Gideon the Ninth

“Shut up,” said the Lady of the Ninth, and, horrifyingly: “I’ll alter the terms. A fair fight and—”

“—and I leave scot free? I’m not that stupid—”

“No. A fair fight and you can go with the commission,” said Harrow. “If I win, you come to the muster, and you leave afterward—with the commission. If I lose, you leave now—with the commission.” She snatched the paper from the ground, pulled a fountain pen from her pocket, and slid it between her lips to stab it deeply into her cheek. It came out thick with blood—one of her party tricks, Gideon thought numbly—and signed: Pelleamena Novenarius, Reverend Mother of the Locked Tomb, Lady of Drearburh, Ruler of the Ninth House.

Gideon said, feeling idiotic: “That’s your mother’s signature.”

“I’m not going to sign as me, you utter moron, that would give the whole game away,” said Harrow. This close, Gideon could see the red starbursts at the corners of her eyes, the pink smears of someone who hadn’t slept all night. She held out the commission and Gideon snatched it with shameless hunger, folding it up and shoving it down her shirt and into her bandeau. Harrow didn’t even smirk. “Agree to duel me, Nav, in front of my marshal and guard. A fair fight.”

Above all else Harrowhark was a skeleton-maker, and in her rage and pride she was offering an unfair fight instead. The thoroughbred Ninth adept had unmanned herself by starting a fight with no body to raise and not even a bone button to help her. Gideon had seen Harrow in this mood only once before, and had thought she would probably never see her in this mood again. Only a complete asshole would agree to such a duel, and Harrowhark knew it. It would take a dyed-in-the-wool douchebag. It would be an embarrassing act of cruelty.

“If I lose, I go to your meeting and leave with the commission,” said Gideon.

“Yes.”

“If I win, I go with the commission now,” said Gideon.

Blood flecked Harrow’s lips. “Yes.”

Overhead, a roar of displaced air. A searchlight flickered over the drillshaft as the shuttle, finally making its descent, approached the wound in the planet’s mantle. Gideon checked her clock. Two minutes. Without a moment’s hesitation, she patted the Reverend Daughter down: arms, midsection, legs, a quick clutch around the boots. Crux cried out again in disgust and dismay at the sight. Harrow said nothing, which was more contemptuous than anything she could have said. But you didn’t get anywhere through softness. The House was hard as iron. You smashed iron where it was weak.

“You all heard her,” she said to Crux, to Aiglamene. Crux stared back at her with the hate of an exploding star: the empty hate of pressure pulled inward, a deforming, light-devouring resentment. Aiglamene refused to meet her gaze. That sucked, but fine. Gideon started digging around in her pack for her gloves. “You heard her. You witnessed. I’m going either way, and she offered the terms. Fair fight. You swear by your mother it’s a fair fight?”

“How dare you, Nav—”

“By your mother. And to the floor.”

“I swear by my mother. I have nothing on me. To the floor,” snapped Harrow, breath coming in staccato pants of anger. As Gideon hastily slipped on her polymer mitts, flipping the thick clasps shut at the wrists, her smile twisted. “My God, Griddle, you’re not even wearing leather. I’m hardly that good.”

They stepped away from each other, Aiglamene finally raised her voice over the growing noise of the shuttle: “Gideon Nav, take back your honour and give your lady a weapon.”

Gideon couldn’t help herself: “Are you asking me to … throw her a bone?”

“Nav!”

“I gave her my whole life,” said Gideon, and unsheathed her blade.

The sword was really just a gesture. What ought to have happened was that Gideon raised a booted foot and knocked Harrow ass-over-tits, hard enough to prevent the Lady of the Ninth embarrassing herself by getting up over and over and over. A booted foot on Harrow’s stomach and it would have all been done. She would have sat on Harrow if she’d needed to. No one in the Ninth House understood what cruelty was, not really, none of them but the Reverend Daughter; none of them understood brutality. The knowledge had been dried out of them, evaporated by the dark that pooled at the bottom of Drearburh’s endless catacombs. Aiglamene or Crux would have had to call it a fair fight won, and Gideon would have walked away a nearly-free woman.

What happened was that Harrowhark peeled off her gloves. Her hands were wrecked. The fingers were riddled with dirt and oozing cuts, and grit stuck in the wounds and beneath the messed-up nails. She dropped the gloves and wiggled her fingers in Gideon’s direction, and Gideon had a split second to realise that it was drillshaft grit, and that she was absolutely boned in all directions.