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Captain Judith Deuteros scowled at the inside of the supply closet door, releasing her focus on the floating droplet of blood before her and letting it fall to the floor.
Which is to say, Assistant Supply Clerk Judith Deuteros scowled at the same and released her focus, et cetera, because her ten-minute break was almost up and she needed to maneuver back up a flight of grated metal stairs on two crutches that stuck in the gaps.
The downstairs supply closet was not the most convenient place to take breaks, nor certainly the most comfortable, but it contained, in addition to stacks of envelopes and pads of flimsy and boxes of pens, a distinct lack of customers, supplies managers, and—well. Of other people she wanted to avoid.
People with loud laughs and absurd quantities of blonde hair.
People whose shifts in the cafeteria of the municipal office did not require them to go back to the office proper, ever, but who ventured there anyway, frequently and for no obvious reason.
People who she was going to have to put up with after work regardless; whose loud laughter was going to keep her from falling asleep tonight in their shared room with its three narrow beds; who were going to clog the shower drain in the communal bathroom down the hall with absurd quantities, indeed, of blonde hair.
Judith stopped for breath at the top of the stairs and wondered how Coronabeth even managed to find anything to laugh at these days.
She knew Coronabeth had been in hysterics following the loss of Ianthe to perfect Lyctorhood. Privately, Judith thought the remaining mortal Princess of Ida was well shot of her twin’s unusually acidic approach to having a martyr complex. She couldn’t imagine Coronabeth would agree; and yet the hysteria had not returned since their arrival on this greasy little planet.
Before, Judith would have said Coronabeth was simply spoiled—sparklingly cheerful and gracious when the world aligned itself to her desires, petulant when it did not. But their situation here was wretched, and Coronabeth, surprisingly, was not.
Coronabeth was—
—damn it.
Coronabeth was here.
Judith smelled the coffee before she saw the hair. Since they were about thirteen, she had been able to smell the princess coming; Coronabeth could never commit to a signature scent, but she always wore perfume, and she wore it hard. The strength, not the bouquet, identified her.
Now, stripped of wealth and position, Coronabeth’s herald was the aroma of the drinks she served. She carried two, not three, which meant she had already seen Hect and was poised to spend her own ten-minute break talking to Judith and Judith alone.
Time for Judith to move her break time again. If she was downstairs when Coronabeth got to the office proper, Coronabeth would never find her.
But today she was out of luck.
“Judith,” said Coronabeth in greeting, and handed her a coffee.
“That’s so kind,” Judith said, as she did every time she was snared this way, and accepted the cup. “I must be getting on with work, but it was terribly good of you to stop by.” She smiled perfunctorily and walked away.
As she did. Every time.
Coronabeth, of course, followed her.
“This morning was ever so busy,” she said. “I’ve made about a thousand cappuccinos, I think I’m starting to see pictures in the foam. I could tell fortunes.” She adopted a mystic tone. “Ah, the frothy rose! Beauty will be yours, but beware…beware of winter’s killing frost.”
Judith presented another nice little smile and wished Coronabeth had fallen into the sea at Canaan House.
“I think I’d try to drum up a really happy fortune for the old gentleman who works in the mailroom, the one who always gets cinnamon in his coffee. Although I don’t know what you tell old people about their futures, come to think of it. Expect many wonderful naps? Your grandchildren will prosper? There is a dark stranger coming, one who brings with him…hard candy?”
“Mm-hm!” said Judith, not quite at her full Cohort-formal-dinner capacity for tolerating small talk, but trying.
Coronabeth went on as Judith sat and propped her crutches against her desk. Judith tried the coffee. It was sweet, thick, and chocolatey.
She turned her attention to the neat stack of citation notices before her. Coronabeth perched on her desk, long legs encroaching on Judith’s personal space. Judith had quite lost the thread of her conversation; it had moved on from foam-based fortunetelling, but where to, she could not say.
“Anyway, I did win, but Martrice thinks we ought to have another competition before opening tomorrow and set up the basket farther away.”
Mystifying. Judith folded a notice, stuffed it into an envelope, and began to address it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Coronabeth glance up at the clock, bite her lip, and fold both her hands tightly around her own cup.
“Judith,” she said.
Since she didn’t continue, even a modicum of politeness forced Judith to look over and tilt her head questioningly.
“Enjoy the coffee,” Coronabeth said eventually.
She didn’t leave, so Judith said:
“Yes. Thank you.”
And then she did leave.
She had been this way since they’d come back from that lush tropical place where they’d seen Harrowhark the First. Now, instead of needling Judith about her reliance on a government that hated necromancers and starting petty arguments about longstanding disagreements, Coronabeth was chatting with her (which was dreadful) and bringing her coffee every afternoon (which was decadent and unnecessary).
Judith drank a little more. From the consistency, she was pretty sure Coronabeth had just put a scoop of chocolate ice cream into a cup of coffee.
Which she was pretty certain was not officially listed on the municipal office cafeteria menu.
But Coronabeth had a way of ignoring rules and order.
Which Judith hated.
* * *
Judith always left the municipal office after Hect, whose job as a courier started and ended early, and ahead of Coronabeth, who stayed to close up the cafeteria.
She walked the short way to their lodgings with her head down and shoulders stiff. This was not a planet where a necromancer of the Cohort did well to draw attention.
Hect had gotten a little strategy game played with square tokens and was sitting on her bed, staring at the board, as the skeletal hand of her necromancer hovered between two of its pieces.
Up to a point, Hect was an ideal roommate. She was quiet and tidy. She didn’t bring friends back to the room, unless you counted Sextus’ hand, which at least didn’t make a lot of noise.
If only Judith hadn’t seen her feral edge, she’d be a lot happier about sleeping in the same room.
Then again, if Hect could listen to Coronabeth singing off-key in the communal shower every night, every single night, without filing her toothbrush into a shiv, tearing aside the curtain, and going right for the woman’s untalented throat, maybe Judith didn’t have anything to worry about.
Judith changed into her shabby casual wear, folded her work clothes, and started in on her nightly therapeutic exercises for her leg. Hect and the hand played their game in silence.
Their lodgings here—the bedroom, plus access to a shared kitchen and bathroom—were provided at low rent by the Blood of Eden’s refugee program, which had also arranged for their jobs at the municipal office. Judith’s status as a Cohort captain and necromancer was not unknown; she had after all been abducted (or “rescued,” as the others put it) in full uniform. This did not exclude her from their refugee services. But she had been informed, pleasantly and with deadly firmness, that any actual necromancy would not be tolerated.
As a result, Judith had been getting quite a lot better at blood magic. Bones were hard to come by here, but blood was as simple as the scab on her side that wasn’t going heal anytime soon, because she kept picking it open to practice when she could be alone.
She didn’t think either Coronabeth or Hect would give her away—particularly as Hect had as much to lose if anyone found out about the Master Warden’s regrown and reanimated hand—but she didn’t let them see her, either.
Coronabeth came through the door now in a burst of coffee smell and went straight to the dresser to get her own casual clothes. Before she threw her cafeteria uniform on the floor, she removed from her shirt pocket the letter she had been given by Harrowhark the First, with postscripts by Ianthe, and set it gently on her bed.
Irritatingly, Coronabeth cut a dashing figure in the dark clothes they all wore on this planet. Judith, for her part, had always looked frankly excellent in Cohort red-and-white, and felt like a criminal in this shabby black.
“I’m going out to practice,” said Coronabeth. She’d fetched Gideon the Ninth’s rapier out from under the bed.
That rapier was the only thing Judith was almost happy to see these days. Almost, because it came effectively attached to Coronabeth, but by the Holy Prince Undying, it was a gorgeous weapon, elegantly severe, a classic piece for a cavalier.
Marta had admired it greatly; Judith always thought of her when she saw it. And that was another reason for the “almost.”
Coronabeth, having donned a sword belt, picked up her letter and held it briefly against her chest with both hands before tucking it into its usual pocket.
Something cold and brittle inside Judith snapped.
“Have you written her back, then?”
Coronabeth turned at the door. “Sorry?”
“Have you written to your precious sister? Does she know you’re a traitor to the Emperor? While she serves him?”
Alarm bled through the guarded confusion on Coronabeth’s face.
Judith kept going. “Are you going to warn her of what’s coming, or let her fall down with him?”
Coronabeth, going back and forth between pale and red, didn’t seem to know what to do with her right hand. It trembled at the knob; jerked toward the hilt of the Ninth’s beautiful rapier; clenched, shaking, at her side.
Hect watched from the bed, Sextus’ hand balanced motionless near her. Judith’s head felt full of thunder and lightning, but she kept her gaze steadily on Coronabeth.
And Coronabeth put her face and hand back to the door, twisting slowly, as if she didn’t want to be seen as storming out.
Seeing her go for the high road, Judith barreled down the low.
“Would you do it yourself? Would you kill Ianthe?”
Coronabeth whirled and, very suddenly right next to Judith, shoved her. Judith dropped one crutch; she tightened her grip on the other, but she was now on the ground, so it didn’t matter. She desperately wanted to know whether Hect was going to pick a side and if she would then fight on it, but as her eyes were frozen on Coronabeth, she couldn’t tell how likely it was.
She found herself lurched upright again, Coronabeth’s fingers digging into her shoulders. Coronabeth opened her mouth like she was going to snarl an argument back at Judith, but nothing came out. Her jaw worked, opening and shutting, until a high sob wrenched its way from her through. She shook Judith and cried, and Judith took it numbly.
Finally, Coronabeth let go, and left.
If I don’t talk to another necromancer, I’m going to scream, thought Judith.
Then she remembered.
* * *
Hect, much to her credit, didn’t make it more awkward than it was. She nodded, and showed Judith the little alphabet board she had drawn up for the hand to pick out words on, and tactfully went out for fish and chips, leaving Judith alone with the remains of Palamedes Sextus.
Judith, not knowing quite where to begin, fell back on etiquette.
“How have you been, Sextus?”
She had to pay close attention to follow the fingers’ movements over the letter board. O-N-T-H-E-O-N-E-H-A-N-D-N-O-T-F-E-E-L-I-N-G-E-N-T-I-R-E-L-Y-M-Y-S-E-L-F-O-N-T-H-E-O-T-H-E-R-H-A-N-D-I-W-A-S-E-V-E-N-M-O-R-E-D-E-A-D-A-M-O-N-T-H-A-G-O
Judith reconsidered screaming as a viable outlet for her angst.
“What do you think of who your cavalier’s fighting for now?” she said darkly. “What happens to you if the Blood of Eden stamps out necromancy?”
Sextus went very still for a long moment.
C-A-M-D-O-E-S-W-H-A-T-S-H-E-H-A-S-T-O-S-H-E-I-S-W-H-E-R-E-S-H-E-I-S-A-N-D-S-H-E-B-E-L-I-E-V-E-S-I-N-T-H-E-E-M-P-E-R-O-R-S-S-I-N-S
“The Emperor is God,” said Judith, soft and fierce. “His actions, by definition, cannot be sins.”
Y-O-U-R-E-T-H-E-O-N-L-Y-S-O-L-D-I-E-R-H-E-R-E, Sextus told her. R-E-S-T-O-F-U-S-D-O-N-T-H-A-V-E-T-H-A-T-K-I-N-D-O-F-F-E-A-L-T-Y
“You—all of you!—came to the First House to serve the Emperor! You—” Judith stopped as Sextus moved again.
I-S-E-E-F-A-C-T-S-C-A-M-S-E-E-S-P-O-S-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-I-E-S-Y-O-U-S-E-E-G-O-D
Judith’s face was hot as she started and stopped again.
C-O-R-O-N-A-B-E-T-H-S-E-E-S-A-C-A-U-S-E
“I don’t understand Coronabeth at all,” she whispered.
Sextus scuttled across the board and laid his fingers comfortingly over Judith’s.
* * *
Judith heard footsteps outside the closet door and whooshed today’s drop of blood behind her back. Maybe the walker was going for the water boiler, not office supplies, and she wouldn’t need to stop.
Then she smelled the coffee, and her stomach clenched.
The downstairs supply closet had, it seemed, abruptly discontinued its signature lack of Coronabeth Tridentarius.
The doorknob jiggled, Coronabeth stepped inside, and Judith hit her in the face with the blood drop, pettily.
“Ackgh!” Coronabeth nearly dropped the coffees, but recovered, set them down on a box of binder clips, and wiped at her face with her cafeteria uniform sleeve. “That wasn’t wise, Judith; what if I’d been someone else?”
“I could smell you.”
Coronabeth blinked.
Judith glared.
After a moment, Coronabeth regained something like composure. “Judith, I want to talk to you, and I don’t want you to stalk off.” She held up a key and ostentatiously dropped it into her shirt. “So I’m not letting us out until you’ve heard me.”
Judith’s stomach repeated its swift clenching action.
“Coronabeth,” she said, “did you take the key out of the door?”
Coronabeth nodded.
“It locks from the outside, Coronabeth. There’s no keyhole in here.”
Coronabeth’s eyes widened very slightly, and her hand went to the doorknob. It did not, of course, turn.
“Well,” she said, retrieving the coffee cups, “we’re going to have some time to talk, then. Butter pecan latte?”
Judith sat on a tub of rubber bands and ignored the proffered cup.
“Judith,” said Coronabeth, “Camilla told me I’d better talk to you. And she said you come down here during your breaks. And she told me—because Palamedes told her—that you’re lonely, Judith.”
Judith made a mental note that Palamedes Sextus was a twice-damned snitch.
The Princess of Ida sat on the floor, holding her coffee in both hands, and leaned forward. “It seemed really simple and obvious as soon as she said it—I sort of knew after we saw Harrowhark, anyway—and—and I’m sorry.” Her eyes flickered down to the cup and back up to Judith. “This planet, the Blood of Eden, they’re good things for me, but they aren’t for you.”
“Good things,” Judith echoed. “It’s good to be in a place where they hate God himself?”
Coronabeth waved God aside with a hand. “You have to hide who you are, what you’re good at. And I know what that’s like, and I don’t want to go back.” Coronabeth sucked in her breath shakily.
“Judith, I hate myself for thinking this, but it’s so good to be somewhere where people wouldn’t like Ianthe better, if they knew.”
“People have always liked you better than Ianthe,” Judith said blankly. It wasn’t even a show of bad judgment; Coronabeth was obnoxious, but Ianthe was obnoxious and sour, too.
“I know,” said Coronabeth. “But it would have been different, if they knew she was the only necromancer between us. Ianthe would have been different.”
“You should have been her cavalier.”
Coronabeth’s mouth did something funny and sad, and she put her coffee down. Judith picked hers up and sipped.
“I wish someone had told Dad that was a good idea,” Coronabeth said finally. “Ianthe would have liked me better. I’d be with her now.”
“You’d be fighting against the same people whose side you’ve taken,” Judith pointed out.
Coronabeth shrugged. “It wouldn’t matter. I’d be with her. We’d crush them.”
“Whose side are you on, Coronabeth?”
“In her absence?” Coronabeth said seriously. “I’m with the people who think I’ve got value. If Ianthe thought—if Ianthe wanted—” She choked on the words and didn’t finish.
“If Ianthe wanted you with her, you’d be dead.” Judith tried very hard to make it sound kind.
“Maybe,” said Coronabeth. Then, “Would you have done it?”
Judith swallowed and couldn’t answer for some time.
“Well,” she said eventually, “Marta died anyway. So. Maybe.” After another long moment, she added, “I think, though….I think I might serve the Emperor better as a captain than I could have as a Lyctor.”
“And you think I would have made a good cavalier?” Coronabeth moved to sit closer together.
“You would have been utterly fearsome,” Judith said. “If you’d been trained to carry yourself like a fighter? You would be the most intimidating woman I have ever seen. You’re six feet tall; if you’d learned to loom, instead of shimmer—"
Coronabeth cackled. “I like the sound of that.” She rose to her knees, towering over Judith, and set her hand at her hip as though at the hilt of a sword. Her voice dropped about an octave as she said, eyes flashing more in laughter than in danger, “Who dares insult the Third House?”
Judith leaned back involuntarily. Coronabeth seemed to fill her entire field of vision.
“You’re a natural,” Judith said, a bit more breathily than she would have liked.
“Really? I think I like looming. I may always loom from now on.”
Judith thought, I don't think I'll survive that, and bit her lip against the realization rising to the top of her mind, that Coronabeth, when you gave her a chance, could be quite compelling, particularly if you got to looking at, say, her shoulders.
She refocused her attention more decorously on Coronabeth's face. To her alarm, Coronabeth was smiling at her rather wickedly, giving Judith the distinct impression that her own face had, like the twice-damned Sextus, betrayed her emotions.
“I want us to get along, Judith,” said Coronabeth, notes of both sincerity and coyness mingling in her voice.
“Yes,” said Judith. “We ought to. Yes.”
Coronabeth put both her hands against the wall behind Judith, her eyes brilliant with intent. “We're all right? We're done fighting each other?”
“Yes,” said Judith again.
One hand came to rest on Judith's shoulder, far more gently than it had the previous night, and another settled on her hip; and Coronabeth kissed her, sweet and fierce and resilient.
Fuck it, thought Judith, and kissed her back.
* * *
Hect let them out, eventually, and politely disregarded Coronabeth’s mussed hair (which Judith found she liked rather a lot after all) and untucked shirt (for Judith had taken an opportunity to retrieve her key to the supply closet, with the orchestral accompaniment of loud but appealing giggles).
Judith might have thought Hect was in fact entirely uninterested in their escapade, except that after Hect had trotted up the stairs, ahead of Judith, going slow on her crutches, and Coronabeth, looming prettily over her, she looked over her shoulder at the two of them and grinned, briefly.