“So keep in mind I’m the kind of pity case you bring out at parties to make other people feel better about themselves,” the other woman said smilingly, ignoring the Fifth’s polite protests to the contrary, “but I would love you to explain your work, just so long as you pretend I am five and go from there.”
“If I can’t explain this clearly, then the fault is mine, not yours. It’s not so complex. We have so little that survived from the period post-Resurrection, pre-sovereignty and pre-Cohort, except in secondhand records. We have transcripts of those from the Sixth, though they’re keeping the originals.”
“They’re kept in a box full of helium so they’ll outlast the heat death of Dominicus, Lady Pent,” said Palamedes.
“Your Masters won’t even let me look at them through the glass.”
“Light is the paper-killer,” he said. “Sorry. It’s nothing against you. It’s not in our particular interest to hoard Lyctoral records.”
“They’re good copies, at least—and I spend my time studying those. Writing commentary, naturally. But being here meant almost more to me than the idea of serving the Emperor. Canaan House is a holy grail! What we know about the Lyctors is tremendously antiseptic. I’ve actually found what I think are unencrypted communiqués between—”
Even with Dulcinea Septimus making the intense eyelash bat of What you are doing and saying is so fascinating to me, Dulcinea Septimus, Gideon knew a boring conversation when she heard one. She took cautious sips of the purple, slightly chewy wine and was trying not to cough as she swung her attention over to her own shadowy marchioness of bones: Harrow was picking at the food, sandwiched between the stony cavaliers of the Seventh and Second. Every so often she would say something terse to Protesilaus, who would take sixty seconds to think about it before making replies so uninflected and curt that they made Harrow sparkle by comparison.
The mayonnaise uncle was talking to the anaemic twin, his probable future bride. “I was removed by … surgical means,” Ianthe was saying calmly, her long fingers toying with the stem of her glass. “My sister is a few minutes older.”
The white-kirtled young uncle was not eating. He had taken a few priggish sips of wine, but spent most of his time with his hands folded quietly over each other and staring. He had the posture of a metre ruler. “Your parents,” he said, in his unexpectedly deep and sonorous voice, “risked intervention?”
“Yes. Corona, you see, had removed my source of oxygen.”
“A wasted opportunity, I’d think.”
“I don’t live alternate histories. Corona’s birth put my survivability somewhere around definite nil.”
“It wasn’t on purpose, mark you,” drawled her cavalier from across the table. His hair was so perfect that Gideon kept staring at it, mesmerised, hoping some specific bit of the ceiling would break down and squash it flat.
Ianthe affected shock. “Why, Babs, are you part of this conversation?”
“I’m just saying, Princess, you don’t have to be so down on her like that—”
“You don’t have to contradict me in public, and yet—and yet.”
Naberius flicked his eyes very obviously over to the other end of the table, but Coronabeth was busy with Magnus: probably swapping new jokes, Gideon thought. He said, “Stop being a pill.”
“I repeat, Babs, are you part of this conversation?”
“Thank God, no,” said the hapless Babs sourly, and turned back to his previous conversation partner: the thickset nephew cavalier, stolidly refilling his bowl. He did not look thrilled to repossess the Third’s undivided attention. Next to the spruce Naberius Tern, he looked shabbier and more worn-out than ever. “Now, look, Eighth, here’s why you’re wrong about the buckler…”
Gideon would have liked to know what was wrong about the buckler; but as she reached over for her glass again, she felt a tug on her sleeve. It was the disagreeable teen who was sitting on her other side, looking at her with a particularly fierce expression, emphasised with near-Ninth quantities of black eye makeup. Jeannemary the Fourth screwed up her mouth as though expecting an injection, all the little corners of her face more angular in ferociousness, her jillion earrings jingling.
“This is going to be a weird question,” said Jeannemary.
Gideon dropped her arm and tilted her head quizzically. A little bit of blood drained from the teen’s face, and Gideon almost felt sorry for her: hood and paint and robes on the priesthood around her had put her off dinners at the same age. But the teen stuck her awful courage to its sticking place, breathed out hard through her teeth, and blurted very quietly:
“Ninth … how big are your biceps?”
It seemed to be long after Gideon was forced to supinate and flex at the whim of a teenage girl that their bowls were replaced with new ones, these filled with confections of cream and fruit, and mostly sugar; the Fifth had obviously been busy. Gideon ate three helpings and Magnus, not bothering to hide his amusement, pushed a fourth her way. Magnus was inarguably a much better cook than a duellist. Before she had come to Canaan House, Gideon had considered getting full a grim process of gruel and spoon and mouth that had to be done in order to maximise chances of not having her ass later kicked by Aiglamene in some dim room. It was one of the first times that she had felt full and fat and honestly happy about it.
Afterward there was a tray of the hot, grassy tea to clear the mouth, and the various Houses stood around with warm cups in their hands to watch the skeletons clear up.
Gideon looked around for Harrow. Her necromancer was ensconced in a corner with, of all people, Teacher: she was talking to him in low tones as he alternately nodded or shook his head, looking more thoughtful than giddy for once, his thumbs stuck in his gorgeous rainbow sash.
Someone touched Gideon’s hand, very lightly, as though afraid of startling her. It was Dulcinea, who had taken refuge in a chair; she was shifting her hips a little awkwardly in the hard wooden seat with the tiny, restless motions Gideon suspected she made when she was sore. She looked tired, and older than usual; but her pink mouth was still very pink, and her eyes alight with illicit amusement.
“Are your biceps huge,” she said, “or are they just enormous? Ninth, please tick the correct box.”
Gideon made sure her necromancer couldn’t see her, and then made a rude gesture. Dulcinea laughed her silvery laugh, but it was sleepy somehow, quiet. She pointed serenely to a spot next to her seat and Gideon obligingly squatted there on her haunches. Dulcinea was breathing a little harder. She was wearing a filmy, foam-coloured dress and Gideon could see her ribs expand beneath it, like a shocked animal’s. Her silky, chestnut-coloured ringlets, painstakingly curled, spread out over her shoulders.
“I liked that dinner,” said Lady Septimus, with deep satisfaction. “It was useful. Look at the children.”
Gideon looked. Isaac and Jeannemary were standing close to the table, Jeannemary’s sleeves pulled down to reveal her biceps. They were the muscles of an athletic and determined fourteen-year-old, which was to say, unripped but full of potential; her floppy-haired teen-in-crime was wearily measuring them with his hands as they carried on a conversation in whispers—
(“I told you so.”
“Yours are fine?”
“Isaac.”
“It’s not like this is a bicep competition?”
“Dumbest thing you ever said?”)