Gideon rubbernecked until a white-robed priest with another parti-coloured belt hurried over from the trio to them, tapping on Teacher’s shoulder and murmuring in worried half-heard snatches: “—were inflexible—the household’s backing—born at the exact—both the adept—”
Teacher waved it off with an indulgent hand and a wheezing laugh: “What can we do, what can we do?”
“But it’s impossible—”
“Only trouble at the end of the line,” he said, “and a trouble confined to them.”
Once the other priest had gone, Harrowhark said repressively: “Twins are an ill omen.”
Teacher seemed tickled. “How delightful to hear someone say an ill omen could come from the Mouth of the Emperor!”
From the shuttle that carried the Seventh House came consternation. The skeletons had pried the hatch open, and someone tottered out. In what felt like painful slow-motion—like time had decided to slow to a gruesome crawl to show itself off—they had fainted dead away into the arms of the waiting priest, an old man who was singularly unprepared for it. His legs and arms were buckling. The figure was dragging on the ground, threatening to spill entirely. There was red blood on the priest’s front. He cried out.
Gideon never ran unless she had to, and Gideon ran now. Her legs moved as swiftly as her awful judgement, and all of a sudden she was scooping the crumpled, drooping figure out of the priest’s buckling arms, lowering his cargo to the ground as he murmured in amazement. In response, the ice-cold point of a blade bit gently through her hood to the back of her neck, right up to the base of her skull.
“Yo,” said Gideon, her head absolutely still. “Step off.”
The sword did not step off.
“This isn’t a warning,” she said. “I’m just saying. Give her some air.”
For the person folded up in Gideon’s arms seemed a her. It was a slender young thing whose mouth was a brilliant red with blood. Her dress was a frivolous concoction of seafoam green frills, the blood on it startling against such a backdrop. Her skin seemed transparent—horribly transparent, with the veins at her hands and the sides of her temples a visible cluster of mauve branches and stems. Her eyes fluttered open: they were huge and blue, with velvety brown lashes. The girl coughed up a clot, which ruined the tableau, and those big blue eyes widened in dismay.
“Protesilaus,” said the girclass="underline" “stand down.” When the sword didn’t move an inch, she coughed again and said unhappily: “Stand down, you goof. You’re going to get us in trouble.”
Gideon felt the pressure and the edge remove itself from her neck, and she let out a breath. Not for long, though; it was replaced with a gloved hand pressing over the place where the blade had been, a hand which was pressing down as though its owner would quite like to punch her occipital bone into crumbs. That hand could belong to only one person. Gideon braced to be dropped headfirst into the shitter, and Harrowhark’s voice emerged as though it had been dredged up from the bottom of a charnel house.
“Your cavalier,” said the Lady of the Ninth quietly, “drew on my cavalier.”
As Gideon died gently of shock, buoyed back to this life only by the weird bruises forming at the top of her spine, the other girl broke out into miserable coughs. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “He’s just overprotective— He never would have meant— Oh my God, you’re black vestals— Oh my God, you’re the Ninth cav!”
The girl in Gideon’s lap covered her face and seemed to break into sobs, but it became apparent that they were gurgles of mirth. “You’ve done it now, Pro!” she gasped. “They could demand satisfaction, and you’d end up a mausoleum centrepiece! Lady or Lord of the Ninth, please accept my heartfelt apologies. He was hasty, and I was a fool.”
“Come on,” said Gideon, “you fainted.”
“I do do that,” she admitted, and gave another wicked chuckle of delight. This appeared to be the greatest thing that had ever happened to her. She fluttered her hands like she was having the vapours. “Oh, God, I was rescued by a shadow cultist! I’m so sorry! Thank you! This is one for the history books.”
Now that the threat of violence had passed, the priest, with difficulty, had dropped to his knees. He unwound the exquisite prismatic scarf at his waist and hesitated before her. The girl gave an imperious little nod and he began wiping the blood away from her mouth, reverential, seeming far less worried about the entire mess than—Gideon didn’t know. Discouraged? Disconcerted?
“Ah, Duchess Septimus,” he said, in a tweedling old voice, “and is it so advanced as all that?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Oh, Lady,” he said sadly, “you should not have come.”
She gave a flashing, sudden smile, the edges of her teeth scarlet. “But isn’t it beautiful that I did?” she said, and looked up at Gideon, and strained past her to look at Harrow, and clasped her hands together. “Protesilaus, help me up so that we can apologise. I can’t believe I get to look real tomb maidens in the face.”
Great, rugged arms thrust past Gideon’s vision, and the girl in her lap was lifted up by a six-foot collection of sinews. The man who’d put the sword to her neck was uncomfortably buff. He had upsetting biceps. He didn’t look healthy; he looked like a collection of lemons in a sack. He was a dour, bulky person whose skin had something of the girl’s strange, translucent tinge. He was waxen looking in the sunlight, probably with sweat, and he wore the girl half-draped over his shoulder as though she were a baby or a rug. Gideon sized him up. He was dressed richly, but with clothes that looked as though they’d seen practical wear: a long cape of washed-out green, and a belted kilt and boots. There was a shining length of etched chain rolled up and over his arm, and a big swept-hilt rapier hung at his hip. He was staring at Gideon emptily. You’re gigantic, she thought, but you move awkwardly, and I bet I could take you.
The hand at the back of her neck relaxed a fraction. Gideon didn’t even get a hard flick to the skull, which boded ill. Whatever punishment Harrow was going to mete out would be meted out later, in private, and viciously. She’d screwed up but couldn’t quite regret it; as Gideon brushed herself off and picked herself up to stand, the Lady of the Seventh House was smiling. Her babyish face made it difficult to give her a timestamp. She might’ve been seventeen, or thirty-seven.
“What must I do to gain forgiveness?” she said. “If my House blasphemes against the House of the Ninth in the first five minutes, I’m going to feel like a boor.”
“Keep your sword off my cavalier,” said Harrow, in tones of the sepulchre.
“You heard her, Pro,” said the girl. “You can’t just get your rapier out willy-nilly.”
Protesilaus did not deign to reply, his gaze fixed on Gideon. In the awkward silence that resulted, the girl added: “But now I can thank you for your aid. I’m Lady Dulcinea Septimus, duchess of Castle Rhodes; and this is my cavalier primary, Protesilaus the Seventh. The Seventh House thanks you for your gracious assistance.”