gideon i love you but arghhhhh what were the communiqués and between whom????
I think we see some of Abigail's discoveries in HTN!
She shows Harrow several "Lyctoral traces" that she discovered in Canaan House, including two parts of a correspondence about a potato-based recipe in HTN ch 10:
After that cut into cubes, fry in the butter or oil, turn it occasionally until it is crispy. Cut up the pickle so there are no big chunks and mix it into the pan before turning off the heat. M told us yesterday that Nigella "eats like a child," so I
and
If you come to my room, I will make you the potato dish you liked
as well as the "calligraphic S" in chapter 21, and a note that says "I still get an erotic charge from snakes, sorry to say" in chapter 28. Several of these are the notes that Harrow instead sees as Wake's messages and memories.
If so, "unencrypted communiqués" was perhaps a rather tongue-in-cheek or grandiose description offered at the dinner party, and it's all the more tragic that notes about potato recipes and Lyctoral predilictions may have partly led to Abigail's death.
But also...it seems like one of the correspondents about potatoes might have been Cassiopeia, who is repeatedly and significantly referenced in HTN. When Harrow scoffs that the notes seem unimportant, Abigail responds that she could use them to summon the writer's ghost - and there is then a long discussion about the fact that both she and Magnus are very certain that she could do this, and that the only limitations are the amount of blood it would require and the question of where Lyctors go when they die.
Which feels...significant in a series where Abigail later reveals that the River does not work as John has suggested it to, where the entwinement and metaphysical weight of Lyctoral souls is revealed to be more complex than first believed, and where Abigail and Magnus also chattily hint at other significant secrets in Canaan House, such as the "lost chambers of the Emperor Undying" (something she suggests Magnus is more likely to trip over than she is to summon the ghost of Matthias Nonius...).
This may all be me desperately hoping my blorbo makes a reappearance in ATN, but it sounds rather like we may not have heard the last of those communiqués...
Additional points in favor of Cassiopeia showing up somehow!
Even with her feelings schooled, Harrow’s voice sounded feeble and childlike and plaintive. “Is there nothing I can do before entering the River that might mean I stay put?” “No,” said Abigail. “It’s the River. It moves. You’d have to pick the revenant’s path and travel along a thanergetic link, and that’s just madness again: sitting inside—I don’t know—a teapot, clinging on without sense or understanding, going slowly insane. And as I said, your soul longs for your body.”
-
“No, he’s not,” you said. “A ghost attached to an immobile object—a ghost attached to an immobile object for this length of time—it would have lost coherency and drifted away long ago. He could not walk. He could not speak. He could not perceive. A ghost does not cling passionately for months to a few fragments of skull.” “He would,” she said. “I’m certain he had a—forceful personality, but—” “No, I mean he deliberately fixed his soul to his body, with spirit magic,” said the cavalier. “We planned for it. In the event of his death. I know he did it, because I got the message. I only want to make sure I snagged the right part of the skull. We didn’t account for—pieces. If he’s not in here I have to go find the others.”
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“Cassiopeia the First left us instructions years ago,” said Camilla. “We left for a Lyctor.” [...] Pyrrha said, “Cassy played long games.”
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Augustine was a spirit magician like the Mithraeum was a box with some bones. [...] and so did God, shepherding you and Ianthe both to take lessons from the Mithraeum’s resident expert in Resurrection Beasts. “It’s not my primary wheelhouse,” Augustine explained. “But since our last expert vanished into a large intestine, unravelled by a troop of ghosts, I’m the last spirit adept standing.” “He’s being modest,” said God. “The barriers between us and the River are Augustine’s. He could plunge half a city into it, if he wanted.”
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Augustine said, “I’m not Cassy, John.”
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“I stood on the bank and watched Cassiopeia die, Teacher— [...] She led them away from the brain; I was there in projection, and I saw when they seized her legs and arms … I was laying stakes for the Beast, and I was there, and I thought to myself, Lord, But what will we do with your ceramics collection? There is so much of it.”
I'm not saying it'd be a teapot or any part of her ceramics collection, but it's an interesting choice of example from Abigail when this had been said... >:) And Pal was the scion of her House, after all... So if Wake, a regular-ass non-necromancer, could not only cling but remain focused on her mission by sheer determination for 20 years, what might a Lyctor of this kind of specialty manage to achieve...
(Bonus points that we don't actually know when Cassy died, but it very well could have even been way less than 20 years ago. Teacher's "it is only now in the twilight of his original seven that he has listened to his remaining Lyctors" could straight up imply Cassy died very recently before the start of GtN, even. She might not even need to have clung as long as Wake did.)
---
More debatable but possibly also relevant...
“It is here! The Resurrection Beast is come! The seventh colossus, brood of that which murdered Cyrus the First, packmate of that which murdered Ulysses the First, the one and the same that Cassiopeia died for.”
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Augustine said urgently, “Number Seven—” “Got away.” “What—what, it ran? You got it to run?” When this was not met with details, Augustine said, “But—you lived?”
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“They concoct their own vengeance,” said the Captain. “Their justice is not my justice. Their water is not my water. I came to help. I am made a mockery. The danger is upon you, and you do not even know …”
Why did Varun leave? What did ever happen to the cavs who went to help? Mysterious behavior, from the very Beast that Cassiopeia, the primary expert on Resurrection Beasts, died fighting... And I mean... really, unless you count John and Harrow as RBs, a Resurrection Beast has never actually been the thing that killed a Lyctor other than allegedly G1deon? Cyrus and Ulysses and Cassy all died via their own plans to try to take down a Beast. So it's very... curious, to say the least...
I'm not banking on this part or anything, but I'm just saying, if Varun were to show up physically in AtN playing the part of giant spirit bus to Cassiopeia and the cavs and maaaaaaybe even G1deon (though fascinating implications if that were possible) and maybe having picked up the Fourth and Fifth pairs after the battle, I wouldn't be surprised at this point, you know?
Either way, I WILL be surprised if we don't see ANYTHING more about her by the end...
