“Pray only that my bones be one day interred in the Anastasian monument, where even the ghost of the light does not go,” said Ortus, in front of everybody, like an absolute shit. Even in the shadow the heat slapped down on him, and beneath his veil some idiot had painted him with the Skull of the Anchorite Dying, that idiot probably being Ortus. As he wept from the sunshine the alabaster wounds of the Anchorite turned to big runnels of paint. No First priest’s blessing could get him inside the Anastasian, the tomb reserved for warriors: Ortus was only likely to die with a heretic’s blood still wet on his sword if he found a very slow heretic. “That is the only blessing I desire.”

The other priests murmured. “Incredible,” said Teacher. “I love it. I bless you that way, twice. Now, won’t somebody fetch me the box?”

What followed was a long and incomprehensible parade of cavaliers, starting with Marta the Second. After Teacher called out, “Ortus the Ninth,” Ortus went up for his prize and returned to present it to his necromancer, as he ought. He placed within Harrow’s gloved hands a ring with a single key laced upon the iron: a singularly dull and uninteresting key, with two teeth and a triangle head. It sat very heavy in the black leather of her palm.

The little man eased himself down upon his stool, from the sides of which no small amount of stuffing was emerging, like a sat-on cream-filled roll. He said comfortably: “Now I will tell you something new, something you are not meant to know: about the First House, and about the research facility.

“The base of Canaan House dates back to before the Resurrection. We first built upward, to get away from the sea; then we built outward, to strive toward beauty … This was meant to be the palace of the Kindly Master, where he might work and hold court and live for always, and oversee all the rebuilding that had to be done. For the Resurrection did not resurrect every broken thing, you understand, and nor did it create anything new. There was hard work ahead—fixing, or designing, and it took a great deal of blood and sweat and bone. Yet those were lovely years, happy ones. And that was the time before Lyctors.”