The window cracked. At first she assumed it was the howling, killing wind; but as she and Abigail watched, a questing pink tentacle, crackling with ice as it shifted and slithered, made a ropy trail down a broken hole in the glass. A long, pulsing tube. As they watched, a sphincter opened in the end, and from that hole emerged a clattering pile of plex scope slides, the type you would preserve a cell sample between. The door to the bedroom had been flung open: the previously dead Magnus Quinn was there, wearing a huge furry coat, cavern-cheeked from the chill, saying, “They’re breaching the walls, dear.”

“Tell Protesilaus and the lieutenant not to touch them.”

“Too late, and I can’t blame them, these things are vile—”

“Leave your body to your body, Reverend Daughter,” said Abigail, rising shakily to stand, her teeth chattering. “If you were dead on the other side, we’d all be gone by now. If you die in here, your soul is gone forever. Right now, in this moment, you are alive—let us ensure that if your body survives, you will remain at the helm.”

Harrow fought to be heard over the screams of the wind. “But I was stabbed through the stomach! What’s happening out there?”

44

THAT SAME NIGHT BEFORE THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

THE BLADE OF THE rapier tangled in your skin. Big hanks of dermis kept wending their way up along the fuller, unsure where to head from there; as organs knitted together inside your abdomen—as interstitial meat threw itself against the invasive blade—the bloodied tip quivered, pushed this way and that by the regrowing tissue. You’d been stabbed from behind, and you’d collapsed backward onto the rapier’s hilt. Its foible pointed upward where it protruded from your torso.

And you’d gone and left me behind.

I arched up on your hands, rested your weight on your feet—the blade stayed stuck—and I pushed up against the corridor wall, and I got you to stand. Your legs were trembling. The only thing I could think of to do was to wad up your hands in the robe, give myself a count of three, and push the rapier tip backward as hard and as quick as I possibly could. The noise that resulted—I’m not doing it justice when I say it went SCHHHLIIIIICK, which also doesn’t describe the pain of a full foot of steel being pushed back through your innards and out the small of your back as carefully as I could do it, which wasn’t very. The sword fell to the tiles with a sad rattle, and I took a couple of moments, and by the time I reached down to get it you’d just—healed up. No more pain. No more stab wound.