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“Ninth,” he said, “if she were capable of anything, in order to become a Lyctor—don’t you think she’d be one already? If she really wanted to watch the world burn—wouldn’t we all be alight?” “Stop flattering her. But—thanks,” said Gideon, and she darted off into the corridor after Harrow.
She had more or less expected Harrow to lead with “What were you doing in my closet,” at which point Gideon might well have shaken her until the teeth in her head and the teeth in her pockets all rattled.
After a moment’s consideration, Harrow stepped in too—walking off the side carelessly, slipping beneath the water like a clean black knife. She disappeared beneath the surface, then emerged, gasping, spluttering in a way that ruined everything about the portentous entrance.
It looked as though she were ransacking drawers in her brain trying to find the right set of words to wear.
“It didn’t happen before I was born,” said the other girl, sounding very unlike herself. “Or at least, that’s not precise enough. It happened before I was even conceived.” “That’s unwholesomely specific.”
Gideon waited. “Of course I wouldn’t be worth it,” Harrow said scornfully. “I’m an abomination. The whole universe ought to scream whenever my feet touch the ground. My parents committed a necromantic sin that we ought to have been torpedoed into the centre of Dominicus for. If any of the other Houses knew of what we’d done they would destroy us from orbit without a second’s thought. I am a war crime.”
“I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.”
In the end her job was surprisingly easy: she wrapped her arms around Harrow Nonagesimus and held her long and hard, like a scream. They both went into the water, and the world went dark and salty. The Reverend Daughter fell calm and limp, as was natural for one being ritually drowned, but when she realised that she was being hugged she thrashed as though her fingernails were being ripped from their beds.
“Too many words,” said Gideon confidentially. “How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch.” The Ninth House necromancer flushed nearly black. Gideon tilted her head up and caught her gaze: “Say it, loser.” “One flesh—one end,” Harrow repeated fumblingly, and then could say no more.
If I die, I need your duty not to die with me.” “That is such a dick move,” said Gideon reproachfully. “I know,” said Harrow. “I know.”
A small, astonished smile creased her mouth. The smile transformed her face into an affliction of beauty that Gideon had heretofore managed to ignore.
“Nav, when I saw her face I decided I wanted to live. I decided to live forever just in case she ever woke up.”
“One last question for you, Reverend Daughter,” said Gideon. Harrow said, a little unsteadily: “Nav?” Gideon leaned in. “Do you really have the hots for some chilly weirdo in a coffin?” One of the skeletons punted her back into the water.
She did not say this. Silas Octakiseron knew more than he should, but if Harrow discovered that now, she’d be off down the corridor in her nightdress with a sack of emergency bones and a very focused expression.
“What a dope,” she said instead. “I was never loyal a day in my life and I still saw you in the raw.” “Go to sleep, Gideon.” She fell asleep, and for once didn’t dream of anything at all.
“Reverend Daughter, you know as well as I do that the Eighth House wouldn’t let a little thing like fair play get in the way of its sacred duty to do whatever it wants.”
She kept looking at Gideon with the screwed-up eyes of someone who had been handed an egg for safekeeping and was surrounded by egg-hunting snakes.
Gideon looked around for the lieutenant, found her, and then looked away again. She didn’t need a very long look to tell that Dyas was dead. For one thing, her skeleton and her body had apparently tried to divorce.
the Eighth House necromancer, who could not be accused of having the milk of human kindness running through his veins. He did not even have the thin and tasteless juice of feigned empathy.
“Please elaborate opened up, because my imagination is better than your description and I am not having a lot of fun here,” said Gideon.
Griddle, at the first sign of trouble—” “Run like hell,” said Gideon. “I was going to say, Hit it with your sword,” said Harrow.
He looked as though he had just been given a piece of chocolate cake and found, after two bites, half a spider.
Silas said, “I feel no wards here.” Harrow said, “It’s a lure.” “Or carelessness,” said Palamedes. “Or they just didn’t give a shit, guys,” said Gideon, “given that the key is still inside the lock.”
Gideon’s skin had already been crawling, but now it was trying to sprint.
“To walk with the dead forever … enormous power, recycled within you, from the ultimate sacrifice … to make yourself a tomb.”
“She took Babs,” she said, which seemed fair enough. But then Corona started crying again, big tears leaking out of her eyes, her voice thick with misery and self-pity. “And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken me.”
The tragedy saturated the stiffening bones and static hearts lying in state at Canaan House, but there was also deep tragedy in the flawed beams holding up their lives.
Gideon lay on the floor, facedown, and became hysterical.
“A necromancer alone can’t bring that down, Griddle. That’s regenerating bone.” “I’m not running, Harrow!” “Of course we’re not running,” said Harrowhark disdainfully. “I said a necromancer alone. I have you. We bring hell.” “Harrow—Harrow, Dulcinea’s a Lyctor, a real one—” “Then we’re all dead, Nav, but let’s bring hell first,” said Harrow.
Her adept said: “I’ll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does.” Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly. “We do bones, motherfucker,” she said.
Long years of warfare meant that they each knew exactly where the other would stand—every arc of a sword, every jostling scapula. No hole in the other’s defences went unshielded. They had never fought together before, but they had always fought, and they could work in and around each other without a second’s thought.
“I have bested my father,” said Harrow to nobody, staring upward at nothing, alight with fierce and untrammelled triumph. They were both lying supine on a pile of what felt like feet. “I have bested my father and my grandmother—every single necromancer ever taught by my House—every necromancer who has ever touched a skeleton. Did you see me? Did you behold me, Griddle?” This was all said somewhat thickly, through pink and bloodied teeth, before Harrow smugly passed out.
She kept running her fingers over the blood at her abdomen, apparently amazed by her capacity to bleed. Gideon wished she was less interested and more dying, but you had to take victories where you could get them.
“Get out of here. Take your necromancer. Go.” “Hell no,” said Gideon. “It’s time for round two.” She considered that. “Wait. Is this round three now? I keep losing count.”
“I may be from the Ninth House,” said Gideon, “but if you say any more cryptic shit at me, you’re going to see how well you can regenerate when you’re in eighteen pieces.”
“I wish the Ninth House would do something that was more interesting than skeletons,” said Cytherea pensively.
The world vibrated around them. Everything was suddenly very dark. A wavering yellow light flicked on, and Gideon realised that against all odds Camilla had somehow retained her pocket torch.
“Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House,” she said hoarsely, “you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.”
“Your arms are like fucking noodles,” said Gideon disapprovingly. “I’m a necromancer, Nav!” “Yeah, well, hope you like lifting weights for the next myriad.”
Harrow said, with some difficulty: “I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.” “Yes you can, it’s just less great and less hot,” said Gideon. “Fuck you, Nav—”
“One flesh, one end,” said Gideon, and it was a murmur now, on the very edge of hearing. Harrow said, “Don’t leave me.” “The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee,” said Gideon. “See you on the flip side, sugarlips.”
If it had been possible to die of desolation, she would have died then and there: as it was, all she could do was lie on the bed and observe the smoking wreck of her heart.
She pressed her forehead down onto the cold, clean tiles. “Please undo what I’ve done, Lord,” she said. “I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Gideon Nav.”
I’m thankful for her patience, wit, and insight, but would like to remind her here that hard-boiled eggs shouldn’t be added to potato salad. Fight me.
