Work Text:
Scenario: Sin Eater
Gideon started yelling from the furthest regions of the resort. This turn of events was not unexpected.
Nor was the substance of her complaint.
"Oh for fuck's- Harrow! Someone tossed a bath bomb into the sensory deprivation chamber again."
Harrow remained seated at her dais and waited. She didn't have to wait long for Gideon to come bounding up to her. Everything about Gideon appeared incensed, up to and including the angles of her hair. Strange, since Harrow had watched Gideon grind bones all afternoon. In the process, she had pespired profusely into the hair at the nape of her neck, and had therefore been effervescently bedraggled for hours.
"Did you hear me?"
"It would be hard to keep from hearing you."
"And?"
"And you know what to do."
The salt water would have to be drained away completely. The tub would be bleached down in order to remove any hint of lavender or jasmine or whatever off-planet scents the offending party wanted to bring with them to a planet almost devoid of vegetation. Then that tub would be out of commission for several days. At least the Ninth House's resort had more than enough chambers to go around, even at the height of the tourism season. This was good, considering that tourism was the beating heart of the Ninth House's economic and cultural revival.
No, the problem was that an unsanctioned scent rather destroyed the aesthetic that brought pilgrims to the Ninth House. Though the resort produced their own gift shop bath bombs, and they always adhered to what wealthy pilgrims expected from the planet; space-black or bone-brown. No scents save for something indefinably mineral. No coruscating touches such as glitter. Certainly no sneeze-inducing floral oils. Just good, solid acid and a bicarbonate base. After the requisite fizzing ended, the supplicant's bath would be awash with bone matter as fine as sand. They would watch those bits of bone swirl in the water, and attempt to divine their future. If the vision remained murky, the pilgrim could at least take comfort in immersing themselves in bones created and blessed by the hand of the youngest Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House.
Never mind that Gideon was often the one who had been punished with grinding down random clavicles generated by Harrow (sometimes even an ulna or radius or two if Harrow was in a particularly sour mood.) Whenever Harrow had to supervise this, she would name each of the muscles in Gideon's arms in order to remind herself that Gideon was made up of the same parts as anyone else. It kept her from thinking about how this display of strength seemed like its own kind of worship.
Now, Harrow tried to name all the muscles in Gideon's face. Specifically, which muscles were currently acting so perfectly concert to produce such a dramatic scowl. That glare seemed enough to wipe the paint off of Harrow's skin.
Almost.
"Shall I repeat myself?" Harrow asked.
"Couldn't we, like, look up who last used that chamber and ban them from the planet? It would be nice not to get high off of bleach so much."
"The chambers have an excellent ventilation system."
Gideon threw up her hands and stalked away. Harrow considered following after, but decided to go back to huddling over today's accounting. It was hard to remain on the correct section of her tablet, though. Every so often she would click over to a tab that had no business still being open. The paint on her forehead itched; a sign that she had probably been too expressive during that exchange. Or throughout the day, really. It would be unfortunate if that was the case. People came to this resort partially in order to be witnessed by one of the nine Reverend Daughters of the Ninth House. Harrow pulling faces would wreck that particular bit of mystique.
"Harrow!"
This time Gideon's shout was so alarming that it made Harrow sprint to reach her.
The lights were uncharacteristically turned on in the deprivation chamber in question. Normally the lights were not on. The tiny tub would glow purple, until the sensors indicated that the guest had entered the salt waters. Then those lights would turn off, leaving the guest to float in total darkness, buoyed by the salt water.
Most of these chambers were meant for a single person, but there were large ones meant for entire families. Harrow's parents had taken her to one the day they confessed the war crime they had nearly committed. The near miraculous conception of Harrow's eldest sister had prevented it (let alone the fact that they went on to have nine daughters in total), but her parents still shouldered the monumental weight of that almost-sin. Although she was the youngest child, Harrow had also proved to be their most talented. Therefore, they had designated her to bear the memory of their sins. She would be expected to pass it down to her youngest heir, should she have one.
Harrow almost never set foot in these chambers, and had never seen them the lights on like this. Being able to see this room's exact dimension's felt a little like gazing upon something holy and forbidden. It took every ounce of her willpower to look right into Gideon's eyes, which were unholy but even more forbidden.
"What, Griddle?"
"This room smells like that fruit you confiscated."
Just yesterday a group of horrid young adults had come from the Third House. They weren't pilgrims in any meaningful sense, save for the fact that they had gone from one place to another throughout the solar system. They seemed exceptionally fond of Gideon, and Gideon would always end up immersed in their midst for a week.
Really, they were just overly indulged thrill-seekers, who couldn't bear to be away from their creature comforts for any length of time. This entailed bringing in various types of flora and fauna that had not been sanctioned to grow on the Ninth House. Sometimes these carts would be brought to Harrow - or one of her sisters - for inspection.
A few weeks ago, Harrow had been given a crate full of illicit apples, and she and Gideon had watched a tiny worm inching its way across the fruit's skin. Harrow returned more often than she cared to admit to the sound of Gideon laughing in delight at that sight.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"This room smells like that green and orange-y fruit the custom's official brought to you. The one you said you hated."
"The mango."
Harrow had, indeed, hated it dispassionately, the way she hated most raw fruits. Once she'd accidentally drank hydrochloric acid, and her parents had had to commission the most skilled flesh mages in order to repair her esophagus. The acids in fruits tasted about the same to her.
It was too bad. They always smelled rather appealing.
"Yes, the mango. You turned it into oil for this bath bomb."
"What makes you think so? Isn't it much more logical than another spoiled tourist brought some contraband in with them because they felt they were too precious to float in sacred saline without any embellishments?"
"That was a lot of words. Can't bring yourself to say 'I'm innocent,' huh?'"
"I'm innocent." It was a technical truth. She'd been born blameless, and that had always been the problem.
"I also recognize your handiwork."
Gideon cupped her hands and scooped out some water. Harrow looked down and saw tiny bone fragments floating above Gideon's palms. It was an ossuary in miniature, and it would fall to pieces if Gideon flattened out her fingers.
"Fine. I made that bath bomb and then I threw it in the water."
"Then you should clean up your mess."
"Alright." Harrow stepped aside so that Gideon could more easily leave. Everything in Harrow felt rather deflated.
Gideon stayed, though. "I don't understand your motive, though."
She was looking at Harrow like the youngest Reverend Daughter was a puzzle that could be solved. Like Harrow was something out of one of those mystery stories that they sometimes included in one of Gideon's dirty magazines. Those tales only seemed to give Gideon plausible deniability to claim she only had those edifying periodicals in order to read the articles.
This annoyed Harrow so much that she tightened her grip on her table. Then she brought it up to her face and swiped onto the tab that had gotten its tenterhooks into her several days ago.
"'The Ninth House Resort is mostly a trap for gullible supplicants and adventurers. If you go here, you will be bogged down by the planet's wildly pretentious atmosphere. Everything feels incredibly fake. I thought the baths of the Eighth House were much more authentic and appealing.' Two stars."
Gideon looked like she wanted to throw something. Instead she let her handful of bone-flecked water spill onto the floor.
"You're reading reviews again?"
"Reviews are often the basis of pilgrims deciding to come here. There is a reason the Third House thought it was worthwhile to inundate their rivals with one star reviews."
"Someone left a review saying he got stabbed here."
"You're proving my point."
"He also he'd come back. Bad reviews aren't always bad."
By now they were both breathing hard, like they'd sunk to the bottom of a fresh water pool and managed to surface just in time.
Then Gideon buried her face in her hands and made a sharp laugh in disbelief. It almost sounded pained, and Harrow distantly wondered if that was due to saltwater still clinging to Gideon's skin. That would be enough to sting the eyes.
She was still laughing when she looked back up, though.
"You did this so I would stick around and eventually you would work up the nerve to vent to me about something that had pissed you off."
Harrow tried to deny it, but she couldn't. It didn't matter that she wasn't in the salt water. It's mere presence was making her increasingly wary of telling lies.
"Let's float," she said.
"What, so you can drown me?" Despite Gideon's tone, she was already turning off the lights.
They didn't look at each other as they stripped, and once they were in the water the lights went off as they were programmed to do. They were enveloped in the not-unpleasant scent of mango, and the faint scent of salt. She couldn't see Gideon at all, but she could hear water lapping against the edge of the tub. Harrow tried to focus on the physics of that, before she remembered that she was here to confess.
"Yes, I tried to make you stay late."
"Have you considered journaling?"
For some reason that made Harrow imagine getting out her face paint and a calligraphy brush. She imagined inscribing her grievances onto Gideon's skin the way she wrote orders on flimsy. She'd give each of her complaints all a different name, the same way ancient scholars had classified the Ninth House's skull iconography.
And then Gideon would get in a bath like this. The paint would peel away from her skin, the same way Harrow's face paint was dissolving into the salt water, now.
"I'm considering it now," Harrow said.
"Also have you considered just talking to me directly?"
Harrow remained silent.
The presence of salt meant that she couldn't sink, even if she wanted to succumb to the water. The longer she floated in the dark, the less she felt tethered to gravity. She could imagine herself drifting along the ceiling. She could imagine herself drifting through space.
In the water, their hands brushed together. She thought about all the veins below Gideon's skin, wreathed around the fingerbones. She thought about the shape of Gideon's knuckles.
This never happened. But perhaps it would be nice if it had gone this way?
*
Scenario: Someone, Somewhere Knows the Truth
[Partial transcript for episode 53 of Creepy Things for True Crime Loving Teens from the files of scrivener Abigail Pent.]
[Episode title: The Reverend Father and Mother of the Ninth House Are Already Dead?! And Some Other Things, We All Know You Clicked for This]
[The theme plays music for Creepy Things for True Crime Loving Teens. It manages to sound like baroque music and trap music all at once.]
Jeannemary: Hello and welcome! You’re listening to Creepy Things for True Crime Loving Teens. I’m your host Jeannemary Chatur.
Isaac: And I’m-
[A sudden, sharp intake of breath. Then Jeannemary dissolves into laughter.]
Jeannemary: Are you alright there?
Isaac: I’m fine, I’m fine, I just-
Jeannemary: [Talking over Isaac] Your nose is rebelling at the subject of this episode-
Isaac: Seriously, why do some sneezes disappear like that?
[Sudden clacking on a keyboard.]
Jeannemary: I can’t believe you’re looking this up!
Isaac: The first subject of this episode is stupid, so at least our listeners will learn something useful out of it.
Jeannemary: Well?
Isaac: What?
Jeannemary: Why do some sneezes go away? I’m in suspense!
Isaac: You’re stalling.
Jeannemary: No I’m genuinely curious.
Isaac: It’s not that exciting. It just means that the dust or phlegm or whatever it was stopped being an irritant before sneezing became necessary.
Jeannemary: [A very serious broadcaster style voice.] Hello, I’m your host Jeannemary Chatur of the Fourth House, and you’re listening to Just Phlegm Things With Otolaryngology Loving Teens.
[Laughter, mostly from Jeannemary.]
Isaac: You asked-!
Jeannemary: I did, I did-!
Isaac: Just remember, dear listener, we only accept five star reviews.
Jeannemary: Yep! We won’t be moved by complaints about us going off-topic!
Isaac: True strength comes from ignoring the alleged topic of your podcast entirely.
Jeannemary: Only weaklings ask their editors to cut out the irrelevant stuff. By the way, you still need to introduce yourself, you know.
Isaac: Are you saying I’m irrelevant?
Jeannemary: Isaac, come on
Isaac: There you go, I’m introduced.
[Scoffing noises from Jeannemary.]
Isaac: Guess we’d better start the episode for real, huh?.
Jeannemary: Fine.
[More cross talk than usual]
Isaac: So many of you have pleaded with us to talk about this-
Jeannemary: If you’re listening and that’s one of you, please just go outside-
Isaac: Even though it’s so obviously fake-
Jeannemary: Unless you’re on the Sixth House. I don’t want anyone succumbing to hypothermia because of me.
Isaac: But, yes, a few weeks ago-
Jeannemary: Wait!
Isaac: What?!
Jeannemary: We have to say what the topic of our podcast is, too!
Isaac: You know I was thinking about that yesterday, actually.
Jeannemary: [Sighs] How so?
Isaac: The concept of our podcast is pretty much right there in the title, right?
Jeannemary: Right….
Isaac: You look so skeptical
Jeannemary: We have to have some structure.
Isaac: Right after saying we always go off-topic?
Jeannemary: The structure is what allows us to go so wild sometimes!
Isaac: Uhhh…
Jeannemary: I’ll make it quick! If you’re listening you probably already know what all this is about. But if you’re somehow actually new, then you should know this is a podcast where we talk about four creepy recent events! We go by turns explaining one event to the other, and then we rate them based on how creepy they actually are. Okay, there.
Isaac: And, yes, the first one up today is about what’s going on with the Ninth House. Mostly because all of you out there keep asking!
Jeannemary: So what is going on at the Ninth House?
Isaac: Allegedly- Allegedly- they actually let in a few pilgrims to go visit a few months ago-
Jeannemary: You know, people scoff at this like ‘ohhhh imagine paying to go to the Ninth.’ But I would totally go!
Isaac: Would you?
Jeannemary: Definitely! They only let, what, five or so pilgrims in every decade or so?
Isaac: I don’t think there’s a hard and fast number.
Jeannemary: It’s so remote and almost no one goes there who wasn’t born there and it would be so interesting I think.
Isaac: Dear listeners, I promise this is not a promotion of tourism to the Ninth House.
Jeannemary: [Giggling] Can you imagine the ads if they did? Come see bones and … more bones!
Isaac: You literally just said you wanted to go there.
Jeannemary: All the things that interest me about it don’t translate well to advertisements. Wow, imagine if they had a podcast on there actually. How would they make that tie into mattress ads?
Isaac: Anyway, one of the pilgrims slipped a recording device into a worship service led by the Ninth House’s Reverend Father and Mother. After this video went viral across the other Houses, many people became convinced that the leaders of the Ninth House are already dead because they aren’t … moving too much?
Jeannemary: … You’re going to sum it up that quickly?
Isaac: That’s really all there is to it. People saw a blurry video and their imaginations ran wild.
Jeannemary: The Ninth House has been extremely insular but … even more so in the past decade. Some of their strict rules do make sense if we believe in that theory.
Isaac: So you do believe it. Why did you tell people who were interested in this topic to go outside?
Jeannemary: I just think that it’s not like people will know one way or another unless they go to the Ninth House and verify for themselves. After a certain point you’re just running yourself ragged on search engines chasing after nothing.
Isaac: I think the people who are trying to see if the video was faked are doing something use-
[He’s cut off by a ping for a news story.]
Isaac: Wait. Hold on. They actually managed to track down someone who emigrated from the Ninth House!
Jeannemary: Really?!
Isaac: One … Gideon Nav. She left the Ninth House and actually … came here. To the Fourth!
Jeannemary: Oh damn! Damn damn damn! We have to interview her!
Isaac: I don’t know if that will work, the person who reached out to her was, uhhh, told to fuck off. In no uncertain terms.
Jeannemary: We gotta try, lets g-
[Recording cuts off.]
[Recording starts up again. Time stamped several days later.]
Gideon: Listen, I’m humoring you before you’re both, like, eleven-years-old and you bought me a snack before shoving a recording device in my face. You get my time for five minutes, and that’s all.
Jeannemary: That’s fine. Can you state your name and occupation? Is this how it goes? We’ve never interviewed anyone for our podcast, not really.
Isaac: Well, we brought Abigail on to talk about-
Gideon: My name is Gideon Nav and I’ve been trying to have an obscure life in the Fourth’s military, but I was informed I had to help with some noble kid’s passion project. Now go on and ask me about whether my House’s leaders are dead. Either you’re right and it’s a great tragedy and I’m offended, or you’re wrong and I’m still offended.
[Silence.]
Isaac: I apologize.
Jeannemary: I’m really sorry, I-
Gideon: [Sigh] It’s fine, it’s fine, maybe this will get everyone to calm down. The truth of the matter is-
[Harrowhark, no matter how much I try I can’t transcribe this portion of your mind’s wanderings. It’s not that my hand doesn’t work. It’s simply that Gideon seems to say several different things all at once, including events that are mutually exclusive to one another. For example, it sounds like she’s saying your parents are dead at the same time she says they’re definitely alive. I've never heard anything like this.
In a vacuum, it’s all rather fascinating. When I describe it that way it makes it sound like a room where several individuals are speaking. However, it’s not muddled like that. I can hear all of the different scenarios just as clearly.
I suspect this scenario would eventually resolve itself, depending on whether you are more inclined to want punishment or protection from your cavalier. Seeing as I can feel this scenario slipping away from me, I don’t know if you could answer that for yourself.
All I know is I have to thank you for allowing me to spend a little more time with a happy Isaac and Jeannemary. - Abigail Pent]
*
Scenario: Planet of Love
Far, far away, an entire continent on the Seventh House was drowning in enflamed embalming fluids.
This was less of a disaster than it could have been. From what Harrow gathered, the Seventh House reserved its largest island for the burial of its most important dead. After a myriad, that translated to a great deal of dead, even if they comprised the slightest fraction of the population. Being able to maintain one's flesh long past the point of death was seen as a point of prestige. No one lived on the Isle of the Dead, though, save for lighthouse keepers, mummifiers, and guards sworn to service for years at a time. All the House's greatest population centers were on the other side of the planet, and it might take some time for them to feel any disruption in the ecosphere.
Harrow felt a grim sort of professional pride as she skimmed all the headlines on this subject. Said pride allowed her to mute the sound of the roaring crowds all around her. It further allowed her to stop thinking about how this stadium housed more people now than the entirety of the Ninth House.
The Seventh House's predicament was a predictable (albeit extravagant) one. For a decade, they'd either had years that were far too rainy, or years that were far too hot. The former had eroded the planet's burials, while the latter had heated up the materials meant to mummify their dead. The result was a filigree of rivers of burning resin.
When the social media feeds weren't busy fixating on Canaan Stadium's Annual Nine Houses Song Contest, extremely online denizens were poring over images of the Seventh House's Isle of the Dead.
-Looks like rock candy.
-I want to lick it!
-Do you want the universe to end again? Because drinking 10,000 year old corpse juice is probably a good way to get the universe to end again.
-This wouldn't have happened if you stanned Palamades! #SexPal
That last comment made Harrowhark remember exactly where she was, and it became impossible to ignore the chattering of nearby crowds. More often than not, sounds of too many people was the aural equivalent of getting bone fragments under her eyelids. Her whole body wanted to seize up. She wanted to bodily push all that noise away.
The Ninth House hadn't participated in this competition in decades, to the point that social media obsessives would often write it out as Canaan Stadium's Annual Nine Eight Houses Song Contest. Harrow's plan had been decent enough; Attend the contest. Lose in the first round with the dourest possible Ninth House hymn. Signal to the universe that the Ninth House was strong. Signal to God that her house's faith remained steadfast, even in the onslaught of all this worldliness. There was an empty mental space after this point, but she expected to profit.
Except, things had gone wrong for the start. Somehow she had managed to be voted to the next round. And the next. And the next after that. She would never run out of hymns (she knew hundreds at least) but she very well might run out of stamina.
Harrowhark became very aware of Gideon next to her. Her bodyguard always seemed to appear out of nowhere the instant Harrowhark mused on her own lack of physical strength.
Gideon looked up from her tablet, almost as if she could read Harrow's mind. The stadium's bright lights seemed to bother her as much as its sound tormented Harrow. She'd since been wearing sunglasses throughout this entire interminable week. Gideon lifted them now to look at Harrow, and the gold of them stung far more than the lights.
"You look like you're about to pass out. Or die." Gideon said this cheerfully, as if nothing could be better.
"You've gone through the same schedule as I have. I got two hours of sleep last night, which is a quarter of what the human body needs." As soon as the previous night's activities ended, the next day’s activities seemed to begin. This meant showing up very, very early for wardrobe and makeup even though Harrow provided both things for herself.
"Suddenly you care about eight hours of sleep."
That gave Harrow a strange pang she couldn't quite identify, and so she didn't answer. The crowd was so loud around the two of them that she briefly considered moving her lips to look like she was speaking. She could blame Gideon's lack of comprehension on this noise.
"Never mind," Gideon said, before Harrow could do any of that. "What are you reading?"
"What are you reading?" Harrow was suddenly ravenous to hear Gideon talk, even though she heard Gideon talk enough for several lifetimes.
"Not reading. I'm just watching something."
Gideon tilted the screen so Harrow could see. Harrow felt an emotion clawing through her fatigue, and realized it was bafflement.
"It's just me on stage last night, hearing the results."
It was so strange. The camera wasn't fixed on Harrow's performance. Instead, it watched her as she stood there and listened to the remaining contestants' rankings.
Below it was the usual drivel.
-Go girl, give us nothing
-Cultist queen!
-I love her fancams lmaoooo
Harrow pushed the screen away. "I don't understand. I know people have cameras focused on contestants when they perform, but what's the point when we're just standing there?"
"That's how fame works."
"I'm not famous."
"You're the first Ninth House contestant in decades. Yes, you're famous. Wasn't that the point?"
Gideon then slid her sunglasses back down onto the bridge of her nose, disappointing Harrow.
"Not that kind of fame."
"If it makes you feel better, people are unironic fans of me."
"Really?"
"Oh yes. They thing I look tall, and suave, and really, really fucking cool."
"I don't believe you."
"Suit yourself."
Harrow decided to return to looking at the Seventh House's problems, this time with renewed vigor. She did not want to see how people across the Houses were commodifying Gideon, boxing her into their stockpile of in-jokes. She did not want to see Gideon translated into memes that seemed incomprehensible to Harrow.
"Well, that's unfortunate. Poor Seventh House."
Abigail Pent had been voted off in the second round, but seemed perfectly fine with it. She and her bodyguard-husband were seated in the box right next to the Ninth House's box, and she was proving to be the type of person who read over someone's shoulder. Right now she had her hand on the railing that divided them and was staring at Harrow's tablet.
It would be annoying from anyone else. Harrow was annoyed right now. However, Abigail was also prone to having interesting insights.
And so Harrow made the Herculean effort to be sociable, all the while knowing there were probably cameras focused on her right this very second.
"Do you do something similar on the Fifth House?" That is, preserve certain bodies in an area designated for such use.
"No no, not at all."
"I can't imagine not using every skeleton available for their utility. It strikes me as rather disrespectful."
"Oh, you'll probably be disappointed with us, then, because our objections to such practices is entirely practical I'm afraid. We have very little land. Turning an entire continent into a mausoleum is impossible on the Fifth House."
"It doesn't seem like it was practical on the Seventh House, either. Did its people want too much?"
"Is that what you think happened?"
*
Scenario: All Those Flavors and You Chose to be Salty
When they returned to Harrowhark’s dormitory room, Gideon immediately poured herself a massive cup of water and gulped it down. She followed it up by imbibing just as ungracefully three more times. Harrow had been off-kilter ever since Gideon had showed up at her doorstep. Now the sign off Gideon’s ordeal left Harrowhark feeling comforted in a way she hadn’t been all day. In fact, it was likely she hadn’t been this relaxed since she arrived at the Second House.
“How much salt did they put in that meal?” Gideon finally said.
“I suggest you become accustomed to it, since you will be here for half a year. Everyone here seems to believe this is a perfectly normal amount of saliferous intake.”
Gideon made a disgruntled sound and drank another cup of water.
This afternoon, when Harrowhark had looked through her door’s eyehole only to be confronted with Gideon, she had immediately ringed into this polar station’s emergency hotline. The support staff that answered her call informed her that there was no way to put Gideon in a shuttle and deliver her right back to the Ninth House. It had officially become winter on this hemisphere of the Second House and it led to conditions not conducive to flying. Gideon had, apparently, arrived on the last feasible shuttle and was now stranded
An hour later the station’s director had come to tell Harrowhark that they had no available rooms for Gideon. Therefore, they would have to share Harrow’s sleeping quarters until it became safe enough to send Gideon away.
For some reason this had left Gideon looking just as stricken as Harrowhark had felt. Persistent guilt combined with a strange desire to be hospitable. The result had been just as strange and alchemical as the process that went into exploding a shuttle. She had decided to take Gideon to the food hall. There, she had demanded that Gideon eat a particular dish of flattened out bread covered in dairy and vegetable matter. Gideon had either enjoyed it so much she didn’t want to talk, or she had just welcomed the excuse not to talk to Harrowhark.
And now Gideon’s body was noticing the sudden intake of sodium.
“Is it all like this?” Gideon asked, with an unnecessary touch of dramatics.
“Yes.”
Harrowhark was lying, but she was annoyed Gideon hadn’t noticed what Harrow had been eating. In the past few weeks she had finally graduated to being able to eat clear soups with bits of coagulated soy milk and green organic matter that everyone seemed to be able to identify but her. If Gideon had been paying attention to her, then Gideon would have noticed that Harrowhark’s meal had been milder in nature.
Instead, Gideon had wolfed down her food, never meeting Harrowhark’s eyes. Harrow sipped on her soup much too soon and it had burned the roof of her mouth. Now frayed bits of skin brushed against her tongue as she swallowed and contemplated Gideon.
Gideon appeared to be out of danger of dehydration, because she now gave Harrow an appraising sort of look.
“Welp, I found you.”
Harrow immediately - and passionately - hated the warmth that flooded through her body. “My parents sent you after me, I take it.”
“Yes, they asked me to track you down.”
“And now you’re going to have to wait six months to drag me back in ignominy. Well done.”
“The way I see it, you have six months to kill me and seal me up in the ice somewhere. No one knows where I’ve gone.”
That first sentence stung (even though Gideon has no reason to know how close she had come to being murdered for Harrow’s future.) It stung so much, in fact, that she nearly missed the implications of the second sentence.
“You detected my whereabouts but did not inform my parents about my location.”
Gideon rolled her eyes, and Harrow realized how much she had missed the sight of lamplight glinting off Gideon’s golden irises.
“Your parents paid me to look for you. They failed to be specific that I had to bring you back. I came here to warn you.”
Harrowhark sat down on her bed. Her skin felt so cold all of a sudden, but that was probably due to her nervous system fully registering Gideon’s reemergence.
“Why would you be loyal to me like this?”
“I’m not loyal to you, Nonagesimus. I’m loyal to myself, and I know I’m not a narc.”
“Ah.” Harrow didn’t know what to say to that, so she stared just above Gideon’s broad shoulders. There, one of Harrow’s maps in progress was pinned to the wall.
“Also I wanted to warn you that it’s pretty easy for people to figure out where you absconded off to. Eventually your parents are probably going to track you down.”
“Then you ran a fool’s errand. They have no warriors that can prevail on me to make me return. I will stay right here.” And so would Gideon for a while.
Her parents had likely started with Gideon because everyone knew Gideon would try to leave the Ninth eventually. She had been stopped so many times, but she was bound to be successful someday. Gideon disappearing would probably cause no alarm whatsoever, and few people would think to connect it to the disappearance of her parents’ prodigal daughter.
“Most people on the Ninth think you’re dead by the way,” Gideon said, as if reading Harrowhark’s mind.
“Really?”
“Yes. They believe you got lost in the catacombs somewhere and froze to death.”
“I assume my presumptive piety is greatly revered.” The Ninth House catacombs were an intricate maze that sprawled out and out. A thousand years ago, the most devout pilgrims would try to wander it’s length and breadth in total darkness. This meant that a great deal of devout pilgrims had died. After a while, this type of pilgrimage had been discontinued by the Reverend Family.
“Those rumors were encouraged by your parents. It took me a while to chase all of them back to the source. They really had me running in circles.” Gideon said this like it was Harrowhark’s fault, and in some respects it was. “Once I realized that was all a bunch of bullshit, though, it was incredibly easy to figure out where you had gone.”
Harrow shivered and resisted the urge to wrap her blankets around herself. It was probably obvious that she was shaking.
“It’s not as though I left an encyclopedia in my bedroom turned to an entry on the Second’s polar ice caps.”
“No, but I remember you talking all the time about them when you were a kid. Remember? You saw those news items about how they were trying to map the ice caps but they were struggling because ice has a tendency to melt and freeze and melt again, and the borders kept changing. You had all these ideas about how to perform some kind of thaumaturgy with the components of soil so that there could be a map that updated in real time.”
“You remembered that?”
“Yes, because you were insufferable for a year about it. You don’t exactly let things go. You also like to be useful. If you had gone off-planet, then you would have come here.”
Harrow gave in and pulled the blanket around her body. She had nothing to say.
“What made you leave, though? That’s the other reason I tracked you down. I had to know.”
“You just outlined my reasons clearly. I really, really like maps.”
Gideon ran a hand over her face in frustration. Harrow wondered if she would drop to the floor and do push-ups to work through her exasperation. Or maybe Harrow was confusing hopes and likely outcomes again. This was confirmed by what Gideon did next. She threw herself into the bed that had heretofore remained empty. (Most dormitory rooms contained at least two roommates but Harrow had been given a room to herself owing in part to her talent and partly due to the weird hours she kept.)
Harrowhark - still wrapped up in a comforter - went and sat by her desk. She stared out the window, and was mostly greeted by her own reflection. There was a distant beacon of light on the far, far horizon. The southern polar landscape was dotted with research stations. They were tall, and the highest parts of the towers were perpetually lit up by LED lights in order to prevent local shuttles from crashing into them when it was dark. In the winter time, these lights stayed on even if there was no aircraft to be found. The nearest tower appeared deceptively close.
No matter how much Gideon needled her, Harrowhark vowed to never reveal the reason for her departure from the Ninth House. She would never talk about the day she had gained her majority and her parents had taken her down to one of the salt pools. There they had revealed the truth behind the death of her generational cohorts. There they would reveal the reason for their abhorrence of Gideon. There they had revealed the source of Harrowhark’s prodigious aptitude for necromancy.
She hadn’t felt grief or fear or rage on that day. She hadn’t felt much of anything for days. She hadn’t even felt anything when she abruptly tried to pick a fight with Gideon. Rather than using bones, Harrowhark had tried a physical altercation. It had ended in five milliseconds with Gideon pinning Harrowhark to the wall. By now Harrowhark couldn’t be sure if Gideon had really held Harrow up off the floor. Perhaps that had been the result of Harrow’s feverish imagination over the past few seasons. Either way, she had scraped together all of her funds, wiped off her face paint, and bought a ticket to the next shuttle out of the Ninth House. She had only started to feel something once the shuttle was wrapped up in the indifference of space.
Now, Harrowhark wondered if Gideon remembered that fight. Probably not.
She leaned her forehead against the window, even though it was frigid to the touch. Her toes and fingers were beginning to feel numb. She couldn’t see the landscape outside at all, but she knew what it looked like. Vast sheets of ice in rings, and lots of pockmarks that looked like footprints when viewed from the atmosphere. The perimeter was constantly reshaping itself ('constant' in galactic terms) creating new peninsulas and inlets, before giving way to rusty soil. There were a lot of components in that soil that could be found in bone. Harrowhark wasn’t mapping ice, so much as she was mapping the contours of a blank space. Water didn’t respond to her thaumaturgy, but at least it didn’t have much salt in it.
It was strange, actually. Salt sanctified the pools back home. Here, people could load up food with it and sell it in packages adorned with cheerful, colorful mascots.
“Did it suddenly get fucking freezing in here?” Gideon said. She had her face buried in the pillow.
“You’re cold?” This surprised Harrowhark. It was also a somewhat gratifying revelation, too. She had no muscle mass, and therefore little to trap warmth in her bones. Gideon, in contrast, never seemed to be cold in her life.
“Yeah.” Gideon’s teeth were chattering. “And it just keeps getting cold.”
Harrowhark wanted to deny this for some reason, even though her shivering must be visible by now.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since this is a polar region.”
Harrowhark wanted to point out that conditions were perfectly livable in doors, but something about the cold was wiping her mind clean. “We could put on more clothes,” she suggested.
“Bad idea,” Gideon said. “It’s better to share body heat to keep warm.”
This was the kind of suggestion Gideon would probably die rather than make, and Harrowhark would rather die than accept it. She managed to make a sound that’s part sigh, part scoffing. In the process, she saw her breath on the air and abruptly remembered long-buried facts about the body. Case in point, the temperature at which marrow freezes.
Ultimately, the whole process was wholly un-lascivious. This wasn’t one of Gideon’s dirty magazines. There wasn’t a stupid show made of undressing, nor did any of them undress just enough to make the imagination fill in the details. They both stripped down to their undergarments with haste, and then clung together under Harrowhark’s blankets.
For a long while, Harrow was an animal creature seeking warmth. There was nothing in the universe other than Gideon’s warm hands, and legs, and arms. Even though Gideon had admitted to being cold, warmth still flowed from her into Harrow’s flesh. Even the parts of them that weren’t touching - like Harrowhark’s ears - seemed to melt and even burn a little.
When Harrowhark could put one thought after another, she still managed to avoid conjuring shame. For a while she reflected on how this wasn’t a very equal exchange. Holding her must be like holding on to a statue or a corpse limned in ice. Gideon had looked more uncomfortable with her own thirst earlier, though. Now, her features were so blank that she had to be hiding something significant.
The small of Gideon’s back was smooth. Harrowhark realized this long after she started running her fingers up and down Gideon’s body. Just like the perimeter of the ice cap, it would be impossible to map Gideon. Her skin felt smooth and seamless, but she also had for her skin to breath. Beyond that there were cells, and beyond that atoms.
No matter how much Harrowhark reminded herself of Gideon’s solidity, she couldn’t quite absorb the fact of it.
She ran her tongue over her dry lips and opened her mouth to confess, after all. To what, she couldn't say. She would have to be surprised as well.
The speaker in her room crackled to life. It was Abigail Pent, a visiting scholar from the Fifth House.
“Harrowhark, we briefly lost power. Are you alright? The heat should come on soon.”
“Why did you check up on me?” Harrowhark didn’t know if she was talking to Gideon or to Abigail.
“Interesting question. Do you mind if I answer you with a question of my own? Why shouldn’t I care about your welfare?”