Your whole soul flinched. A livid heat rose up your neck. With a titanic struggle, you managed not to shield your face with your hands, to be sure of your bedsheet mask. Lyctoral perception had made you complacent. Ianthe Tridentarius was a black hole where no heart could be sensed beating and no brain could be seen sparking. The brain, you knew grudgingly, existed. The heart was an open question. She looked at your face—saw, most likely, her own death reflected in your expression—and reached inside her robe. The palm of your hand slapped to her forehead with a ringing thwack. You could not sense her: she was a locked door in a dark room to you; but with a touch you could feel the orbital bones you might remove from her face.

“Before you do anything I am quick to reassure you that you will regret,” said the other Lyctor, who had not moved—who had not recoiled at your palm’s promise, except, perhaps, a quick shuttering of those mixed-up eyes—“I have a message for you.”

The hand slowly withdrew from the robe. None of this would have been enough, except (the blood howled in your ears; you thought you heard footsteps, but then they slurred into voices, then back into footsteps again) that caught between Ianthe’s fingers was a piece of flimsy with the name Harrowhark clearly upon it. The name Harrowhark was lettered in your hand. Underneath, in smaller lettering, and still your hand: To be given to Harrowhark immediately upon coherence.

You looked at the letter. You looked at Ianthe. Even in that short interval, the battlefield of her eyes had changed. From beneath your palm, you could see that one iris was now wholly a washed-out purple, like a fading bruise or a dying flower; the other one was blue and brown commingled. This glittering mess of heterochromatics focused on you, totally calm, utterly sure of itself.

“I wish you’d explained to me what coherence meant,” she complained. “Did you mean coherent as in, I recognise objects and their names? Did you mean coherent as in, I am no longer remotely out to lunch, which means you’re still not eligible? I wasn’t going anywhere near you in the first instance of you opening your eyes. Your only settings were power-vomit and murder.”

“Tell me how you came to have what you are holding,” you croaked.

“You put it in my own hands, you skull-faced fruitcake,” she said soothingly. “Go on. Take it. It’s yours.”