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PROLOGUE

Even before she opened her eyes, Gideon knew that something was different. Growing up in the dingiest cell on the most depressing wing of the bleakest dormitory on the darkest planet in the solar system attuned a person to the tiniest nuances of the light, and the diffuse and overbright way the early morning rays of Dominicus seeped in at the edges of the blackout curtains was new; in all the months they had been on the First, she’d never seen anything quite like it.

“Warden,” she heard Camilla say inches away from her face, probably into the side of her necromancer’s neck where her face was surely jammed, “Sorry. Hey. I need to get up.”

“No sorry,” he mumbled, presumably into her hair.

“Sure,” said Camilla, and Gideon felt her own hand be gently shifted from Camilla’s tit where it had been resting to the corner of her pillow. She cracked an eye open to watch Camilla extract herself from Palamedes, climb across his body and over the side of the squashy, ancient bed, successfully avoid all the squeakiest parts of the mattress (it was impossible to avoid some of the less squeaky parts, even for Cam), and roll into the fuzzy slippers she always left parked on the floor. Camilla crept past the cavalier cot heavy with weapons, past the whiteboards covered with a bunch of necro mumbo jumbo and toward the nearest window.

When she peered around the edge of the curtain and gasped audibly, Palamedes seemed to come alive.

“Warden,” she whispered, more loudly and urgently this time.

“I’m here, Cam,” he replied as he hurried to join her. It was then that Gideon felt a stirring behind her, and much to her chagrin, Harrowhark removed her leg from where it had been thrown over Gideon’s hip, rolled out of the bed, and left Gideon cold and alone.

Camilla had wordlessly drawn back the curtain for Palamedes, and Gideon finally opened her eyes fully and understood what she was seeing.

The ocean in the distance looked very much the same – angrier, maybe, under the nickel-grey sky. But everything else in view was unrecognizable. It was as though someone had thrown a thick, sparkling white blanket across the entire landscape, and large white flecks filled the air as they drifted toward the ground.

“Remarkable,” Harrow said as she reached the window herself. “I’ve never seen so much snow.”

Camilla and Palamedes turned to gape at her.

“THAT’S snow?” said Palamedes.

“Good morning to you too,” Harrow replied.

“You have snow on the Ninth?” said Camilla.

 “In the leek fields, mostly,” Gideon piped up from the bed that everyone had left her alone in. “Something to do with the environmental controls, I think.”

“On days when Drearburh is facing away from Dominicus, the ambient moisture condenses on the roof of the atmospheric dome. To prevent it from freezing solid and damaging the surface, we vent it back into the atmosphere, where it crystallizes and falls to the ground as snow,” Harrow explained.

“Okay, that’s way less complicated than I always thought it would be,” said Gideon. “Hey, where are you going?”

This was directed at Camilla and Palamedes, who were putting on their softest trousers and thickest sweaters.

“I want to look at the snow up close,” said Palamedes.

“I’m going with him,” said Camilla.

“You’ll freeze like that, both of you,” said Harrow. “If you don’t have proper coats, you need to put on at least two more layers of clothing. And find some hats and gloves.”

“Better yet, get back in bed,” said Gideon. She patted the spot that Camilla had vacated, waggling her eyebrows.

“No, Griddle, you get up too,” said Harrow. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, if the Sixth are going to spend the day catching snowflakes on their tongues.”

“Actually, Harrow, would you mind joining us?” said Palamedes. “We could use your expertise. Cam, write down the snowflake idea, would you?”

“Already did,” said Camilla, holding up her notebook.

Gideon pulled the covers back over herself, hoping that would be the end of it and she could have a nice warm lie-in, even if neither of her girlfriends was going to lie in with her. Unfortunately, Harrow noticed and grabbed her blanket-covered leg, shaking it with her feeble bird-boned necro arm.

“Nice try,” she said.

Gideon groaned.

I. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

“All right,” said Palamedes. “Give me the rundown.”

“First, we make initial observations,” Camilla read from her notebook. “Appearance is already noted, although we’ll want to get a close look as well. Sound, if any; smell, if any; taste; and, of course, texture.”

“Brilliant,” said Palamedes, fiddling with the thick, soft gloves Cam had found coated in a layer of dust in the closet of one of the Lyctoral studies.

“Then we catch some flakes and view them through the ocular,” Camilla continued, holding up the tiny handheld microscope they had brought from the Sixth.

“Perfect,” said Palamedes. He tried to run his fingers through his hair, but the ostentatiously large and thick hat that had been sitting next to the gloves in the Lyctoral study closet was in the way.

“Then we improvise – any further experiments that come to mind,” said Camilla.

“Excellent,” said Palamedes. He looked at Camilla in the soft knit cap she’d found that he’d insisted she wear as Harrowhark had advised. Her hair curled sharply under it and framed her face in the cutest way he’d ever seen. “Well. Shall I?”

“Only one step at a time, please,” she said. “Until we fully understand what we’re dealing with.”

Palamedes nodded and opened the door to the terrace.

During their childhood and adolescence, both he and Camilla had spent plenty of time in cold storage rooms, for medical purposes as well as while on duty shifts in food cataloguing and preparation. He had expected this experience to be similar, and therefore was not prepared for the gust of wind that blew a cloud of falling snow directly into his face. Nevertheless, he bravely set one foot out onto the tile, sheltered from the larger drifts by the building’s overhang, and then the other.

“Cam, hold on tight to that pencil,” he bellowed into the wind.

Camilla followed him onto the terrace and they surveyed their environment, hearts pounding.

“Minus five degrees centigrade,” said Camilla, looking at her pocket thermometer.

“Only minus five? It feels like minus fifty.”

“The thermometer is accurate. Could feel colder because of the wind.”

“Of course,” said Palamedes thoughtfully. “Just like a fan – the wind draws the heat away from our bodies. And yet a temperature barely low enough to freeze water was enough to facilitate this amount of snow.”

Camilla was taking furious notes now, so Palamedes gingerly rested his foot on top of the snowdrift, not sure what to expect. Snow was made of ice, and ice was slippery, so maybe his foot would slide off? What did people on the Ninth do about that? What had people on the First done about it, prior to the Resurrection, for that matter? He suddenly felt very close to his ancestors. His foot went straight through the surface of the snow and he yelped loudly.

“Warden?” Camilla was instantly at his side.

“I’m fine, sorry,” he said quickly. “Just taken by surprise.”

Camilla looked skeptical. “I’ll go ahead,” she said, and stepped into the snowdrift as well, first with one foot, then with both. The snow came up to her ankles and caved in powdery-soft on top of her feet.

“It’s a little cold,” she said. She tucked her notebook under one arm and her pencil behind her ear and bent to gather a handful.

“Cam, what happened to your gloves?” asked Palamedes in alarm.

“Oh, I took them off,” she replied. “Can’t write with them on.”

“Your hands will freeze!”

“I’m fine. Okay. This smells like nothing, and tastes like…nothing. Like highly filtered water.”

“Cam, what if you get frostbite?”

“I’m not going to get frostbite,” Camilla said. “I’m fine. Can you catch a snowflake, please? They seem to melt too quickly on bare hands.”

Palamedes lifted his gloved hand and watched a few flakes settle on top. He took the ocular that Camilla offered him, fitted it to his eye, and gasped.

The most delicate, intricate crystal structure he had ever seen stared back at him, six clear diamond-bright points with fractal trim of a complexity beyond what even his brain could register. It was the most stunning thing he had ever seen.

“Look at this,” he said excitedly, removing the ocular and holding it out. “Look how beautiful. Oh, Cam, this is extraordinary.”

Camilla fitted the ocular to her own eye and took his hand with a gentleness that filled him with a rush of emotion. She looked at the snowflake on his glove and gasped as he had, and he was so in love with her, his handsome, wonderful cavalier, his partner in adventure, cheeks rosy with cold and dark hair curling under her cap growing wet and stringy.

She looked up and removed the ocular, and he took her face in his thick-gloved hands and kissed her right on the mouth, letting the seconds slow to a crawl as they stood together in the swirling cloud of snow.

When they pulled apart, a smirk spread across her lips.

“Nice improvising,” she said.

II. THE PERFECT CRIME

“You’re really getting the hang of snow,” said Gideon, footsteps crunching as she reached the far edge of the terrace. Harrow had suggested they look for snow shovels, and had then explained to Palamedes and Camilla what a snow shovel was, and then Camilla had volunteered to help search, but not before instructing Gideon to keep an eye on her necromancer.

“Thanks!” Palamedes said, grinning from ear to ear. His matchstick legs stretched straight out in front of him where he sat in a snowbank, rising above the surface only by virtue of the several layers of fabric they were wrapped in. His glasses were fogged beyond use, but Gideon supposed visibility wasn’t a priority when you were just sitting on the ground. She leaned against a low wall a few feet away and jammed her mittened hands into her pockets.

“Experiments turning up anything?” she said. “Anything interesting?” she amended, having lived with Palamedes for some time now.

“Everything interesting,” he replied. “Did you know that snow has a different thanergetic signature to liquid water? You can’t use psychometry on water; it’s all ancient so there’s no point, but snow? Now, that’s a different matter. I know exactly where all of this came from,” he said, holding up a handful. “It came…from the clouds.”

Gideon broke into a smile. “You’re taking the piss,” she said.

Palamedes laughed. “I am. But I really am learning so much. Actually, now that you’re here, I was hoping you might show me some of your favorite snow-based activities.”

“Um, okay,” said Gideon. “Well. We didn’t actually get this much on the Ninth, and most of the time I spent out there was to work, and the only one around to do anything with was Harrow, and she thought it was funny to hide bone chips underneath the snow so she could turn them into constructs that would grab my ankles while I tried to cross—”

“I’m sorry,” said Palamedes. “Never mind, we don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, no, it’s cool,” said Gideon. “What I was going to say was, I got pretty good at fighting back. Here, get up, I’ll show you.” She strode over to Palamedes and pulled him up by the hand, then took several steps away and scooped up a large handful of snow.

“I used to put chunks of rock in these when I could find it,” she continued, patting the snow into a sphere. “It was only a problem when I would mistake a bone chip for a rock. That was bad. I’m not gonna do that to you, though, don’t worry. This is just for fun.” She wound up her arm and lobbed the snowball at Palamedes. It hit him in the side of the head and knocked his glasses even more askew than they already were.

Palamedes gaped at her in astonishment for a moment before bending to pick up his own chunk of snow with obvious glee and patting it into a sphere like Gideon had. It disintegrated in his hands and, completely undeterred, he picked up more snow and tried again.

“Is there a trick to it? What’s the ideal density? Tell me everything,” he said. The second snowball proved to have more structural integrity than the first, and he threw it in Gideon’s direction, where it landed a short distance in front of her feet.

Gideon magnanimously came a few paces closer. “No trick, really,” she said. “Just vibes and practice. This is all supposed to be fun.”

“Okay,” said Palamedes, who was already working on another snowball. “Keep hitting me.”

“Uh.”

“What is it?”

Gideon scratched the back of her neck. “How much of a problem is it gonna be if Cam comes back out and sees me pelting you with snow?”

“Oh,” said Palamedes, “Well, she might want to duel you, but that usually ends well for you both, doesn’t it?”

Gideon considered this.

“All right, I’m in,” she said. “But let’s get a little more organized here.”

Twenty minutes later, they both collapsed laughing in the no man’s land between the hastily constructed snow forts they had built to shield their even more hastily constructed stockpiles of snow artillery. Palamedes’s glasses were actively hindering him and Gideon’s nose and cheeks were as red as her hair.

“Hey, Sex Pal,” Gideon said, giggling, “did you notice that if you stood up right now, there would be a beanpole-shaped hole in the snow?”

Palamedes looked from side to side and burst into a new wave of laughter.

“What if I covered my tracks a bit?” he said conspiratorially, and began to fan his arms up and down and his legs from side to side.

“Hahaha, what then?” said Gideon, lying back down in her own Gideon-shaped hole and doing the same.

“You’ll never know it was me!” said Palamedes. “The perfect crime.”

“So that’s why they call you a genius!” Gideon said. Both of them were laughing so hard they could barely breathe.

When they finally calmed down, they fell silent, noticing how much quieter their surroundings seemed to be, as though the snow had dampened even the sound of the ocean.

“Gideon?” said Palamedes after a moment.

“Hm?” said Gideon.

“I’m glad you and Harrowhark are here.”

Gideon closed her eyes. “Me too.”

“Gideon?”

“Hm?”

“I think my legs are frozen solid.”

“Great. Cam’s gonna kill me and not even in a sexy way.”

“I might take a hot bath.”

“Okay. I might stay out here, if you don’t mind.”

“Go right ahead.”

Palamedes slowly stood up and headed toward the house. Gideon lay on her back and looked at the light of Dominicus diffused through the thick grey clouds. She was almost used to the brightness of the daytime by now; some days it seemed that the perpetual twilight of her life on the Ninth had been nothing more than a dream. The site of her real life was here on the First. Here, she and Harrow loved each other. Here, she had friends to throw snowballs at – snowballs that were soft and broke easily where they hit you and didn’t leave marks on your skin. Here, she was learning, finally, for the first time, what it meant to feel happiness.

III. LET'S GO AGAIN

Camilla looked from Gideon’s face, which was regrettably plastered with her goofiest lopsided grin, to the long metal tray they’d taken from the morgue, to the bottom of the hill some 30 meters away, to Gideon’s face again.

“What’s on your mind, babe?” said Gideon.

“Hm. Well. It looks like a 40-degree pitch, at least,” said Camilla, gesturing to the hill.

“Is that good?”

“It’s. Steep.”

“Good, that’s kind of the point,” said Gideon.

Camilla narrowed her eyes. “Tell me again where you read about this?”

Gideon nodded. “So, it was this comic book – no, no, hear me out! – from the Second, where they have snow, right, and there was an ad for these things, they’re called sleds, that are made especially for sliding down hills, and they looked pretty much just like this tray. Also, in the comic, the academy cadets went sliding down a hill using trays from their dining hall.”

Camilla frowned, sucking on her teeth. She had to admit the idea was compelling.

“All right. But you sit in front,” she said finally.

Gideon smiled broadly. “This is so exciting, I love doing shit like this with you.”

They positioned the tray just above the edge of the incline and Gideon sat down about halfway back, digging her heels in to steady herself. Camilla sat down behind her and wrapped her legs around Gideon’s waist – if they’d been facing each other Gideon would have waggled her eyebrows, she just knew it – and rested her hands on Gideon’s shoulders.

“Ready?” said Gideon.

Camilla took a deep breath. “Ready,” she said.

Gideon set her feet in the front of the tray and pushed them over the edge of the incline.

The wind whipped through Camilla’s hair, lifting it off her neck as they sped down the hill. The snow was thick and dense and smooth, and Gideon was steady and solid and warm, and Camilla’s stomach leapt like it always did on a shuttle leaving orbit, or when the connector train on the Sixth lurched onto the dropoff just outside Swordsman’s Spire. Camilla lived for those moments, and just like all of the others, this one was over too soon.

When they got to the bottom of the hill, she jumped off the tray immediately. “Let’s go again,” she said.

Gideon slowly turned to look at her.

“Cam. That was. Awesome,” she said.

“Yes,” agreed Camilla.

“I was right, wasn’t I,” said Gideon.

“Yes,” agreed Camilla.

Gideon got to her feet. “Can you say it? Please? Out loud?”

Camilla took Gideon’s face in her hands and kissed her softly. “You were right, Gideon. I had fun.”

Gideon beamed.

They took the tray, now officially a sled, Camilla supposed, back up the hill. She mused that this didn’t seem to be a particularly efficient leisure activity, at least in terms of the ratio of time spent enjoying it to time spent preparing to enjoy it. It was a good thing she and Gideon were both up to the physical challenge; as much as she loved Palamedes, she imagined that either he would take twice as long to climb up the hill as she would, or she would have to carry him.

At the top, Camilla put her hand over Gideon’s when she went to place the sled on the incline. “My turn to sit in front?”

Gideon did waggle her eyebrows at that, which meant that Camilla had a hand on her tit to look forward to on the ride down the hill. They fitted themselves into the sled, held on to each other, and pushed.

Again the wind whipped through Camilla’s hair, hitting her face as well this time. She was grateful for Gideon’s warmth and solidity behind her. Her stomach soared and she felt like she could just about take flight, and that was the last thing that went through her head before the metal tray caught on a hidden bump in the terrain and spun just enough to send the two of them rolling head over heels, with a sharp crack, all the way down the hill.

“Gideon! Are you okay?” Camilla said as soon as they reached the bottom, so Gideon couldn’t say it first. She hopped to her feet to show that her lower body was perfectly intact, casually cradling her right arm.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Gideon, dusting snow off herself as she stood. “But I thought I heard…oh no.”

Oh well, thought Camilla.

“Cam, your hand is at the wrong angle.”

“That’s awfully judgmental of you,” Camilla said.

Gideon ignored this. “Let’s go in and find your necro,” she said.

The idea of involving Palamedes in the consequences of Camilla’s selfish choice to do something as dangerous as ride a metal tray from the morgue down a steep snowy hill made her head swim. She would probably never forgive herself for it. But she knew it couldn’t be helped; he was the only one there with expertise in medical necromancy, even if he wasn’t as good at…bone magic…

She shook her head. “No. Harrow.”

Gideon looked at her closely, then nodded. “Harrow. You got it.”

They hurried back to Canaan House.

IV. QUIET IN THE LIBRARY

Having demurred from their snow day activities thus far, aside from trying and failing to find a snow shovel, Harrow wasn’t too hard to find even despite the size of Canaan House. She favored a limited mainstay of rooms, preferring those that tended to have the most productive use to her, and it was in her favorite of these, the library, that Camilla and Gideon found her studying as though it was a day like any other, ignoring the sparkling white landscape visible through the tall windows.

“Oh, good, you’re in here,” said Gideon, pushing Camilla forward. “Cam’s hurt. She needs your help.”

Camilla reminded herself that Gideon meant well and that this was not a situation in which, strictly speaking, she could convincingly deny that she needed help. She successfully resisted the urge to bolt.

Harrow looked at their ruddy faces and wet outdoor clothes appraisingly. She’d looked so sour when Palamedes had asked her to join them outside earlier. Here comes the I-told-you-so, thought Camilla. But it didn’t come.

“Thank you, Gideon,” said Harrow gravely. “I’ll take it from here. Fetch Sextus for me, please; this is an excellent opportunity for him to see the power of a true bone adept firsthand.”

Maybe it had been a mistake to come to her, Camilla thought.

Gideon left to find Palamedes, and Harrow indicated the chair adjacent to her own at the study table, which Camilla took. She eyed Camilla’s arm. “Was it a clean break?” she said. “I can regrow the bone as needed, but if there are shards, I may not be able to incorporate them accurately without a visual reference. A sufficiently advanced flesh magician could simply extract them through the skin with minimal pain, but I am—” she looked away, “—still learning.”

“It was a clean break, I believe,” said Camilla. “It only needs to be set. Will you hold my elbow in place while I do it?”

“Absolutely not, you will hold your own elbow in place and I will set the bone.”

“I have experience setting broken bones; I can manage.”

Harrow squinted at her. “Then you know that it would be absurd to let a patient set their own broken arm. I also have experience with this. Hold still, please.”

“I’ve handled much worse.”

“You can allow me to set your arm, or you can argue with me until Nav manages to find Sextus and bring him here, and then he can give us his opinion.”

Camilla silently proferred her arm.

Satisfied, Harrow bent to examine the break. Aside from the alignment of the wrist, it looked fairly normal, but the first hints of bruising were beginning to bloom. Camilla managed to keep her outward reaction to the slightest trembling of her lip while Harrow stroked the site of the fracture with steady, confident fingers. She was used to swallowing pain.

“Hold your elbow in place,” Harrow instructed her, curling her hand around Camilla’s wrist. “Now, on the count of three. One.” She pulled, and Camilla’s vision went white.

“Hect?” said Harrow a moment later, unbearably gently.

“I’m fine,” Camilla said quickly, steadying her breath. “I’m fine.” She scanned her forearm – the hand and wrist were aligned properly, and both radius and ulna appeared to be straight.

Harrow laid her hand across the fracture once more, and presently Camilla felt a tingle and an ache, as though her arm were being stretched. Harrow removed her hand and Camilla found that she was able to move her arm without support.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Harrow cast her eyes down, the thinnest layer of bloodsweat tinting her forehead, and Camilla realized that she hadn’t moved her hand. “You’re very welcome,” she replied. They sat in silence.

The sound of footsteps echoed in the hall and Palamedes burst through the door, hair damp from the bath Gideon had told Camilla he’d gone to have, medical bag swinging from his shoulder.

“Cam!” he shouted.

“She’s fine, Sextus,” said Harrow dismissively. “I took care of it.”

Palamedes was already rummaging in the medical bag. “I’ll be the judge of that, thank you,” he said, emerging with a thermometer and a bottle of analgesic.

“Warden, don’t be rude,” said Camilla.

His expression softened instantly but he didn’t stop moving. He stuffed the thermometer under Camilla’s tongue, much to her dismay, and bent to examine the now noticeably red patch on her arm.

After a few seconds, he straightened up, handed Camilla the bottle of analgesic, said, “100 milligrams, and don’t argue,” turned to Harrow, and offered her his hand to shake.

“I don’t need your solicitousness,” said Harrow.

“In that case, stand up so I can hug you,” said Palamedes. “Your work on Cam’s arm was outstanding. Going only by the bones, I can’t even tell that it was ever broken at all. That is not to say that you are not under orders to rest it for the next few days—” this was directed at Camilla, “—but I have absolutely no concerns about the prognosis. Thank you, Harrowhark.” The gravity of this last sentence was diminished slightly when he swiveled to remove the thermometer from Camilla’s mouth.

Even under her full face of makeup, Harrow looked distinctly pink, and Camilla didn’t think it was due to bloodsweat.

“I’ll leave you alone, then,” she said awkwardly, nodded at both Palamedes and Camilla, and ducked out of the library, dodging Palamedes and his threats of hugs.

Camilla took 50 milligrams of the painkiller while Palamedes was watching Harrow go and made sure to replace the cap loudly in order to draw his attention.

“Oh, right,” he said. “Your temperature is slightly elevated but within normal range. Let me take care of this bruising, and then I thought we could do some of the jigsaw puzzles we never got around to looking at. You’re to lift nothing heavier than a mug of hot cocoa for the remainder of the day.”

“Warden, it’s just my right hand.”

“Just your right hand! My right hand, more like. God, Cam, I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”

V. EVERY STRUCTURE NEEDS A SKELETON

Harrow fled into the corridor and walked directly into Gideon.

“Oh, good, there you are,” said Harrow. “Sextus is out of his mind. I’m going to escape, and you’re coming with me.”

“You got it, my gloaming sovereign,” said Gideon, who had lost count of the number of times Harrow had said things like this to her.

Harrow spun on her heel and beckoned Gideon to follow her, and Gideon followed.

“So where are we going?” Gideon said after a moment.

“I’m not sure,” Harrow admitted. “The library is now off limits, as are our quarters, I suppose, and all of my materials are in those two places.”

Gideon took her opening. “Hey, you haven’t been outside yet today. Let’s go fuck around in the snow.”

Harrow scowled. “It’s too cold.”

“It’s like five degrees warmer than the average bedroom in Drearburh,” said Gideon. “Also, Cam found a bunch of coats earlier. I bet a few of them are short enough for you.”

“There’s nothing of interest out there.”

“That’s not what Sex Pal thought. Aren’t you the one who’s always going on about being curious and inquisitive? You gonna let him show you up?”

Harrow pursed her lips.

“Please, Harrow? Come outside and play?” Gideon said, with a theatrical pout and a bat of the eyelashes that probably wasn’t visible behind her shades but that she felt helped with the overall vibe she was going for.

Harrow sighed. “Fine. Show me the coats.”

Ten minutes later, Gideon held open the door to the terrace to let Harrow, now bundled into three layers of coats, waddle through.

“What did you have in mind, Griddle?” she said from behind two thick scarves that were probably already covered in face paint.

“Oh, Harrow,” said Gideon. “You of all people should know that the mind is the only true limit to the endlessness of possibility, and whatnot.”

“Humor me.”

“Well, uh, there’s the hill where Cam and I went sledding—”

“Far too dangerous. Out of the question.”

“Right. Well. Anyway, over here is where Sex Pal and I had a snowball fight.”

“You built those…shields?” Harrow looked thoughtful.

“Uh, yeah, I mean they’re nothing fancy,” said Gideon.

Harrow scoffed. “Of course they aren’t. They have no structural integrity.” She stalked over to the one Gideon had built and kicked the center, which crumbled easily.

“Hey!” protested Gideon. “I made that.”

“And I will help you make it better.” Harrow said. She paused and looked at Gideon expectantly.

Gideon resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Oh, really?” she said indulgently. “And how do you plan to do that?”

Harrow nodded in satisfaction. “With this.”

She took a handful of bone from her pocket and sprinkled it on the ground. A low rectangular lattice sprang from it, sturdy and strong.

“Every structure needs a skeleton,” she explained.

Gideon joined Harrow next to the bone lattice and bent down to pat a handful of snow against it. The snow stuck to it readily, and when she had finished, the new barricade was sleek and firm. An idea was beginning to form in her brain.

“Harrow,” she said, “what if you made some full skeleton constructs?”

“For what purpose?” asked Harrow.

Gideon flashed her a smile. “Because every structure needs one.”

Dominicus was low on the horizon when they finally finished and surveyed the results of their labor. Or, rather, a combination of their labor and that of the additional skeletons Harrow had raised to help. A small snow chapel buttressed by skeletons housed a snow-covered skeleton altar, in front of which stood two human-sized figures made of snow and also skeletons.

“Nice chapel,” said Gideon. “This baby can hold so many ghosts. Good altar, too. I could pray for hours at that thing.” She turned to Harrow and peeled back one of the scarves covering her face to kiss her lightly, and saw Harrow flush a bit at the chill of her lips and nose.

“Thank you, Griddle,” said Harrow. “Your work is also, er.” She was looking closely at the human figures for the first time.

Gideon steadied her expression.

“Does this one have bobbed hair?”

Gideon bit the inside of her lip.

“And the other is…wearing glasses? Griddle.”

Gideon burst out laughing. “Do you think they’ll like them?”

Harrow looked skeptically at the comically large chest that Gideon had packed onto the one with bobbed hair. “I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.”

VI. THE INTERROGATION

“Cam, the other hand, please. You’re supposed to be resting that one,” came a voice from the kitchen as Harrow and Gideon approached.

“You specifically said I could hold a mug of cocoa. I’m well within the stated parameters,” said a second voice.

“I was thinking of the white ones in our quarters; these must be three times the—oh, there you are!” said Palamedes as they entered.

“We found your note,” said Harrow.

“Yes, well done, we weren’t sure how much longer you’d be out and felt it would be a shame to deprive you of Cam’s cocoa.” He held up an enormous blue mug decorated with brown antlered animals wearing scarves. Camilla’s hands were wrapped around an equally enormous green mug covered in thin red and white horizontal and vertical lines. A third mug, red and patterned with images of wrapped boxes in all different colors, sat on the counter, full to the brim with the same white substance that was floating on top of Palamedes’s and Camilla’s. A fourth mug sat beside it, black with images of red and white hook-shaped objects, that did not contain the white substance.

“Here’s yours,” said Camilla to Gideon, gesturing to the unclaimed mug of cocoa.

“Wow, thanks, Cam,” Gideon replied.

“And this one is for you, Harrowhark,” said Palamedes.

Harrow pulled the remaining mug toward herself. The liquid inside was clear and smelled faintly of lemon.

“Oh man,” said Gideon, tasting the cocoa, “this is fantastic. What’s in it?”

“I’ll show you the ingredients I used. It’s not hard,” said Camilla, and she led Gideon into the pantry.

Palamedes sat on one of the stools leaning against the kitchen island and indicated another to Harrow, which she took. He lifted the mug in his hands and had a sip. The white substance, which appeared to be solid but rapidly melting in the hot cocoa, left a small mustache on his lip that he licked off.

Harrow cupped both hands around her mug of hot water.

“I wanted to apologize for being overly effusive earlier,” said Palamedes. “What I should have said was, simply, that I greatly appreciated your service to my cavalier, and by extension, to me. In another life, I would have liked to introduce you to the orthopedic surgeons on the Sixth.”

Harrow stared into her mug for a moment before lifting her gaze to speak to Palamedes’s chin. “Your apology is accepted, and I would like to thank you in turn for your many incidents of service to my cavalier, and by extension, to the Ninth House and to me.”

Palamedes smiled his bright, endearing smile. “It’s my pleasure, always,” he said. “With that out of the way, then, I was hoping to pick your brain on some data I gathered earlier. First, I noticed that the individual snow, er, units, were hexagonal crystals. I was wondering if we might investigate the possibility of engineering applications together. Second, the patterns of accumulation against the building were intriguing and often surprising, and I’ve put together a tentative model that I was hoping you could check for accuracy. Third—”

“Sextus?”

“Yes, Harrowhark?”

“On the Ninth, the snow falls against the pure black of the atmospheric dome, not the matte grey of this House’s sky, vertical and predictable rather than chaotic and free-willed. Its smell is the previous generation of leeks from which it evaporated; its sound is the crunch of a servitor’s footsteps. On this world, I am deafened by silence. This snow is foreign to me. This House is foreign to me.  I cannot answer your questions.”

Palamedes nodded and fiddled with his glasses.

“My apologies again, Harrowhark. In that case, I would be honored to hear anything you might be able to tell me about snow on the Ninth.”

The pantry door opened, and Camilla and Gideon sauntered out with a suspiciously casual affect and headed toward the door into the corridor. Harrow noticed that Gideon’s shirt had come partially untucked.

“Excuse us,” said Camilla with a nod at Harrow and Palamedes.

Palamedes raised his eyebrows.

“I would be honored to hear anything you might be able to tell me about snow on the Ninth,” he repeated, “at great length and in as much detail as either of us can stand, starting immediately.”

EPILOGUE

“Hey, Cam,” Gideon said into Camilla’s shoulder, where her face was smushed. The two of them lay wrapped in blankets in the bed they shared with their necromancers, arms and legs tangled together.

 “Hm?” said Camilla.

“I’m sorry about earlier. I should have let you take the lead with Harrow. When you broke your arm.”

Camilla furrowed her brow.

“Have you been thinking about that all evening?” she said. “Gideon, it’s okay. Everything turned out fine.”

Gideon shifted to speak more clearly. “I just felt so bad. I was the one who wanted to go sledding, and look what happened. And now here I am, making you comfort me about it for some reason.”

“One time Palamedes broke my leg,” said Camilla. “Don’t tell him I told you. He still feels bad about it.”

“Ha, okay, I won’t.”

“Thanks.”

Gideon rubbed the side of Camilla’s arm with her thumb, and Camilla curled herself against her.

“Hey, Gideon.”

“Yeah?”

“I had a good time today. Incident aside. Thank you.”

“Yeah, me too! I’m glad.”

“The Warden told me how much fun the two of you had outside together. He said you taught him a lot about how to have fun in the snow. He said he wanted to show me everything you did because I would like it too.”

“Ha, yeah, I bet you would. Actually, you know what? He taught me a lot about how to have fun in the snow. I never used to like it much. Nothing good ever really happened to me in the leek fields. So getting to see him so excited, seeing it through his eyes…it gave me a chance to, I dunno. Heal a bit? Is that stupid?”

“No, not at all. It’s beautiful, actually. You should tell him. He’d be so happy.”

“I might do that. Thanks, Cam.”

Gideon ran her hand down Camilla’s side to rest on her hip, brushing her nipple on the way. Camilla smirked. Gideon never could resist a chance to touch a nipple.

“Hey, Gideon?”

“Yeah?”

“Did Harrow get a chance to go outside today?”

“Yeah, we went together. She made a bunch of skeletons and they helped us build stuff out of the snow.”

Camilla raised her eyebrows. “I’d like to see it.”

Gideon grinned. “I’d love to show it to you. Remind me tomorrow.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Hey, Cam?”

“Hm?”

“Not to get mushy or anything, but I love what the four of us have.”

Camilla’s heart leapt.

“I do too,” she said, voice low and soft. “I’m so glad we all found each other.”

“I love it when you use that voice,” said Gideon, nuzzling deeper into Cam’s chest.

“What voice?” said Camilla, doing the voice.

“That one,” said Gideon. “The voice that sounds like…like you love me.”

“Like I love you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I do. Love you.”

“I love you too.”

Camilla wrapped her arm around Gideon more tightly and kissed her forehead, and Gideon squeezed back.

“Hey, Cam.”

“Hm.”

“I fucking love your tits.”

“Thanks.”