Gideon the Ninth

Colum made a sound in the back of his throat. Ianthe was visible as a blurred shape behind the yellow-streaked flesh wall. Silas walked forward on light feet—crackles of electricity arcing over his skin, his hands—and laid his palms on the shield.

The skin puddled around his fingers, and for a moment Gideon thought it was working. Then the wall sucked his hands inward, ripping and bristling with canine teeth. The shield bit down savagely, and there was blood at Silas’s wrists. He cried out, and then closed his eyes, the heat pouring off him in waves; Colum went greyer and greyer, and stiller and stiller, and Silas squeezed his hands into fists.

The shield went pop, like a pimple or an eyeball, and fell to the floor in ragged strips and jiggling globs. Silas looked almost surprised to see Ianthe, who was gripping her head in tight-knuckled hands. When Ianthe looked up, her eyes were wild and white again, and she screamed in a voice that required many more vocal cords than she possessed.

Silas approached her with hands like hot white murder. Ianthe ducked past him and flung herself down onto one of the still-bubbling sheets that had made up her shield. She sunk down into the skin with a splash, peppering the wooden floor with hot yellow fat. The skin blistered and crinkled up on itself like it had been burnt, and then it deliquesced into a viscous puddle, leaving no trace of Ianthe.

Silas knelt by the puddle, and—silver chain starting to warp and buckle on his perfect white tunic—thrust his hand into it. Colum made a noise as though he had been punched in the gut. A bloodied hand emerged from the puddle, seized Silas by the shoulder, and jerked him in.

The ceiling broke apart like a thundercloud, and a torrent of bloody, fatty rain sluiced down on them all. Gideon and Harrow gagged and pulled their hoods down over their heads. Two figures tumbled from above, filthy with blood and lymph. Ianthe landed on her feet, and delicately shivered off the fetid red soup, more or less unblemished, while Silas fell heavily to earth. There was a faint red mark like a slap on Ianthe’s face; she touched her cheek, and it paled into nothing.

Silas clambered to his knees, clasped his fingers together, and the feeling of suction popped the pressure in both of Gideon’s ears. She saw his power warping around Ianthe now, and she gave a disbelieving laugh. She was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating.

“Octakiseron,” Ianthe said, “you can’t take it faster than I can make it.”

“He’s trying to drain her,” muttered Harrow, spellbound. “But he’s splitting his focus—he needs to bring Colum back, or—”

Colum—ashen as his name, drunk in movement, numb—had lifted his sword, and was moving inexorably toward Ianthe. He backhanded her full across the face with his shield, as though to test her. Ianthe’s head snapped back, but she looked more dazed and surprised than hurt or injured. Her breath was coming in stutters. She righted herself like nothing had happened, and the cavalier thrust forward with his blade. She raised her hand and wrapped it around the shining edge like it was nothing. Her hand was bloody, but the blood itself pushed back gracefully, quietly repelling the blade like it was all just so many more fingers.

Silas clasped his hands together, and the pressure nearly made Gideon hurl. Colum shook his sword—the blood broke off like shards of glass—and Ianthe staggered, though nobody had touched her. As she lurched away from Colum the blood on the floor and the walls and the ceiling was drying up, burning into itself as though it had never been. Her eyes were that awful, blank white, and she was holding her head and shaking it as though to reposition her brain.

“Stop doing this to me!” she was hissing. “Stop it!”

Colum turned and with a liquid, exquisite movement, sliced down across her back. It was a shallow cut. Ianthe did not even seem to notice. The blood bubbled over her pretty yellow robe and the new gash revealed the wound sucking in on itself and zipping together. “Listen,” she was saying, “Babs, listen.”

Silas slammed his fists on the ground. The air was choked from Ianthe’s lungs. Her mouth and skin puckered and withered: she stopped, awkward, stiff, eyes bulging in surprise. The remnants of blood rose from the floor as pale smoke, trailing heavenward all around them. For a moment everything was blanched clean and luminously white. In the middle of all this stood Ianthe, unnaturally still and bent. Blood dripped calmly out of Silas’s nose and ears in the blood sweat.

Gideon felt Harrow flinch—

Ianthe’s pallid purple irises had returned, and so had the pupils, though perhaps all a little paler than before. She was ageing before their eyes. Her skin sloughed off in papery threads. But she was not staring at Silas, who held her as firmly as though he had her clasped in his hands. She was staring, disbelieving, at Colum the Eighth.

“Well, now you’re fucked,” she announced.