oooh ok so I’ve started my Harrow reread and I noticed something interesting.
“You stared with calm vacuity at a six-sided container draped with the Second House’s scarlet and white, which had no human remains inside.”
Three Houses are mentioned in this passage as “aberrant”: the Second, the Third, and the Sixth, and their aberrance consists of the fact that they’re missing bodies. The Sixth coffin contains some parts of Palamedes’ body, and is missing Camilla because she’s alive. We know the Third coffin is empty because the twins are both alive and Ianthe has taken Babs’ body into her own custody. The Second is missing Judith because she’s alive, but Marta? Her body was at Canaan House, and there’s no reason I can see why it wouldn’t have been recovered along with the others. Sure, it was in bad shape, but not worse than Palamedes. And as far as I can tell from AYU, Blood of Eden doesn’t seem to have Marta’s remains in the same way as they have Gideon’s body at this point. It’s possible that Judith and the crew managed to bury or cremate Marta before BOE arrived, but if that’s the case, then why not the others? Where is Marta Dyas’ body??
Good catch! I went back to read it and John says they didn’t recover any trace of Camilla or her body, and same goes for Judith and Coronabeth and Gideon’s body. He says they got partial remains of the Seventh and Palamedes, and that everyone else is accounted for. Which is interesting, because that means that either John is lying about having accounted for Marta’s body by then (possible! he’s a known liar!) or that he has accounted for her body and is just… keeping it? For some reason?
It remains possible that the Canaan House crew managed to bury or cremate Marta, but if John can recover the cremated remains of the Seventh then he should be able to recover Marta’s cremated remains too. So I think this is unlikely.
I wonder if he’s kept Marta’s body in part because Judith is the only necromancer unaccounted-for? Not sure where he would be going with that, but it does seem like this was done on purpose.
Or Harrow is staring at the empty coffin standing in for the presumed-dead Judith, and Marta’s body is one coffin over. It says “a six-sided container draped with the Second House’s scarlet and white,” not “the six-sided container,” leaving open the possibility there’s more than one such container present.
Let’s look at the math. Seventeen people originally, two for each participating House plus one for the extra Third. Minus the five survivors, that’s twelve. Gideon’s body was taken and Protesilaus was cremated, and so was Dulcinea so we don’t have to factor in that extra body, so that leaves us with ten corpses. Harrow senses ten bodies present in the Erebos.
It seems like Marta’s body most likely was recovered, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was present in the Hold. Those ten bodies would also include Naberius Tern, and we know his necromancer had him stashed away as a surprise tool to use later. So we can count out Blood of Eden, but we have no proof either way of John having returned Marta’s body to her House.
I agree with this; and now I’m trying to count out the ten bodies. We have the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Eighth for sure; that gets us to six. Marta and Babs’ bodies are on board the Erebos, even if not in the hold necessarily; that’s eight. If Pro and Dulcie’s remains were recovered from the incinerator, that gets us to ten. (Does that count as a body, if it’s ashes?) Do Palamedes’ remains count as a body? Or half a body? I assume as well that we count Cytherea? Basically I’m unclear if ashes count as a body.
I’m pretty certain there’s a reason New Rho burns suspected necromancers, Kiriona said they had to burn the bodies infected by the demons, Wake tried to burn Gideon and Pyrrha to kill them, and both Canaan House and the Mithraeum have person-sized incinerators. Burning a body seems to disrupt thanergetic connection. Cremains may or may not be necromantically inert, but I would bet you anything they don’t register as corpses anymore.
The scraps of Palamedes are… detectable, but. Hm.
ALT
We might have an extra body, depending on if Palamedes counts from a distance or not.
Very good connections re: cremains! Although, Isaac does say he can tell when ashes are cremains as opposed to … well, non-corpse ashes. Doesn’t that suggest they would be detectable, especially by a Lyctor?
I’ve been interpreting the scraps in Pal’s coffin as whatever pieces of him Camilla didn’t pick up. Do you have a different interpretation?
There are bone fragments left after cremation, and the ash left behind has a particular consistency. Isaac references the consistency of the cremains when he discovers them, to argue that it was fat and tissue burned and not just bone, but the framing of his certainty contrasted with Corona’s doubt gives the impression there’s something necromantic at play too. So I went looking, and Gideon does confirm that cremains aren’t inert; Harrow makes her bone cocoon out of them!!
I still very much doubt they could be taken for intact dead bodies to the lyctoral sense. Harrow’s description of the ten bodies from a distance is: “thanergy with the rot of thalergy arrested, snap-frozen.” The rot of thalergy isn’t a factor with cremains—that’s the point of cremation—so the burned Seventh wouldn’t be numbered in those ten.
Oh yeah we’re on the same page about the scraps of Pal being whatever bits and pieces of his body the Cohort could scrounge out of the rubble. Wonder if it’ll ever become relevant that there are still bits of Paul’s past self confettied across canaan house. What I’m uncertain of is if that collection of bits would have enough uuuhhh thanergetic ‘mass’ for Harrow to tell it’s a dead body from a distance. She describes the bodies as ten discrete “bundles” of thanergy, so signs point to yes. But it is a complicating factor.
ALT
