a quick observation from how far I’m into yet another reread of harrow the ninth (…don’t look at me):
in the first fight between augustine and mercy that harrow overhears, early in her time on the haunted fucking space station, I think there’s actually a huge piece of foreshadowing to what happens at the end of the book. at one point in that conversation, what seems to be happening if you read between the lines (since harrow can only hear them) is that after augustine threatens her – to ‘tell daddy’, which is maybe the most cursed way he could have phrased it, good job fhsfkas – mercy tries to pull the same trick she’ll use against john at the end of the book and starts to cry in order for augustine to let his guard down and let her close enough to kill or disable him with her superanatomist powers. except that unlike john, augustine actually knows her far too well to fall for it hahaha. (we don’t realize exactly how well he probably read her intentions like a book there until we get to see her employ exactly the tactic he’s narrating with john later, which is somehow so delightful to me)
this also lends a weight/adds a certain something to how quickly he realizes what she’s about to do at the end, when he begs her not to. like he also says in this conversation, she doesn’t have that many different tricks at the end of the day; in my mind she’s kind of a scalpel of a person – sharp as fuck, but her repertoire also mostly comes down to cutting when you get right down to it lol. (*sigh* I love her immeasurably, what a character) in addition augustine turns out to be completely, distressingly right, if a HUGE asshole about it as is his wont, when he says john is going to be willing to forgive him and not mercy. so much shit gets set up/foreshadowed around this point in the book even aside from the main plot stuff, it’s wild. I also keep coming back to the fact that augustine realizes someone’s messing with cytherea’s body – he thinks it’s mercy doing it, and tells her to stop it both here and after the threesome. which means god is either an idiot, pretending to be an idiot, or actively covering for someone or something and not too picky about who he has to gaslight along the way, since he’s so adamant the body hasn’t been moved. (we get another example of mercy being the least favorite child in the process too – he says g1deon wouldn’t mess with cytherea’s body out of respect (cue pyrrha in the background going ‘rip my necromancer but I’m different’), augustine wouldn’t do so out of love… and mercy wouldn’t out of superstition fhskjfsda. forget necromancy, the river, or the nine houses, john’s real domain is passive aggressiiveness)