Gideon the Ninth

Everyone’s heads twisted their way. Gideon froze. It was the Reverend Daughter who maintained complete equanimity as she dropped her cup into Gideon’s hands and, before a sea of faces—some curious, some bored, and one (Dulcinea’s) enthusiastic—Harrow began: “I pray the tomb is shut forever. I pray the rock is never rolled away…”

Gideon had known on some basic level that the religion practised in the dark depths of Drearburh was not quite the religion practised by the other Houses. It was still a shock to the system to have it confirmed. By the expressions on some of the faces—bewildered or blank or long-suffering or, in at least one case, openly hostile—the others hadn’t been confronted with it either. By the time Harrow had finished the three priests looked softly delighted.

“Just as it always was,” sighed the little bent priest in ecstasy, despite the wretched dirge.

“Continuity is a marvellous thing,” said salt-and-pepper plait, proving themself insanely tedious.

Teacher said: “Now I’ll welcome you to Canaan House. Will someone bring me the box?”

The gangling silence focused on a robed skeleton who carried over a small chest made entirely of wood. It was no wider than a book and no deeper than two books stacked on top of each other, estimated Gideon, who thought of all books as being basically the same size. Teacher threw it open with aplomb, and announced: “Marta the Second!”

An intensely dark girl snapped to attention. Her salute was as crisp as her flawless Cohort uniform, and when Teacher beckoned, she marched forward with a gait as starched as her officer’s scarlets and snowy white necktie. As though bestowing a jewel upon her, he gave her a dull iron ring from the box, about as big around as the circle made by a thumb and forefinger. To her credit, she did not gawk or hesitate. She simply took it, saluted, and sat back down.

Teacher called out, “Naberius the Third!” and thus followed a rather tiresome parade of rapier-swinging cavaliers in varying attitudes coming up to receive their mysterious iron circles. Some of them took the Second’s cue in saluting. Others, including the man-hulk Protesilaus, bothered not at all.

Gideon’s tension grew with each name. When at last in this roll-call Teacher said, “Gideon the Ninth,” she ended up disappointed by the banality of the thing. It was not a perfect iron loop, as she had thought, but a twist that overlapped itself. It locked shut by means of a hole bored into one end and a ninety-degree bend at the other, so that you could prise it open simply by fiddling the bend back through the hole. The metal in her hand felt granular, heavy. When she returned to her place she knew Harrow was sweating to snatch it off her, but she clutched it childishly tight.

Nobody asked what it was, which Gideon thought was fairly frigging dumb. She was near to asking herself when Teacher said: “Now the tenets of the First House, and the grief of the King Undying.”

Everyone got very focused again.

“I will not tell you what you already know,” said the little priest. “I seek only to add context. The Lyctors were not born immortal. They were given eternal life, which is not at all the same thing. Sixteen of them came here a myriad ago, eight adepts and the eight who would later be known as the first cavaliers, and it was here that they ascended. Those eight necromancers were first after the Lord of Resurrection; they have spread his assumption across the blackness of space, to those places where others could never reach. Each of them alone is more powerful than nine Cohorts acting as one. But even the divine Lyctors can pass away, despite their power and despite their swords … and they have done so, slowly, over these ten thousand years. The Emperor’s grief has waxed with time. It is only now, in the twilight of the original eight, that he has listened to his last Lyctors, who beg for reinforcement.”

He took his cup of tea and swirled the liquid with a twitch of his wrist. “You have been nominated to attempt the terrible challenge of replacing them,” he said, “and it is not at all a sure thing. If you ascend to Lyctor, or if you try and fail—the Kindly Lord knows what is being asked of you is titanic. You are the honoured heirs and guardians of the eight Houses. Great duties await you. If you do not find yourself a galaxy, it is not so bad to find yourself a star, nor to have the Emperor know that the both of you attempted this great ordeal.

“Or the all of you,” added the little priest brightly, nodding at the twins and their sullen-ass cavalier with a flash of amusement, “as the case may be. Cavaliers, if your adept is found wanting, you have failed! If you are found wanting, your adept has failed! And if one or both is wanting, then we will not ask you to wreck your lives against this impossible task. You will not be forced if you cannot continue onward—through single or mutual failure—or make the decision not to go on.”