A wide range of emotions dance across Harrow’s features in a short period of time, and Palamedes misses all of them, too intent on following all the threads that spun by Gideon’s memories, all at once.

“Brute force is the word for it,” he says dryly, then shakes his head. He still doesn’t like what Harrow did, but the specifics no longer matter to him in quite the same way. “Did you know that you’re not the only lyctor to have…compartmentalized one’s cavalier? I gather that in all the chaos on Mithraeum, Gideon ran into someone else like her—that is, a cavalier conscious in her necromancer’s body. Pyhrra Dve. Bloody River, what I wouldn’t give to speak to her. Hell, I’d sit through an hour’s worth of Cohort propaganda in exchange if I had to.”

Pal’s almost breathless from chasing his own thought process, but he again stops short at Harrow’s final comment. Returning his glasses to his face, he looks at the other necromancer thoughtfully. After a long pause he says, “And what’s the difference between a prison and a sanctuary, really? One is meant to protect the people outside from the person inside; the other shelters the person inside from the dangers of the outside world.”