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He stepped back and bowed to her. It was an unpretentious, entirely modest movement. In The Noniad it might have taken half a page. There was no time for him to make any kind of speech, but despite over twelve books of Ortus celebrating his verbosity, he did not seem the type of man to make one; all he said was, “Many thanks, and farewell. Spirit-guide of the Fifth, can you send us four to the shore’s edge?”

“Easily,” Abigail said. She stepped forward and put one hand on Protesilaus’s and Ortus’s shoulders, and she peered through her thick glasses at them, and said quickly: “Are you—”

“For the Seventh,” said Protesilaus.

“For the Second,” said Marta.

“For the Ninth,” said Ortus.

The candles flared up again, that black flame threatening to scorch the ceiling, and Canaan House seemed to rock again as though with some earthquake—the electric lights overhead flickered and died briefly—and all four cavaliers were gone, back into the River. Harrow found herself imagining them in her mind’s eye: rising out of those turbid waters before the Saint of Duty with his spear and his sword, something looming behind him, bigger than the eye could comprehend. Bluer than death; unimaginable, advancing to greet the four dead swordsmen and the Lyctor.

Harrow the Ninth - Act Five, Chapter Forty-Nine