Gideon the Ninth

The punch would have spun Marshal Crux’s scabrous, plate-clad bulk around three times like a top and left him on the floor seeing little skeletal birdies. It knocked Cytherea clean through the wall. The wall was already feeling pretty sorry for itself, and at this last insult it gave up entirely and collapsed, with a terrific rumble and crash of rock and brick and bursting glass slumping outward onto the garden terrace. Daylight flooded through, and the smell of hot concrete and wood mould filled the air. The potholed floor groaned as if threatening to follow suit. Camilla, who had guts of steel and the pain tolerance of a brick, wobbled to stand; Gideon wove her arm beneath Camilla’s sword arm before the Sixth cavalier could protest, retrieved the bird-bone bundle of her necromancer, and staggered outside as fast as this crippled procession could manage. There was simply nowhere else to go.

The salt wind from the sea blew hot and hard through holes in the glass that sheltered the expanse where mouldering plants continued to dry out on their great trellises. Insensitive to the situation, Dominicus shone down on them, cradled in the unreal cerulean of the First’s sky. Gideon laid Harrowhark down in the shadow of a broken-ass wall that seemed as though it wouldn’t crumple down and squash her yet. Camilla slumped next to her, swords crossed over her knees. At least this place had significantly fewer bones.

Ianthe strode down a low flight of stairs, sword in hand, hair rippling white-yellow in the breeze. Dead leaves and plant matter drifted down around her, disturbed by the crumbling wall. Cytherea was picking herself up off the flagstones where she’d been hurled, and as Ianthe lunged at her again it was obvious she was on the defensive. She was not as quick as Ianthe; she was not as reactive. She would still have speared Gideon through in the first ten seconds of a fair fight, but against another Lyctor, things seemed to be going wrong. Ianthe grew more vicious with each hit. As Cytherea’s blood flew into the air, she was freezing it in place, manipulating it, stitching long red lines through the space around and between them. Every time Cytherea got hurt—and she was getting hurt now, bleeding like a normal person, with none of her earlier invulnerability—the web of blood grew in size and complexity, until it looked like she was duelling in a cage of taut red string.

Nor was that the worst of it. As Gideon watched, somewhere between horror and fascination, the earlier wounds—the ones Palamedes had inflicted when he blew up the sickroom—began to reopen. Strips of skin along the Lyctor’s arms blackened and curled; a big, messy gouge split down her thigh, independent of Ianthe’s blade. Even the curly hair started to sizzle and crisp back up.

“What the hell?” objected Gideon, more to relieve her feelings than in hope of an answer.

“She hadn’t healed,” said Camilla weakly from beside her. Gideon glanced around; the other cav had dragged herself up into a sitting position against the wall and was watching the fight with grim, professional eyes. Of course, cavaliers from Houses with more than one living necromancer probably saw necromancers duel all the time. “She’d just skinned over the damage—a surface fix, hides the cracks. To really heal, she needs thalergy—life force—and she hasn’t got any to spare.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Gideon. “Sextus gave her turbo cancer.”

Camilla nodded with enormous personal satisfaction. “Well,” she said, “that’ll do it.”

Ianthe’s magic was as efficient and lean as Naberius’s swordsmanship—neat and contemptuous, clean and too perfect, not a beat missed or a second’s hesitation. Cytherea stumbled away from her onslaught, and Ianthe closed the trap. The cage of blood suddenly contracted, tightened, clinging to the older Lyctor like a net. Cytherea stood tangled in it, not even bothering to try to fight free, eyes closed to slits. Her hair was scorched almost down to stubble. She was struggling to breathe. Her shrapnel wounds were gaping red and fresh, and her knees were buckling. The smell of blood and leaves was overpowering.

Ianthe stood before her, panting now herself. She kept shaking her head as though to clear it—kept rubbing her temples fretfully—but she was gleaming and triumphant, sweating, smug. “Tired?” she said.

Cytherea opened her eyes and coughed. “Not particularly,” she said. “But you’re exhausted.”

The filmy red net dissolved to nothing. It didn’t even fall away from her; it seemed almost to be absorbed back through her skin. She straightened up, stepped forward, and grabbed Ianthe’s throat in one fine-boned, delicate hand. Ianthe’s eyes bulged, and her hands flew up to clutch at the other woman’s wrist.

“Just like a child … all your best moves first,” said Cytherea.