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Despite Gideon’s best efforts, her whole life, she’d had Harrow’s name on her wrist.
The Ninth House, being more concerned with matters skeletal than flesh, did not care to formulate a policy on what the wrist words meant. Most of the withered not-yet-corpses that made up the Ninth House had words Gideon had never heard, presumably names. Though the word on Crux’s wrist showed up as the name of a particularly busty frontline cav in one of Gideon’s mags, which ruined a perfectly good mag for her.
So Gideon could have anything in the world on her wrist, and it was just her fucking luck that the clean black letters there spelled “Harrowhark.”
It was some small comfort knowing that her mouldering gothic tormentor was also haunted by an ever-present “Gideon.”
***
As the spaceship descended towards the blinding white of Canaan house, Harrow surveyed Gideon from head to toe, frowning in her skull paint.
“Never take off your…armored sleeve,” said Harrow.
“Vambrace,” said Gideon, and then, “Why?”
She hadn’t expected an answer, so when Harrow looked to the side and paused, like she was considering it, Gideon could have been knocked over with a feather.
“The houses have different ideas about what the words on wrists mean. It’s best to keep them hidden.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Gideon fervently. The name on her wrist wasn’t the reason she wore her vambrace, but it wasn’t NOT the reason. Having to look at “Harrowhark” when the real thing was right there was just adding insult to injury.
***
Gideon thought she was finally getting the hang of the caf after a few meals. True, the presence of food other than snow leeks was enough to incentivize acclimatization.
If only there weren’t other people here.
“Abomination,” hissed the mayonnaise uncle, but for once, he wasn’t directing his ire towards Gideon. No, Abigail and Magnus bore the brunt of his insipid gaze. Which just reaffirmed Gideon’s conviction that the Eighth house was full of the most pedantic nitwits in the universe. Who could find something offensive in the Fifth house?
“I beg your pardon?” Abigail said, but there was something in her tone that reminded the room that she was a necromancer of a caliber high enough to serve the Necrolord Prime.
“You leave the words of God uncovered on your wrists. Have you no shame? Have you no respect?”
“Now, Eighth, we all have our own beliefs in what these words mean. If you find it so offensive to see my name written down, you can always look away,” Magnus said, as jovial as ever. But Gideon could see the tautness in his stance, even though he hid it well. He was ready to move at a half-second’s notice, if she was any judge.
It didn’t come to that. The most obnoxiously upright man in the universe—and that was saying a lot, coming from Gideon—turned with his old nephew and stalked away.
Magnus relaxed. Abigail turned and took her husband’s hand, stroking her thumb over her own name on his wrist in a gesture with the ease of long habit, and the casual intimacy of it all made Gideon’s face heat under her skull paint.
“‘Words of God.’ Horseshit,” Abigail muttered.
“Apologies if the Ninth also thinks they’re words of God,” Magnus said cheerfully. Gideon shook her head. That, at least, she was confident about. If Harrow wanted her to lie about that, well, she could have spent more than a minute in Gideon’s company since arrival.
“I wish we could ask what you think, but I suppose we’ll have to ask your necromancer for that,” Abigail said.
Gideon made a small noise. Not quite a grunt, not quite an “Mm-hmm.”
“The Sixth probably has whole treatises you can read,” Magnus said, smiling at his wife. The thought of research was already easing the necromancer’s face back into its usual friendliness. Magnus broke the gaze with his wife and said to Gideon, “The Fifth isn’t quite as romantic as the Seventh about it, but we’re like most houses. And, well, given that we’re married, I can hardly deny that they’re our soulmate’s names, can I?”
“They’re WHAT?!” said Gideon.