Gideon the Ninth

By the end of that week, Gideon had met nearly all of the adepts and their cavaliers. This did not break down barriers and form new friendships. They nearly all gave her wide berths in the dim Canaan House corridors—only Coronabeth would greet her breezily according to Coronabeth’s whims, which were capricious, and Magnus was always good for a cordial Good morning! Er, excellent weather! Or Good evening! Weather still excellent! He tried pathetically hard. But most of them still looked at her as though she were something that could only be killed with a stake through the heart at midnight, a half-tame monster on a dubious leash. Naberius Tern often sneered at her so hard that he was due a lip injury.

But you got a lot of information by being silent and watching. The Second House acted like soldiers on unwilling leave. The Third revolved around Corona like two chunks of ice about a golden star. The Fourth clustered by the Fifth’s skirts like ducklings—the Fifth necromancer turned out to be a fresh-faced woman in her mid-thirties with thick glasses and a mild smile, who looked about as much the part as a farmer’s wife. The Sixth and Seventh were perennially absent, ghosts. The Eighth’s creepy uncle–creepy nephew duo she saw seldom, but even seldom was more than enough: the Eighth necromancer prayed intensely and fervidly before each meal, and if they passed in the corridor both flattened themselves to the furthest wall as though she were contagious.

Small wonder. The way to the Ninth’s living quarters—the corridor that led to their front door, and all about their front door, like ghoulish wreaths—was now draped in bones. Spinal cords bracketed the door frame; finger bones hung down attached to thin, nearly-invisible wires, and they clinked together cheerlessly in the wind when you passed. She had left Harrowhark a note on her vastly underused pillow—

WHATS WITH THE SKULLS?

and received only a terse—

Ambiance.

Well, ambiance meant that even Magnus the Fifth hesitated before saying Good morning, so fuck ambiance in the ear.

As far as Gideon could tell, Dulcinea Septimus spent 100 percent of the time on the terraces, reading romance novels, being perfectly happy. If she was trying to psych out the competition, she was doing so with flair. It was also very difficult to avoid her. The Ninth’s cavalier elect would walk past an open doorway, and a light voice would call out Gideon—Gideon! And then she would go, and no mention of her sword would be made: just a pillow to be moved, or the plot of a romance novel to be related, or—once—a woman seemingly lighter than a rapier to be picked up and very carefully transferred to another seat, out of the sun. Gideon did not resent this. She had the sinking feeling that Dulcinea was doing her a favour. Lady Septimus was, delicately, showing she did not care that Gideon was Gideon the Ninth, a paint-faced shadow cultist, a Locked Tomb nun apparent: or at least, if she cared, she viewed it as the delight of her days.

“Do you ever think it’s funny, you being here with me?” she asked once, when Gideon sat, black-hooded, holding a ball of wool for Dulcinea’s crocheting. When Gideon shook her head, she said: “No … and I like it. I send Protesilaus away a good deal. I give him things to do: that’s what suits him best. But I like to see you and make you pick up my blankets and be my scullion. I think I’m the only person in eternity to make a Ninth House cavalier slave away for me … who’s not their adept. And I’d like to hear your voice again … one day.”

Fat chance. The one half-glimpsed vision of Harrow Nonagesimus was all that Gideon had seen, after that first spar. She didn’t appear again, in the training room or at the Ninth quarters. Her pillow was rumpled in a different way each morning, and black clothes heaped themselves untidily in the laundry basket that the skeletons took away at intervals, but she did not darken Gideon’s door.

Gideon went back to the training room regularly—and so did the cavaliers of Fourth and Fifth, and Second and Third—but the Sixth and Seventh cavaliers avoided it, even now that it was laminated to a high shine and smelled of seed oils. The skeletons had moved their efforts to cleaning the floors now. The burly Eighth cavalier had come in once when she was there, but on seeing Gideon, bowed politely and left posthaste.