Gideon the Ninth

Muster broke up after that. Most of the congregation stayed to keep praying at their good fortune, knowing that the Secundarius Bell would be ringing in a scant hour anyway. Gideon would have vaulted up to leave and sprint back to her shuttle first thing, but the skeletons flooded out in neat, serried ranks down the centre of the nave, two abreast, blocking all other progress in their readiness to get back to their snow leeks and the heat lamps of their fields. The disgusting great-aunts removed themselves behind the parcloses to the claustrophobic family chapel off to one side, and Harrowhark ordered her parents’ complaisant mummies out of sight to wherever she usually hid them. Back in their lavish household cell, probably, and to bar the door after. Gideon was massaging sprains from her fingers as her sword-master came seesawing down the aisle.

“She lies,” said Gideon absently, by way of greeting. “If you hadn’t noticed. She never keeps her promises. Not a one.”

Aiglamene did not answer. Gideon didn’t expect her to. She just stood there, not yet meeting her student’s gaze, one liver-spotted hand clutched tight to the grip of her sword. Eventually, she said gruffly: “You have always suffered from a want of duty, Nav. You can’t argue that. You couldn’t spell obligation if I shoved the letters up your ass.”

“I gotta say, I don’t think that would help,” said Gideon. “God, I’m glad you didn’t teach me my spelling.”

“A soldier’s best quality is her sense of allegiance. Of loyalty. Nothing else survives.”

“I know,” said Gideon, and, experimenting, rose from the pew. She was standing fine, but her ribs ached; one was probably cracked. Her butt hurt from being dragged. She was going to be swollen with bruises before nightfall, and she needed to have a tooth put back in—not by one of the nuns, though, never again. The Cohort would have bone magicians aplenty. “I know. It’s fine. Don’t get me wrong, Captain. Where I’m going, I promise to piss fidelity all the livelong day. I have lots of fealty in me. I fealt the Emperor with every bone in my body. I fealt hard.”

“You wouldn’t know fealty if it—”

“Don’t hypothetically shove stuff up my butt again,” said Gideon, “it never does any good.”

The lopsided old woman took a scabbard off her back and wearily handed it over. It was Gideon’s. Her sword had been sheathed safely inside it. Aiglamene tossed her the abandoned suitcase, to boot. This would be the closest to an apology she would get. The woman would never touch her, and she would never give her a word that had no edges. But this was nearly tender for the captain of the guard, and Gideon would take it and run.

Determined footsteps sounded down the centre aisle, alongside the sound of ancient lace rustling over slick obsidian. Gideon’s gut tightened, but she said: “How the hell are you going to get out of this one, Nonagesimus?”

“I’m not,” said Harrow, surprising her. The Reverend Daughter’s sharp-angled, foxy chin was thrust out, and she still had a thick rime of blood circling each nostril, but with her burning black eyes she looked exalted as a bad bone saint. “I’m going. This is my chance for intercession. You couldn’t comprehend.”

“I can’t, but I also couldn’t care less,” said Gideon.

“We all get our chances, Nav. You got yours.”

Gideon wanted to punch her lights out, but she said instead, with forced jollity: “By the way, I worked out your nasty little trick, jackass.”

Aiglamene did not cuff her for this, which was also some sort of apology; she just jabbed a warning finger in her direction. Harrow cocked her chin up in genuine surprise, hood falling away from her dark, short-cropped head. “Did you?” she drawled. “Really?”

“Your mother’s signature on the commission. The sting in the tail. If I come clean,” she said, “that renders the signature null and void, doesn’t it? It buys my silence. Well played. I’ll have to keep my mouth shut when I hand that one over, and you know it.”

Harrowhark cocked her head the other way, lightly.

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” she said. “I thought you meant the shuttle.”

Alarm bells rang in Gideon’s head, like the First and Second Peal all mixed together. She could feel the heat drain from her face, and she was already backing out of the pew, into the aisle, wheeling away. Harrowhark’s face was a painted study of innocence, of perfect unconcern. At the expression on Gideon’s, Aiglamene had put a hand on her sword, moving herself between the two with a warning stump of the leg.

Gideon said, with difficulty: “What—about—the shuttle?”

“Oh, Ortus and his mother stole it,” said Harrowhark. “They must be gone already. She still has family back on the Eighth, and she thinks they’ll take them in.” At her expression, Harrow laughed: “You make it so easy, Griddle. You always do.”

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