Nobody came to help her—everyone ran to Camilla. Nona didn’t mind at all, except that she wanted to run to Camilla herself. Camilla had risen to her knees, the sword driven through her midsection like a kebab with just one thing on it, and she was grimly—solidly—holding the hilt steady, her dark hair sticking on her sweat-stained face. Crown had tumbled next to her in a handsome heap and was trying to hold the sword steady from the other end, with the presence of mind to wrap her hands in her dress so she didn’t cut herself to ribbons. She kept saying, “Stay with me, Camilla. Stay with me,” until Cam murmured, wetly and thickly—
“Not going anywhere.”
“I’m holding you to that,” said the body of Ianthe Naberius.
It sat up all of a sudden, like Nona getting woken up by the sponge, only all at once instead of in stages. It jackknifed in two. Pyrrha had rushed to retrieve her gun the moment all the soldiers started toppling like dolls; now she walked forward holding it in both hands and released the safety, her aim on Ianthe. Then she saw something that Nona couldn’t. She lowered the gun. She said—
“You fucking legend.”
Ianthe’s body ignored her. It grasped the hilt of the blade that was buried in Camilla’s body. Camilla did not look up, but only said, to Pyrrha: “It’s missed the pelvis. Take it out.”
“It’s still a gut wound,” said Ianthe’s body. “You’ll be out of commission.”
Curiously, Cam kept addressing all her remarks sideways, as though she could not bear to look at or address the dead body. She said, “I’ll cope.”
Nona was horrified—she could not tear her eyes away—as Ianthe’s body grasped that hilt, supported itself on its knees, and pulled.
The body unsheathed the sword—all that slim metal came flashing out—Camilla’s chin snapped upward, then back, and she stared at the ceiling, and she did not make any more sound than an unready exhalation. The body flung the sword away—it spun over the tiles, splattering Cam’s blood as it went. Ianthe’s body tugged off its right glove, and Pyrrha dropped down on the other side, unfolding Cam’s shirt. Cam was really a mess now. Crown said, “I’ll get bandages,” and left Cam propped up by Pyrrha and Ianthe’s body.
Camilla didn’t like this. She said roughly, “Give me space. I’ve had worse.” Pyrrha moved away, wiping her hands on her trousers, but Ianthe’s body didn’t. It placed its arms over the flooding wound in Camilla’s side, and Cam’s chin lolled on her chest. Her breathing was wet—then still and quiet.
Ianthe’s body said—
“Won’t you look at me, Camilla Hect?”
Camilla murmured something that Nona could not hear. The body said, “I died, and you carried me. I gambled, and you covered my bet. You kept the faith, and were the instrument of both my vengeance and my grace. And now I have fought through time, and the River, and Ianthe the First—fought and bested Ianthe the First, and I hope I never fight her ever again … Will you not look at me now, Cam, and know me?”
Camilla raised her chin. She looked at the dead face. She said quietly—
“Yes, Warden, I will always know you.”
Their foreheads touched. Camilla reached out with her slippery hand, and Palamedes clasped it with Ianthe Naberius’s cold, gloveless one. Because both of their hands were very messy it made an embarrassing squelch, but neither of them appeared to notice or care. Nona had to look away.
She heard Palamedes say, in the voice of Ianthe Naberius—“Pyrrha, I can barely do anything. I’m only the hand in a sock puppet. I don’t think I could unpick a single ward, and I can’t do a damn thing for Cam’s bleeding—thank God nothing’s protruding.”
Cam said, without opening her eyes, “Don’t worry about me, Warden. I’ll walk it off.”
“Yes, thanks for your input,” said Palamedes pleasantly. “I’ve taken it under advisement and will add it to the next agenda.”
Camilla smiled that wonderful hot-metal smile that Nona had loved as long as she had been alive.
“Jackass,” she said.
“Don’t try anything thalergetic, Sextus,” Pyrrha said. “Focus on the big picture, we don’t need fine-tuning. All you need to do is read the body you’re in—it would have touched the corpse. Discounting this room, there shouldn’t be any other remains. Where’d she stash it?”
Palamedes took off the other glove on Ianthe Naberius’s dead hand. He blindly grasped about, trying not to dislodge Camilla, and put that hand on the tiles. He had to think about it, but then he said— “I can’t get fine details. There’s some kind of corpse stashed in a downstairs annex room. Two lefts will bring you to a corridor with Ianthe’s fingerprints all over it—then there’s remains, and that’s the only corpse sig for two hundred metres, which doesn’t really account for—”