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“Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”
The dreadful teens both stared with eyes so wide you could have marched skeletons straight through them.
Never work with children, Griddle, their prefrontal cortexes aren’t developed.
Gideon put her arms around Harrowhark. She lifted her up off the ground just an inch and squeezed her in an enormous hug before either she or Harrow knew what she was about. Her necromancer felt absurdly light in her grip, like a bag of bird’s bones. She had always thought—when she bothered to think—that Harrow would feel cold, as everything in the Ninth felt cold. No, Harrow Nonagesimus was feverishly hot. Well, you couldn’t think that amount of ghastly thoughts without generating energy. Hang on, what the hell was she doing.
“Thanks for backing me up, my midni...
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“Don’t make this weird, Nav!”
Don’t just ask them that,” her necromancer hissed. “It’s a weird thing to ask.” “Shut up! It was just a question!”)
DESPITE THE FACT THAT they now knew Gideon had a working pair of vocal reeds and the will to use them, the trip down to the facility was spent in silence.
What she badly needed was Harrow Nonagesimus,
SWEET DREAMS
“Bullshit there wasn’t anything I could have done,” said Gideon, “I’ve thought of everything I should’ve done. There’s about fifty things I could’ve done and didn’t.”
Isaac had been made into a big teenage colander;
She thought: It is stupid for a cavalier to watch their necromancer die.
“If you want your keys back from Silas Octakiseron, I’ll deck him for you.”
“You look like a bucket of ass.”
The first finger and thumb of the hand ringed around hers. The dark blue eyes were luminous—too luminous; their lustre was wet and hot and bright—and Gideon pressed those fingers between her hands, very carefully. It felt as though even a little bit of pressure would crush Dulcinea to dust between her palms, like the very oldest bones kept in the Ninth House oss. Her heart felt sore and tender; her brain felt sore and dry.
of pretending, so yeah. Right on nearly all those counts. You know I’m the fakest-ass cavalier who ever faked. The actual cav had chronic hyperthyroid and was a serial limpdick.
“because I thought you said, ‘Come and take tea with myself and Brother Asht,’ the dumbest thing to say, ever.”
“Eat me, milk man,” said Gideon, and staggered around the corner. She heard Colum’s “Means yes, probably,”
But from then on she slept wearing her rapier, her gauntlet on her chest like a heavy obsidian heart.
“You’re slow.” “You’re paranoid.” “I am—currently—alive,”
“You’re too forensic.” “You lack scope. Give over, Nonagesimus.
disdainful black crow of a
“I said saddle up, sunshine. Come on. You know what to do.” “I manifestly don’t, and never tell me to saddle up, sunshine ever again.” “I’m saying to you: siphon me.” “Nav—” “Sixth are watching,” said Gideon, brutally.
“That reminds me! I now officially ban you from seeing Lady Septimus.” “Are we having this conversation? Are we really having this conversation?” Harrow’s face was pinched into an expression of deliberate patience. “Nav,” she said. “Take it from me. Dulcinea Septimus is dangerous.” “You’re nuts. Dulcinea Septimus can’t even blow her nose. I’m sick of how weird you’re getting over this.” “And yet you’ve never thought about how she still managed to get a key—how am I being weird?” “I don’t know,” said Gideon, heartily fed up with the whole thing. “I don’t know! Maybe it’s because whenever she’s
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Ortus would never rhyme melancholy with my mortal folly again.
“I want you to think about why you and Harrowhark Nonagesimus now represent an entire generation,”
“I want you to think about the deaths of two hundred children, when you and she alone lived.”
“Vent bacteria does not kill immunoefficient teenagers,”
“You’ve never seen a Ninth House teenager.”
“Vent bacteria,” said Silas again, “does not kill immunoef...
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“I need a better motivation than the fact that the Ninth House sucks,”
The Ninth heart is barren, and the Ninth heart is black.”
Well, fuck to you too!—but
Gideon was sorely tempted to take him with her and away from Silas,
Her lovely golden hair was stuck up in sweaty tendrils atop her head, and she had stripped down to her camisole and her shorts, which Gideon was far too befuddled to appreciate but not too befuddled to overlook. Her long tawny limbs were leprous here and there with chalk dust, and she held a rapier and a knife.
Coronabeth spun to face her. Her stance was good: her eyes were very beautiful, like amethysts.
The Third princess laughed. The flush on her cheeks was a little bit too hot and pink.
Once Gideon would have loved to hear Corona talk to her with that low, breathy intensity,
“Your biceps … they’re eleven out of ten,”
had placed his arm like a crossbar over Corona’s collarbone, and she had bitten him, apparently to soothe her own obscure feelings.
The whole room smelled like Harrow:
With numb fingers, Gideon removed the severed head of Protesilaus the Seventh.
with expressions that plainly said idiot.
Palamedes had been the one to wait patiently next to her while she had thrown up lavishly in the Sixth’s toilet.
Camilla had shoved a mug of hot tea into Gideon’s hands, strapped two swords to her back, and disappeared.
This had all happened before Gideon could protest and now she was left alone with Palamedes, her discovery, and a cluster headache.
“She’s mine.” “You’ve said that five times now.” “I mean it. Whatever goes down—whatever happens—you have to let me do it. You have to.” “Gideon—” “What do I do,” she said, quite casually, “if she’s the murderer?”
“What would you do if you discovered Camilla was a murderer?” “Help her bury the body,” said Palamedes promptly. “Sextus.” “I mean it. If Camilla wants someone dead,” he said, “then far be it from me to stand in her way. All I can do at that point is watch the bloodshed and look for a mop. One flesh, one end, and all that.”
“Everyone wants to tell me about fleshes and ends today,” said Gideon unhappily. “There’s a joke in there somewhere.
