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Harrow could not believe she’d let Griddle talk her into this. Had being here at Canaan House made her go soft? When had she ever let Gideon Nav convince her to do anything she didn’t want to do? Especially something like this.
Harrow could think of things worse than a dinner party, obviously she could think of things worse than a dinner party, but the fact that she could did not make the idea of a dinner party any better. She should be down in the basement beating the construct and taking another step towards proving she was worthy of being a Lyctor, but instead she was here at a dinner party enduring small talk.
Or, more accurately, not enduring small talk. Harrow was no shining conversationalist and it appeared no one she had been sitting near was either. Protesilaus the Seventh had a conversational acuity that put Harrow in mind of a corpse, and Silas Octakiseron had taken one look at her when she’d sat down and made a sign to ward against evil. The pale Third twin and the Third cavalier were more animated. Their conversation topics were alternately horribly dull or far more information than Harrow needed, but she was desperate enough that she might have listened in and tried to nod at all the right places to feel like she was part of the conversation had they both not looked at her like she was something slimy they’d stepped in.
The food was bad too. Or perhaps it wasn’t bad and Harrow was just bad at food. There were too many flavors and all those flavors were unfamiliar. Harrow and food didn’t get along under the best of circumstances. Fortunately food on the Ninth was generally bland and simple and she could tolerate it most of the time. All the food they’d eaten here at Canaan House had been at least a little objectionable—too many new textures and unfamiliar tastes—but now she realized it had all been simple compared to the Fifth’s cooking. The fact that she was still a little nauseous from overexerting herself down in the facility this morning didn’t help either. The only reason she even made an attempt at eating was because Silas Octakiseron was abstaining claiming some kind of Eighth religious tenet. Harrow would have respected that except that he’d said it while looking disgustedly at her which made her think her presence was his actual reason. She refused to do anything that made her seem similar to the Eighth necromancer so she made herself eat.
Meanwhile, down at the other end of the table, Gideon looked to be having a grand old time, if a grand old time counted as stuffing one’s face. Griddle’s obvious comfort in the crowd filled Harrow with an awful emotion somewhere between rage and jealousy. She had never been able to work out how Gideon Nav—easily the most universally hated of the Ninth’s three remaining children—had never appeared beaten down by the world. How could a child whose defenders numbered exactly one remain so brashly egotistical? Throughout their entire childhoods Harrow had often given in the urge to try to force Gideon to face how horrible and hopeless the world really was, but it had never worked. And now Griddle was pulling it off again here. It was bizarre and infuriating.
At least she appeared to be maintaining her faux vow of silence. Harrow found herself desperately jealous of her cavalier. If only she could have taken a concocted vow of silence of her own and then she wouldn’t have to worry about figuring out what to say to all these strangers. It couldn’t have happened, though, at least one member of the Ninth delegation had to be able to speak and it couldn’t be Griddle who would give the game away the instant she opened her stupid mouth. That meant that Harrow had to be the one who spoke for them both, even though that was proving to be a task she was not up to.
She kept having paranoid thoughts about what she looked like. Had she applied her face paint correctly? Was she wiping it off when she ate? Was there blood sweat on her somewhere? These thoughts were all ridiculous. She knew her paint had been perfect when they’d arrived and she had learned to eat without messing it up when she was a child. She’d taken a very thorough sonic before dressing for this event to make sure there was no trace of blood sweat on her. She was being ridiculous.
She attempted another inane comment to the Seventh cavalier only to have to wait what felt like a whole myriad to get a response. The only part of her brain that was not increasingly jittering around in a sea of social anxiety snidely thought that it really was like having a conversation with a corpse. This was drowned out by the growing part of her brain that wanted to hide under the table, though that obviously wouldn’t improve the situation at all.
In her day to day life at home it was almost possible to forget that Harrow had basically no conversational skills. She only really talked to a small handful of people she was already comfortable with and whenever she had to talk to the rest of her people it was in formal or ceremonial circumstances where there were scripts for her to follow. She was not made for this sort of socialization.
As always when she was forced to remember how terrible she was a talking to people she eventually found herself thinking of her parents. Surely if Harrow had had the right words she could have convinced them not to take their own lives. Outwardly she told herself she hated Griddle for what had happened to her parents, but inwardly she hated herself. She was the one who had opened the Tomb and looked at the Body. She was the one who had been careless enough to be caught. She was the one who had failed to say the right words to convince her parents to stay. Blaming Gideon was just a crutch.
She bit the inside of her cheek hard to stop those thoughts in their tracks. She bit her cheek again to control the urge to hide under the table. She eyed the clock hung on the wall over the kitchen door. She wondered how long she had to stay here before it wouldn’t be rude to leave. She just wanted to go down the facility and complete the trial. She’d even take returning to the Ninth quarters. She’d take being anywhere but here.
But dessert hadn’t come yet and she knew that she’d never be able to drag Griddle away without creating a scene until after that. She was stuck here.
Hopefully dessert came soon.