Harrow ducked out from behind her pillar and she walked toward Gideon, hands still clasped together. Her face held the beatific, fire-white expression she’d had the day she told Gideon she was going off-planet: an unwavering resolve almost like joy. She stopped in front of the other girl and looked up at her, shaking the hood from her dark head, and she closed her eyes into slits. “Come on, Nav,” she said, and her voice was alight. “This is your chance. This is your opportunity to come into glory. Follow me through this, and you can go anywhere. House cavaliers can get any Cohort position they like. Do this for me and I won’t just set you free, I’ll set you free with a fortune, with a commission, with anything you want.”
This nettled her. “You don’t own me.”
“Oh, Griddle, but I do,” said Harrowhark. “You’re bound to the Locked Tomb … and at the end of the night, the Locked Tomb is me. The nominated Hands are to enter the First House, Nav; their names will be written in history as the new Imperial saints. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and it may never happen again. Nav, I am going to be a Lyctor.”
“‘Hello, I’m the woman who helped Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s fascist rise to power,’” said Gideon to nobody in particular. “‘Yes, the universe sucks now. I knew this going in. Also, she betrayed me afterward and now my body has been shot into the sun.’” Harrow came too close, and Gideon did what she had never done in the past: she raised the rusted sword so that its naked point was level with the other girl’s forehead. The necromancer adept did not flinch, just made her black-smeared mouth a mocking moue of shock. “I—will never—trust you. Your promises mean nothing. You’ve got nothing to give me. I know what you’d do, given half a chance.”
Harrow’s dark eyes were on Gideon’s, past the blade pointed at her skull. “Oh, I have hurt your heart,” she said.
Gideon kept it absolutely level. “I boohooed for hours.”
“It won’t be the last time I make you weep.”
Aiglamene’s voice rattled out: “Put that damn thing down. I can’t bear to see you hold it with that grip.” And, shocking Gideon: “Consider this offer, Nav.”
Gideon peered around Harrow’s shoulder, letting the blade drop, trashing the miserable thing scabbardless in the nearest niche. “Captain, please don’t be a proponent of this horseshit idea.”
“It’s the best idea we have. Nav,” said her teacher, “our Lady is going off-planet. That’s the long and short of it. You can stay here—in the House you hate—or go attain your liberty—in service to the House you hate. This is your one chance to leave, and to gain your freedom cleanly.”
Harrowhark opened her mouth to say something, but surprising Gideon further, Aiglamene silenced her with a gesture. The crappy swords were set aside with care, and the old woman pulled her bockety leg out from underneath her and leant the good one against the catacomb wall, pushing hard to stand with a clank of mail and bone disease. “You care nothing for the Ninth. That’s fine. This is your chance to prove yourself.”
“I’m not helping Nonagesimus become a Lyctor. She’ll make me into boots.”
“I have condemned your escapes,” said Aiglamene. “They were graceless and feeble. But.” She turned to the other girl. “With all due respect, you’ve dealt her too ill, my lady. I hate this idea. If I were ten years younger I would beg you to condescend to take me. But you won’t vouchsafe her, and so I must.”
“Must you?” said Harrow. There was a curious softness in her voice. Her black gaze was searching for something in the captain of her guard, and she did not seem to be finding it.
“I must,” said Aiglamene. “You’ll be leaving me and Crux in charge of the House. If I vouchsafe the freedom of Gideon Nav and it is not given to her, then—begging pardon for my ingratitude—it is a betrayal of myself, who is your retainer and was your mother’s retainer.”
Harrowhark said nothing. She wore a thin, pensive expression. Gideon wasn’t fooled: this look usually betokened Harrow’s brain percolating outrageous nastiness. But Gideon couldn’t think straight. A horrible dark-red heat was travelling up her neck and she knew it would go right to her cheeks if she let it, so she pulled the hood up over her head and said not a word, and couldn’t look at her sword-master at all.
“If she satisfies you, you must let her go,” said Aiglamene firmly.
“Of course.”
“With all the gracious promises of the Ninth.”
“Oh, if she pulls this off she can have whatever she likes,” said Harrowhark easily—way too easily. “She’ll have glory squirting out each orifice. She can do or be anything she pleases, preferably over on the other side of the galaxy from where I am.”
“Then I thank you for your mercy and your grace, and regard the matter settled,” said Aiglamene.
“How is it settled. I have patently not agreed to this shit.”
Both of them ignored Gideon. “Getting back to the original problem,” said the old woman, settling painfully back down among the swords and the knives, “Nav has had none of Ortus’s training—not in manners, nor in general scholarship—and she was trained in the sword of heavy infantry.”
“Ignore the first; her mental inadequacies can be compensated for. The second’s what I’m interested in. How difficult is it for a normal swordswoman to switch from a double-handed blade to a cavalier rapier?”
“For a normal swordswoman? To reach the standard of a House cavalier primary? You’d need years. For Nav? Three months—” (here Gideon died briefly of gratification; she revived only due to the rising horror consequent of everything else) “—and she’d be up to the standard of the meanest, most behind-hand cavalier alive.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Harrow languorously. “She’s a genius. With the proper motivation, Griddle could wield two swords in each hand and one in her mouth. While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade. Am I right, Griddle?”
“I haven’t agreed to stone cold dick,” said Gideon. “And I don’t care how bad-ass cavaliers are meant to be, I hate rapiers. All that bouncing around makes me feel tired. Now, a two-hander, that’s a swordsman’s sword.”
“I don’t disagree,” said her teacher, “but a House cavalier—with all her proper training—is a handsomely dangerous thing. I saw the primary cavalier of the House of the Second fight in his youth, and my God! I never forgot it.”
Harrow was pacing in tiny circles now. “But she could get to the point where she might believably, possibly be mistaken for a trained cavalier of the House of the Ninth?”
“The reputation of the Ninth cavalier primary has not been what it was since the days of Matthias Nonius,” said Aiglamene. “And that was a thousand years ago. Expectations are very low. Even then, we’d be bloody lucky.”
Gideon pushed herself up from the pillar and cracked her knuckles, stretching her chill-stiff muscles out before her. She rolled her neck, testing her shoulders, and unwrapped her robe from around herself. “I live for those days when everyone stands around talking about how bad I am at what I do, but it also gives me hurt feelings,” she said, and took the sword she had abandoned for trash. She tested its weight in her hand, feeling what was to her an absurd lightness, and struck what she thought was a sensible stance. “How’s this, Captain?”