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Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. — Moby-Dick, Chapter 96, The Try-Works.
"Hush."
While the curule troops crawled through Canaan House, Cytherea clutched her two prizes against her chest, one hand over each mouth. The sea beat below their cliff; the rock was slick and black. There was not enough room for them here.
Camilla struggled, her breath rasping, and Cytherea hissed, again, at her to hush. She chuckled when Camilla bit her palm, only to choke on the gluey ichor that spurted out.
"I can wait a very long time," Cytherea reminded them as night fell. The wind off the ocean rose frigid and Cytherea tucked a coverlet over them. "Don't test me."
Camilla lay there against Gideon's corpse and watched scraps of cloud tear across the stars. Her own wounds ached along a scale of agony: nothing would kill her outright, but taken together, they would leech her close to death. That conclusion, of course, omitted the unknown factor of being kept captive by Cytherea.
Gideon's body was cold and very stiff, but still better than the mad, febrile gaze of Cytherea, who sat hunched like a locust watching them.
*
"What do you want?" Camilla asked. She must have slept, or passed out again. Silvery light spilled over Cytherea's skull-sharp face and caught the tufts of Gideon's hair. They were inside now, a room she had never seen, with holes in the ceiling and side. It smelled, as the entire place did, of constant rot. "What can I do for you?"
"Is that how the Sixth attempts diplomacy?"
"No," Camilla admitted. "It's what I want to know."
"I want her," Cytherea said. Her voice was small, her gaze lowered coquettishly.
"You're a lyctor. What's stopping you?"
"Ninth got her soul. All I have is..."
"Leftover meat," Camilla said for her. "And me?"
"You..." Cytherea paused to look Camilla up and down. "More than anything else, you are an inconvenience —"
Only occasionally now did Cytherea resemble Dulcinea. The beauty was long gone, blown away like skittering hail, and in its place, all Camilla saw were bones and stubborn, painful light.
"— but, perhaps, a boon. Always good to have a spare, wouldn't you say?"
Camilla understood her position better now. She was a liability, her time limited.
*
"There's always something left over, some scrap or two..."
They were in a laboratory hung with cobwebs and filthy with the husks of millennia of insects. On a scarred metal table, Gideon's body was spread out. Camilla did not like to look directly at her, but the sense that Gideon was smirking was irresistible. Wreathed in an ancient white coat several sizes too large for her, Cytherea rustled about inside Gideon's corpse, her lower lip caught in her teeth like a parody of concentration.
Cytherea worked her hand into the wound over Gideon's heart. She rummaged for something, anything, some thalergical gobbet or clot of soul.
"Of course," Camilla said. Everyone knew the soul clustered around the heart, embraced the lungs like wings, and rose on a slender stalk to the brain pan. The diagram of thalergic signatures was standard crèche decor throughout the empire. "Ninth's fusion was so hurried and messy, she must have missed a lot —"
Cytherea barely glanced at her, but easily backhanded Camilla, sending her sprawling. "Don't make nice."
"I'm not —" She pushed herself up on one elbow. "I want to —"
"I'll find her," Cytherea said and turned back to Gideon. "You hush."
"I can help."
"You can't."
Camilla knelt where she'd skidded, sucking on air and working her jaw back into place. She was the most alive one here. Wasn't that exactly the kind of stupid joke that Gideon would appreciate?
*
Someone so ancient and so very, very crazy had no need for sleep. Instead, Cytherea walked the ruined halls of Canaan House, limping slightly, muttering to herself.
Camilla had nowhere to go, no way to communicate, nothing to do. In the same situation, she knew, Sextus would have been delighted. So much reading to catch up on!
Grief coiled and turned in her gut, its scales barbed, easily snagged on tender places.
*
Red lightning, power that churned the sea and annihilated every leaf and innocent bug in a ten-klick radius, a storm that raged for three days and brought down yet more of Canaan House's walls.
Cytherea shrieked victoriously, then collapsed.
And after it all, when the courtyards were pocked with puddles glaring in the sun and, for a moment or so, the air actually smelled fresh.
On the lab table, Gideon Nav sat up with a groan. The wound at her heart gaped slightly, its edges gray.
Pursing her lips, Gideon squinted into the middle distance. "Not sure if dead, or just nightmare."
"Little of both," Camilla told her. "Can you stand?"
"Can I?" She laughed, then started to choke. When she straightened back up, her mouth was smeared with blood. She looked around with colorless eyes. "What the actual uncanny shit, Hect?"
"We don't have much time." Camilla paused, reconsidering. "Perhaps we have too much time. It's complicated."
"Oh, good. Riddles, my fave. Right after mazes, but before charades."
Gideon slung her arm over Camilla's shoulder and together, awkwardly, they got her to her feet and shuffling forward.
They stepped over Cytherea's supine form. She was little more than a sack of bones, set at painful and arbitrary angles. Camilla considered stepping heavily on that twig of a neck, but did not. She didn't understand why, then or later, except that getting Gideon away took priority.
"She wanted you back," she told Gideon when they'd reached the terrace. Warm sun spilled over everything and even touched Gideon's drained eyes.
"Ugh, seriously?"
Camilla nodded.
"Be the undead," Gideon muttered. "Snag all the chicks."
Camilla drank rainwater from an old flower pot. There was no food to be had here; she had been chewing on dead plants and the occasional insect, much to Cytherea's amusement.
"Here," she said, handing Gideon the water.
Gideon held the pot without moving further. She stared at the cracked tiles at their feet. She traced their edges with her toe. "Is this loss?"
Heat, unbidden and unwelcome, exploded inside Camilla's sinuses and behind her eyes. Something gave way — she might have said she gave way — and she collapsed against Gideon, sobbing.
*
When Cytherea found them, they were curled around each other, clutching tight, faces buried against necks.
"It's like a porno," she cooed, poking them apart with a long bone cane. "Two cavs caught in a secret tryst! What terrible punishments will they suffer?"
"Hot single cavs in your area," Gideon replied, hopping to her feet with her old, easy grace. "Ready to take you down."