Gideon the Ninth

“As I have repeated to excess, Griddle, I’m still working on the theory. Nonetheless—look back at the maps.”

The necromancer fell to brooding, staring through swollen eyelids down at the journal. Somewhat astonished still, Gideon leaned over and, ignoring her adept’s dumb mystic despond, flipped the pages back to the three-level plan for Canaan House. A few of the X-marked doors were circled with scratchy black ink and marked with crabbed symbols that she did not recognise. These seemed to be distantly distributed throughout the First House building, tucked away or secreted.

Gideon flipped another page. There was a pencil sketch of an animal’s skull with long horns. The horns curved inward into points that almost touched but not quite, and the sockets were deep holes of black pencil lead. An electric thrill of recognition ran through her.

“I’ve seen this before,” she said.

Harrow bestirred herself. Her eyes narrowed. “Where?”

“Hang on. Let me look at the map again.” Gideon flipped back and found the atrium; she traced with her finger the twisty route from there to the corridor and stairs that led to the cavalier’s dais. She found the staircase, and jabbed with her thumbnail: “You haven’t got it—way ahead of you, Nonagesimus. There’s a hidden hallway here, with a locked door.”

“Are you certain?” Now Harrow was well and truly awake. At the answering nod she rummaged in her robes for a long iron needle and jabbed it inside her mouth—Gideon winced—before the bones at the bedhead unceremoniously shoved her up to a ninety-degree angle, weapon held ready, end shining with red blood. She said, “Show me, Nav.”

Thoroughly satisfied with herself, Gideon placed her finger next to the enormous door of black stone she’d hidden behind the tapestry. Harrow marked the place with a bloody red cross and blew on the ink: it skeletonised immediately into a tarry, dry brown. X-203. The necromancer could not hide a triumphant smile. It stretched her mouth and made her split lips bleed. The sight was incomparably creepy. “If you’re correct,” she said, “and if I’m correct—well.”

Exhausted by all the effort, Harrow closed the journal and tucked it back inside her robe. She sank back down into the dusty embrace of the bones, wrist joints clacking as they lowered her onto the dark slippery material of the duvet. She groped blindly for the water and spilled half of the remnants down her front as she took gulping, greedy sips. She dropped the empty glass onto the bed next to her, and then she closed her eyes. Gideon found herself gripping the slender rapier at her hip and feeling the heft of its basket hilt.

“You could’ve died today,” she said conversationally.

For a long time the girl on the bed was supine and silent. Her chest rose and fell slightly, evenly, as though in sleep. Then Harrow said without opening her eyes, “You could attempt to finish me right now, if you liked. You might even win.”

“Shut up,” said Gideon, flat and grim. “I mean that you’re making me look like a disloyal buffoon. I mean it’s your fault that I can’t take being your bodyguard seriously. I mean that all this sacred duty do exactly as I say blah blah blah shit does not matter in the least if you die of dehydration in a bone.”

“I wasn’t about to—”

“Baseline standard of a cavalier,” said Gideon, “is you not dying in a bone.”

“There was no—”

“No. It’s Gideon Nav Talking Time. I want to get out of here and you want to be a Lyctor,” she said. “We need to get in formation if that’s going to happen. If you don’t want me to ditch the paint, this sword, and the cover story, you’re taking me down there with you.”

“Griddle—”

“Gideon Nav Talking Time. The Sixth must think we’re absolutely full of horseshit. I’m going down there with you because I am sick of doing nothing. If I have to wander around faking a vow of silence and scowling for one more day I will just open all my veins on top of Teacher. Don’t go down there solo. Don’t die in a bone. I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady.”

Harrow’s eyes flickered open. “Stop.”

“I am your sworn sword, night boss.”

“Fine,” said Harrow heavily.

Gideon’s mouth was about to round out the words “bone empress” before she realised what had been said. The expression on the other girl’s face was now all resignation: resignation and exhaustion and also something else, but mostly resignation. “I acknowledge your argument,” she said. “I disagree with it, but I see the margin of error. Fine.”

It would have been pushing her luck to point out that there was no real way Harrowhark could have denied her; she had the key, the upper hand, and significantly more blood. So all she said was, “Okay. Great. Fine.”