In that echoing metal silence, they all moved to make their perimeter around the diagram. Harrowhark had dug big handfuls from Ortus’s panniers, and stood shod in a crunchy, perfectly pulverized pile of bone. She watched Abigail and Magnus cross on tiptoe, nimbly dodging any line that their shoes might scuff, and in passing turn and kiss each other gravely. She was not embarrassed to see this intimacy; in fact, she found that it was vaguely interesting to see a marriage play out in front of her. There were many strictures against a necromancer marrying their own cavalier, and whatever road Abigail and Magnus had chosen to walk had been a difficult one: she knew that the marriage had preceded the cavaliership, which perhaps had made it less grotesque for both. They kissed as chastely and briefly as children; Magnus touched her cheek and said quietly, “Godspeed, my darling,” and she said, “You too.” That was all. No more, and no less.

It was still entirely uncertain whether her skeletons could handle this freezing, wretched cold. If she was bound by the rules of her pre-Lyctor state, it was going to be difficult. The candles wheezed and flickered but kept burning gamely on. Protesilaus stood opposite his necromancer. Ortus was there beside Harrowhark, a big black-wrapped bulk in her peripheral vision, trembling a little from cold and probable fear.

Lieutenant Dyas was her opposite. Harrow had told her back in the laboratory that Judith Deuteros was alive, and she’d gotten a rather curt “Thought so” in reply. Dyas had begun to turn away, then surprised Harrow by turning back and suddenly saying, “She’ll give them hell,” in tones that were scarcely less blank; but with an expression that was far from it.

Now Magnus stood at the head of the circle facing the frozen-over coffin. His necromancer did not put herself at any particular point. She had taken a jug in her hands, one of a set that Protesilaus had carried with care down the long facility ladder, and Harrow did not know what had been put inside it.

“Here is the libation, for what good it may do,” said Abigail.

She carefully poured a measure of the jug’s contents at the foot of the coffin. A brief spill of thin, milky, whitish liquid pooled at the base, sluggish in the cold.

“You come to conquer,” she said, and spilt another runnel.

“You come in fury,” she said, and spilt another.

“You come bearing ancient weapons,” she said, and another.

“You come with a sword of the Ninth House,” she said, and one more.