“Pyrrha—you’re not really a Lyctor again, are you? You’re you, not your other self?”
“No. I was only pretending, like you were only pretending. You can check my eyes,” said Pyrrha.
“I hope you don’t mind being the last one to know,” said Nona, dusting herself off a bit self-consciously, “but I’m dying.”
This fell completely flat.
“’Course you are,” said Pyrrha.
“I mean it, Pyrrha.”
“Yeah. I suspected you were, though,” Pyrrha said cheerfully. “I didn’t make a big deal out of it. We’ve all got our secrets … but the soul longs for the body, Nona. Even a fucked-up soul … even a soul that’s been changed forever. It takes a lot to acclimate a soul to a body it wasn’t born in, if that original body’s around for it to miss.”
“But you’re not sad,” said Nona.
“Of course I’m not sad. You’re not dying on my watch. Kiddie, when you were yelling…”
Nona was still a little embarrassed about that.
“I took Cam a bit too literally.”
Pyrrha opened her mouth to say something, but then they rounded the second left and she shut her mouth.
The hallway corridors were made of good white interior bricks braced with concrete and metal struts—lots of buildings were; the white stone kept out the heat—but one short section of this particular corridor had been decorated in delicate blood filigree and squiggles: not only the walls, but the floor and even the ceiling. The squiggles were thickest in a square on one wall, like someone had wanted to mark off a door. Pyrrha glanced at the wall, and then she barked out a laugh.
“Is that writing?” said Nona.
“Sort of. It’s a ward—a mark meant to keep us out. Necromancy. That bit’s writing though, House.”
“What’s it say?”
Pyrrha pointed. “Don’t go through here.” And pointed again. “I mean it, idiot. You will disintegrate. A bit obvious … everything else was good and paranoid. These things are all over the barracks—her bedroom, the shipyard, the downstairs tunnel exits. Some of ’em were blinds though. She never trusted me fully. The corpse must be down here.”
“Okay. What’s the trap?”
Pyrrha took up a piece of trash from a box that had half-tumbled over—a piece of broken pipe—and tossed it, underhand, toward the door.
It shivered into bits before Nona’s eyes, and a fine patter of dust came out the other end and dribbled on the corridor floor.
“It’s a shit version of Mercymorn’s old entropy trap,” said Pyrrha. “Not half as good. Done entirely through wards—brilliant—but entirely reliant on wards—fucking ridiculous. Good at keeping people out though … and almost impossible for anyone but another Lyctor to break. See what it’s made out of? That’s blood. Blood wards age, and they burn out if you make them work too hard … And I’m sorry, No-No, but that’s where you come in.”
Nona didn’t understand. “If you want us to stand here chucking stuff at it we’ll be here all day.”
“Nona,” said Pyrrha, “your regeneration ability is a million times better than any normal Lyctor’s. None of them could regrow the way you do. I’m not sure you’ve got a limit … not with the kind of damage you’ve come back from. So I’m really sorry … we’re going to have to use you, and it’s going to hurt like fuck. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it were not literally the most important thing in the world.”
Nona found herself giving a fluttery sigh. She felt a little bit envious, and a little bit weary. “What’s so special about this body we’re going after, anyway?”
“In general? She’s the key to a door that’s been kept locked for ten thousand years,” said Pyrrha. “Personally? She’s the last thing I have left of a woman I tried to trick into loving me, and got played myself. And for you? She might be you, kiddie.”
Nona found herself sighing again, like her body wanted to let out all its sound at once. One of her ears felt slightly blocked, and when she tilted her head and blew her nose and pulled at her earlobe a little trickle of water came out.
“What if I don’t like me?” she said.
But Pyrrha didn’t seem to understand.
“Well, you’ll probably start visiting clubs and trying to hit on the dancers, and going from relationship to relationship not really being able to commit.”