Chapter Text
Here’s the thing. Trentham? Pretty fucking cold. Like, yeah, the concrete bunkers and the armour-plas and all that doesn’t help but even if you take all that away it’s still freezing my tits off. And sure, I grew up on the Ninth - and thank the King Undying that I wasn’t there anymore - which was chilly, but Trentham was different. Harrow’s little domain was the old, slow cold of tombs and graves. Hit Aisamorta or one of those bone-clacking revenants with a Trentham gale, the wind whipping in from the poles across the shuttle ground, and they’d go ass-over-teakettle, shivering all the way.
Pretty fucking funny image.
I was thinking about the Ninth more, now. Obviously. Harrow would be at Canaan House. She was too much of a weird little bone nun not to get all hot and bothered (as much as the temperature of her soul ever crept above absolute zero, anyway) at a letter from God. Would she recognise me? Obviously she would. Obviously, and, and - anyway. Didn’t matter. Not really. I’d made this life myself. Gideon the Second didn’t owe her anything.
Gideon Dyas, actually. The name still sat uncomfortably. It chafed like a too-tight swordbelt - knew what the felt like fucking intimately because the Ninth didn’t make things for people like me and the Dve Territorials assistant armourer had just stared and muttered something about standard sizing and offered to buy me a drink (Liz had laughed at - don’t think about Liz).
It’d been Marta’s idea. I’d seen her a few days ago - Judith was busy with the handover brief in the next room, and I’d gotten a few moments with her. She’d been in bed, still convalescent; but her hand seized mine, skin paper thin and feverishly hot and I cracked some dumb joke about doctors and healing and she’d ignored me and said, voice half rasping, “Judith is my life. You have to protect her. You’ll be there in my name.”
I’d swallowed a lump in my throat and thought about how I didn’t deserve her friendship. “Yeah,” I’d told her, but it sounded rounded off, informal, a dismissal and she still had my hand in that grip and so I’d cleared my throat and said, “Yes. I will. I swore it. I can do it again?”
She’d let go of my hand, sinking back onto the pillows, eyes starting to shutter closed. “I trust you. I don’t need that. Just make sure she’s safe.”
So I would. I’d lost my platoon on Khiron, lost my friends, for all we’d won the war. I wasn’t about to let that happen again. I was a cavalier, now, cavalier primary of the Second. That meant something. I wasn’t like Ortus, someone with poetic words - fuck me what a disaster that he was my only point of reference for anything vaguely fancy - who could describe it. But I had my blade, and I had my vow.
And I had my adept.
The bunker doors slid open behind me, a gust of over-pressured warm air pushing out like the breath of a beast. “Apologies for the delay, Lieutenant Dyas,” said Judith. I turned, braced up, saluted smartly. She returned it, hand snapping perfectly to her brow, the faintest moue of discomfort on her face. Probably the wind. Dress reds looked sick, guaranteed panty dropper (I spoke from considerable experience) but they were not well insulated. “Shall we be about it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
We went. The shuttle was a silvery personnel transport, well appointed. No crash-harnesses and shock-gel and gun-pods chattering fire into the LZ, and thank God for it. Unmanned, too, which was weird. Remotely controlled off the First, probably. Judith settled her seabag (I’d gotten the rest of our dunnage stowed that morning with help from a very hungover work detail) and the ship kissed off the ground, Trentham’s surface falling into the distance.
Neither of us said anything, those first minutes as we cleared atmo and made for the supra limit. What was there to say?
Comm-intercepts and hort-codes buzzed as we burnt priority direct across the orbital defence identification zone. Snouts of heavy guns tracked us through the void, fusion pulsers and mass drivers and everything else the Cohort could muster. Out the porthole, the great bulk of HMS Conquerer loomed, flagship of the 7th Interface Response Group; our immediate reaction force inside Joint Operations Area Dominicus. A brigade of three thousand marines at twelve hour notice to move, another twenty two thousand in follow on elements.
I’d checked it carefully. Just in case. I was pretty good with a sword. Okay, no, I was superb with a sword. But if we ran into trouble, a whole bunch of pissed off bucket-heads wouldn’t hurt.
Deep space now, past the limit, and the porthole stars blurred, red-shifted, as the supraluminal engines kicked in. Something seemed to release in Judith, her bowstring taut frame loosening just a skosh. “Three hours,” she observed.
“Yes,” and dropping the ma’am because she’d told me I could, and Marta had said that I probably should, and it was another nakedness. “Do you need the grave dirt brought out?”
“No. Thank you, Dyas.” The words seemed carefully chosen, precisely placed. Judith was a precise woman. Obviously. But I couldn’t imagine it had been like this between Marta and her. Not that I expected something that close off the back of a few weeks partnership, not that I was even sure I wanted it but…but anyway. Too many of my thoughts trailed off into a mess these days. Hardly good material for my inevitable skin mag series, unless it was one of those fuck-off boring Seventh ones which were all weepy and artistic and shit.
“Do you have all the kit you need?” Judith asked.
“Yes,” and then because the real question was a stock-take, “Longsword, rapier, off-hand dagger, two carbines with eight magazines each, hold out pistol, frag and krak grenades, breaching charges, and ratpacks for seven days.” And an emergency transponder in a hidden compartment I wasn’t talking about.
She raised an eyebrow. “No anti-tank launcher?”
“Jeannemary’s bringing it.”
“Of course.”
Most of the rest of the trip passed in silence.
—
I’d had three years to get used to sunlight, but the First still impressed. It blazed in through the portholes like a tide as we came into land. Something to focus on. The descent was gentle, not a juddering assault drop lit only by high-alt nuke bursts but it was still an effort of will to let Judith head down the ramp first, to keep five steps behind her as was proper for a cavalier. This was safe ground. The First House, where God had arisen in glory -
A weathered half-ruin. It had been great, once. White stone walls, minarets marbled with gold, terraced gardens. But the towers had tumbled, the walls bowed under by age, the greenery spiralling into greying rot and filmy decay. The upper garden had an excellent field of fire onto the shuttle dock.
We were all a parade of brightness next to it. Judith had pulled out the intelligence files on the other heirs. I knew them by that. The beanpole thin man and the woman with blunt-cropped hair in scholar’s greys had to be the Sixth. The Eighth were milk-white and sour-faced and though I wasn’t Ninth anymore they looked instantly punchable. Especially the little one in silver filigreed chainmail. The Seventh, right in line with Judith’s notes, was the seafoam green figure looking about to expire.
Introductions were made, conversations sprang up. We’d come down next to the Fourth and Fifth, thank God, so I could chat to Jeannemary as Isaac and Judith and Abigail got to talking obscure necromantic arts. She was taller than when I’d last seen her, gold flashes at her shoulders marking command - the Fourth were in House blues today, but she was a Cohort officer same as me. She’d seen the firing position into the garden too, and regretted that First House wasn’t good tank country and -
“Jody!”
That spun me around, tensed, ready to go for my sword. Judith squared her shoulders a very little, the tic Marta had told me to look out for, and said. “Princess Coronabeth.”
“Oh, come on Jody. Don’t be like that. Not in front of Babs and everyone.” A vision in blonde, the princess who’d been at Liz’s funeral, gestured at a sulky fellow who seemed more hair-gel than man; Naberius Tern, Prince of Ida; and Princess Ianthe, her sallow-faced reflection who managed to make all of Corona’s advantages into disadvantages which honestly I hadn’t even been sure was possible. This Fourth and Fifth discreetly backed away. Bastards. I glanced recrimination at Jeannemary and thought about trying to blink-code ‘some fidelity, huh, you bitch, get back here and help us.’
“Naberius. Ianthe.” The slightest nod to each. Judith seemed determined to be icily polite until the gaggle fuck of Third Housers left us alone. I knew that Corona and her had a history but not anything actually of it. That maybe seemed worth checking out now. Coronabeth also worth checking out for totally different reasons. “My cavalier, Gideon the Second.”
“Oh, of course, I heard about Marta - I hope she gets better soon? She’s really the life of our soirees.”
That I absolutely did not believe.
“I will pass on your sympathies.”
A handful more minutes passed in excruciating small talk, like actually, genuinely painful. White robed priests from Canaan House, at least, I thought they were priests - there was something off-putting about them, so clergy made the most sense in my experience - flitted about. Dulcinea the Seventh and her big man-hulk of a cav had shambled into a conversation with the Sixth, which looked vaguely comical. I caught Naberius, Babs, eyeing me, trying to scope my whole deal probably. Unfortunately, flexing at him wasn’t really the Second thing, and I was of the Second, so I matched Judith’s tone and imitated parade ground soldiery.
We managed to win free when the last shuttle came down; Judith made her excuses about wishing to talk to its occupant. To Harrow. I’d been scouring the LZ from the moment we debarked for a black-on-black figure (any paving stones screaming or plants dying at her presence would only be another giveaway) but no dice. So this last one had to be her. And Ortus, probably, poor fuck.
“You need not speak to her, if you do not wish it,” Judith said, quietly. I hadn’t told her everything about Harrow. Obviously. But enough, and she had a fierce mind and no doubt had figured out more than that.
“It’s fine.”
The ramp came down, and out stepped Harrowhark Nonagesimus, fully clad in layers of black lace, a dark veil, a little ambulatory pocket of Drearburh. She hadn’t changed a bit. An evil stick, an unfashionable shadow, a blight and a pox and this was the reunion I’d been hoping for and fearing and I didn’t even have any good one liners.
It struck me, in the light spilling from Dominicus, how small she really was.
Her gaze up, tracking - it settled on me and she stopped. Stock-still. “Griddle?” Only half-audible, breath catching. Beneath her veil, a flash of wider eyes, a furrowed brow. I could read Harrow like a skin mag. Always been good at it. But it still took me a second to realise - she was confused.
I liked it.
And then I knew precisely what I was going to say, the pieces clicking into place.
“Lieutenant Gideon Dyas, ma’am,” I said, with utter pomp. Glorying. Revelling. This was the nightmare, the foulness, an insane creep with such catastrophically bad vibes she could probably murder a planet in her sleep. And now I had one over on her. Fuck the Ninth (except Aiglamene, she was cool) and fuck Harrow and look at me. Look at what I made of myself when I escaped you. Rubbing that into the wound was worth a hundred bad jokes and a thousand shit-eating grins. “May I present my adept, Captain Judith Deuteros?”
A long, long pause.
“You may,” Harrow said, eventually, and something of her sepulchral tone wavered.
“A pleasure,” Judith said, briskly. “Gideon is one of our best. Though she is now of the Second, I wished to commend her to your attention. She honours both her Houses and the King Undying through her service.”
I fought back at an extremely confused smile. Judith certainly hadn’t said that to me before. I mean, sure, she’d taken me as her cav so I’d guessed she probably thought I was at least semi-decent at swinging a sword around, but, yeah. Huh. Weird. Good weird. But weird.
It struck me, in the ensuing quiet, that I maybe should have briefed Judith a bit more carefully about Harrow (to wit, a hideous witch from hell). But Harrow merely nodded.
“Is Ortus here, ma’am?” I asked, because it seemed something to ask, and at least that way I could know what else I was dealing with. Ortus was fine. Crux would be a joke. If it was Aiglamene…I didn’t know. I’d done a lot of what she’d said I could, but I’d left the Ninth to do it.
In silent reply, a black shrouded figure came walking out of the shuttle, feet ringing loud on the metal and clicking onto stone. Much slighter than Ortus, smoother at the joints than anyone in the Ninth, had they found some mercenary or some - a gust of that humid wind ruffled its cloak back.
We stared.
A skeleton looked back at us, a red spark in its empty eyes.
It had a rapier belted at its side.