Gideon the Ninth

“This is going to be good,” said Gideon to nobody in particular. “‘Gideon, here’s some money. You can spend it right here, on bones.’ ‘Gideon, I’ll always be nice and not a dick to you if you come back. You can have Crux’s room.’ ‘Gideon, here’s a bed of writhing babes. It’s the cloisterites, though, so they’re ninety percent osteoporosis.’”

From out of her pocket, with no small amount of drama, Harrowhark drew a fresh piece of parchment. It was paper—real paper!—with the official letterhead of the House of the Ninth on the top. She must have raided the coffers for that one. The hairs on the back of Gideon’s neck prickled in warning. Harrow ostentatiously walked forward to leave it at a safe middle point between them both, and backed away with hands open in surrender.

“Or,” said the Lady, as Gideon slowly went to pick it up, “it could be an absolutely authentic purchase of your commission in the Cohort. You can’t forge this, Griddle, it’s to be signed in blood, so don’t stuff it down your trousers yet.”

It was real Ninth bond, written correctly and clearly. It purchased Gideon Nav’s commission to second lieutenant, not privy to resale, but relinquishing capital if she honourably retired. It would grant her full officer training. The usual huge percentage of prizes and territory would be tithed to her House if they were won, but her inflated Ninth serfdom would be paid for in five years on good conditions, rather than thirty. It was more than generous. Harrow was shooting herself in the foot. She was gamely firing into one foot and then taking aim at the other. She’d lose rights to Gideon forever. Gideon went absolutely cold.

“You can’t say I don’t care,” said Harrow.

“You don’t care,” said Gideon. “You’d have the nuns eat each other if you got bored. You are a psychopath.”

Harrow said, “If you don’t want it, return it. I can still use the paper.”

The only sensible option was to fold the bond into a dart and sail it back the way it came. Four minutes until the shuttle landed and she was able to make hot tracks far away from this place. She’d already won, and this was a vulnerability that would put everything she’d worked for—months of puzzling out how to infiltrate the shuttle standing-order system, months to hide her tracks, to get the right forms, to intercept communications, to wait and sweat—into jeopardy. It was a trick. And it was a Harrowhark Nonagesimus trick, which meant it was going to be atrociously nasty—

Gideon said, “Okay. Name your price.”

“I want you downstairs at the muster meeting.”

She didn’t bother to hide her amazement. “What are you announcing, Harrow?”

The Reverend Daughter remained smileless. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

There was a long moment. Gideon let a long breath escape through her teeth, and with a heroic effort, she dropped the paper on the ground and backed away. “Nah,” she said, and was interested to see a tiny beetling of the Lady’s black eyebrows. “I’ll go my own way. I’m not going down into Drearburh for you. Hell, I’m not going down into Drearburh if you get my mother’s skeleton to come do a jig for me.”

Harrow bunched her gloved hands into fists and lost her composure. “For God’s sake, Griddle! This is the perfect offer! I am giving you everything you’ve ever asked for—everything you’ve whined for so incessantly, without you even needing to have the grace or understanding to know why you couldn’t have it! You threaten my House, you disrespect my retainers, you lie and cheat and sneak and steal—you know full well what you’ve done, and you know that you are a disgusting little cuckoo!”

“I hate it when you act like a butt-touched nun,” said Gideon, who was only honestly sorry for one of the things in that lineup.

“Fine,” snarled Harrowhark, now in every appearance of a fine temper. She was struggling out of her long, ornate robes, the human rib cage she wore clasped around her long torso shining whitely against the black. Crux cried out in dismay as she began to detach the little silver snaps that held it to her chest, but she silenced him with a curt gesture as she took it off. Gideon knew what she was doing. A great wave of commingled pity and disgust moved through her as she watched Harrow take off her bone bracelets, the teeth she kept at her neck, the little bone studs in her ears. All these she dumped in Crux’s arms, stalking back to the shuttlefield and presenting herself like an emptied quiver. Just in gloves and boots and shirt and trousers, with her cropped black head and her face pinched with wrath, she seemed like what she really was: a desperate girl younger than Gideon, and rather small and feeble.

“Look, Nonagesimus,” said Gideon, thoroughly unbalanced and now actually embarrassed, “cut the bull. Don’t do—whatever you’re about to do. Let me go.”

“You don’t get to turn and leave quite so easily, Nav,” said Harrowhark, with palpable chill.

“You want your ass kicked by way of goodbye?”