Gideon the Ninth

“The Ninth House is a House of broken promises,” said Silas. “The Eighth House remembers that they were not meant to live. They had one job—one rock to roll over one tomb; one act of guardianship, to live and die in a single blessedness—and they made a cult instead. A House of mystics who came to worship a terrible thing. The ruling Reverend Father and Mother are the bad seeds of a furtive crop. I do not know why the Emperor suffered that shadow of a House. That mockery of his name. A House that would keep lamps lit for a grave that was meant to pass into darkness is a House that would kill two hundred children. A House that would kill a woman and her son simply for attempting to leave is a House that would kill two hundred children.”

Gideon felt grimy and unsettled. “I need a better motivation than the fact that the Ninth House sucks,” she said. “Why? Why kill two hundred kids? More importantly, why two hundred kids and not me or Harrow?”

Silas looked at her over steepled fingers.

“You tell me, Gideon the Ninth,” he said. “You are the one who tried to leave in a shuttle they planted a bomb in.”

Gideon was silent.

“I do not think any scion of the Reverend Mother and the Reverend Father should become a Lyctor,” said Silas softly. “The open grave of the Ninth House should not produce its own revenant. In fact, I am unsure that any of us should become Lyctor. Since when was power goodness, or cleverness truth? I myself no longer wish to ascend, Gideon. I’ve told you what I know, and I assume you will understand when I say I must take your keys from you.”

Her spine jolted her upright in her chair. The dust-coloured fingers paused on their bleached seam.

“That’s what this is about,” said Gideon, almost disappointed.

“My conscience is clear. I ask for the good of all the Houses.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I will challenge you for them.”

“My sword—”

“You may find the challenge hard without it,” said Silas Octakiseron, quiet and resigned in his triumph.

Gideon couldn’t help darting a glance at Colum, half-expecting to find his sword already in his hand and a grim smile on his face. But he was standing with his needlework tumbled to the floor, his face closed like a fist and his shoulders so set each tendon looked like it was flossing his clavicular joints. He was brown-eyed and baleful, but he was not looking at her.

“Master,” he said, and stopped. Then: “I told her there’d be no violence here.”

Silas’s eyes never left Gideon’s, so they did not see his cavalier’s face. “There’s no sin in that, Brother Asht.”

“I—”

“An oath to the Ninth is as medicine to sand,” the necromancer said. “It sinks from sight and yields no benefit. She knows this as well as any, and better than some. The Ninth heart is barren, and the Ninth heart is black.”

Gideon opened her mouth for a witty riposte—Well, fuck to you too!—but Colum got in first, to her infinite surprise. “I’m not worried about the Ninth’s heart, Uncle.”

“Brother Asht,” said Silas, quite gently, “your heart is true.”

“Every day we spend here I’m less sure about that,” said Colum.

“I share your feelings, but—”

“I said to her, ‘I swear on my honour.’”

“We will waste no truth on liars,” said Silas, his voice still colourless but harder now, like water to ice: reminding, not reassuring. “Nor pledges on the damned.”

“I said,” repeated Colum, slowly, “‘I swear on my honour.’ What does that mean to you?”

Gideon stayed very still, like a strung-up animal, but she let her eyes slide sideways to the door. Sudden movement might let her pick up her sword and get the hell out of there before this terrible uncle-nephew soap opera climaxed in beating her like a gong, but it might also remind them she existed and that they could have this heart-to-heart later. Silas had shifted restlessly in his seat, and he was saying: “I will not dissect words and meanings with you like a mountebank, Brother. Leave the semiotics to the Sixth. Their sophists love nothing more than proving up spelled differently is down. If a wasted oath pains you I will lead you in atonement later, but for now—”

“I am your cavalier,” said his cavalier. This shut Silas off midflow. “I’ve got my sword. I’ve got my honour. Everything else is yours.”

“Your sword is mine also,” said Silas. His hands were gripping the finials of his chair, but his voice was calm and even and actually sympathetic. “You need take no action. If your honour must remain unsullied, I may have your sword without asking for it.”

He raised his hand, and the white linen sleeve fell away from the pale chain cuff. Gideon remembered the blood-stuffy room where Abigail and Magnus lay, and she remembered all the colour pulled from the room like it was just so much fast fabric dye. She knew that this was a game over, and her eyes slid sideways from the door and onto Colum, who was—looking right at her.