Reddit post by u/WetPepper on July 19th 2022

Things are a movin and confusin left and right. Harrow and Ianthe get to see a bunch of ghosts, we meet the rest of the lyctors (and they are weird), and Ortus serenades Abigail with the Noniad.

Chapter 6

Harrow comes awake paralized and in a wheelchair. We realize that the person pushing the wheelchair is a Lyctor (Hi Mercy!) and they are extremely peeved (we don’t yet know this is just what she's like). Mercy looks at Harrow's whole face (the horror!) and after Harrow unparalyzes herself asks Harrow how old she is. The body appears behind Mercy and tells Harrow she must lie, Harrow says she is 15 and:

“That emotion played out over the face again, like the ripple of darkness across a briefly disturbed body of water. The whole body clenched and unclenched. It didn’t matter that she was a black hole to you, without thanergy or thalergy to speak of; it was just a matter of seeing her shoulders. It was relief. It was unalloyed, full-bore relief.”

After some ranting about how the emperor never listens to her Mercy tells Harrow to get in a shuttle where she finds Ianthe and a cohort officer who is in the process of drawing a ghost ward on the hull. We find out the Cohort has lost three ships and 18000 soldiers to a missile attack. The emperor appears and makes clear that he is leaving the Eberos with Mercy, Ianthe, and Harrow. The cohort officer starts to die and is saved by the emperor after using quite a lot of her blood in the ward.

The emperor explains that they are traveling to a deep place in space that is only accessible via going though the river. Through a strained magma metaphor it is explained that while this enables faster than light travel, it is incredibly dangerous and only possible for Lyctors. There seems to be a lot of doubt whether Harrow will survive the journey. Harrow and Ianthe are told to lie on the floor and then they see the water.

Chapter 7

The water comes in and Ianthe starts to see things. After 1 minute 44 seconds the ghost ward fails and bodies start to hit the ship. Something hits Harrows leg and she tries to use a theorem to protect her feet. This is bad according to God:

‘“Oh—” He used a word you did not understand. “Harrowhark, no theorems!” “Don’t be ridiculous. She can’t be using theorems,” said Mercy. “She’d be barely awake and it’s totally beyond her at this poi—John, stop her, she’s using theorems!!”’

Harrow sees more and more bodies, including a toddler with a painted face and very red hair, this really does her in and she starts screaming. Harrow sees the 200 bodies of the dead children of the Ninth House and is blistering and bleeding everywhere.

God grabs Harrow and they leave the river, as Harrow blacks out she wonders why she saw five points of light when there were only 4 of them in the shuttle.

Chapter 8

Back at Canaan house Harrow does not like tea, it is way too hot and burns her taste buds. Ortus says the ninth house intersession while Harrow looks over the other beings in the room. The keyrings are handed out and Teacher goes over the history of Canaan house and the lyctors. Saying that this is the place the lyctors figured out how to become lyctors and this place has been left as it was then.

“Someone spoke up—the Fifth woman—and she said, fearlessly and amiably: “Then the path to Lyctorhood is independent research? Gosh! And it isn’t even my birthday.””

“Teacher says that while that is part:

“The other part, the greater part, is the silence … is the care. You are not alone in the facility. In its heart lies the Sleeper, and how long that creature has lain there I do not know; but I do know that they are your greatest threat, for although they lie in sleep … in that sleep, they walk.””

And so we are introduced (kinda) to the sleeper, who Teacher says cannot be killed and must be avoided at all costs.

Ortus is terrified but Harrow has no sympathy. He starts quoting the Noniad and then asks again why she chose him:

“Harrow said, “There was nobody else.” His mask slipped, and not the mask made of alabaster and black paint. Ortus looked at her with his steady dark gaze, and his heavy face flickered; she realized with electrified astonishment that he was exasperated. “You never did possess an imagination,” he said, and, obviously upset with himself, his mask reappeared as swiftly as if slapped back on with both hands.”

A skeleton beckons them to follow, but as they do so it asks Harrow “Is this how it happens?”

Chapter 9

Harrow wakes up in a chapel, lying in a pew. It is the funeral for Cytherea the First and Harrow wants to be anywhere else. Mercy, God, and another lyctor are kneeling at the altar. God states a memory of Cytherea, saying that she came to them on death's door as a last resort. The new lyctor’s, Augustine gives a eulogy for her saying she had an enormous capacity for love.

Mercy notices Harrow and Ianthe are awake and they are introduced to Augustine the First, the Saint of Patience. After some chit chat another lyctor busts in the chapel.

“Unlike the other Lyctors, all of whom skewed hungry, soft men and women of the necromancer build, his frame carried nothing but muscle. He was sinew over bone. He was a walking tendon.”

Greeting God, he tells them that Number Seven is at the rim and this has a deflating impact on the group. This resurrection beast is much closer than they thought.

God decides to stay and make a fight of it, as the plan all along was to get more lyctors to do precisely this. God refers to the latest lyctor as “Ortus the First” and Harrow once again passes out.

Chapter 10

Ortus is reciting The Noniad to the Fifth House when Harrow interrupts them. Abigail shows Harrow what she is working on, she is assembling documents from Canaan house to do historical research and possibly call a lyctoral ghost. Tempting a ghost that old and possibly a lyctor would be unprecedented by Abigail is excited about the idea. Ortus praises her and Magnus jokingly tells him to stop flirting with his wife (to which Ortus is mortified).

Abigail gives Harrow a slip of paper and says that scholarship is best as a communal effort. While she disagrees Harrow takes the paper. Abigail asks if it is normal for someone from the ninth to have such “diverse” spirit energy as she detects over one hundred and fifty signatures marked on Harrow. She flees and tells Ortus they must avoid the fifth house at all costs.

Harrow looks at the paper Abigail gave her, and it reads insanity about Eggs dieing. She gives it to Ortus who says it reads “If you come to my room, I will make you the potato dish you liked”. They argue and Harrow says she needs a cavalier with backbone. Ortus says he is glad that he never became that cavalier to which Harrow is confused by.

Chapter 11

Harrow is found leaning over Cytherea’s corpse having stabbed the two handed sword into the corpse's breast. She had no idea how she got there.

Thoughts/Takeaways/Discussion Starters

This was the point of the book where I thought I started to kinda get what was going on (although still extremely confused) on my first read though. It's clear that we have one storyline of Lyctor Harrow post Canaan house and one storyline of Necro Harrow going though Canaan house again (with a bunch of differences). It's still very unclear how they tie together or how the events of Gideon relate but both are moving forward. What did people initially think was going on at this point when you first were reading through this section?

I love the introductions of the Lyctors in these chapters, Mercy knocking out the officer and asking for understanding. The description of Ortus as a walking tendon. What sticks out the most about the initial introduction of the lyctors?

We get the stakes of the book here, Number 7 is close and the lyctors need to prepare to fight it. Apparently this was the reason Jod wanted new lyctors. This makes the lack of direction in Gideon even more of an oversight on Jod’s part to me, 8 new lyctors instead of two would have been such a better outcome, why didn’t he work harder to set it up? Even accounting for Cytherea it seems unlikely that many of them would have become lyctors with the guidance available to them. Was Jod trusting that once someone got it they would show the others? Or did he only kinda want new lyctors made?

I love the Ortus interaction with the Fifth House. Abigail is the audience Ortus has always wanted (even if she is mostly interested so that she can figure out the 9th house history). Magnus telling Ortus to “stop flirting with my wife” is never not hilarious.

SPOILERS BELIOW

***

***

***

Re-read Discussion thoughts

• We get a lot of OG Gideon hints here, most notably Harrow passing out when Ortus the First is named. It seems like Harrow’s ability to hear Gideon's name and replace it got better and better as the book progresses (she doesn’t pass out every time) I assume this is her/Ianthe’s brain chicanery improving over time.

• Mercy asking Harrow’s age is one of those moments that really stands out in a re-read. Mercy first looks at her face and is relieved (probably because she doesn’t look anything like Jod and doesn’t have his eyes) then asks Harrow’s age and fully thinks that Harrow isn’t the baby they lost on the Ninth (I mean correct, but not as correct as she thinks).

• Did we ever figure out how Wake got Harrow to stab Cytherea's corpse?

***

***

***

END OF SPOILERS

Link to full discussion on Reddit with Comments