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They knew by age five that she was not a necromancer, and suspected by eight that she would never be a nun.
The Lady of the Ninth House stood before the drillshaft, wearing black and sneering. Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus had pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering. It comprised 100 percent of her personality. Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance.
“Can I appeal to your deep sense of duty?” “Nope,” said Gideon. “Worth a try,” admitted Harrow. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “What about a bribe?” “This is going to be good,” said Gideon to nobody in particular. “‘Gideon, here’s some money. You can spend it right here, on bones.’
“Gideon Nav, take back your honour and give your lady a weapon.” Gideon couldn’t help herself: “Are you asking me to … throw her a bone?”
Ortus wasn’t made in his mould. Coupling him to Harrow had been rather like yoking a doughnut to a cobra.
I wanted to wait … for the very moment when you thought you’d gotten away … to take it from you.” Gideon could only manage, “Why?” The girl’s expression was the same as it was on the day that Gideon had found her parents, dangling from the roof of their cell. It was blank and white and still. “Because I completely fucking hate you,” said Harrowhark, “no offence.”
“Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.” “That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark. “Die in a fire, Nonagesimus.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Harrow languorously. “She’s a genius. With the proper motivation, Griddle could wield two swords in each hand and one in her mouth. While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade. Am I right, Griddle?”
Act accordingly had been her secret dread that ten years from now everyone else would be skeletons and explorers would find Ortus reading poetry next to her and Harrow’s bodies, their fingers still clasped around each other’s throats.
“All you need to know is that you’ll do what I say, or I’ll mix bone meal in with your breakfast and punch my way through your gut.” Which was, Gideon had to admit, entirely plausible.
“Oh, this is boring,” Gideon had said in disappointment. “I wanted one with a skull puking another, smaller skull, and other skulls flying all around. But tasteful, you know?”
“Do you want,” Gideon whispered huskily, “my hanky.” “I want to watch you die.” “Maybe, Nonagesimus,” she said with deep satisfaction, “maybe. But you sure as hell won’t do it here.”
“Hail to the Lady of the Ninth House,” warbled a voice delightedly, bringing the count of people who had ever been happy to see Harrow up to three.
Gideon the Ninth, who would have paid cash to be called absolutely anything else, rose as her mistress rose.
The gangling silence focused on a robed skeleton who carried over a small chest made entirely of wood. It was no wider than a book and no deeper than two books stacked on top of each other, estimated Gideon, who thought of all books as being basically the same size.
Everybody was poised in readiness for the outlined syllabus, and scholarship made her want to die. There would be some litany of how breakfast would take place every morning at this time, and then there’d be study with the priests for an hour, and then Skeleton Analysis, and History of Some Blood, and Tomb Studies, and, like, lunchtime, and finally Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone. The most she could hope for was Swords, Swords II, and maybe Swords III.
Gideon saw lights dull in every eye that had gleamed for Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone.
“Oh, singular,” said Dulcinea quietly, more to herself than to Gideon. “Lipochrome … recessive. I like looking at people’s eyes,” she explained suddenly, smiling now. “They tell you such a lot.
A skeleton in the corner wound a long pole into a network of cobwebs, displacing showers of dust; a couple of others sat about, watching the fight.
“Of course I’m willing, and the princess is gracious,” he said, “but I didn’t get to be cavalier primary due to being the best with a rapier. I’m cavalier primary only because my adept is also my wife. I suppose you could say that I—ha, ha—cavalier primarried!”
Gideon made a mental note to write down the joke so that she could use it herself later.
She smelled nice, like how Gideon imagined soap was meant to smell.
Gideon Nav knew in the first half second that Magnus was going to lose: after that she stopped thinking with her brain and started thinking with her arms, which were frankly where the best of her cerebral matter lay.
She raised her shoulders in an expression that the brethren of the Locked Tomb would have recognised immediately as the precursor of Gideon about to do something particularly daft, but Corona took it as acceptance,
She hadn’t been this overstimulated since that one time when training had consisted of Crux, a repeating crossbow, and two skeletons with machetes.
She had left Harrowhark a note on her vastly underused pillow— WHATS WITH THE SKULLS? and received only a terse— Ambiance.
This had all played out in Gideon’s imagination on many solitary nights, and often she had indulged in a wilder flight of fancy where Harrowhark would open an envelope galaxies and galaxies away, and read the news that Gideon Nav had won a bunch of medals and a huge percentage of prize money for her role in the initial strike, a battle in which she was both outstanding and very hot. Harrow’s lip would curl, and she would drawl something like, Turns out Griddle could swing a sword after all. This fantasy often got her through a hundred reps.
Maybe they could just swap friendship bracelets.
She would not thank Gideon even if she had sat her flat ass in a puddle of molten lava, especially not as Gideon would religiously mark each anniversary of the day Harrow destroyed her butt with magma.
He said coolly: “Because I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation.” The unconscious figure sacked across Gideon’s shoulder muttered, “Like hell you are.” “Thought that would wake her up,” said Palamedes, with no small amount of satisfaction.
The book was a thousand pages thick, maybe a million.
“This calls for rigor, Nav.” “Maybe rigor … mortis,” said Gideon, who assumed that puns were funny automatically.
The expression on the other girl’s face was now all resignation: resignation and exhaustion and also something else, but mostly resignation.
Gideon rolled her eyes so hard that she felt in danger of twisting the optic nerve.
“Teacher said that the facility was chocka with ghosts and you might die?” “Correct.” “Surprise, my tenebrous overlord!” said Gideon. “Ghosts and you might die is my middle name.”
“Harrow,” she said, “if you wanted a cavalier you could replace with skeletons, you should’ve kept Ortus.”
Harrow said, “No.” “I want to go,” said Gideon. “This sounds impossibly vapid.” “I want to eat a dessert.”
Politics. Diplomacy. I’ll eat yours if you don’t want it.”
And I’ll be so good. I’ll be silent and Ninth and melancholy. The sight will astound and stimulate you.”
In any case, both she and Harrowhark turned up, gorgeously gowned in their Locked Tomb vestments, painted like living skulls, looking like douchebags.
Harrowhark was too busy storming out of the room with her robe billowing out behind her in the way Gideon suspected she had secretly practised.
The expression on her face was completely alien. Harrowhark Nonagesimus was looking at her with unalloyed admiration. “But for the love of the Emperor, Griddle,” she said gruffly, “you are something else with that sword.”
ONE FLESH, ONE END. G. & P.
“I need you to trust me.” “I need you to be trustworthy.”
There was something curious about Harrow’s face when it was not fixed into the bland church mask of the Reverend Daughter: something thin and desperate and quite young about it, something not totally removed from Jeannemary’s desperation.
Harrow said, in bottom-of-the-ocean tones: “The Ninth House has not practised its art on—weeny—constructs.”
Gideon found herself staring straight down the barrel of a loaded Harrowhark Nonagesimus,
I would finish the challenge that sickened Sextus. Not for the high ground. But because he must learn to stare these things in the face.
“Why?” “Probably because you asked.” The heavy eyelids shuttered open, revealing baleful black irises. “That’s all it takes, Griddle? That’s all you demand? This is the complex mystery that lies in the pit of your psyche?” Gideon slid her glasses back onto her face, obscuring feelings with tint. She found herself saying, “That’s all I ever demanded,” and to maintain face suffixed it with, “you asswipe.”
