Harrowhark looked at him, chose to make that look her final word, and then drew him into an alcove. The alcove was shallow, but he provided good cover. Her fingers shook a very little, so she withdrew them into her sleeves, so it might not be too obvious. She took the innocuous piece of paper that Abigail Pent had given her to examine, and she unfolded it.

When she saw what was inside her eyes seemed to strobe; the streaked red writing almost hovered above the page, the letters crowding and cramping themselves together as she read—

THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED AND YOU LIED TO ME SO I DID THE IMPLANTATION MYSELF YOU SELF-SERVING ZOMBIE AND YOU STILL SENT HIM AFTER ME AND I WOULD HAVE HAD HIM IF I HADN’T BEEN COMPROMISED AND HE TOOK PITY ON ME! HE TOOK PITY ON ME! HE SAW ME AND HE TOOK PITY ON ME

AND FOR THAT I’LL MAKE YOU BOTH SUFFER UNTIL YOU NO LONGER UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THAT GODDAMNED WORD

They were totally alone. Harrowhark nonetheless made her fingers very still, and made the sign she had taught to Ortus—the one that asked the question, What am I seeing? He instantly took the paper from her shivering fingers and scanned it.

“If you come to my room, I will make you the potato dish you liked,” he read aloud, with gravity. And: “How must we understand potato?”

“As your closest vegetable relative,” said Harrowhark, who’d never seen one in real life.

“You are a ready wit,” her cavalier said, with no apparent rancour and every sign of appreciation. “I have always admired your facility for repartee, my lady. Oftentimes someone will say something to me, and later I will think up the perfect riposte—so perfect the hearer could not help but wilt, and be ashamed that they had set themselves up to receive it—but by that point it is often hours after the fact and I am lying in my bed. And in any case, I hate conflict, all kinds.”

Harrowhark rounded on him.

“The Tomb have mercy, Nigenad, you should be ashamed to advertise as much,” she snarled, and did not even understand her incandescence. “A cavalier’s life is conflict. She is a warrior, not a human-sized sponge. If only duels took the form of competitive passive-aggression, I’d probably be a Lyctor already. And you have the temerity to call yourself a son of Drearburh? Don’t answer that; I know you barely have the temerity to call yourself anything at all. For the love of God, Ortus, I need a cavalier with backbone.”

“You always did,” said Ortus. “And I am glad, I think, that I never became that cavalier.”

Hours after the fact, when she was lying in her bed, Harrow’s brain let the response roll up to the surface: What the hell do you mean by that? Which was not a comeback.

11