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Harrow is sitting in the first pew of the empty chapel, the few pilgrims steering clear of her pure black Ninth robes and her chain of lead lined skulls and her sheathed rapier. She had not gone away when Crux had gently bid her, shooed her, muttering deprecations against that vile ingrate who sullies the house with her very presence and her mewling pretense of honor-
But Crux had duties in his service of the Ninth and he could not tarry forever with its castoff, and when he reluctantly pulled himself away and stumped and rattled out of the sanctuary Harrow bowed her head and closed her eyes in a semblance of prayer. She focused hard on keeping her breathing steady, and thought of nothing but the way her hand was clenching around a link of the chain, edges of bone digging into her palm.
They had told her of the price they paid for what she should have been, the price the Ninth had paid for what she was not, when she was four, and then again when she was five when they still had held onto the hope that she would be a necromancer and the golden - eyed indenture who played pirates with primitive constructs of her own devising was just another necromancer to add to the general store of the Ninth. She felt the weight of their deaths on her soul, on her muscle and bones. She had made her body into a thing that could serve the Ninth with its power, even if her fumbling hands could only touch the surface of bone and not slide power beneath.
She hears a rustling in the flock of pilgrims at the open doors. She did not move, she did not turn. Look at Harrow, she hears in Aiglamene’s voice, she stands like a monument. Her posture straightens still further and she thinks of herself as stone.
But then she hears “Harrow Nova,” echo carelessly to the rafters, sound getting closer with the insouciant click of footsteps, and her shoulders tense up so quickly they almost crack. “The necromantic sicon of your house wishes to speak with you.”
Harrow doesn’t move even to open her eyes.
“Griddle,” she says flatly. “I cannot imagine you saying anything to me that would be worth hearing. In fact, you saying anything worth hearing is such a flight of fancy that I really can’t manage it.”
Gideon chooses not to respond, and Harrow hears the footsteps stop at the edge of the pew she sits in and opens her eyes, focusing on the chain in her hand. The one she only got to keep because Gideon had intervened.
“Aren’t you supposed to be making final preparations for your absence?” she spits, too tired to be clever about it.
Gideon’s returning laugh cracks high in the middle into some sort of high cackle. When Harrow turns to look at her, her smile is broad enough to crack the paint on her lips and her eyes are so wide that the green luminescence on the ceiling catches the whites and turns her eyes even more eerie and eldritch than normal.
“Been practicing seeing the future along with your endless pushups?” she says, not quite a question, with not quite a smile. “That’s what I was here to talk to you about. I don’t want to become a lyctor with Ortus. I told them I’m not leaving without you.”
***
Gideon glances back at some pilgrims who seem much more interested in the drama taking place before the altar than prayer and draws Harrow up by the wrist. She takes her through a small door to the side of the altar to the secret corridors of the Ninth House that Harrow vaguely remembers being led through from a much lower perspective. She is so busy working through the implications that she barely twists her wrist in Gideon’s grip, and in return Gideon barely seems to notice her tugging.
Gideon’s always had a base of muscle without even trying that Harrow had had to sweat blood for. She momentarily finds space to hate her for that too, no matter that she’s blindly following a situation she doesn’t understand.
They emerge from the cramped hallways with their rounded ceilings into a circular intersection and shrine, some aged bone bracelets arranged carefully on a plain robe draped over the altar carved out of the wall. A lattice of inlaid bone crisscrosses up and up to curl around the peak of the domed ceiling, lines splitting off like a nine-spoked wheel and stretching themselves back down to the ground. More than three quarters of the inlay remain, leaving only a fourth of the pattern in pocked blood-brown emptiness against the dark stone.
Gideon stops short and turns, and is somehow shocked when her hold on Harrow’s wrist brings Harrow close enough that Harrow can see the smudged line of paint on her right cheekbone, the crisp lines otherwise obviously applied by someone else more skilled for the departure. Harrow can see Gideon’s eyes meeting her own before flicking down lower and then across to where Harrow’s wrist is still resting in the loose circle of her fingers, and she drops it like touching Harrow burns her and takes a hasty step back.
Harrow shakes her wrist, irritated. “What do you mean you told them you’re not leaving without me?”
Gideon takes another step back and sprawls onto the curved bench on the wall opposite the altar, tipping her head back against the stone and releasing a breath of laughter. Harrow sees the way the careless tilt of her body against the wall makes her have to arch her back to laugh like that and her lip curls. She turns and paces away.
“What do you want me to say, Nova?” Gideon drawls. When Harrow reaches the edge of the small room and turns back to Gideon her amber eyes are looking right at her, and Harrow tears her eyes away to avoid getting caught in them. “I said that if I had to go try to become a lyctor with Ortus at my side they may as well send me begging to the Fifth. I said that without you I would dishonor my house in front of the emperor, I’d make sure of it.” She stretches her arms above her head and fishes a wrinkled apple out of one of her sleeves. She turns her eyes to the apple and digs a ragged fingernail under the skin, peeling it away a piece and leaving the exposed white flesh. “I said that if their adept is already unworthy of the honor of the Ninth with every breath she breathes they may as well send a half decent cavalier instead of a droopy bag of overdecorated bones.”
Harrow stares. Then she raises an eyebrow. ”You think I’m half decent?”
She bites a sliver of apple skin off her fingernail and flashes a grin at Harrow. ”Someday you might even get up to passable. But that doesn’t matter when Ortus is the only other choice and he doesn’t even rate.” She looks back down to pull another piece of skin off of her apple, with her thumb this time. “If you’re secretly composing epic poetry that you feel the need to talk about every second of the day, though, I just might change my mind.”
“Maybe I’ve picked up a deep appreciation for the Venerable Xenima.” Harrow says dryly. She wants to sit instead of stand, but the only bench in this small intersection is the one Gideon’s spread out on, and that would be too uncomfortably close. Even almost all the way across the small, claustrophobic room Gideon feels almost uncomfortably close.
Gideon leans forward with her elbows on her knees, her sleeve under her robe riding up slightly to show the inside of her wrist as she holds her apple rolled forward to weigh against her gently curled fingers.
“Isn’t she the one who dedicated all her deeds to her girl back home?” she asks, eyes glittering. She finally takes a proper bite of fruit and smiles at Harrow with all her teeth. “Already more interesting than Nonius and I haven’t even heard a single line. You can have a little epic poetry if you want. As a treat.”
Harrow remembers having a pear once as a child. It was wizened like Gideon’s apple, and it crumbled, so it wouldn’t cut into proper slices. It was still so sweet that Harrow could only handle one small piece at a time or be overwhelmed, for the rest of the time keeping it wrapped up in a cool corner of her room. In the few days before it spoiled, she had faithfully went about her duties as a small Reverend Daughter who had not yet been determined a disappointment, and while completing those duties thought of nothing else but the fruit carefully sequestered and portioned out in her room.
And Gideon has just eaten half an apple in one bite.
Harrow strides forward towards Gideon, and then closer still, until Gideon’s back is against the wall again and she’s looking up at Harrow with wide eyes.
“What do you want, Griddle?”
Gideon shrugs.
“To be a lyctor,” she says carelessly, not breaking eye contact. “To save the Ninth.”
If Harrow reaches a hand out and leans forward, right now, her hand would land on Gideon’s thigh. She’s standing between her sprawled legs.
Gideon’s trying to hand her what she had worked for, what she had sweat and screamed and challenged Ortus in the sanctuary to achieve.
“No. You’re not making me cavalier primary just for that.” She leans forwards. “What do you want?”
Gideon’s eyes flicker over Harrow’s face and down, then back up to her eyes.
“I want —“ and then she swallows and turns her head to the side, refusing to look up at Harrow anymore. Harrow’s so close she can see the shadow of her eyelashes on her cheek.
She stares off to the left of Harrow’s chest. “Is it so unbelievable that I’d be selfless? Everyone knows you want to be cavalier primary. You could go off and join the Cohort and serve the Ninth that way, but you don’t.”
Harrow steps back and sneers, “Pity, then. Condescension is so unbecoming on you.”