Chapter Text
The captain flying your ship barked something across the overhead that was interspersed with a burst of panicked static, and Ortus peered at you perched atop your packet of grave dirt with something akin to curiosity. If the speaker spat out meaning, you couldn’t comprehend it. This much he understood plainly.
You observed his hulking frame as he stood on legs wobbling to tap at the plastic partition between your party of two and the captain of the vessel, all the while gesturing with his hands. The sky of the watery planet of the First was blue and vast and cloudless.
You absently watched him receive a shrug drowned in nonchalance for a response, and though the look you were met with offered all of his usual apology, Ortus seemed affected by a unique kind of Ortus-grief which you hoped to never bear witness to again.
You still had ambition that you would see much less of your cavalier than you had in the last three months before departure. Or that midweek might hurry along swiftly, carrying with it Aiglamene, your retinue, and the remains of your sanity.
The tense silence stretching between you was drowned out by the din of the engine as you breached the atmosphere and the vehicle initiated descent, and then you were experiencing a violent turbulence like a cane about the head. Your brain was porcelain in a sealed bag of plastic, splitting and crushing against itself gracelessly in a compression you were unfamiliar with, and without any desire to experience again.
Ortus stretched a wobbling hand in your direction, and something in your animal brain snapped like old elastic as your fingers closed around his thumb like a child's.
Space travel had never been your particular forte; having never left your beloved Castle Drearburh in your two decades of life, how could it be. You suppose you should have forgiven yourself these juvenile mannerisms of your flesh cage in your intense surprise. There were likely to be many, beginning when your booted feet touched the fertile soil of Canaan House. At this moment, you were still not certain what the First House might hold for you.
Your summons to the House of the First came with Ortus' company as a mandatory postscript, which despite your best wishes, you now had to admit could prove useful to you. The older son of the Drearburh had been a pivotal piece in your private correspondence with the Fifth House, cementing in your mind his worthiness to your hard-earned trust.
Aiglamene had packed you and he off with your great grandmother's knucklebones and his newly acquired Drearbruh rapier for safety, stuffed to the gills with a promise of the return of abundance to your dwindling population. Your parents had spared you half a glance, lacking any parting words of comfort. Perhaps they found it gauche; you, their one hope for the Ninth, the future Reverend Daughter, fearful at the prospect of interstellar travel. You already missed Crux, nurse of your childhood and the only person who might have spared you a kind word, dearly.
Knowing you would return home successful to joyous celebration in spite of your ailing, apathetic parents spurred you on. You prayed to the Locked Tomb even as you tumbled down that crisp tunnel of light that you, too, could orchestrate a resurrection, no matter how minor.
***
No detail about the progeny of the Kindly Prince had been offered on the pristine page, and you had no chummy friendship of your youth with the other Houses to call upon when your letter arrived.
Addressed to the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, a title you were suspicious of the Emperor’s knowledge of the moment you saw it written in a script foreign to your Drearbruh eyes, the neatly constructed gold lettering was a glorified invitation to a series of ceremonies.
The week long celebration was to culminate in a ball where the sacred spawn of the Necrolord Prime would name a partner. Little information was offered beyond this primary task with a dress code to boot.
The objective? To secure a marital match befitting divinity.
The prize was greater than the task at hand to you so used to the poverty of your little home: the House or Houses successful would enter into an equal partnership with the House of the First, receiving utmost protection from the Emperor in the war's steady advancement.
You did not feel guilt at assuming such a place you did not belong - you probably didn't think you would make it as far as the seat of the Emperor anyway.
But you were compelled to try.
A prospect so incredible with so small a cost as your hand in marriage could not meet resistance from any of the more abundant Houses under the Necrolord Prime's guidance, and no House needed protection more than the Locked Tomb's native own.
Your people would want for nothing evermore. The only glaring issue you could perceive was the expectation placed on you to forge a kind of lifelong friendship with the heirs to the other Houses - luckily for you, you had started on the latter rather recently.
Your heart had flitted at the very notion of restoring the Ninth to an abundance it enjoyed before the limits of your memory, and you had accepted and returned the ornate letter before the Reverend Mother or Father had caught wind of its arrival. Their apathy saddened you, though no more than usual, and you had beheld the joy of genuine paper in your own gloved hands. Nothing could quite dampen your spirits.
Nothing, until the moment your syrupy idiot brain recalled the fact that you would be attended by the cavalier primary and the cavalier primary alone for the first three days.
You anticipated Ortus Nigenad might make for himself a friend in the First House; some dull companion who would share his determined passion for the spoken word, leaving you to attend to your tasks, both sanctioned and heretical, in peace. You could only hope.
***
Your crash landing on the Emperor's home might have been mortifying, had anyone been in the vicinity to perceive it. The captain realigned the steering and bolted from the House of the First before you could think to ask for directions to the castle.
For the first and perhaps only time, you were glad to were alone with Ortus for some time.
You children of the Ninth had landed in a clearing near a worn down patch in the grass that could, reasonably, be mistaken for a path. Being out in such a bright, open landscape struck jagged horror into your heart, and you stole nervous glances in Ortus' direction more often than you would like to admit.
If his baleful black eyes noticed your erratic glances, he did not acknowledge it. For this, you found yourself grateful.
As you walked adjacent to the makeshift path, never touching it, you began to recognise the kind of thalergetic signature unique to another necromancer. A powerful necromancer.
Your hackles rose instinctually before it struck you to likely be another House pair journeying to the castle. It seemed to sit so far in the distance from where your ship had deposited you.
The duo were indeed following a path parallel to yours, at a similar pace, and if you strained your ears you could almost make out the low drone of two people in sporadic conversation. The adept was stalked closely by the second heat source, who was smaller and more compact in stature insofar as you could tell. The cavalier had a kind of quickness in their step which the necromancer's loping gait lacked, and almost as soon as you motioned for Ortus to stop, the pair halted their weaving through the forest, too.
"Who's there?" You demanded of the low hanging trees to the northeast of where you stood. Your voice held none of the particularly fearful inflection seizing at your heart.
Ortus remained blessedly quiet, but closed the distance between you and he in a quicker step than before, one hand poised at the hilt of his rapier. You supposed his height made up for his overall lack of intimidation, but his pacifism would not save your life now if it came to it. You worried a chip of bone from the shell of your left ear, slowly, poised like a snake ready to strike.
Then the other set of people began to move once more, the necromancer no longer strolling, in your direction. You held your ground with your nose pointed skyward, preparing for a first encounter rougher than your impromptu arrival on the First. In the distance, a wave crashed against the sandy shore, and you tasted salt on the breeze that kicked your salivary glands into useless action.
Two grey clad figures stepped into view simultaneously, and you found yourself shocked to be facing two of the most mundane looking people you had ever beheld in your short life. Had the gangly one not been as rail thin as you, you may have mistaken the smaller, dark haired person for the adept between them. The taller of the two had a stern expression perpetually gracing his features, with comically thick glass lenses protecting a set of clear grey eyes. It was he who spoke first.
"Palamedes Sextus, Warden of the Sixth House," he said to you both in an almost inaudible mumble. Then, like a wild hog, he outstretched one large hand and clasped your own hand in his long fingered grip. He shook your entire arm up and down twice, and repeated the gesture with Ortus, who had gone even more silent than before. "We spoke only briefly in Abigail’s letters. I engineered the, erm, scattered arrival of the Houses. Your royal script fits you to a tee - I am to assume you the heir to the house of the Ninth, right?"
This he addressed to you with the still vibrating arm.
A curt nod was all you trusted yourself to give Sextus, but Ortus had found his voice. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Ortus Nigenad, cavalier primary to the royal family of the Ninth House, and you are in the presence of the Reverend Daughter Lady Harrowhark, Keeper of the Locked Tomb." His tone was a more confident tremor than you had ever heard him utilise at the pew or in the library.
"Lovely stuff," the Warden said with a nod indicating his cavalier. “This is Camilla.”
Camilla was upending a bag in an apparently futile search for something inside. Each object she removed was passed promptly to Sextus, who made no attempt to explain her actions. The stack of equipment piling in his arms awkwardly looked ready to tumble to the floor.
"A pleasure," offered the cavalier, Camilla, distracted as she ruffled through the bag. When she found her target, which appeared to be a folded sheet of flimsy mapping the area in great detail, she held the bag open for her necromancer to return each object with careful precision. Camilla said no more, and the Sixth set off walking toward the sea, leaving you, puzzled, to follow.
***
When your legs had caught you up with Sextus’ loping strides, your brow was damp with exertion, and you were glad of your thick lace veil to hide beneath despite the high light of Dominicus.
Your fellow necromancer fared no better in his sweat dampened greys, but Camilla seemed unfazed by the unrelenting heat. Between her hands she twisted the flimsy as you approached the intersection of your individual routes.
At the point where eight paths connected stood a gate even Palamedes could not see above. It was both alike and unnervingly unfamiliar to your home.
"I must admit," you began in a steady and rehearsed cadence, "I expected a more formal reception from the House of the First." One corner of Camilla's mouth had quirked at your indignation, and internally you cringed down to your very toes. "Are we to create the puzzles ourselves, too?"
Camilla was staring at you very evenly. You realised she was no taller than you, but that her compact stature had given your brain the illusion of height. She looked sturdy. "She didn't she write to Drearburh?"
You, on the other hand, were thoroughly unbalanced.
"She?" Ortus ventured timidly, and you readied yourself to pass off the ignorance as his sin to bear. Your heart sped a rhythm that rendered your tongue insensate in the cavernous tomb of your mouth.
"The Divine Daughter. She lives here alone," Sextus explained with patience, fiddling noiselessly with a metal box labelled POST.
He had to stoop to look through the hole that was almost level with your line of sight, much to your embarrassment. "Blank. Must have a cloth or something draped across it from the inside. The old skeletons put the challenges together, she said.” This he added as an afterthought for your benefit.
Camilla was unhooking two keys, marked VI and IX respectively, from a worn slot in the metal gate next to a perfectly key shaped space. "She called them bullshit pretences to keep her Dad happy."
Through clenched teeth the dark haired woman told you this, unaware of the scratching in your chest. Camilla held the flimsy between her lips in a compact, perfectly folded square. Her speech was not impeded when she continued, “her words, not mine. I wouldn't worry too much about a passing grade, though."
Camilla the Sixth placed the Ninth key in Ortus' doughy hand, and slid the former into the opaque hole with an efficient click.
Intrigue had gripped you body and soul, and you fought with your own facial muscles to retain composure.
You were operating under the assumption the Emperor had issued each invitation himself, and felt now the sharp, immature twist of being left out of a conversation. You didn't know this child of God beyond a rudimentary knowledge of her existence; how could you expect yourself to form a working relationship with her when you had never even conversed.
A countdown from ten steadied your nerves and quelled the rage you swore would not best you here.
"I never have," you all but whispered, mind fully occupied by your distant and dying planet. What other archaic secrets of the social world had you missed out on in your first twenty years holed up in Drearburh?
***
The opening foyer of the castle you had to climb a hundred steps to reach was airy and spacious, with an open doorway to the left and a vacant throne to the right. Lining the walls were the bones of the truest Cohort heroes revered, their sunken skulls wrapped and tied carefully with a sash denoting their affiliation.
There were no black sashes present in the entrance hall. You were not at all surprised to realise this.
An idle whistle sounded melodically from the open frame just west of your party.
Sextus inclined his head in the direction of a man ancient enough to rival your own dwindling population. He moved about the kitchen with none of the slowness of a child of the Ninth; you envied his zest for life.
You felt the old feeling that gummed up the atria of your youthful heart: Drearburh was a viscous graveyard.
Two women, dressed in identically pristine Cohort whites, stood to attention. If not for the cavalier's rapier, you would not have known the necromancer from the swordswoman immediately. You generously guessed she was a middling necromancer.
“Captain Judith Deuteros,” intoned the first woman, the one without the rapier. Your competition.
“Lieutenant Marta Dyas,” the second woman echoed crisply. Neither moved from their position across the room.
You doubted the adept would put up much of a fight in this competition - the Second were known to even the Ninth for their marriage to the battlefield. Likely, they were here to gather intel on you all and personally guard the sacred body of the Empire's child.
Palamedes issued his introduction, and you cut across Ortus, eager to assert yourself. You had not introduced yourself to a stranger in many years, and you had recovered from the initial shock of meeting people your age. Exhilarated, you gave your full title to the Cohort officers.
The whistling priest with the rainbow sash hurried in from the left as the Ninth and the Sixth deposited their few possessions on the floor. No one made an attempt at small talk. The little priest beamed at your assembled group.
"We welcome you, young heirs of the Empire, to Canaan House. We wish you luck in your journey and joy in the process. We have one rule here, and it is a simple one: there are no rules!”
He guffawed in the wake of his attempt at hilarity, entirely lost on this particular set of people.
“The Lord’s heir will be present at the ball this evening. I have been told to insist you all prepare by arriving with an empty stomach and your dancing shoes on.”
In the midst of his little speech, your eye was disturbed by a gaudy triptych of jewellery moving up the steps of Canaan House.
Two blonde women paraded up the steep incline in steady conversation with one another. The man taking up the rear of their opulent trio was laden down with bags enough for a month's stay.
You took an immediate distaste to the cavalier's pout, but disregarded the twin necromancers - and they were twins in spite of the sun and moon difference between them - as superficial. The butter haired twin looked bored out of her mind, while the golden one took centre stage under a window in the foyer.
These women were title-holders, spoiled and waited on all their lives, not talent genuine. While their thalergetic signature was indeed stronger than the average adept, being doubled, you doubted their ability. Certainly no threat.
Still, when the sunny one spoke, each head in that space turned to listen to her.
"Announcing the arrival of the Crown Princesses of Ida. I am an honoured guest in your abode, dearest Lord. Coronabeth Tridentarius, the first of my name," she bowed gracefully. "Miss Ianthe Tridentarius, my twin sister and other half." Here Coronabeth paused for effect. Or, maybe, she had forgotten the prescribed words which came next.
After a cough from the cavalier, she piped up once more. "Naberius Tern, esteemed royal cavalier." Unless the category on which you would be judged was external beauty, the Third would pose no danger to your mission.
The little priest repeated his welcome along with the evening plans to the Third while the prior occupants of the room peered at you and the librarians where you had taken up residence against the wall for a hard second, before turning and leaving in perfect military formation, apparently satisfied with their scrutiny. They hadn't even introduced themselves to the royals. You dismissed the Second there and then in that open space.
The sash clad priest merrily informed your mixed bag group that the afternoon was yours alone to reorient and recuperate for the evening ball. Fearing further attempts at socialisation from the Sixth House, you motioned for Ortus to follow and fled that foyer without a glance behind you.
***
The Ninth quarters were composed of three rooms more spacious than you had even seen the likes of before. Adorned with candles in each crevice and rich silken sheets on the bed, you were struck by the enormous wealth on display at Canaan House.
You ached; one week more and all of this would be shared among the people of Drearburh. You left Ortus to his own preparations and shut your door behind you.
Stripped of your Skull, your skin was pale to the point of unhealthiness. You had not slept overly well in preparation for this trip, and it showed in the shadows darkened beneath your black eyes.
You figured a short rest would remediate this, but you had time not for relaxation. There was work to be done.
First, you wrote to the House of the Fifth informing them of your arrival. You had no idea what to expect of them, and no way of telling if they had arrived yet or not. Ortus delivered this to their designated room within the hour.
You surveyed the room broadly for camera devices or other surveillance equipment. Each frame, be it door, chair, or bed, you afforded a closer visual once over.
You were still and silent in your movements for a moment; no electric buzz hummed in that room. The only sound was the ticking of a device with two hands forming a vertical line across the face. It appeared to tell the time, if your studies on the First were to be believed; you didn’t know how to read it.
Assured of your privacy, you turned to the light of the sun streaming warmly through the glass above the bed. The view from your new bedroom window was of the same coastline you had followed to arrive here, stretching beyond the limits of your sight. You could not see the front gardens from your room, and so felt comfortable pinning back the heavy curtains as you worked.
A note to the Sixth was checked off next on your mental list of tasks. You stored this in the draped sleeve of your sash to distribute on your way to meet the Fifth. You exchanged your boots for heeled pumps and your thick gloves for a thinner lace pair that covered the arm right to the elbow.
Once you had reapplied your paint carefully, you stepped quietly out into the corridor housing the Ninth quarters to find the designated spot. Ortus knew where you would be, should an emergency occur, and you timed your steps to the staccato pace of your heart.
Pent’s directions were precise and, more importantly, correct. Soon, you had arrived at a plain wooden door in a corridor open to the elements.
This was an older segment of Canaan House - here and there, sections of the wall were crumbling to a fine dust like the grains of sand in an hourglass.
The door to the meeting room was indeed notched along the bottom by a line, just as the Fifth had indicated it would be. Using a code you had not devised yourself, clues were more difficult to unravel. When you knocked the unique knock of eight fast beats and a ninth slow one, the door swivelled open and you were all but yanked inside.
The smiling face of Sir Magnus Quinn, Abigail’s husband and cavalier, welcomed you to a room containing a long table lined by stiff backed chairs. At the head sat his necromancer, and she was surrounded by two women and a smattering of paper on the table.
All three were endowed with necromantic talent which flared like a thalergetic halo around their little congregation. You had never been in the presence of such power. It cleaved your heeled feet to the floor momentarily.
One of the women, you noticed in this haze, reclined in a chair quite unlike the rest. There were four bespoked circles total on the adapted seat, two under either arm which allowed the woman movement wherever she desired.
She glanced up at your entrance, and then smiled a smile like the setting of the sun. “Duchess Dulcinea Septimus,” she said in a voice tinged with relief. She waved you over to sit next to her, but you were distracted by your own desires.
You could think of more than a few Niners who might thrive with such a device. Your head filled with an image of your people, cared for like someone had for this woman. The dizzying reality of what you were about to achieve blurred your sight again in a rush of emotion.
You had to pull yourself together. Closing your eyes, you coaxed forward the voice of your father from your childhood. All I do, I do for the Ninth. You imagined yourself saying these words aloud. You were calm when your eyes opened again.
To Pent’s left was a plain looking woman who spared you not a look. Her hair was a crop of shocking red, and she didn’t raise her head from her writing even when Lady Pent addressed you.
“Harrow.” Abigail spoke warmly, as though you two were old friends. “You look well. Do have a seat. We have so much to fill you in on.”