“Insinuation denied,” said Harrowhark. “You don’t have one”—sweet, that meant Harrow hadn’t successfully been through all her stuff—“and more importantly, you should do without. I never liked that cursed thing anyway; I always felt like it was judging me. If you require a two-handed sword every time the chips are down you’re worth nothing as my cavalier.”
“I still don’t get how this whole test is meant to work.”
The Reverend Daughter gave this consideration, for once. “All right. Let me—hmm. You know that a bone construct is animated by a necromantic theorem.”
“No way! I assumed you just thought super hard about bones until they happened.”
Ignoring this, Harrow continued: “This particular construct is animated by multiple theorems, all—woven together, in a sense. That enables it to do things normal constructs can’t possibly.”
“Like regenerate.”
“Yes. The way to destroy it is to unpick that tapestry, Nav, to pull on each thread in turn—in order—until the web gives way. Which would take me ten seconds, if I only had it at arm’s length.”
“Huh,” said Gideon, unwillingly starting to get it. “So I unpick it for you.”
“Only with my assistance. You are not a necromancer. You cannot see thanergetic signatures. I have to find the weak points, but I have to do it through your eyes, which is made infinitely more difficult by you waving a sword around the whole time while your brain—yells at me.”
Gideon opened her mouth to say My brain is always yelling at you, but was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. The necromancer froze as though she were under attack, but this knock was followed by guttural hysterics of the kind that Gideon had heard before. The sound drifted off down the corridor accompanied by the hurried footsteps of two semiterrified teenagers. Jeannemary and what’s-his-face had shoved something underneath the door, and left.
She went to see what it was. It was a plain, heavy envelope—real paper, creamy brown. “Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” she read out loud. “Gideon the Ninth. Fan mail.”
“Give it to me. It might be a trap.”
Gideon ignored this, as it was quite likely Harrow would toss the thing out the window rather than give it a chance. She also ignored Harrow’s lemon-pucker scowl as she withdrew a piece of flimsy—less impressive than the envelope, but who barring the Emperor would use real paper for a letter—and read aloud its contents.
LADY ABIGAIL PENT AND SIR MAGNUS QUINN
IN CELEBRATION OF THEIR ELEVENTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
PRESENT THEIR COMPLIMENTS TO THE HEIR AND CAVALIER PRIMARY OF THE NINTH HOUSE
AND REQUEST THE HONOUR OF THEIR COMPANY THIS EVENING.
DINNER TO BE SERVED AT SEVEN O’CLOCK.
Underneath in hasty but still beautifully-formed handwriting was another note:
Don’t be affrighted by the wording, Abigail can’t resist a formal invitation, at home am practically issued one for breakfast. Not at all a serious function & would be deeply pleased if you could both see fit to come. I will make dessert, can reassure you I cook better than I duel.—M.
Harrow said, “No.”
“I want to go,” said Gideon.
“This sounds impossibly vapid.”
“I want to eat a dessert.”
“It occurs to me,” said Harrow, drumming her fingers, “that during a single dinner the deaths of multiple House scions could be assured by one clever pair, a bottle of poison, and then—suddenly, the Fifth House’s primacy is assured. And all because you wanted a sweet.”
“This is a formal invitation to the Ninth House, not just you and me,” said Gideon, more cunningly, “and being dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists, shouldn’t we make a teeny weeny appearance? It’ll look rude if we don’t go. We can extrapolate heaps from whoever doesn’t come, and everyone will, to be polite. Politics. Diplomacy. I’ll eat yours if you don’t want it.”
The necromancer lapsed into brooding. “But this delays finishing the trial,” she complained finally, “and wastes an evening in which Sextus can get ahead of us at his leisure.”
“Bet you Palamedes will be there. We can do the trial afterward. And I’ll be so good. I’ll be silent and Ninth and melancholy. The sight will astound and stimulate you.”
“Nav, you are a hog.”
But that meant they were going to go. Gideon reflected on her unexpected victory as she stared in the mirror, idly counting the pimples cropping up as the result of repeated slathers of cult paint. The atmosphere was—relaxed, in this strange and waiting way, like the time she’d got a sedative and knew a nun was coming to whip out her tonsils. She and Nonagesimus were both waiting for the knife. She had never known Harrow to be so malleable, nor to go such a long time without raking her claws across Gideon’s internal tender spots. Maybe the Lyctor trials were having a mellowing effect on her.
No, that was too much to hope for. Harrowhark was pleased because everything was coming up Harrowhark—she was glutted on getting her own way, and the moment that glow wore off the knives would come out again. Gideon couldn’t trust Harrow. There was always some angle. There was always some shackle closing on you before you could even see it, and you’d only know when she turned the key. But then—
That evening, it was funny to see Harrow fuss. She put on her best and most senescent Ninth robes, and became a skinny black stick swallowed by night-coloured layers of Locked Tomb lace. She fiddled with long earrings of bone in front of the mirror and repainted her face twice. Gideon realised with no small amount of amusement and curiosity that Harrowhark was very frightened. She got more snappish as the evening wore on, and moved from languid postures of affected boredom with a book to a tense, rolled-up curl with hunched shoulders and knees. Harrow kept staring at the clock and wanted to go a full twenty minutes early. Gideon had just thrown on a clean robe and her tinted glasses, and noted that the necromancer was too tetchy even to veto those.
Why on earth was she scared? She had headed up function after dreary, overembroidered Ninth function, ornate in its rules and strict in its regulations, since she was a kid. Now she was all jitters. Maybe it was about being denied her dark necromantic needs down past the access hatch. In any case, both she and Harrowhark turned up, gorgeously gowned in their Locked Tomb vestments, painted like living skulls, looking like douchebags. Harrow clinked when she walked with the sheer multiplicity of bonely accoutrement.
“You came!” said Magnus Quinn when he saw them; he was too well bred to double-take at two horrible examples of Drearburh clergy on the loose. “I’m so pleased you’re wearing your, ah, glad rags; I was convinced I’d be the only one dressed up, and would have to sit resplendently among you all, feeling a bit of an idiot. Reverend Daughter,” he said, and he bowed very deeply to Harrow. “Thank you for coming.”
He himself was immensely trim in a pale brown, long-coated suit that had probably cost more than the Ninth House had in its coffers. The Ninth was high on ancient, shitty treasures but low on liquid assets. In a lower and chillier voice than Harrow usually ever affected, she said: “Blessings on the cavalier of the Fifth. Congratulations on the eleventh year of your espousal.”
Espousal. But Magnus said, “Indeed! Yes! Thank you! It was actually yesterday. By happy accident I remembered and Abigail forgot, so in her resulting angst she wanted to make me dinner. I suggested we all benefit. Come in, please—let me introduce you.”