“Then did the dire bone frenzy fall upon Nonius, the mightiest arm of the Ninth and its bulwark;

Spasmed his veins with the death lust; his great heart roared like a black iron furnace, hungry for corpses…”

“Ah,” said Harrowhark. “Yes. Book Sixteen.” And, presently: “I think ‘bone frenzy’ might be a term open to coarse misinterpretation, personally.”

Better death by the drawn sword, and better the death of the knucklebone. There was only one trigger to drive Ortus Nigenad so comprehensively berserk, and she had forgotten that it was not a trigger to use lightly. Ortus primly said he thought that nobody who read the Noniad would be the sort of churl who misread a simple and evocative collocation like bone frenzy; he went on to suggest that such a person probably didn’t even read in the first place, and would be more inclined to trifle with prurient magazines or pamphlets than to bother themselves with a complex epic such as the Noniad; he said that he wouldn’t want such a person to read his poetry anyway.

“At least now I possess the time to finish it,” he added a little moodily, but apparently satisfied with that thought.

This surprised her only in that it was so obviously expressed. She did not voice what she thought: that even if he was right—even if the last thing Harrow wanted was for Ortus to get in the way as she studied the paths of Lyctorhood, to become a finger and a gesture, to take the only divine path that had ever opened for her in order to save her House from a destruction she herself had inflicted—it didn’t behove him to say as much. She hoped he never finished it. She hoped there was never world enough or time. Harrowhark had always thought Matthias Nonius, legendary cavalier of her House, sounded like an absolute horse’s ass.

“Harrowhark,” said her cavalier, “I wish to ask you a question.”

He did not sound timid now; his mood had shifted to a more typical restrained sadness, though she thought, perhaps, there was something else within it. Harrow took a moment to study his face. Ortus would be a good rest cure, should the homesickness get too acute. He had classical Ninth eyes: a tintless shade very close to true black, sharply ringed around the iris, very like her own.

Ortus said a little restlessly: “What do you think it is like—to be a Lyctor? Do you think it is a central tragedy to them, their great age, their timelessness?”

She was surprised again. “Nigenad, what would be the tragedy in living for a myriad? Ten thousand years to learn everything there is to know—to read everything that has ever been written … to study without fear of premature end or reckoning. What is the tragedy of time?”