“It would be unprecedented,” said Pent. She was talking a little bit too much, too fast. “I mean, there’s the issue of whether the Lyctor in question is even dead. That’s the first thing to consider. As a speaker to the dead, I really am at my best when people are not alive … If they are in the River, whatever the depth, I can only hope that a handful of minor relics and the new blood of my beating heart will tempt them to the surface. Nobody has ever tempted a Lyctor before. I am not even certain where they go. Do Lyctors enter the River? Do Lyctors pass as we pass? I don’t know where they wait. I don’t know how to direct them. But I would so love to try.”

Harrowhark waited, her thumbs pressed together within her sleeves.

From the half a step behind her, Ortus said: “Your indefatigability in the face of ancient death becomes you.”

“Stop flirting with my wife,” said Magnus. (Harrowhark had forgotten that he was Abigail’s husband, and found the concept of making eyes at one’s cavalier too revolting to bear.) When he caught sight of Ortus’s expression over Harrow’s shoulder, which Harrow could only imagine, he said hastily: “Joke! A joke. Wouldn’t suggest it of you, Ninth.”

“I would like to give you something,” said Abigail Pent.

This was to Harrowhark. She watched as the capable hands—strong, for a necromancer’s, beautifully formed and with very even nails—took a bit of folded paper from the table. She passed it to her Ninth colleague as though it did not hurt her to give away such precious material. She was smiling, very slightly.

“Scholarship is best made as a communal effort,” she said. “If you can tell me anything of interest about that paper, I’d be very grateful for it. If you could tell me anything tedious, I’d still be thankful. Bone adepts do have such a notorious eye for detail.”

Harrowhark Nonagesimus was of the Ninth House; if it had been her in possession of Abigail Pent’s resources, she would have kept them all to herself. On dying she would have put them all in a chest and buried them to keep them from the greedy eyes of other scholars for another thousand years. She took the gift with gloved fingers, turned it around in her hands—it was just paper; it had the thanergy of paper, and unlike flimsy, she would be able to feel the seethe of bacteria eating away at it if she pressed it to her bare skin.

“I am—obliged to you, Fifth House,” she said.

Magnus was saying: “Ortus. What does happen to Nonius, after he faces the ensorcelled swordsmen? I assume they fight?”