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“Harrow,” she said, “if you wanted a cavalier you could replace with skeletons, you should’ve kept Ortus.”
“Frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, hippocampus—I fought with them all inside you,” she said. “I’m not equipped to deal with a living spirit still attached to a nervous system. You’re so noisy. It took me five minutes to peel away the volume just to see. And the pain is so much worse than skeleton feedback—your spirit rendered me deaf! Your whole body makes noise when you fight! Your temporal lobe—God—I have such a headache!”
“You can control my body,” she said. “You can read my thoughts.”
“If only I could. The moment I get a handle on even one of your senses, I’m overwhelmed by another.”
“You are banned from squatting in my lobes and my hippocampus. I don’t want you pushing all the furniture around in there.”
“Don’t have an aneurysm, Nav. I cannot and will not read your thoughts, control your body, or look at your most intimate memories. I don’t have the ability and I certainly don’t have the desire.”
“It’s for your protection, not mine,” said Gideon. “I imagined Crux’s butt once when I was twelve.”
I’m afraid I have to pass out.”
And she crumpled neatly back onto the floor. Pure sentiment found Gideon kicking out one leg to catch her. She ended up lightly punting her necromancer on the shoulder but assumed that it was the thought that counted.
A few hours after, Harrowhark had woken up from her floor nap and accompanied her cavalier back to their quarters.
My brain is always yelling at you,
Jeannemary and what’s-his-face had shoved something underneath the door, and left.
“Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” she read out loud. “Gideon the Ninth. Fan mail.”
“I want to eat a dessert.”
“and being dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists, shouldn’t we make a teeny weeny appearance?
I’ll eat yours if you don’t want it.”
“Bet you Palamedes will be there. We can do the trial afterward. And I’ll be so good. I’ll be silent and Ninth and melancholy. The sight will astound and stimulate you.”
“Nav, you are a hog.”
“I’m so pleased you’re wearing your, ah, glad rags; I was convinced I’d be the only one dressed up, and would have to sit resplendently among you all, feeling a bit of an idiot.
The Ninth was high on ancient, shitty treasures but low on liquid assets.
“What do Marta the Second, Naberius the Third, Jeannemary the Fourth, Magnus the Fifth, Camilla the Sixth, Protesilaus the Seventh, Colum the Eighth, and Gideon the Ninth all have in common?” You could have heard a hair flutter to the floor. Everyone stared, poker-faced, in the thick ensuing silence. Magnus looked pleased with himself. “The same middle name,” he said. Coronabeth laughed so hard that she had to honk her beautiful nose into a napkin. Someone was explaining the joke to the salt-and-pepper priest, who, when they got it, said “Oh, ‘the’!” which started Corona off again.
which had completed Gideon’s requirements for a meal at hot.
“I was removed by … surgical means,” Ianthe was saying calmly, her long fingers toying with the stem of her glass. “My sister is a few minutes older.”
she felt a tug on her sleeve. It was the disagreeable teen who was sitting on her other side, looking at her with a particularly fierce expression, emphasised with near-Ninth quantities of black eye makeup. Jeannemary the Fourth screwed up her mouth as though expecting an injection, all the little corners of her face more angular in ferociousness, her jillion earrings jingling.
“Ninth … how big are your biceps?”
Someone touched Gideon’s hand, very lightly, as though afraid of startling her. It was Dulcinea, who had taken refuge in a chair; she was shifting her hips a little awkwardly in the hard wooden seat with the tiny, restless motions Gideon suspected she made when she was sore. She looked tired, and older than usual; but her pink mouth was still very pink, and her eyes alight with illicit amusement.
Gideon looked. Isaac and Jeannemary were standing close to the table, Jeannemary’s sleeves pulled down to reveal her biceps. They were the muscles of an athletic and determined fourteen-year-old, which was to say, unripped but full of potential; her floppy-haired teen-in-crime was wearily measuring them with his hands as they carried on a conversation in whispers—
(“I told you so.” “Yours are fine?” “Isaac.” “It’s not like this is a bicep competition?” “Dumbest thing you ever said?”)
“As mentioned before, you’re a hog. Hurry up. We don’t have much time.”
“I saw—lights, when I was fighting it. Overlay. Bright spots, where you told me to hit, a glowing halo. Is that what you meant by thanergetic signature?”
You could not have comprehended the dark mysteries only my mascara’d eye doth espy,
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.” The blood all drained away from Gideon’s cheeks for some reason. The world spun off its axis. Bright spots sparked in her vision. She found herself saying, intelligently, “Mmf.”
If I didn’t know that, I’d be saying that you were Matthias Nonius come again or something equally saccharine.”
“Harrow,” said Gideon, finding her tongue, “don’t say these things to me. I still have a million reasons to be mad at you. It’s hard to do that and worry that you got brain injured.”
she only drew close to the work to pull Ianthe’s hair away from her face,
using. They had both come from their beds without bothering to dress, and hence were wearing astonishingly flimsy nightgowns,
The Third princesses worked like musicians who couldn’t help but return for the encore: a spell, retirement, another, another. They knelt side by side, holding hands, and for all that Ianthe had made fun of her sister’s intellect Corona never broke a sweat. It was Ianthe who ran wet with blood and perspiration. At one point she beckoned Naberius forward and, in a feat that nearly brought up Gideon’s dinner (again), ate him: she bit off a hunk of his hair, she chewed off a nail, she brought her incisors down on the heel of his hand. He submitted to all this without noise. Then she lowered her
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“You will pardon me,” he said, “if I do not take advice on spirits from a bone magician.”
he simply punched Silas in the face.
“A Cohort captain,” said Naberius, “don’t rank higher than a Third official.”
“I’m very much afraid that it does, Tern.” “Prince Tern, if you please,” said Ianthe.
“I have no intention of collaborating.”
“Don’t act the jilted lover, Babs.”
It was Jeannemary Chatur, her eyes red-rimmed, sticky and stained, her hair in a frizz. There was no sign of pluck in her now, except maybe a wild hardness around the eyes as she looked at Gideon.
“Yes, tomorrow morning after at least eight hours’ sleep,” Gideon suggested without hope. “An admirable attempt at comedy in these trying times,” said Harrowhark. “Let’s go.”
“At the key, moron, not at me.”
The moron looked at the key, but did give her the middle finger.
“Put it in the hole, Griddle.” “That’s what she said,”
“This is a service I was unaware I was meant to provide,” said Gideon.
ONE FLESH, ONE END. G. & P.
