GUIDELINE #2: YOU CAN NEVER RETURN TO THE NINTH HOUSE.
The way home is closed to you. Do not set foot within the House again. Do not allow yourself to be taken there by force.
GUIDELINE #3: THE SWORD WILL REMAIN ON YOU AT ALL TIMES.
Wipe it down with your arterial blood nightly. Coat the blade in the ash which regrows. Do not cut flesh with the naked blade. Do not cut bone with the naked blade. Even this may not prove enough. Treat the sword as your promised death, and act according to the first guideline.
GUIDELINE #4: YOU ARE COMPROMISED.
You may already suspect this, if you’re not as big a fool as I take you for. I will confirm your access to the Lyctoral well. This battery is, most likely, the extent of your capability. Make up for your inevitable failings through study. Your understanding of flesh and spirit magic is execrable, so start there. Do not aim to only build upon what you already know. It pains me to admit this, but you know piss-all. I refuse to let you build your house on such shiftless & ureal sand.
GUIDELINE #5: YOU OWE IANTHE TRIDENTARIUS THE FAVOUR OF THE CHAIN.
This will be difficult to justify. I will therefore not justify it. Tridentarius has made what has come to pass possible. I owe her a debt that you will undoubtedly be paying for the rest of your life. The agreement does end on your death. The agreement does extend into the House, but NOT into the Tomb. The agreement is singular but does take precedence over and above any debt you have sworn to anyone lesser than the Holy Corpse, over and above the Emperor of the Nine Houses. In order to avoid philosophical quandaries she will expect you to re-swear immediately on receipt of the letter, and any failure to do so undoes the whole business. Do not be tardy here.
It goes without saying that Ianthe will destroy you if she can. She has helped me ably, but it has cost her nothing and you everything. I have guarded from her full understanding of the work so that she cannot undo it on a whim or by accident. You are in her power. I am in no doubt of her misusing it. You yourself never had power over anyone else but you misused it violently.
GUIDELINE #6: READ THE OTHER MISSIVES ONLY IF AND WHEN YOU MEET THEIR REQUIREMENTS.
I have left other instructions in case of new circumstances. Ianthe holds twenty-four of these letters and will give you twenty-two, including this one. They are numbered accordingly. Memorise the requirements and carry the letters on you at all times, ready to act the moment you are required to read them. Follow their instructions without hesitation. I repeat: do not read them otherwise.
To myself: a brief break in guidelines follows, before the last. You will think at this point that I have given you a terrible hand to play the game with. I am not unsympathetic. Nonetheless, understand that I envy you more than I have ever envied anyone, and that I look upon your birth as a blessing. Look upon me as a Harrowhark who was handed the first genuine choice of our lives; the only choice ever given where we had free will to say, No, and free will to say, Yes.
Accept that in this instance I have chosen to say, No.
GUIDELINE #7: EXAMINE IANTHE’S JAW AND TONGUE AFTER YOU READ THIS.
Owing to her Lyctoral status this will require physical touch. Under no circumstances can you let her know you are examining them. Do whatever it takes. If you suspect either jaw or tongue has been replaced, DO NOT SWEAR THE OATH. Instead kill her immediately.
In the hope of a future forgiveness, I remained,
HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS
* * *
“Come here,” you said, less steadily than you would have liked.
Ianthe—still dreamily doused in starlight—obliged you instantly, still smiling that same secret, conspiratorial smile, like a spider tucked inside a shoe. She arranged herself in the chair by the bed, and you noticed again her favouring the left arm, as though the right was too heavy a burden.
You swung your legs off the hospital cot, and you took the sheeting away from your face, despising your nakedness. Her mismatched eyes widened, just briefly, as you stood before her, considering—the sword was six feet of abandoned steel tangled in the thin blankets, but you thought that for now, a small distance would have to do—and you reached out to cup Ianthe’s face in your hands. Your thumbs pressed up against the warm flesh that skinned her ramus and your other fingers butterflied over her cheeks. Your metacarpus nudged up against the body of the mandible. When you tilted her jaw up to you your skin was discoloured against her skin; her skin was discoloured against your skin. There was the faintest suggestion of dried blood beneath your fingernails.
You found your mouth and eyes screwing up, as though against the light, or a sour taste; you could not help it. But the vile course of action was obvious. You leant down and—holy shit—kissed her squarely on the mouth.
This, at least, she hadn’t expected—how could she, what the fuck—and her mouth froze against yours, which gave you time to work. Ianthe was a black hole to you, a null, an empty, overradiant space, unreadable; but close physical proximity could echolocate that darkness. It was osteoids your fingers searched for. New bone always gave itself away, its fresh collagen spongy and bright with thalergy. The lining of her cells was in keeping with old bone. When you pressed the tip of your tongue to her tongue she made a small, tight, half-wounded sound—she was probably trying to call for help—but although the lingual muscle was not your area of specialty, you could probe through flesh the signs that her foramen bone was whole, unscarred by a fresh rip of the tongue from the mouth. You were safe.
You withdrew, finally, your mouth from her mouth. Ianthe was left, lips slightly parted, eyebrows raised, her bloodless face untouched by maidenly blushes.
“I pledge myself again to the service of Ianthe Tridentarius, Princess of Ida, daughter of the Third House,” you said. “I swear again to honour any previous agreements I made to her. I swear by my mother; by the salt water; by that which lies dead and unbreathing in the Tomb; by the ripped and remade soul of Ortus Nigenad.”
“Who?” she said. “Oh, yes—the cavalier.”
Ianthe wiped the pad of her thumb over the blanched bow of her lips, then considered her fingers. “Well,” she said eventually, “that constitutes some improvement over your sewing my lips shut, like you did the … no, pardon me, I agreed not to mention incidental detail.”
“Wait. You submitted to be made a Sewn Tongue?”
“Ask me no questions and I shall tell you no lies,” said the Princess of Ida, wiping her thumb against her bottom lip again, very delicately. “Look, all I shall say is that for a House that trades solely in bone, you own some enormous needles. I accept your fealty again, Ninth House, and can only assume that you have now read the agreement.”
You sat back down on the bed and placed your hand on the sword, which had the effect it always did: your oesophagus gave a little exhausted shiver, your salivary glands jolted, and the nausea rose up behind your eyeballs. “You have wrung a great deal of blood from what seems to be a very little stone,” you said.
“I gave you something you cared about very deeply at the time,” she said, idly swinging one leg to perch over one knee. “I don’t consider my price all that high … and neither did you. What’s more, now we are about to embark on what promises to be a truly beautiful friendship, with me the lone fruitful thing in your salted field, et cetera, so I’ll thank you to not embark on the I have been hard done by act.”