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It takes John a long time to rename P—.
He’s not sure why. He hasn't had trouble with the others; Mercymorn and Augustine and Gideon had been the easiest things in the world, and the others no different, not really. But he can't put it off much longer.
“Please, John,” said G— that is, says Gideon, at breakfast. “Let it be soon?”
They’re eating pork cutlets, which aren’t really a breakfast food, but they’re working with what they’ve got, and no one could be bothered to cure bacon. They’re courtesy of the actual grilling capabilities of Gideon; yesterday’s dubious sausages were down to the enthusiastic, if fallible, culinary skills of Augustine and John. They’re on a perpetual Boy Scout camp, at the moment, cooking miscellaneous meats on a fire in a wrecked old frying pan. John hasn’t figured out cereal crops not of a dental inclination yet, though he and Gideon are working on it.
On the floor, Alecto is chowing down on the ceramic crockery he's salvaged. John can’t be bothered to stop her, even though he’ll have to go and find more. She seems happy enough, even if Mercymorn is watching her out of the corner of her eye with a slightly revolted expression, and wincing at the worst cracking sounds. John thinks he might have to try a little harder to convince them all to come around to Alecto, but he also doesn’t really blame his disciples for their ill-concealed fear of her. Because it is fear, even if they think it’s revulsion or suspicion. It’s the same primal, uncanny-valley nerves that you got as a kid from, like, Jim Henson’s scarier puppets, or those weird CGI people in the Polar Express, or those TikTok AI-generated dark fantasy concept clips…
What was Gideon saying? Oh, right. Please.
“It doesn’t happen overnight, mate,” says John, staring at his mug of water and wondering if he can push tea leaves up his priority list. “I have to get it right. I’ll get to her soon, I promise. Next, in fact.”
John’s not a monster, you see. He’s let them remember some things; who they were to each other, mostly. Who they liked; or, in the case of Mercy and Augustine, who they hated, with a fervent side helping of sexual tension. It’s easier that way. But they don’t remember their first deaths, the circumstances of them— only that the world ended, and they died, and John has bought them back. But Gideon knows he’s missing someone, someone who John can bring back— even if he’s struggling on names, on details. John has put it all down to the side effects of the nuclear winter. Oops! All Radioactive Memory Loss! He feels bad, but not bad enough to admit the truth; that it’s him, going into the brain and poking around in their memories, pulling wires and flicking switches. It’s easier this way. And kinder. No one wants to remember their gory death. The whole point of gory death is that you don’t remember it.
(He tries to pretend he’s forgotten, too, but he hasn’t. He remembers all of it. Everything. That’s the whole problem.)
Gideon frowns uncomfortably, but he goes back to his plate without pressing the point. The new necromancers don’t yet have the knowledge necessary to argue with him; and even if they did, John knows they can never— and will never— understand everything he can do. So they have to keep quiet and eat their breakfast, and be generally useful, and let John get on with the hard word of recreating civilization.
He has, up and running, six disciples: Augustine, Mercymorn, Gideon, Ulysses, Alfred, Titania. He hasn’t gotten to P—, N—, Mercy’s pet nun, or C— yet, partially because he’s got so many other things to do, like figuring out the damn crops (it’s been so long since he last had rice, or granola) and partially because he’s stalling. Having to recreate his old friends is not getting less intimidating. Plus, frankly— these are the ones he’s a tad afraid of waking up. Mercy’s pet nun… well, he remembers what happened there, even if he’s long disposed of the evidence on the body, and the blood-splattered wimple. N— and C—, he feels bad. Some newlywedded bliss they got. And P—’s loyalties have always been… harder to parse.
John glances at Gideon across the table.
“I have to work hard to keep you— you seven up and running, as it is,” he adds. “I need to practise before I add more people into the fold. It takes time for me to develop my strength. I don’t want to risk them, you know?”
“Yeah,” says Gideon glumly. “That— makes sense.”
John gives him a good-natured kick under the table, and he smiles, but it’s strained. John still feels bad that he didn’t bring him back first. He doesn’t think Gideon really cares, and it isn’t as if Gideon remembers they had been childhood best friends… but still, he knows they were close. Are close. Maybe that’s why he’s giving him P— back before Mercy gets her nun.
Mercy, for her part, has said nothing at this breakfast. Again. She has been strangely patient, which isn’t like her. John has asked her several times if she wants C— back before Gideon gets P—, as is her right, as the second disciple resurrected, all that… but she just stares at him with this peculiar, pinched little look. She says she’ll wait. Even after John lets her see the body, she has asked only for the ‘necklace’ from C—’s body, which John lets her have, with modifications. The clicking of the beads is starting to drive them all slightly insane, and John has had a quick peek, under the pretence of hugging her, just to check she doesn’t remember more than she ought…
But no.
She knows— they know— only one God, these days. And he’s not a rosary type of guy.
(On the floor, Alecto looks beseechingly at Gideon, ceramic shards stabbed into her lip and tongue. He thinks about it, shrugs, and gives her his empty plate to chew on.)
John’s gotten superstitious with this renaming business, though.
It hadn't been hard to come up with the names for the first few— what was more difficult was getting used to them. (Except Mercy’s, anyway. John had always hated her original name. So prim.)
But it’s getting more difficult.
John stands in the morgue and peers down at the dead, perfect face (fucking P—, never bought a moisturiser in her life but made it through the nuclear apocalypse with Old Hollywood Vaseline-lens skin), and considers. Alecto stands in the doorway, and makes a sort of sad, anxious lowing sound, raking her nails up and down her arms.
“She’ll be back up soon,” says John. Another part of the reason he’s hurried up this whole resurrection business is because the corpses have been upsetting Alecto. The shriek she had let out when he’d first retrieved them had given him tinnitus until he’d tampered with his eardrums to stop it. “They’ll all be back soon, Annabel. All the people.”
He’d hoped to placate her with the name, the sentiment, but her yellow eyes still burn.
“Soon,” said Alecto. She tries out the syllable; “So-on.”
“What do you think I should name her?”
Alecto blinks, and comes to peer down at the corpse. She puts a long, perfect hand out, crooks her fingers against the dead cheek. She doesn’t really have language that she hasn’t mimicked from him or the others, John has realised, so she won’t be much help. But at least she feels included.
Yes— he has been… careful, with the names he gives his old friends. He doesn’t know what for. He could have just named them all Kelly and Tiffany and Harry and been done with it, he didn’t even have to keep the initial… but he’s been a bit poncey about it, frankly. The classical world, the plays of Shakespeare, the Bible, every piece of literature and culture ever made, have all been burned to shreds in the nuclear fallout, lost to everyone except John and his excellent poetic memory. Sometimes he thinks it’s like that crap film, the one where everyone but that one guy forgot about the Beatles. Except instead of the Beatles, it’s all of human culture, ever. The names, the references— they mean nothing to anyone except him. He feels a certain responsibility, for blowing up the entire cultural canon. A shred of guilt. A shard. Sorry, William. Sorry, Geoffrey. Especially sorry, Jane.
They exist only in his head, now, and in his friend’s names. Oh— and in Alecto. Alecto remembers, because he’s told her. He has recited quotes, soliloquies and poems to her, and she remembers them all, down to where he paused and how he drew breath. She had liked Poe best, hence the name:
And neither the angels in Heaven above / Nor the demons down under the sea / Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee…
John feels he owes it to the long-dead artists, see. Sorry for being the one to finally demolish your memory. I’ll name my spaceship after you. My best friend. My fish. I’ll name it all after you. That sort of thing.
(He has wondered if he could bring back the very, very long dead, maybe say sorry in person— but he thinks it’s a bit late, which is a shame. He could have solved the Princes in the Tower mystery, or something. That would have been fun. Now he’ll never know, which is annoying.)
But John is careful anyway. He doesn’t believe in much anymore, but he does believe in irony, and he doesn’t want to be bitten in the arse by something down the line. That’s why he named Ulysses after the dog, not the man. No Joyce, no Homer; just him and the chunky old lapdog in his grandmother’s garden.
So… P—. What is there for her?
He bites his nails thoughtfully, then stops hurriedly when he nears the nasty crack of Alecto trying to copy him. Penelope, circumspect Penelope? Then again, any modern classical scholar could have told you that Penelope was too cunning for her own good, and it won’t do to have her matched up in some way with Ulysses, not when he has Titania. Perhaps Pallas, but that invokes a certain honouring the wrongful death of a friend nonsense he'd rather not bring into the fold with P—. She was often the angriest with him, and considering the whole whoopsy with G— (Gideon, he reminds himself; Gideon) , he doesn't want to evoke that. Still, he's fine now, isn't he? Whole and hale and not evaporated into a fine red mist by the suitcase nuke?
Still, maybe best not to take the risk.
Alecto is stroking P—’s hair in admiration, perched on the metal table. She does— did?— have fabulous hair, John has to admit. Alecto has probably never seen anything so red…
Ah. Aha!
“Pyrrha,” he says to Alecto, who just looks at him. “Pyrrha. Red-haired. Is that boring? Of course, it’s also the name of Deucalion’s wife. She helps repopulate the earth after the flood. That’s a good omen, isn’t it?”
Alecto isn't really listening; she's trying to scratch at P—’s face now, curious. She’s risking marring the perfect skin. John gently moves her hand away.
“Pyrrha,” he repeats. “That’s a happy portent.”
He likes it. It’s fun, it’s apt. Plus, there’s nothing threatening or ominous about Deucalion’s wife. She does her duty. Does what she can. Helps Mother Earth and the gods to regrow the population. Has a happy ending. Isn’t that what he wants? What they all want?
Alecto says: “These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope, / They do not point on me.”
“That’s a certain phrase,” says John cheerfully.
And so, when he removes his fingers from her eyelids and temples, ignoring Gideon staring nervously over his shoulder, he grins and says:
“Good morning, Pyrrha.”
Pyrrha’s eyes open, and immediately narrow. A very fetching green, always have been. Augustine had tried to compliment them, once, and had been shot down like an enemy fighter jet, but it doesn't change the fact that they're an excellent pair of lights.
“What have you fuckers done now?” she says, which is about right. Then her eyes refocus, and she says; “Gideon.”
She’s barely finished the last syllable before he's reaching for her. Oh, good, thinks John, allowing himself to be shunted out of the way. He’s overwritten the names successfully, without damaging the rest of the memory. It had been a bit rocky with Mercymorn— he’d had to knock her out a few times to meddle, but he’s been getting better and better every time.
“What am I, chopped liver?” says John brightly, and Pyrrha’s eyes swivel to him over the top of Gideon’s sculpted shoulder. It's working. It's all working. “Don't I get a thank you?”
“You get a thank you once you magic me up a cigarette, Corpse Wizard,” says Pyrrha, slowly peeling herself away from Gideon and propping herself on his shoulder to stand up. Gideon clamps a hand tightly around her back to steady her.
“I’m not quite there on tobacco plants yet, I’m afraid,” says John, wondering if he could fiddle with the bit of the brain that controlled addiction. “I’m working on it.”
Pyrrha clicks her tongue in irritation. “Seems you’re working on a lot of things,” she says, peering about the faded and cracked walls—
Before John can decide if she means that as an insult or not, her eyes fall on Alecto, lurking by the doors. She whistles quietly.
“Hello. Who’s this?”
“This is Alecto, Annabel— whatever you want to call her. She has a few names,” says John. “She's… new.”
“I'll say,” murmurs Pyrrha. She eyes Alecto with a reasonable caution, but it’s overlayed with a relentless curiosity. Alecto smiles politely with her teeth, just like John taught her, though she slightly overdoes it and makes it look lupine. She comes to try and touch Pyrrha’s hair again, but John stops her. Pyrrha, to her credit, just arches an eyebrow.
“Hello, Alecto,” says Pyrrha. She nods to her hip. “Good sword, you’ve got there.”
Alecto puts a long hand to her sword, as if she’s forgotten it’s there. She says:
“Lay this unto your breast / Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.”
“You said it, doll,” says Pyrrha— by now she’s unfazed by the strange, perfect woman. She’s bouncing on her toes, testing her muscles. Ready for a scrap, like she always was. Excellent. That’s just what he needs.
“We’ve been writing poetry,” says John, by way of explanation, sending a silent apology to John Webster for taking credit for his work. Alecto looks thoughtful, then wanders away, padding down the stairs to the cellar below the catacomb. John lets her go. She likes to play with the melted chainmail he dragged out of the museum ruins.
“Alecto’s still learning language,” says Gideon, by way of explanation. “She’s fine. She’s just a bit… eccentric.”
John will say it for Gideon, he’s a far sight more forgiving of Alecto’s eccentricities than his sibling disciples.
“Ah,” says Pyrrha, watching Alecto go. “I suppose that’s the apocalypse for you.”
“Ye-es,” says John apologetically. “Things have changed, a bit. A lot in fact.”
“So I gathered… Lord.” Pyrrha turns back. It’s slightly sarcastic, but that’s Pyrrha for you. At least her brain hasn’t tried to reject the whole bit about John as God, bloody atheist that she once was. “Should I swear allegiance?”
“Would you mind terribly?” says John. “It’s just that everyone else has, you see, and it would be a bit embarrassing…”
And they laugh, because it’s a joke, but it’s not a joke, and they all know it. He needs them with him. They need to believe in him. Believe with a capital ‘B’. All of them; especially mercurial Pyrrha. She needs to be dutiful Deucalion’s wife, not the scientists’ pet cop…
But he sees her quick glance at Gideon, as if looking for a second opinion. And even though Gideon nods, John thinks, well, steady on. Duty to who?
But Pyrrha is already kneeling, and so John does what is now the perfunctory blessing: Will you serve the construction of the new world? Will you suffer yourself to be guided by the hand of John Gaius, The First Reborn, the Kindly Prince? Do you swear loyalty to Him? Pyrrha says: yes, says I will, to each. Gideon is hovering by the table, worrying his thumbs together, watching with a falcon’s intensity. Perhaps he’s worried Pyrrha will say no; perhaps he’s worried that she’s saying yes.
But she has said yes, and that’s what John wants. He smiles.
“Then rise, Pyrrha Dve, and join us here at Canaan House, in the new world.”
They both offer a hand; Pyrrha chooses Gideon’s, and John pretends to be offended. Pyrrha says, archly, brushing the knees of her trousers;
“Did you come up with all those titles for yourself?”
“Hey— a guy has to have some fun with it,” shrugs John. “They’re not that bad. Gideon and Augustine want to call me Necrolord Prime.”
Pyrrha laughs boisterously.
“I like that one,” she says to Gideon. “We’ll make it stick.”
At this point, Alecto comes rattling back up the stairs— and she’s carrying a second sword, a nice rapier-style piece. She marches up to Pyrrha with her long, lolloping gait and presents it to her— though with slightly too much force, only Pyrrha’s speedy reflexes saving her from having to hold the blade.
“Wow,” says Pyrrha, taking it and testing the reach thoughtfully. “Thanks, sugar. Very cool.”
Alecto beams, proud of herself. John looks at Gideon, and winks. Gideon smiles back.
This is, John thinks, a promising start.
It's hard to watch her die again, though. Even if it is several centuries later.
“Don’t— cry, honey,” says Pyrrha, bleeding out on the lab floor. Her eyes look very stark against all the red, and the blood is collecting in her hair. Gideon’s hands on her are slick and shiny, and shaking so violently he risks dropping her. Her voice raps out, still authoritative, despite the rasp; “Focus— Gideon, focus— for fuck’s sake…”
John crouches in the corner next to a purse-lipped Mercymorn and pallid-faced Augustine, trying to think of something else, anything else, that isn’t Pyrrha bleeding and twitching in Gideon’s arms. But how can he, when he can feel her life seeping away? The slow drip of thanergy?
Alecto is making soft wailing sounds in the opposite corner, gnawing on her fingers so hard the bone is cracking. She doesn't like death. That was the point, after all.
John tries to think of something calming; the sheep near his grandmother’s house. Cheap popping candy. The book of Greek myths he’d read at school, with the nice pictures. Not how Pyrrha is shaking so badly in her death throes that her spear and rapier are rattling together in her hands. She’d insisted on dying with them in hand, which is a very cavalier thing to do, and slightly Viking—
Yes, the illustrations. An image comes to John, pasted over the sight of Pyrrha, sword and spear in hand. It had been a beautiful bookplate, coloured richly; the discarded veil whipping into the corner, the long, deadly hands closing around the sword, the flying curls of auburn hair and the graceful set of the muscular legs. And the caption…
Achilles as Pyrrha .
John jerks, and presses himself into the corner in horror.
Bugger, he thinks. Shit. Bugger. Et cetera…
Not Pyrrha, resurrector of life, dutiful wife and subject… but Pyrrha, the disguised Achilles. Lurking amongst the unassuming maidens of Skyros. Waiting to spring from hiding, raring to strike out at the first threat. That had been the story, hadn't it? Hidden amongst princesses on a remote island by his goddess mother, flushed out by a fake invasion when he ran to fight instead of flee? But who the hell wanted to evoke Achilles? Achilles was rage, wrath. It was the first word of the Iliad! Rage! Doomed endeavour and misplaced pride! Desecrating Hector's body and fighting the river god Scamander and… and…
“Oh shit,” John whispers, but no one's paying attention, because Gideon and Pyrrha are kissing. It's disgusting and undignified, not least because of all the blood, and because Pyrrha has thrown up a little bit, but she clutches the back of Gideon’s shirt so tightly over the hilt of her rapier that John hears the seam pop.
He would have had something to say about this in any other situation, but hey— she's dying, cut them some slack, what's a kiss between friends…
She's dying. The worst part is, John's remembered too late. Now the whole Nine Houses will know her as Pyrrha Dve, Cavalier Primary to the Third Saint to Serve The Emperor Undying. Every time she’s mentioned, every time he sees her pallid green eyes peering out of his best friend's face, he will not be reminded of a dutiful resurrector… but of vengeful rampage and glorious death and a name that will not ever be forgotten.
They’ve broken apart. Gideon is really, truly weeping, getting snot everywhere:
“You’re dying, and you’re still being a fucking philanderer…”
There is a sort of choking, scratching sound. John realises it's Pyrrha laughing. They’d laughed a lot, John realises. He's never really thought of Pyrrha as someone who’s very funny, but even now, Gideon feebly manages a tremulous half-smile for her, even if he looks sick.
“Hey,” manages Pyrrha, very quietly. John can hear the death rattle, now. They need to hurry this up, or they’ll fuck it royally. Cavaliers aren’t meant to take this long to die. “Hey— I know.” She smiles with nasty, blood-clotted teeth. “Here’s— looking at you, kid...”
Hah, thinks John, great film, that.
Then—
Wait, what the fuck?
Pyrrha’s head thuds back, and the hit of thanergy is so sharp and cold that John doubles over slightly. Gideon lets out a terrible moan and curls over her, clutching her so desperately that he might as well be the one being absorbed by her—
“Shush, Alecto,” says John vaguely, forcing down on her vocal chords. He’s felt the catch before she tries to scream, and he doesn't want that now. Alecto makes a hoarse snarl, and then hides her face in her skirt like a child. Mercymorn has turned around to cry. She'll lose the habit, once she's seen a few more of these.
“Gideon the First,” says John softly, getting to his feet.
“Don't,” says Gideon, and his voice is too loud. Then it’s too quiet, when he says: “Oh, John, don't… don't…”
He's trying to seal the wound in Pyrrha’s abdomen with shaking hands, making a real pig’s ear of it. Eventually it scrapes shut, and he buries his face in her bloody hair, rocking her back and forth. Even Augustine has shut his eyes, now.
“The Eightfold Word,” John urges. “Finish it, Gideon. Now. She’ll be with you forever, remembered forever. She’s died nobly, and she’s done it for you. Don’t waste this.”
Gideon doesn’t move. He hasn’t fully absorbed her yet; John is sort of half-holding her soul in place, stopping it fleeing to the river. He thinks to give her a sort of shove, a bit of encouragement. He reaches out—
What’s left of Pyrrha Dve’s spirit seizes him like a bawling revenant, and howls, for his ears and his only:
“Say not a word in death’s favour! I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead!”
John jolts like he's been stung. He scrabbles for her soul signature, something, anything, but she's gone, faster than he could have thought, fleeing like Homer’s spirits back underground. Gone to Gideon, where her loyalty truly had always lain.
How had she—
Below him, Gideon jerks, gasps, then collapses sideways besides Pyrrha’s body, head glancing with a nasty crack on the floor. John vaguely registers him twitching at his feet, but he can’t focus on that, not now.
How had she done that? How had she remembered? John presses his fingers into his eyes, trying to think. How? How? He wasn’t even sure P—, as she had been, had ever had much interest in either Casablanca or the bloody Odyssey. Not that he’d have known. She was G—’s friend, really. Not his. He hadn’t known her, not really, and now her soul is fused forever to Gideon’s…
Gideon stops twitching. John knows what he’ll see when he opens his eyes.
Well— it doesn't matter. She's dead, her soul consumed. What does it matter if some weird glitch made her remember a couple of old films and books? What does it matter if he accidentally named her after Achilles? No one knows. No one but him. That’s the beauty of it, and the tragedy.
Still. Best to mitigate these things. He's got one more chance. Duty, not wrath. Duty, not revenge.
Gideon opens his eyes, and they're green. Perfect. No struggling for control. No nothing. For a second, they fix on him, and they are alight with… something. A nasty sort of—
But then it’s gone. John can fix this. He has fixed this. He can fix everything, you see.
“Hail, Saint of Duty,” said John. “Hail, Gideon the First.”
Gideon turns over and, quietly, starts to cry. Mercymorn has come over to see to Pyrrha's body, and Alecto has followed her. Ineffectually, she's trying to hold Pyrrha's hand. Even Augustine has approached at last, kneeling over Gideon.
“Hope that doesn't come back to bite me,” John murmurs, under Gideon's sobs.