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Overall, this whole “group therapy” thing was kind of an abject failure. 

It had been the Fifth’s idea. Apparently the effort of dicking around with locked doors all day was putting too much pressure on them, and Abigail was a “licensed therapist”, whatever the hell that meant. Gideon still hadn’t figured that one out yet. Could have been normal on other houses (like salads, or having an “afternoon”) and the bony old assholes back home on the Ninth just hadn’t bothered.

She had figured out what group therapy was, though. It was obligatory for all of the younger people on Canaan House (she’d found that out the hard way, when she’d tried skipping to take a shower and a nap) and the older people weren’t allowed in, to “protect their privacy”. This meant that the skinny necromancer from Eighth was sitting by himself, and in the three sessions they’d had so far, he had continually glanced at the door like he’d be able to summon his cav with the power of his mind. She would have liked to see that, honestly, considering she was the oldest person in the room besides the Fifth, who didn’t count because they were in charge.

They were doing a lot of what Abigail called worksheets, which were just really long quizzes that had clearly been copied one too many times and were kind of illegible, and discussing their answers. During this session, she’d sped through the worksheet, mostly because she didn’t know what some of the words meant and had just crossed those questions out. This left her with a considerable amount of time to watch everybody else from under her sunglasses. 

The Fourth teens were doing theirs together, whispering back and forth and occasionally glancing up at the others. This might have been cheating, but Magnus wasn’t stopping them (though that could have been out of a sense of favoritism, since he seemed to know them better than the others). The Eighth necromancer was staring down at his entirely blank worksheet like it had personally wronged him somehow. Abigail and Magnus, who had insisted on being called Abigail and Magnus and not Lady Pent and Sir Quinn, were standing over in the corner and not in their chairs like usual, murmuring to each other much more subtly than Fourth. And Harrow was filling out her worksheet diligently, studying it intently like this was somehow part of the Lyctorhood test. 

Gideon leaned back in her chair, immensely bored. Her lack of worksheets to distract her meant that she had started to focus on how much her face paint itched, and she was about five minutes away from asking Magnus to hand her another worksheet just to get away from it all. 

Thankfully, she didn’t have to get that desperate, because Harrow finished her worksheet at almost exactly the same time as the Fourth teens finished their worksheets, and so the Eighth necromancer was the only one who wasn’t done. Abigail looked around, noticed the complete lack of moving pencils, and stood up to gather up the sheets. The teens had filled theirs out neatly and tentatively, Harrow’s was heavy like Gideon’s, and the Eighth’s was completely blank, if not a little crinkled up. He stared at it even as Abigail took the paper away, following it with his eyes.

“Alright, well, if we’re all done,” said Magnus, who was probably just saying that for show because the Eighth was still decidedly not done and had continued glaring at the paper with enough genuine loathing that Gideon was surprised it didn’t spontaneously combust. “We’ll put those aside for now and take a look at them next time.”

Abigail nodded and took up her usual seat again. “How are you getting along with everyone?”

The silence in the room was thick enough to cut with Gideon’s rapier. The teens looked at each other, eyebrows knitted, and then looked back at Magnus with confused blankness on their faces. The Eighth and Harrow seemed to be in a competition of who could give Abigail the most cold and disdainful glare. Gideon just shrugged, leaning back to watch this whole thing spiral downward like it had the last two times. They had a habit of calling sessions early after someone did something incredibly uncouth and un-Housely. The first time it had been Gideon’s fault, but only because she didn’t know any better, and the second time the Eighth had looked at everyone with the same spontaneous-combustion stare he had given the paper and made the Fourth cav so uncomfortable that she’d had to leave the room. 

Abigail seemed to think slightly better of her question, and amended it to “How are you getting along with everyone here ?”

“Peachy,” Gideon said, because someone had to say something or else Abigail and Magnus were going to start calling on individual people to start the conversation and she didn’t want to risk that person being Harrow or the Eighth. Harrow raised one bepaintèd eyebrow at her. Gideon staunchly ignored this.

“Alright, that’s a good start. Can you go into a little more detail?”

She could not, but she could certainly try. “Been nice to see the Fourth more,” she managed to say. The cav—Jeannemary—beamed, and turned to her necromancer.

( “Did you hear that? She said it was nice to see us!”

“Don’t be silly, she’s just saying that.” )

“I’m glad to hear you’re getting along,” Abigail prompted. “Everyone else?”

Harrow remained silent and dark and skeletal, which was to say, exactly the same as always. She reached up to fiddle with one of the bones dangling from her ear. The Eighth looked at her, then at Gideon, then made a show of looking away.

“Silas?” Abigail prompted. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, is something wrong, Silas?” Gideon echoed, glad that someone else had said his name so she didn’t have to ask again. 

“I would prefer not to be in the same room as—them,” he said stiffly, his expression as terse and unreadable as usual. Gideon rolled her eyes, and was immediately grateful that her glasses hid that. She could already feel Harrow seething next to her, she didn’t need more reasons to be angry. 

“Silas,” Magnus chided, sounding for all the world like a disappointed father. Gideon had already decided that she liked Magnus, who was the only person besides Dulcinea that wasn't intimidated by her whole skull-paint-black-robes situation, but this made her like him even more, especially when Silas's face puckered like he'd just bitten something sour and he looked down. 

Gideon would have been lying if she said she wasn’t a little satisfied to see him looking all upset and chastened and stuff, but then she looked to her right, and Harrow looked equally upset and chastened, and that was slightly less satisfying. She wasn’t sure why (usually if Harrow looked upset and chastened it meant Gideon was having the best day of her life) but for some reason this just made her feel like she’d lost a game she didn’t even know she was playing. 

“Okay, well, why don’t you two get along?” Abigail asked, making what Gideon thought was a very valiant attempt at salvaging this conversation. 

“It’s nothing against them ,” Silas said primly, in a tone of voice that totally implied it was something against them. “Bone nuns should not be here. They were left to rot on the Ninth for a reason. They are wrong, and we are right. We simply do not need to interact.”

Harrow seethed even more than she had been earlier. “Just because you and your ghosts don’t follow the same rules as ours—”

“Like I would listen to a skeleton-maker about spirits,” he said, haughtily. Gideon made a rude gesture at him under her cloak. 

“ Magnus, do something, ” whispered one of the Fourth teens—she couldn’t tell which.

Magnus, for his part, did something. He extended his hands in what was clearly meant to be a soothing gesture, and Silas shut up almost immediately, clearly still upset. Harrow followed suit, a perfect mirror of Silas, him in white and her in black, shoulders tensed and fists balled on their knees. 

“Why don’t you two try to get to know each other better?” Abigail said. Silas and Harrow said nothing, staring down at their laps. This was a great deal more successful than the last time, at least, and Gideon found herself very deeply impressed by the Fifth House and their methods. Maybe this whole group therapy thing actually was going to do something after all.

“What,” Harrow said, in a tone of voice that to anybody besides Gideon might seem calm, “do you suggest we do?”

“I don’t know. Something. You two are smart, you’ll come up with ideas. Have the other over for tea, something like that. It would do both of you well to get along more, I think.” 

Silas was stony quiet. He was doing that spontaneous-combustion stare again, this time at his hands.

No one spoke for a very long time. Magnus cleared his throat. “Well, I think we can finish up here for today,” he said, and the whole room collectively gave a sigh of relief. “Abigail and I will look over the worksheets before our next session, and I want you two to really think about that. It’s hard to get anything done if we don’t trust each other.”

Harrow stood with great ceremony and gestured for Gideon to follow her. Gideon did. She wasn’t sure what exactly Harrow was going to do about this whole thing, but she was sure that if she spent a second more in this place then something was going to go horribly wrong. 

The other necros and cavs were all waiting outside—she got the sneaking suspicion that Ianthe and Corona had been listening at the door—and as soon as Silas stepped out of the room, the Eighth cav stood from his spot kneeling on the floor and went to his side. 

“Brother Asht,” Silas said, his voice as reedy and grating as always. 

“Brother Octakiseron.” 

Harrow didn’t wait for them to finish with whatever weird ritual they were doing (how anyone called anyone else Brother Octakiseron without thinking it was a little bit absurd was beyond her) and just jutted her head towards the door. Gideon, very tired of Harrow being in charge of what she was doing, followed suit. 

The eight sets of necromancers and cavaliers trudged down the hallways. The temporary truce of group therapy was holding, tenuously but steadily, and she had even seen the Third and the Sixth smile at each other over midday meal yesterday. If this went on, they were all going to become friends. Gideon wasn’t nearly as disgusted by the thought as she’d expected herself to be.

Eventually, everyone peeled off from the group to their rooms, leaving her, Harrow, Silas, and his big hulking cav alone in the hallway. Quarters were tight, and though Gideon kept back from Harrow at a steady saunter, as if anyone could possibly think they weren’t associated with each other, Silas’s cav stood right at his shoulder at all times, and Harrow was taking up as much space in the hallway as someone who Gideon could lift with one hand could take up. Her sepulchral robes were trailing wide along the ground behind her, bones clink-clinking against each other. It made for quite the intimidating picture, if you were someone besides Gideon Nav, who was less intimidated and more irritated by anything Harrow did.

Silas, who Gideon could also probably lift with one hand (not that she would ever try), noticed this. Clearly not wanting to be one-upped by shadow cultists , he moved to take up more space in the hall at the exact same time that Harrow stopped to look back at Gideon, and they collided. 

“The Ninth requests the Eighth’s presence for tea tomorrow,” Harrow blurted out, at the exact same time that Silas said “The Eighth House would be obliged to receive the Ninth for tea tomorrow.” And then they both just stared at each other in stunned silence, two identical monochrome necromancers with identical panicked expressions glancing back at their cavs for help. Gideon would have laughed if she hadn’t been so shocked. 

She could practically see the conspiratorial gears ticking away in Harrow’s head. If she was the one to receive Silas , then she’d have the upper hand. They’d owe the Ninth a favor. Harrow would have the high ground. But she couldn’t turn down Silas’s invitation, because then she’d seem rude and un-traditional-and-nunly and whatever else the Ninth was supposed to be. So she was at an impasse.

Silas, for his part, appeared to be at the very same impasse. He stood there staring at Harrow, his mouth open in a little O of surprise. Harrow was controlling her expression better, but Gideon could see anger boiling underneath the pristinely applied skull paint. 

After what had to have been a full minute of silence, the only sound the droning of the electric lights, Silas’s cav put a hand on his shoulder. Silas practically jumped out of his skin.

“Brother Octakiseron and I accept your invitation, Reverend Daughter,” he said, and Gideon was so relieved she could have hugged him right then and there. Harrow’s barely-concealed rage gave way to barely-concealed triumph, and Silas stared open-mouthed at his cav.

“Colum,” he said, shocked and sounding very much like the whiny teenager he was. 

“ Si ,” Colum chided. Gideon wanted nothing more than for someone besides his cav to call him that, just to see what would happen (just not her, because she very much liked having a soul and wanted to keep having one for the foreseeable future). “We would be more than happy to join you.”

“Then we would be happy to have you,” Harrow said, stiffly and formally. With that, she pulled her robes up around herself in as dignified a way as she could manage and swept off, leaving Gideon completely alone with Colum and Silas, who was still staring up at Colum in utter disbelief. Gideon grinned awkwardly, waved like an idiot in the world’s worst attempt to diffuse the tension, and then power-walked off as fast as she could to catch up with Harrow.

“What the fuck was that,” Gideon asked, as soon as they were out of earshot. “What the fuck, was that.”

“Shut up,” Harrow hissed. “They’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care. What the fuck was that? Why are we having them over for tea ? Don’t they literally hate our guts?”

“And we hate theirs. But Abigail said that we should try to get along .” This last part was said through gritted teeth. She set her jaw, glaring down at the floor. “So we are going to try to get along.”

“Did something happen while I wasn’t looking ? Are you feeling okay? You just suggested actually getting along with another person here, who, if this isn’t completely wrong somehow, are our enemies in all this. I can’t believe I have to be the one to say this.”

Harrow unlocked their door, shoulders set back confidently. “Exactly. We’re going to get along, and then the Eighth House will owe us a favor. You’re doing us both a disservice by acting like a buffoon. Be polite tomorrow.” The or else I will remove your bones through your eye sockets was left unsaid but heavily implied. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Gideon said, layering as much sarcasm into the words as she could. Harrow didn’t even turn around as she retreated towards her own bed, leaving Gideon to stare at her back. 

No use in doing that. She might as well get some sleep before this whole socializing thing was going to happen, she felt fried enough as it was. And so she scraped the face paint off in the sink, set her sunglasses carefully aside on the rickety shelf by her bed, and was asleep before her face hit the pillow.

*    *    *

When Gideon woke up the next morning, the whole place was fucking spotless. 

Apparently, instead of sleeping, Harrow had decided to clean their entire chambers in some twisted display of superiority. As if having shinier floors than the Eighth House would somehow shame them into declaring their fealty to the Ninth. Or maybe she was just freaking out. That seemed a little more likely, considering she was wiping down an already spotless table. 

“Hey, can you stop pacing?” Gideon called from her bed, not wanting to risk stepping on the incredibly clean floors. “You’re making me nervous.”

To her credit, Harrow stopped, but only to stick her head in Gideon’s face. She had applied her most creepy and ceremonial skull paint for this, which was not doing her any favors in the “not looking like a complete freak” department. Gideon realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach that she was also probably going to be applying her most creepy and ceremonial skull paint for this, and resisted the urge to roll back over and fall asleep rather than face that possibility.

“What part of this experience,” Harrow hissed, eyes red from lack of sleep, “is making you feel like you should not be nervous? Tell me so I can immediately pull that thought out of your incredibly thick skull. In two hours the Eighth House is going to be here and they are going to be taking every single opportunity to act morally superior to us. And I don’t even like tea.”

Gideon almost asked her why she’d even bothered inviting them, but thought better of it at the last minute because that would have gotten her little more than an exasperated look and a You will never understand the deep and sepulchral machinations of my dark and tenebrous mind, Griddle , and she wasn’t really in the mood. 

The place looked pretty nice, considering. Harrow’s burning of the midnight oil had apparently done some good after all. The long glass table was polished to a shine, and all of the other frail dark furniture had been dusted until it was pristine. Everything looked very neat and formal. Gideon was sitting somewhere between impressed and resigned. All the crushed velvet chairs being neat and formal meant that Gideon herself was going to be expected to be neat and formal, which was almost a fate worse than death. Especially when Harrow was around to give her a death glare for not being neat and formal enough. 

Groaning, she hauled herself out of bed, putting on her sunglasses and heading to the bathroom to take a sonic and put on her paint. 

Staring at herself in the mirror, she came to the conclusion that at least she looked better than Harrow, and started caking on the black paint. She had gotten unfortunately good at it over the last week or so, and the bone gray and black looked slightly less like a child had applied it now. 

Unfortunately, this was not good enough for Harrow, who took one look at her painted face and pointed at the nearest chair. Gideon sat down, giving Harrow her most baleful look, and waited.

“If you squirm, I’ll put the brush in your eye,” Harrow said, wiping the just-applied paint off Gideon’s face. Her hands were remarkably steady for someone who hadn’t slept. Over a matter of minutes which Gideon experienced as a very long time, she had her face properly skull-ified, and as soon as Harrow finished, she jumped up to examine herself in the mirror. The skull looked significantly less messy, but the sunglasses and the hair and the rest of the everything about Gideon meant that it still looked out of place. 

“You wait here. I’m going to go find some skeletons and get us some tea.” Harrow frowned, then narrowed her eyes at Gideon. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I can’t do anything stupid if I’m stuck in this room,” Gideon called after her as Harrow’s black-clad form retreated down the hallway, bones clanking all the way. 

She sighed, laying back down on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. The black metal chandeliers stared back down at her, tiny crystals spinning on their tiny crystal hooks. Gideon stuck her tongue out at them, and nearly reached up to poke the chandelier with her rapier, but thought better of it at the last minute. If she knocked it down, it would absolutely count as doing something stupid, and she would have to be the one to clean it up, so she amused herself by running rapier drills and doing extra push-ups, and then running to redo her face paint since she’d sweated part of it off. She was halfway through reapplying her eye paint when Harrow came back, two skeletons at her shoulders and a box full of what was probably tea supplies in her arms.

“I’m not making the tea,” Gideon said, before Harrow could say anything, because she was only about seventy percent sure that her fake-ass cavalier oath didn’t apply to making tea for her necromancer, and she wasn’t going to risk Harrow invoking it, or worse, invoking it and then telling her immediately after the tea was made that it totally wasn’t something she had to do. Harrow just rolled her eyes and stared at Gideon with immense tiredness in her eyes. 

“We have skeletons for that,” she replied, which was completely true and also made Gideon feel kind of like an idiot. “And fix your hair. I’m not having you look like that in public.”

“We aren’t in public. We’re in here. Which is private. And, I cannot stress this enough, they totally and completely hate us . My hair being in whatever condition it’s in is not going to change that in the slightest.”

Harrow responded to these incredibly compelling points with an eye roll that rivaled the terrible teens, and gestured for her skeletons to get to work. 

With exactly fucking nothing left to do and an entirely unknown amount of time to do it in, Gideon made the executive decision to lay down on the bed and stare up at the ceiling until something more interesting happened. This proved to be a pretty good decision, because the ceiling had some interesting cobwebs on it that Harrow had apparently been too short to reach, and she got to stare at it for a while until she got bored of that and started counting chandelier crystals.

“Get up,” Harrow said suddenly. “And make yourself presentable. They’ll be here soon.” 

“Could you have told me that ten minutes ago?” Gideon groused, but she dragged herself up onto her feet and stuck her rapier into her belt. Even if this was a social event (with snacks, and tea, and presumably socializing), she was still a cav, and Harrow would never let her forget it, so the rapier had to come with her at all times, even though it absolutely didn’t go with her outfit. This was because nothing went with her outfit, because her outfit was dumpy black Tomb robes with a touch of bone white Tomb robe, just to add a little je ne sais quoi . 

Harrow looked marginally less nightmarish, mostly because she was used to this, and could more successfully pretend that she didn’t look like a pile of black cobwebs. However, part of it was (as loath as Gideon was to admit it) that Harrow was just really, really good at looking ominous and holier-than-thou in those robes, and so she looked basically the same as ever.

“Can I wear something else?” Gideon said, glaring at her reflection. 

“If you’re going to look like you’ve never worn them before, then yes.” Harrow waved a hand. “This isn’t just a social event. This is important. So if you absolutely must, wear something you can act like a normal person in, Nav.” 

Gideon chose to ignore the slight and instead focus on the concession to wearing things that she could act like a normal person in. She stared at her very small wardrobe and decided on the tunic that was meant to be worn under all the robes and her least obviously frayed pair of trousers, which were kind of nice, and then just to appease Harrow she threw a single diaphanous black robe over it all. This made her look like what she imagined someone’s actual cav might look like, minus the armor. 

Harrow stared at her, eyes black slits. “Passable. And they won’t know what they should be expecting, anyway. That is a small blessing.”

Before Gideon had a chance to say anything back about that totally unnecessary drag on her cavalier-ing skills, there was a knock on the door, and Harrow froze stiff. She took a deep breath, gestured to the skeletons to animate them, and started drifting ominously toward the door. Gideon followed, trying not to be entirely obvious about sticking her head out the door to see what was going on.

Silas and Colum had dressed for the occasion, presumably. She hadn’t the foggiest what “dressing for the occasion” meant on the Eighth. In any case, Silas wasn’t wearing the chain mail he’d been dressed in every other time she’d seen him (which was either a profoundly stupid decision, or one that showed incredible faith in his diplomatic skills—possibly both), and his cav was in a neat white tunic instead of his armor. His rapier still hung at his hip, but it was tucked into a white leather belt that made the sword’s presence look more like a coincidence than a threat. 

“Reverend Daughter,” Silas intoned, much too solemnly for a kid that was a full head shorter than Gideon. 

“Brother Octakiseron,” Harrow intoned back, in an equally solemn and haughty tone. “And Brother Asht. Come in.”

They did so, and Silas did very little to hide his shudder at the swaths of black fabric draped with skulls that passed for cheerful decoration in Harrow’s twisted mind. Gideon didn’t blame him one bit for that, even if it was rude and possibly bigoted. His cav followed at his side, hovering like always. 

Harrow led the two intruders into the main space of their room, gesturing for them to sit at the long table. She waved a hand, and the skeletons at the wall animated themselves, picking up the tea kettle and setting it aside to warm. 

“It is a pleasure to welcome the Eighth House to break bread with us,” she said, in a very unpleased and unwelcoming voice. “Sit.”

Silas and Colum sat. Gideon was almost impressed. For a scrawny little bone nerd, Harrow could really order someone around. Probably came with the territory, though, since she’d been ordering people around since before she was out of diapers. 

Two cleanly-animated skeletons snapped to life, pouring the tea and serving the tiniest cakes that Gideon had ever seen. Granted, she hadn’t seen that many cakes, but they were incredibly tiny, and she made a vow to herself to eat at least three before this whole nightmare social engagement was over. 

Harrow was clearly a little disgusted by this whole thing. Unfortunately, so was Silas. Apparently the Eighth didn’t do tiny cakes.

“Before we eat, Brother Octakiseron will need to pray,” Colum said solemnly. He bowed his head, and Silas did the same. Gideon frowned. This was going to be weird. Deeply weird. Especially because, as they had learned, they had a completely different religion than the Ninth. 

“Let the King Undying, ransomer of death, scourge of death, vindicator of death, look upon the Nine Houses and hear their thanks. Let the whole of everywhere entrust themselves to him,” Silas began, practically at a whisper. He kept his tone low, though whether this was out of respect for the Ninth traditions or whether this was just how he always spoke, Gideon could not tell. He cycled through this prayer three times and then stopped, looking down at the teacup that sat before him.

Harrow stared at the Eighth pair with open hostility. She seemed to be entirely reconsidering this whole “befriend the Eighth” plan. 

This was about to go terribly wrong, and if they blew up at each other, it was going to be her job to grab Harrow like an angry cat and make sure she didn’t hurl an entire bone construct at their guests, and she really didn’t feel like having to pick her up, so she decided that the much more sensible option was to defuse the situation with her expert tact and social oeuvre. 

“Sugar?” Gideon asked, entirely aware of how much of a stupid fucking thing that was to say as soon as she said it. She sounded like somebody who gave a fuck what these people thought of her. She sounded like one of the disgusting old ladies in comic books who sat around and played whatever ‘bridge’ was. 

Harrow did not accept the offered sugar, because Harrow was the darkest and most deep and soulless woman that had ever walked upon the floors of this house and also because she would probably combust if she ate anything that sweet. Colum took the dish and placed two of the little lumps into his cup, which Gideon thought was adorable and kind of pathetic. 

Silas did not take the dish. Silas stared at it with an expression that even Gideon, in her hopelessly socially bereft state, could tell was fear. 

“Si,” Colum said, very gently, and nudged his necromancer on the shoulder. “It’s okay.” 

Gideon thought to herself, Obviously it’s okay, it’s a goddamn sugar bowl and the fact that he’s acting like it’s poisoned is a huge dick move considering how super-duper nice we’re being, but did not say it. 

Harrow was watching all of this like a hawk, eyes bouncing back and forth between Silas and Colum like she was watching a duel. If she wasn’t filing this away into her little brain to use in future scheming, then Gideon would eat her own rapier. This was kind of an awful thing to do, and also really smart, and as such was very in character for her. Gideon decided to ignore this for now, and accidentally caught Colum’s eye as she was trying to look back at her own teacup, which still didn’t have any sugar in it.

Colum looked at her through the glasses in a way that clearly showed that he had noticed her, and his eyes softened in a way that was very obviously apologetic. He seemed incredibly used to this, and that more than anything gave Gideon pause, because she had just been forced to imagine a world where Harrowhark Goddamn Nonagesimus was paralyzed by every small decision, and she would have to be the person who poked her in the shoulder to get her moving. This, in fact, sounded like an absolute nightmare, not made any easier by the fact that Colum had probably had to deal with Silas for a lot longer considering they were related. She made a mental note to ask if he was okay. 

After what felt like hours of waiting, Silas took the bowl, decisively dropping one single little sugar lump into his teacup. Gideon personally felt that this was way too much decision-making over one sugar, and accepted the bowl from Silas, dropping three sugars into her own tea and stirring vigorously, which was presumably getting a reaction from Harrow. She didn't really want to look. Instead, she downed half the cup in a single very indelicate sip and felt the sugar burning her mouth on the way down. She was not the only one drinking, Colum had the delicate bone china mug in his fingers and Harrow was cupping hers in both hands, but she was certainly the only one with this much tea and sugar now in her system. 

The single lump of sugar that Silas had put in his teacup was presumably still there, because he was staring down at it with an intense expression of revulsion. His fingers were twitching over the edge of the black lace tablecloth in the same way that Gideon had seen Harrow's fingers twitch over the knucklebone prayer beads that hung at her waist. 

“You good?” Gideon asked, possibly rudely. Colum and Harrow both took notice at this point and looked over at Silas, who immediately went red—the first time she had ever seen a color other than white appear on Silas’s person. 

“Silas,” Colum said, placing his hand gently on his necromancer’s skinny shoulder. Gideon was pretty sure Silas was about to kill him. Harrow probably would have killed her, if she had put her hand on her shoulder and said “Harrowhark” in that weird, pitying, parental tone. 

When Silas didn't respond, Colum prompted him again. “It’s okay.” 

“It’s not ,” Silas said, almost petulantly. If she had grown up with anyone younger than her, besides Harrow, the behavior might have reminded her of somebody. As it was, though, it just irritated her. “It’s not okay. I don’t know whether—” 

He stopped himself, anger and humiliation writ large over his face. Gideon was briefly horrified at the thought that she was now witness to this, and might have to be murdered or something to protect his privacy, but honestly she had bigger problems. Such as the fact that Harrow, who was very good at being a massive bitch and taking advantage of other people's deep-seated vulnerabilities, was also here. 

Only Harrow wasn’t . Being a massive bitch, that is. In fact, she hadn’t even said anything. She had her prayer beads wrapped around her fingers and she was studying Silas’s face with intent curiosity. 

“Si,” Colum said, a little louder. He sounded like the platonic ideal of somebody’s dad. 

“ Colum ,” Silas snapped back, which Gideon thought was kind of bold of him. “I can’t. You know I can’t. I have to check—”

“Check what?” Gideon asked, her curiosity ranking higher on the scale of Things Gideon Gives A Shit About than her sense of self-preservation or her politeness. Silas’s mouth instantly snapped shut. He went an even deeper shade of red than before. Gideon thought this entirely impressive, considering how pasty he usually was. 

“Check scripture.” Colum placed his hand on Silas’s shoulder. Silas balked. “Come on. Aren’t we supposed to be getting along with them? We should be open with them. They’re our colleagues.”

“They’re our enemies ,” he hissed, which was a little overboard considering he was the one who looked at them like he had stepped in something gross. “I can’t tell them that.”

Harrow, who had kept her eyes fixed on her prayer beads this whole time, looked up at Silas. “You have to check?”

This was the point where Harrow would usually start poking. Trying to find the little niche of weakness, tug apart the links. But she wasn’t doing that. The expression settling onto her face wasn’t one of cold, medical curiosity, the way she would look at a particularly well-constructed skeleton. No, there was a frighteningly open mask of understanding clouding Harrow’s features. Gideon had half a mind to shake her and say Who are you and what have you done with my shitty necromancer , if only to piss her off and get her back to normal. She wasn’t even being mean. This wasn’t her being-mean face. She was actually, genuinely trying to understand. 

This display of remarkable weakness in front of the Eighth House would have scared Gideon shitless if they also didn’t look absolutely terrified. Silas was still clutching at the tablecloth, rubbing circles into the lace so hard that she was afraid he’d tear it. Colum had his hand on his necromancer’s shoulder still, and was rubbing identical circles into Silas’s back. The whole tableau had the air of disgustingly saccharine family kinship about it, except they were both utterly distasteful, and Silas looked about ten seconds away from stabbing the table with his cav’s sword. Or from crying. She couldn’t really tell which. No one back home on the Ninth showed this complexity of emotion except maybe Harrow, and she wasn’t really a mystery to Gideon anymore. Mostly she was just pissed off.

Except for now, it seemed. For some unfathomable reason, Harrow leaned closer to the other necro and cav, bridging the gap between them, her deadened skull face staring point-blank into Silas’s. 

“Octakiseron,” Harrow said, gently pushing her teacup aside with a faint scraaaaape as it made contact with the glass. “What do you mean, you have to check?”

Silas appeared to remember himself, and sat more properly upright, shoulders set into their usual posture—the one that communicated that he was so, so much better than you, and he knew it, and he wasn’t even being proud of it. 

“It is my duty as the Master Templar,” he said, which was a crock and Gideon knew it. “I am not to do anything which does not follow the Emperor’s commands. I don’t know what his dictates are on… sullying the temple of one’s body with unnecessary displays of excess.”

“It’s one sugar ,” Gideon said incredulously, unable to stop herself. Colum looked at her with an absolutely unreadable expression, as flat and plain as his necromancer’s. “It’s hardly an unnecessary display of excess, everybody does it.”

“I am not everybody, Ninth ,” Silas said with great derision. “I am the judge of all the Emperor’s courts, below God himself. I cannot afford to—to debase myself with immoral acts.”

Gideon was very much considering telling him where he could stick his immoral acts when Harrow spoke up, her eyes still steely and cutting even as she kept her voice quiet. “But you aren’t doing this out of some kind of House pride. You’re doing this because you have to. Aren’t you.”

Silas’s expression shifted—Gideon wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t been looking. “I don’t know what you mean. Of course I have to.” His face was pinched, sharp. “I am the judge of the Emperor’s courts, I have to be moral , I can’t forgive anyone if I’m not. It is essential for me to maintain spiritual purity. It isn’t even just for things like this, part of living the way I do is making sure that everything is correct . Following scripture to the letter is part of life. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”  

Gideon’s incredible deduction skills told her that following scripture to the letter was not part of life on the Eighth. These deduction skills were aided by the fact that Colum looked like he’d been run through with a rapier. He was watching Silas with his brows furrowed. It wasn’t quite anger, nor was it the disappointment that Gideon knew so well from her training. No, it was something close to pity, if you tilted pity slightly to the left and squinted at it at just the right angle. 

“I do understand,” Harrow said, staring at her hands. “You don’t do it because it’s part of your traditions. You do it because you have to. Because it hurts not to.”

Gideon felt like she had just had a hemorrhagic stroke. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, dark queen of being a massive prick to everyone she met, was displaying a sign of actual human emotion. More than that, she was talking about something that affected someone else.

Maybe she was being a little hard on Harrow. After all, she’d only known her for literally her entire existence, and she’d only been horrible for most of that time. 

But she couldn’t even find it in herself to keep mocking Harrow at this point, because Silas was staring at her like she’d just grown a second head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, extremely unconvincingly. “I do what I do out of my devotion to my House.” Sitting beside him, Colum sighed, a low and deep sound that reminded her of a sleeping animal. He looked like he’d heard this many times before, and had stopped believing it a very long time ago.

“You do what you do because if you don’t, bad things will happen to you or someone else,” Harrow continued, her voice slow and clear. “You do what you do to keep people safe. It makes you ill not to pray before meals, or anything else that you do.”

“Shut up,” Silas said, a note of alarm in his voice. “I won’t be made a fool of by—”

“I’m not making fun of you, Octakiseron,” she snapped, bringing her bony fist down on the table with an anticlimactic thump , “I’m telling you all this because it happens to me, too . How else would I be able to tell you all of this? How do you think I know it so well?”

At this display of uncharacteristic Harrow emotion, Gideon felt the strong urge to flee the room. She didn’t, out of respect for the gutsiness of the move, but she did inch her chair very slightly back to survey the whole scene. 

Silas was standing, hands tightened into shaking fists at his sides. Colum, seated right beside him, was looking from him to Gideon to Harrow with his eyebrows raised and his hand just gently brushing the hilt of his still-sheathed rapier. Harrow had stood as well, hands splayed out on the table, staring Silas down like he’d personally wronged her somehow within the last five minutes. The air felt like it was thick and alive, like someone had released a swarm of invisible rage bees into the room and they were buzzing loud enough to bring the whole place down. 

“Lady Pent gave me a… pamphlet. About something she called compulsion-obsession disorder,” she said, biting out the words like they physically hurt to say. “It sounded familiar. And like what I’ve been experiencing. I think you should—talk to her about it.”

Gideon was kind of impressed by this display of vulnerability from Harrow. If Abigail had given her some kind of disorder pamphlet, she would have died on the spot laughing. 

“It’s not a disorder ,” Silas snapped, not meeting Harrow’s eyes. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to.”

“You can’t honestly tell me that it makes you feel good to do that. To pray all the time, to worry about whether you’re doing things right or wrong.”

“It should feel good. It—if it doesn’t, it’s because—” He swallowed hard, looking down at the teacup with that same deep disgust on his face. “It’s because I’m doing something wrong.” 

Silas sank back into his seat, the thin bleach-white fabric of his tunic shaking with his trembling arm muscles. He looked like a string pulled too tight. Colum looked down at him and set both large, scarred hands on his shoulders, turning Silas to face him. “He gets like this sometimes,” he murmured apologetically to Harrow and Gideon, not looking up at them. “Si? Can you look at me?”

“No,” Silas said, voice petulant and teenage and somehow, so much smaller than it had been the last few times he’d spoken in front of them. He didn’t sound like the necromancer adept of the Eighth House. He sounded like a scared little kid. It made Gideon want to run out of the room and lock the door behind herself, not out of any inherent disgust with the concept of scared little kids, but because she had the stabbing feeling that this was something private, and that Silas might soul-siphon both her and Harrow into oblivion for witnessing him being anything less than perfect. 

“I’m getting the pamphlet,” Harrow grumbled, meeting Gideon’s eyes for a moment before swishing out of the room. This left Gideon entirely alone with two upset people from a House that hated them and everything they stood for. Typical , she thought, and picked up her teacup again. 

“Gideon,” Colum said, just as soon as she’d taken a sip of her tea. She swallowed hard. 

“Yeah?”

“How do you do it?”

“Colum,” Silas protested, looking distraught.

“Do what?” she asked, feeling like a complete idiot for not knowing what he was talking about. 

“Help the Reverend Daughter. It’s clear that she trusts you a great deal—” Gideon had to fight the urge to laugh— “and when you’re so close with someone, you must have some knowledge of what they need. Is there anything I should be doing? For Silas?”

What the fuck was she supposed to say to that? She hadn’t even known about the whole disorder thing until Harrow told everybody just now. She wasn’t a confidante. She was barely even a roommate, considering how infrequently Harrow slept here. Essentially, she was a slab of meat for Harrow to use as a sounding board and occasionally leave passive-aggressive notes for. 

Except, well. There wasn’t anybody here that Harrow trusted more . And she had let Gideon stop her from dying in a bone. 

Thankfully, before Gideon could consider the emotional horror of Harrow trusting her a great deal, Harrow herself returned, carrying a slickly-designed pamphlet in perfect Fifth House fashion; smooth lettering, simple but elegant type. She slapped it down on the table in front of Silas, sliding it closer to him. “Take it. I’ll ask Lady Pent for another one when we meet for therapy again.” 

Silas accepted it, stone-faced. He’d gotten his composure back, shockingly, and held the pamphlet with both pale-knuckled hands. He took a deep breath. 

“I think—” he began, and then stopped short, voice scratchy—”that we should stop this for now. If what you say is true, I have to pray on it.”

Harrow clenched her fists (almost imperceptibly, but Gideon was Gideon and could always tell when Harrow was pissed off), but calmed herself, painted face smoothing out. All her frowning had left wrinkles and creases in the gray paint on her forehead. “Fine,” she said, the word terse and dry as bone. “Until tomorrow, then, Octakiseron.”

He nodded to her, his face barely moving aside from a tiny twitch just below the left eye, and reached out to gesture for Colum to follow him. The moment of hesitation between him lifting his hand and following through on the motion made Gideon think that he might have been going to hold Colum’s hand. The thought brought a ball of shame into her throat, making it hard to swallow. She didn’t like the thought that she might have judged this awful, ascetic boy too harshly, and she especially didn’t like the thought that he was in any way like Harrow, because thinking of him being a sad, pathetic little kid made her think of Harrow being a sad, pathetic little kid, both of which made her sick to her stomach.

Wordlessly, Gideon walked them both to the door, black and gray paint smudging together as she pressed her mouth together into a tight line. She watched them leave, two figures dressed in white, and closed the door behind them after they’d vanished out of sight. 

She let her shoulders drop, pressing her forehead against the door and leaving a smudge of paint there as she stood upright again. 

When she turned around, Harrow was sitting down at the table again, staring into the abandoned teacup at Silas’s place, the one lump of sugar still dissolving. Her eyes were hidden by the veil and the paint, and with the heavy black cloth draped around her, she looked very small. 

“That could’ve gone worse,” Gideon said, just to break the silence. Harrow’s shoulders shifted near-imperceptibly. 

“It could have gone better, too,” she replied, looking up at last. “Sit?”

Gideon sat. She was still reeling from the… everything that had just happened, and was really sick of all the weird power dynamic shit that Harrow kept trying to pull, so getting to interrogate her about all that was going to be nice. Ish.

“I… don’t know whether this is going to make things better or worse between us and the Eighth,” Harrow said, sticking one bony finger into the teacup and stirring absentmindedly. 

“You and me both,” Gideon said, laughing, because there wasn’t anything else to do. The whole situation was just so completely ridiculous. They were going to have a hell of a lot to talk about at therapy. “Why’d you give him the thing, anyway?”

“...I don’t know.” She stirred the tea again and again, eyes downcast. The tea stained the pale white bone china—of course they had bone china, it was familiar —and made Harrow’s fingertip distort under the surface. “I was curious.”

“About what would happen if you pushed Octakiseron to the edge of a mental breakdown, just for kicks?”

This got a glare from Harrow, which was kind of deserved. “If I talked to someone about it. I thought it might… do something. Make things worse, or better. Somehow.”

“Did it?”

She shook her head. “It’s just the same.” There was a hint of disappointment in her tone. “What I told Silas today won’t leave this room. I trust that you won’t make anyone else aware of my… infirmity.”

“Harrow. I know, like, approximately one thing about whatever-you-called-it-disorder. I couldn’t tell anyone else about your infirmity if I tried. Which, by the way, sucks. I’m supposed to be your goddamn cavalier and you couldn’t trust me to listen to you about your brain?”

“You have been my cavalier for no time at all. And you hate my guts.” 

This was fair, and Gideon resented it very much. “Still. Aren’t we supposed to trust each other or whatever? I could be a lot more trustable if you told me what was up.”

Harrow considered this, finger still in the tea. “You do… make some semblance of a point there,” she said through gritted teeth. “Fine. But on the condition that no one outside of the two of us hears about any of what I say to you. Do you hear me? This is one rule that I will not have you break, Nav.” 

“I hear you.” She barely had the thought in her head of protesting. Something about this felt too important to make a joke about, or roll her eyes at. Harrow was saying something important . Something that mattered to her. This was a once in a lifetime experience.

With that, Harrow gestured to her skeletons. They pulled away the cups and teapot, taking them away quickly and cleanly, and left them alone. She turned to face Gideon properly, her face solemn and still.

“I have been aware of my illness since I was very young,” she began quietly. “I didn’t have a name for it—not until I requisitioned a copy of some books from the Fifth. There was a complicated name for it, but what I found the most comforting about it was the fact that there were answers. It told me something that I could easily understand and course-correct for. I didn’t think any more of it until… well. Until Abigail suggested that we all participate in therapy.”

“Suggested’s a strong word,” Gideon murmured. “Keep going.”

“I thought if she was going to be treating us for whatever it was we’re meant to be in treatment for, she ought to know a bit about my condition in the first place. That’s why I stayed behind, that first day. You remember.”

Gideon did. She’d waited for Harrow for a full hour after the session was supposed to be over. She had been kind of pissed off at her then, but it made sense. She could picture it—Harrow, fists tight, slowly and grudgingly admitting her weakness to another person; Abigail and Magnus, listening, concerned and aware and paying close attention. It was kind of picturesque. And also deeply weird. 

“That’s when she told you about the other thing?” 

Harrow nodded. “Something I did tipped her off, I think. In any case, she gave me the pamphlet and told me to read it over. Much of it made sense. She’s told me that if I want it, I can have private sessions with her later so she can give me more advice. Secretly, of course, so the others don’t… take notice.”

“And that’s… it? You just talk to her about it and it makes it better?”

“It’s more complicated than that, but in essence, yes. And it makes things… somewhat easier, knowing that there is someone there who can understand.”

“So you think Silas has the same thing.”

“Well—I don’t want to diagnose. That’s more Lady Pent’s place. But the symptoms seem familiar.”

“And the symptoms are?”

Harrow let out a long, slow, nasal breath. “A myriad of things,” she said, wrapping her bone beads around her fingers in a repeating pattern; first around the proximal, then distal phalanges, trailing like drops of water over the knuckles. “This, for one. The—praying. And the feeling of the beads, it has to be even on both sides. And the same meal every day, because I know it hasn’t been tampered with.” 

Harrow paused. “You understand that you are not to tell anyone about this, ever ,” she added quickly, beads clenched tight in her fist.

Gideon could have passed away on the spot. Sure, Harrow was a massive bitch, but usually she was a massive bitch at her, and not with her, which was clearly what was being implied right now with all this sharing of secrets. Maybe they’d be (here Gideon left a mental pause for the sound of vomiting) friends by the end of all this. The thought was thrilling in the bad way.

Gideon said, “I won’t,” once she realized her necromancer was still waiting for an answer, and “I’m sorry” only because her mouth moved faster than her brain. Harrow’s expression tightened into a sour frown at this. 

“As my cavalier, your job is not to pity me,” she said. “Your job is to protect me. This includes trusting me to do my own work, despite my… frailty.”

“I’m not sorry you’re a nut job, I’m sorry it sucks so bad.” This might have been slightly insensitive, but Harrow had dealt her far worse in their time. “You want me to do anything?”

“No.” She paused. “If I ask. Confirm things for me. Tell me not to check if the doors are locked.”

“You got it,” Gideon said, leaning back in her chair. Harrow nodded, stiffly and formally. The time for sharing deep interpersonal secrets was over, and this made Gideon very happy, and also very deeply worried about Harrow’s mental state, not that she would ever say it.

After a long moment of profound and uncomfortable silence, she stood from the table, her chair giving a horrible screech against the floor, and watched for a response from Harrow. When none came, she frowned at her and headed for the door.

“Don’t do anything dumb while I’m gone,” she said, and disappeared to wander around the First. She hoped that doing that would give her enough time to process all this. Somehow, though, she doubted it.

*    *    *

The next time they were all gathered together for group therapy, Silas looked significantly more gray and skeletal than before. He was approaching Harrow levels of not-sleeping now, which was clearly deeply concerning to everyone in the room. The teens from the Fourth kept glancing over at him and then looking at Magnus. Gideon thought she caught one of them mouthing ‘do something’ to Abigail, but she couldn’t be sure. 

Harrow, on the other hand, looked shockingly alive. Granted, the skeleton face wasn’t doing her any favors, but she’d actually done what she told Gideon and asked her to stop her from checking the lock on their door. She had, a few times, and that was it. It was shockingly simple, but that made it all the more deeply harrowing (ha) that she had to do it. 

“Alright, we’ll talk to you individually about your worksheets from last time later, but first, Harrowhark, Silas, I gave you an assignment last time. Did you do it?”

“We did,” Harrow said, her voice in its usual heavy, gloomy affectation. She seemed to be in a competition with herself to be the world’s creepiest necromancer. She did not elaborate.

“And?” Magnus asked. 

“And?” Harrow replied, irritatingly.

Abigail’s eyebrows pulled together in frustration, just for a moment, and then she smoothed out her face in a practiced way. It was the way Aiglamene had looked at her when she didn’t want her to know the full extent of her frustration, and Abigail’s version of the careful neutral face was very impressive. 

“Did you make any progress in being nice to each other?” she asked, tone as steadily, deliberately neutral as her steady, deliberately neutral face. 

Silas sat up a little straighter. Harrow said nothing.

“...I see,” Magnus said, sounding very disappointed. “Well, hopefully that won’t stop you from being civil during our sessions together. That goes for all of us.” He looked around meaningfully. “I understand that things are not exactly pleasant around here recently—”

“Understatement of the millennium,” Gideon interjected—

“But I want this to be a safe space,” he finished, looking at her pointedly. “Leave your preconceptions about one another at the door.” 

Abigail nodded. “If you’ll do it, we’ll do it. Now, do we all think we can agree to that?” she asked in a tone of voice that made it very clear that if they did not agree to that, they would live to regret it until the end of their days, which possibly would be hastened on by the sheer emotional turmoil of having someone be truly, deeply disappointed in you. 

Every head in the room bobbed into a simultaneous nod. Silas and Harrow didn’t look all too happy about it, and Isaac and Jeannemary both seemed mildly confused by the fact that they even needed to agree to this, but they all nodded. Including Gideon—she didn’t give enough of a shit about this to make enemies, not when she had to focus on making sure Harrow didn’t blow any of her enemies up by boiling their bone marrow into a soup or something deeply weird like that. 

“Good,” Magnus said, clapping his hands together in a way that was painfully endearing and also deeply, deeply lame. “Now. Worksheets!”

One very long hour of reviewing worksheets later, Gideon stood, stretched, cracked her back. She was so glad to be done; no matter how much she liked the Fifth, sitting around in a circle talking about her feelings wasn’t exactly her idea of a fun and sexy time. 

Harrow stood primly, sweeping her heavy lace robes around her. The bones on her throat and neck went clink-clink against each other before settling down again. 

“Let’s go,” she said, not sparing any of the others a second glance. 

“Got it, my liege ,” Gideon said, earning herself a baleful glance before Harrow flicked her robes again and led the way out the door.

They stepped out into the main hall once again, and once again Gideon felt like she was being scrutinized by everyone in the room. At the very least, the Sixth weren’t paying a modicum of attention to them. Camilla was staring down at a notebook and Palamedes was gesturing violently with a charcoal pencil, enough that the huge hulking cav from the Seventh was giving him a wide berth. Ianthe and Coronabeth were perched on two low overstuffed chairs, whispering between themselves and glancing at their sorry little gaggle of group therapy participants every few seconds. 

Harrow stopped short suddenly, pulled back like she’d gotten to the end of her leash. Gideon, walking at her shoulder as always, turned to look at whatever had stopped her, and saw a pasty, bony hand clutched at the train of her robe. 

“Nonagesimus,” Silas said, staring at the ground, teeth gritted. 

“Octakiseron,” Harrow said, equally tense.

“I am. Going to speak to Lady Pent. About your suggestion from our prior meeting.” The way he said ‘prior meeting’ sounded like he was chewing glass. 

“I see,” Harrow said, turning to face him. Silas took a quick step back from her, standing just in front of Colum. Gideon stepped closer to Harrow, mostly just so she wouldn’t look like a chump who wouldn’t even defend her own necro. 

“I thought you might want to know.” His hands were drawn up into fists at his sides. Gideon could see the others watching them now, the twins from the Third staring right at Harrow, Dulcinea Septimus watching with interest from her seat on the lounge chair in the corner of the room. 

“Well. Now we know.” Harrow had clearly noticed the eyes on her, and was back to her usual cold-as-the-grave affect, staring at Silas with her posture perfectly noble and her eyes heavily hooded. She looked like the perfect picture of the Reverend Daughter, the same awful bitch that she’d been back on Drearburh. 

Silas looked confused. And then he looked upset. Gideon was afraid for one solitary moment that he was going to throw a tantrum, or start crying, or get his cav to stab them both. But the moment passed, because Silas grabbed Colum’s hand and stormed out of the room, shoulders high and tense by his ears. Gideon could hear him breathing heavily as he passed.

The others started whispering. Harrow let her posture relax, just infinitesimally, and then turned out of the room in one smooth, practiced motion. Gideon, not wanting to look more like an idiot than she already did, followed her, having to do a stupid little jog to catch up. 

As soon as she was out the door and it was closed behind her, Harrow sped up to catch up to Silas, who was a ways ahead of her and speed-walking away shockingly quickly. 

“Silas,” she called, no longer in Reverend Daughter Major Bitch Mode. She did the exact same stupid little jog Gideon had just done and slowed to a stop at Colum’s side, walking backwards to face them. “I thought you would have understood—we can’t talk about this in front of them. It’s already a risk to have told you about this.” 

“I know,” Silas said, voice sharp and too loud. “I know that.” 

Colum murmured something to him, low and under his breath. Silas let out a tense sigh through his teeth. He looked like someone had just poured freezing water over his head. 

“I don’t know what you two think is appropriate, but people don’t do that. You can’t just lie , it’s not right , even pretending nothing happened is wrong —”

Harrow let out an imperious laugh. It came out sharper and more lopsided than usual. “Right. And you think what you did is any better? You haven’t told the Lady Pent about what happened yet. You haven’t said anything during therapy. If you’re so honest, so high and mighty, then why didn’t you fill out any of the worksheets? Isn’t that lying too?”

Silas choked. He froze, mid-gesticulation, hands balled into fists. Gideon could see the frustration working across his forehead. 

“Shut up,” he said. “Shut up. ” The bleach whites hanging crisply from his shoulders were trembling. For someone who had just gone on a pathetic little lecture about their behavior being inappropriate, Silas wasn’t exactly being the picture of niceness right now. He turned on his heel, posture perfectly military-straight, and walked down the hallway, leaving Colum standing dumbly in his wake.

“I’m sorry about him,” he said, slowly. It seemed to be Colum Asht protocol to say things slowly. “This isn’t anything personal, you have to understand. He’s been like this since he was very small.”

Gideon, who had known Harrow since she was very small, and had seen her be a hell of a lot worse than Silas had just been, nodded sagely. 

“Is he going to be alright?” Harrow asked. Gideon hadn’t seen her this nice, ever. Usually Harrow’s interactions with people fell into one of three categories: being a bitch to them, being a bitch to them and also very superior, and ignoring them altogether in favor of being dark and brooding and mysterious like some kind of human bat.

“In a bit of time. He needs rest, for one thing.” He took a deep breath in and then out. “You two. Follow me. It will do him good to have someone to talk to.”

Gideon highly doubted this, as she had been around Harrow when she was about Silas’s age and it had done her absolutely no good to talk to Gideon. But Silas wasn’t Harrow, and Gideon wasn’t the same Gideon she had been when she and Harrow had been eternally at each other’s throats, and she followed Colum, wordless and exhausted from being around so many asshole necromancers. There wasn’t a damn thing in the world you could give her to get her to spend more time with these people. 

And yet here she was, trudging down the hallway in her dumbass Tomb robes, following someone else’s cav to go see a necromancer she didn’t even like . 

The Eighth House’s chambers were exactly as she’d expected them to be. The door’s handle was polished to a bright, harsh shine; the hinges swung without even the hint of a hint of a sound. The chambers inside were just the same. Painfully clean, painfully bare. There was no bed in sight, but she hoped that meant they were just really, really private and not the uncomfortable other option. 

Silas, who had clearly gotten here just minutes earlier, was kneeling bare-legged on the hardwood floor, posture exactingly straight. His hair had come half-loose from its rigid plait, and was sitting in long white wisps over his shoulders. It nearly blended into the wings of his robes.

He was praying, Gideon realized, when her ears caught up with the rest of her. His voice was clear and reedy, as always, and there was a catch in his throat more than there had been before the argument in the hall. The murky, curdled-lemon beams of Dominicus’s light were streaming in through the tall windows, making harsh, sharply-lined pools on the floor. 

“Si,” Colum said, coming to kneel at his side. Silas looked up, white eyelashes standing out brilliantly against his red-rimmed eyes, and looked at Colum with deep betrayal. 

“You brought them . Here. ” 

“Wow, nice to see you too,” Gideon said, even though she had kind of been expecting this. 

“I don’t want them here,” Silas said with great urgency, standing up and turning so his back was against the wall. “Colum, make them leave.”

“I thought it would be helpful to have someone else to talk to. Someone who understands.”

“She doesn’t understand.” The way he said it made it sound like the she in question had put something putrid on the table in front of him. “They’re bone cultists . They don’t understand anything.”

“You know you don’t believe that.”

Gideon was fully prepared to swear her life on Silas believing that. Thankfully, she didn’t have any chance to, because it was barely a minute later that he brought one ineffectual necromancer fist down on the table, then the other, then sank down into the harshly scrubbed wooden stool just beside it. 

“Should we—do something?” Harrow whispered to Gideon, brow furrowed. Gideon just shrugged. Ordinarily she would have been vindicated that her necromancer was just as clueless as she was, but honestly in this situation she would have given anything for Harrow to have answers. 

“Sit, please,” Colum said. He sounded very, very tired. 

Harrow sat. Gideon, who didn’t really have anything else to do, sat beside her. 

Silas wasn’t looking at them. He was still staring at the table, wispy hair hanging in his face. Colum moved, and Gideon thought he’d sit beside them, but instead he went to the clean silver kettle in the corner and started making tea. Great , thought Gideon, half-hysterically. Another fucking tea party.

It took a while for the tea to steep (the Eighth apparently had an aversion to all things that tasted even kind of good, and so the tea was bitterly black and cold brewed), and the whole time, they sat in silence, watching Silas at the table, his spidery white fingers drumming out a slow, quiet pattern on the wooden tabletop.

“Drink,” Colum said to no one in particular, putting a plain white cylindrical mug in front of each of them. Harrow expertly tried to hide her grimace as she took a sip. Gideon, who was used to things tasting not even kind of good, drank at least half of hers just for the caffeine. Silas, who seemed to have a thing for being the most contrary person in whatever room he was in, did not drink. 

“I have to fast,” he intoned. Harrow, seated directly at Gideon’s side, bristled like a bony porcupine. “All that I have done since I came to this place was skirting the line to blasphemy, and I am certain that somewhere I have crossed it. I will fast. This will be atonement.”

Atonement, my ass, Gideon really, really wanted to say. She maintained the one modicum of self-control she had left after all this bullshit and did not say it.

“Silas,” Colum began.

“Brother Asht, do not argue with me on this. I have done wrong; I have communed with heretics and bone cultists and participated in the collective defilement of this holy space.”

“Rude,” the heretic and bone cultist pointed out, kind of offended on Harrow’s behalf. 

“You have done what the space you are in asks you to do,” Colum said, with more patience than Gideon had ever heard from anyone. “You and I both know I was raised to do right, I am your sword and your energy, and I would not steer you towards sin. No one here has done anything wrong. Not you, not myself, not the Reverend Daughter and her cavalier.” There was a slight pause before he addressed them, which made Gideon think he had been about to say “the bone cultists” but thought better of it.

“You’re wrong. You are wrong and you must know it.” 

“Silas,” he said. “Listen to reason.”

“No—I don’t need to listen to reason, you do. You are getting in the way of the rituals of our House—”

“No one does this but you!” This was the first time Gideon had heard Colum so much as raise his voice, and she kind of thought it was badass. “Silas, I’ve been in charge of you since you were a baby. I know you. I know that this isn’t going to do you any good.”

Harrow, at Gideon’s side, was still bristling, stiffer than the bones in her pockets. The whole fasting thing had struck her the wrong way—Gideon had no idea why, but it was totally fair to be squicked out by his whole fight to be a weirdo. 

“Brother Asht,” Silas said, remarkably unsteady. “Please. If you no longer wish to aid me, at least don’t get in my way.”

“It seems like aiding you would kind of mean getting in your way,” Gideon said, possibly stupidly. Harrow fixed her with a look that was half-glare, half-something else. 

Not for the first time that night, she wished she had paid more attention to the people around her. She wished she was Palamedes and Camilla, who were easy to be around and didn’t put anyone on their guards except maybe Harrow; she wished she was Dulcinea Septimus, who could just make you talk by virtue of being doddering and harmless.

“Griddle,” Harrow said quietly, “absolutely no one here is equipped to deal with this. Take the other cav. Go get Lady Pent and Sir Quinn.”

This was an idea that was kind of good, and Gideon wished she’d had it herself. She met Colum’s eyes—not an easy task, considering how tall he was and how she was still sitting in a stool like an idiot—and did a lame little head-nod towards the door. Somehow he picked up what she was very incompetently laying down, and gave Silas one singular pat on the shoulder before walking to open the door for her.

“This happens a lot, then?” Gideon asked as soon as they were outside. Colum shrugged his oversized shoulders in response.

“Enough.”

“How long?” She couldn’t imagine dealing with that for her whole life.

“As long as I’ve been his cavalier,” he said, rounding the corner towards the Fifth’s quarters. “He used to get night terrors about the Emperor telling him he had done something wrong, and then he’d wake up, scared out of his mind that he’d somehow committed blasphemy in his sleep because he was afraid.” Colum shook his head. “It didn’t worry anyone else. Someone in my uncle’s position is supposed to devote every second to maintaining his moral purity, and him running off during meals to pray was simply… him doing his job.”

“Fuck,” Gideon said, for lack of anything else to say. “Must’ve been hard.”

“I’m sure it was. He only had me to talk to—I’m sworn to secrecy, of course, so no one else on the Eighth has ever heard a thing about it.”

This made Gideon feel like a bit of a dick, because she had meant that it must have been hard for him , not for Silas, who had, you know, actually been the one experiencing the stuff, and so she stayed silent for a while longer as they walked to the Fifth’s door. 

Colum knocked, which saved Gideon from the fate of having Magnus jump out at her with a sword. He was wearing a pair of exceedingly stupid reading glasses, and a worn but well-made dressing gown, and looked very startled at seeing a pair of necromancer-less cavs wandering around. And probably, also, these two specific necromancer-less cavs wandering around. 

Once he’d calmed down from the shock, he sighed, rubbing one well-callused hand over his face. “What did they do,” he said, less of a question than a declaration of exhaustion. 

“It’ll be easier to explain once you’re dressed.”

A few minutes later, Magnus and Abigail were walking alongside her and Colum, and the two of them were tag-teaming an explanation of the tea party, and everything that had happened after, up to the fight they’d just had. Gideon left out everything Harrow had told her in confidence, mostly because it wasn’t relevant, but partly out of respect for her privacy. 

“I had no idea Harrow had been so helpful,” Abigail mused as they power-walked down the hallway. “It’s good to hear that she’s acclimating—or, not acclimating, but rather communicating. You know I’ve been working on a history project, I’ve thought for a long time that there’s more out there than we’re aware of when it comes to naming and treating these conditions—”

And then they were at the door, and Gideon found herself hoping, not for the first time that day, that Silas and Harrow hadn’t torn each other’s throats out. 

“Ah, um, Brother Octakiseron?” Magnus said, tapping the back of his knuckles on the door twice. 

No response. Gideon felt her face, underneath the hideous skull paint, drain of blood. 

Slowly, the door swung open, uncomfortably silent on its overoiled hinges. Standing there, draped in her black robes, looking as alive as she ever had, was Harrowhark Goddamn Nonagesimus. This was the first time ever in her life that Gideon had actually been happy to see her. 

“He’s inside,” she said, barely reacting to Magnus and Abigail’s presence. “Don’t come in all at once.”

Gideon, who was damnably and damningly curious, was the second person in after Colum, because they were uncle and nephew and also it was his room too, so it was only fair. When she managed to push past him into the room, she saw the exact scene from when she’d left. High, harsh windows, painfully clean floors and walls, and Silas Octakiseron, laying on the floor.

For a second she thought he was dead, and this was some kind of sick power play from Harrow. But as soon as she got a look at him, she could see him breathing, those fragile necromancer robes fluttering almost imperceptibly around him. She was relieved that Silas Octakiseron was alive—this was a big night for her. Lots of firsts.

Abigail murmured something to Magnus that Gideon didn’t pick up on and walked over to Silas, kneeling down next to him. “Poor child,” Magnus said quietly. 

The poor child sat up and made a very strong effort at not looking like he’d just been laying on the floor. This effort did not succeed, mainly because the crisp papery robes he wore were crumpled where he’d been laying on top of them. He gave everyone in the room a surly glare, and Gideon was very glad that she didn’t have to be Abigail right now. Or Colum. 

Gideon was not entirely convinced that them going to get the Fifth had been a good idea. Silas had been striking out at Colum already, and adding the stifling care of Magnus and Abigail on top of that would have made anyone fighting mad. If she had been a crazy little weirdo on a new House with only Harrow for company—which she kind of was, now that she thought about it—she wouldn’t want to be fussed over by Harrow and another random House.

“Hey, you guys think the kid needs some space?” she said, against her better judgment. Her better judgment had kind of been getting a workout lately. To her surprise, though, Abigail seemed to actually consider this. 

“You’re right. Colum the Eight—it is Colum , yes?—come sit. Harrowhark, Gideon, you can wait outside if you need us. Magnus, you go with them.”

Magnus nodded and opened the door for them, ushering her and Harrow out of the room. 

Once the door was closed, Magnus sighed, looking a lot older all of a sudden. “Are you two alright? This can’t have been the most pleasant time for you.”

“I’m fine,” Harrow said icily. Gideon just shrugged.

“I worry about all of you,” he mused. “All the children—and the others, too. And I know it must seem so condescending, but I do.”

Harrow hmm ed, staring out at the wall.

“There’s something wrong here,” Magnus said. “A danger. It sounds crazy, I’m sure. Paranoid. But there’s a feeling here. We brought Isaac and Jeanne here to protect them from the Cohort, but now…” 

He sighed. “I shouldn’t worry you like this. You have enough to think about already. But be on your guard, Ninth—both of you. I hope to God I’m wrong.” 

Gideon felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. 

*    *    *

Group therapy, shockingly, went well the next time they met. After Magnus’s warning, Gideon had made it her sworn duty to make sure no horrible things happened to the Fourth kids, so she’d become the pseudo-babysitter to a very suspicious Isaac and Jeannemary for the past three days. 

The kids were kind of cool, shockingly enough. They were funny sometimes, not always on purpose, and Jeanne was decent enough with a sword. She fought like a real cav—her dagger was always right at you when she had a spare second. She remembered her saying how much she wanted to be like Gideon, fighting like a real cav, and longed to grab her two-hander and show Jeannemary how she really fought. 

When they met up for therapy again, Gideon arrived with Jeanne and Isaac chattering at her side. Magnus seemed genuinely cheered that they were getting along. Harrow was already there when they showed up, sitting with her prayer beads in her lap. She and Abigail were deep in conversation—Gideon caught snatches of words, something about osseous possession—and she seemed kind of happy. Leave it to Harrow to get all hot and bothered about osseous possession . 

They waited in there for a solid half hour before Silas arrived, hair tied back in a simple knot instead of braided and pinned like normal, deep circles developing under his eyes that rivaled the eye makeup the teens wore. He sat, his wrinkled white robes falling limply around him, and deliberately did not meet anybody’s eyes as he settled into his chair.

“Now that everyone’s here,” Magnus said, “why don’t we have a little bit of a talk? I know a few of us have been struggling more than usual lately, and I thought it might do us some good to think up a list of ways to help ourselves when we’re stressed.” He was being very generous by saying “we”, Gideon thought, and not “you, specifically Harrowhark and Silas”.

“Swords,” Jeannemary said almost immediately. Isaac nodded solemnly from her side. 

“Right,” Magnus said. He was making a valiant effort to sound encouraging. “Swords.”

“It’s true,” Gideon said, unhelpfully. 

“How about something more… accessible?” Abigail said. “I know one of the things that I do when I’m stressed is make myself a nice cup of tea and read one of my favorite histories.” 

Gideon figured this was what most people on the Fifth did when they were stressed, and also all the time. 

“I read comics,” she said, because she figured it was only fair to say something. “And work out. Mostly the working out thing.”

“Yes, good, those are both very helpful. Thank you, Gideon.” 

Harrow, not to be outdone, said in her Reverend Daughter Intonation voice: “I meditate.”

“Another good point! Thank you , Harrow.” 

They kept talking about these ‘coping mechanisms’ for the rest of the session. Magnus made a few attempts at getting Silas to say something, but he didn’t offer anything. Not so much as a glance at Harrow. 

As everyone gathered everything up to leave, Silas glanced out the door, then quietly approached Magnus and Abigail, talking to them in low tones. He was doing the same thing Harrow did, his hands balled up in the fine thin chain mail of his kirtle just like Harrow balled up her hands in her robes. 

For a moment, Gideon debated watching. She was curious—and she felt like she had to stick around to make sure Silas didn’t, like, suck out their souls through their eyeballs or something. 

But Harrow was waiting, and said, “Griddle, come here,” and she saw Magnus giving Silas a concerned look and turning to Abigail, and she figured she probably shouldn’t bother them any more than she already had, and so she turned on her heel and followed Harrow out.

*    *    *

“What are you doing?” Gideon asked, draping herself over Harrow’s chair and into her personal space, just to annoy her. 

“Writing a letter,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Well, yeah, duh , but why? Who would we even write to?”

“It’s to Silas,” she said, setting down her pen and rubbing the bridge of her nose. A twitch had started just above her eyebrow, and Gideon had very likely caused it. 

“Why the hell are you writing a letter to Silas?”

“We’re inviting him over for tea again,” Harrow said waspishly. “If you would leave me alone to my work , Griddle—”

“You’re serious.”

“As the grave.”

“Yeah, brilliant , ’cause the last time went great —” 

“Last time,” Harrow said, speaking right over Gideon as though her words meant nothing at all, “Silas was untreated, and hated us, and did not think of me as an equal. These things are marginally less true now. Do I need to repeat what I said about leaving me to work, or will you go do something inane of your own free will?”

“Press-ups aren’t inane, unless you’re cool with your cavalier being a limp noodle,” Gideon said, mostly just to get a jab in. “And you’re actually sure about this.”

“I am.” Harrow picked up her pen and resumed her writing. “I don’t see why not.”

“Uh, ’cause him and his whole House hates our guts and wants us to rot away on a shitty little space rock?”

“If he does, then he won’t respond, and then we’ll simply go back to not talking to each other. And I cannot believe that I have to remind you that we are stuck here , and if we go around making enemies of every other house then we end up with no resources. I do not doubt your skills with a sword, but having a necromancer with a different skill set than myself may be… productive.”

“You want to be best pals with Silas the gross spirit boy,” Gideon said, disbelieving.

“I do not want to be best pals with anyone, Griddle, I want an ally . This will be strictly a business relationship. A quid pro quo. His spirit expertise for my osseous necromantic advice, and the occasional friendly encounter if that will make the gears turn smoother.”

“You want to be best business pals with Silas the gross spirit boy.” 

“I’m done having this conversation. Go find someone to be best pals with yourself if you’re so set on the topic, and leave me alone. ”

Gideon, who was pretty keen on the idea of being best pals with somebody besides Harrow for a change, did exactly that. 

A few days earlier, they would have all been at each other’s throats, she thought as she wandered the light-filled halls of Canaan House. But now, the necromancer adepts and their cavaliers were being… cordial. Even nice. The smiles and respectful nods from their third session had become friendly conversation and genuine happiness to see one another. Gideon had even caught Dulcinea and Protesilaus in deep discussion with the Sixth once, and they had invited her over. Like they cared about what she thought. 

The first people she found to be best pals with was Jeannemary and Naberius standing in one of the communal halls, the former listening to the latter’s probably useless swordplay advice. Corona was draped like a fine golden cloth over a low chaise, Ianthe sitting stiffly beside her; Isaac and the Fifth were in the opposite corner, watching Jeannemary. Occasionally Magnus would cheer something encouraging her way, and she would sigh in one long, disgusted tone before getting back to it. 

Gideon watched this until someone noticed she was there. That someone happened to be Coronabeth, who waved, which made Naberius and Jeannemary turn to look, which made everyone in the room incredibly focused on her and her presence.

She waved, kind of idiotically, and Magnus waved back. “Come in, come in! We could use another cavalier in here, we’re a bit outnumbered at the moment,” he said jovially, and gestured for Gideon to join him on the huge ornate sofas of the common area. She did so, collapsing in a big lump of black fabric onto the sofa. Despite her being a big lump of black fabric, nobody but Naberius seemed even the littlest bit disconcerted by any of this. They were being really incredibly normal about all this. 

The two cavs sparred for a little longer, and Magnus occasionally got up to correct Jeannemary’s form, and Gideon called partially useless advice from the couch. She figured that a real cav would be more useless than a faker who preferred her two-hander, and so she busied herself looking out the windows into the rest of the halls of Canaan House. 

As she watched, a skeleton with a letter clutched in its bony hands approached, just as Silas and Colum were walking down the hall, engaged in intense conversation that Gideon couldn’t quite hear. The skeleton stopped them, handed them the letter—on paper Gideon recognized, sealed with black wax that was probably stamped with a skull seal—and waited at their side. 

Silas opened it, read the letter, and actually smiled—probably not an easy expression for his severe, hard face. He handed the letter back to the skeleton, said something Gideon didn’t hear, and then they started down the hall, the way the skeleton had come from. 

…Maybe Harrow had been onto something after all.