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WHATS WITH THE SKULLS? and received only a terse— Ambiance.
Well, ambiance meant that even Magnus the Fifth hesitated before saying Good morning, so fuck ambiance in the ear.
As far as Gideon could tell, Dulcinea Septimus spent 100 percent of the time on the terraces, reading romance novels, being perfectly happy.
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.
Harrow had been prevented from coming home for reasons, e.g., that (i) She was dead; (ii) She was too impaired; (iii) She was busy. 2. Harrow had chosen to live elsewhere, leaving Gideon free to put her shoes on Harrow’s bed and indiscriminately rifle through all her things. 3. Harrow had run away.
If Harrow were the type, Gideon’s childhood would have been a hell of a lot smoother.
Gideon longed to put her shoes on Harrow’s bed and to indiscriminately rifle through all Harrow’s things,
was contingent on either the world’s happiest accident or murder, and if it was murder, what if the murderer was, like, weird, which would make their subsequent marriage to Gideon pretty awkward? Maybe they could just swap friendship bracelets.
She had never seen Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s naked face.
Crouching in front of the hatch was a rangy, underfed young man: he was wrapped in a grey cloak and the light glinted on the spectacles slipping down his nose.
It was probably not a comforting sight to see a penitent of the Locked Tomb in the half dark, swathed in black, skull-painted.
Holy shit. Here was a warrior, not just a cavalier.
He had the eyes of a very beautiful person, trapped in resting bitch face.
“Then get off your ass and help me,”
Her necromancer smelled like sweat and blood and old, burnt bone; her corselet of ribs poked painfully into Gideon’s shoulders.
“Give her water and food when she wakes up. She’ll take care of the rest. Probably. She needs eight hours of sleep—in a bed, not a library. When she asks how I knew she was in the library, tell her Cam says she clinks when she walks.”
“Because I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Thought that would wake her up,” said Palamedes, with no small amount of satisfaction. “Well—I’m off. Like I said, liquids and rest. Good luck.”
EITHER HARROWHARK FELL BACK unconscious, having used her last remaining energy to spite Palamedes, or she was just already such a dick she could spite him in her sleep.
she was heartily glad by the end of it to dump her prone and black-wrapped burden on the bed.
Gideon had checked for injuries and been traumatised by the experience.
“Touch me again and I’ll kill you,” said Harrow,
“You look all mummification and no meat.”
“I’m not saying it wouldn’t hurt me, Griddle,” she murmured. “I am just saying you’d be dead.”
Thanks, Gideon,’” she said aloud. “‘I was in a pickle and you saved me, which I had no reasonable expectation of, since I’m an asshole who got stuck in a bone in a basement.’ Is that what you’ve been doing without me, all this time? Dicking around in a basement?”
“Didn’t need—? What, you were having a nap of your own free will?” “I was recuperating—” “Balls you were.”
“The Sixth House, Griddle! Do you know how difficult it is to stay ahead of Palamedes Sextus? Didn’t I tell you to keep your pneumatic mouth shut? I would have been fine; I’d fainted; I was resting.”
The whites around Harrow’s eyes were pink and inflamed, probably from too little rest and too much fainting. She closed them again and her head came down, heavy, back to the bed. Her dead black hair fell in lank and tangled hanks on the pillow. She looked flat and tired. “I’m not having this conversation with you,” she said finally.
“That’s easily contrived. You can’t stay awake forever.”
“I’d hardly call sucker-punching the Third cavalier keeping your head down.”
“You’re not very good at I’m Asking the Questions Now, Bitch, are you,”
“This calls for rigor, Nav.” “Maybe rigor … mortis,” said Gideon, who assumed that puns were funny automatically.
All the while he was winking at me so hard that I thought he had suffered a stroke.”
“Shut up,” said Gideon, flat and grim. “I mean that you’re making me look like a disloyal buffoon. I mean it’s your fault that I can’t take being your bodyguard seriously. I mean that all this sacred duty do exactly as I say blah blah blah shit does not matter in the least if you die of dehydration in a bone.”
“Baseline standard of a cavalier,” said Gideon, “is you not dying in a bone.”
“No. It’s Gideon Nav Talking Time.
“Gideon Nav Talking Time.
Don’t go down there solo. Don’t die in a bone. I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady.”
“I am your sworn sword, night boss.”
“bone empress”
“And you had better stop it with all this twilit princess garbage,” said Harrow, “because I may start to enjoy it.
“Surprise, my tenebrous overlord!” said Gideon. “Ghosts and you might die is my middle name.”
Gideon could make out the etiolated profile of the repellent Third twin, Ianthe.
“Have some care, you dolt, everything here is impossibly old.”
you have a dubious but capable brain;
“As you wish, my lamentable queen,”
“The arms kind of looked like swords. I want to fight it.” “You want to fight it.” “Yep.” “Because it looked … a little like swords.” “Yop.”
“I’m not yet so desperate for a new cavalier that I’m willing to recycle you.
“My mother and my father and my grandmother together could not do what I do,” she said softly, not speaking to Gideon. “My mother and my father and my grandmother together … and I’ve advanced so far beyond them. One construct or fifty—and it simply slows it down … for all of half an hour.”
