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Harrow was drawn to the doorway by the sound of the skeletons working furiously to wipe tiles and scrape away the thick layer of crust from the bottom of the pool. She stepped into the room intent on watching them work, on figuring out how they could possibly function so well. These skeletal servants were beautifully constructed, the bone work beyond anything she’d ever seen on the Ninth. The strength and dexterity in their fingers alone was remarkable.
Harrow had tried to disassemble one on her second day at Canaan House. It held together remarkably well against the attempt, had in fact seemed a little perturbed by Harrow’s efforts. It turned its head to look at her with its big dark orbital cavities before walking away largely unscathed. Harrow’d managed to remove the distal phalanx on the fourth finger of its right hand. It fell and hit the floor with a click, but the construct retrieved it on its way out of the room. The encounter was unsettling, but Harrow was not deterred. She’d pick apart this puzzle eventually, along with all the rest.
It wasn’t until she heard her cavalier’s name spoken aloud--”I call for Gideon the Ninth.”--that Harrow noticed the crowd beyond the glass doors at the other side of the pool. Her cavalier’s name was spoken by the Crown Princess of Ida, shimmering even in the dim light of the room. Beside her stood Gideon, her sword drawn, and the Fifth cavalier with his rapier in hand.
When they began to fight, Harrow jumped, startled, and by the time she’d collected herself, the duel was over and Gideon had won. It was very fast. Harrow could hardly recount what had happened. One moment they were moving, swords barely visible through her veil, the next moment the Third adept burst out with, “Match to the Ninth!” and the room erupted into a cacophony of chatter, most of which Harrow could not decipher from her vantage point. It didn’t matter what was being said. What mattered was that Gideon stood there in the center of it all, still and silent. It was a sight that Harrow had never seen before, one she could hardly imagine, though she was the one who had required it.
Eventually the Third cavalier stood, head thrown back and chin pushed out toward Gideon. Gideon shrugged in response to something he’d said and Harrow realized they were preparing for another match.
She lifted her veil for a better view.
Naberius the Third called out and then the Third princess announced Gideon’s name for the second time. It sounded disgusting on her tongue, low and breathy. Harrow despised the way the woman’s mouth came down on the “nth” in “Ninth,” the sound of tongue against teeth.
Harrow stilled as her cavalier sprang into movement to fend off the Third. Gideon was fast. Harrow had watched Gideon swinging that giant two-hander countless times over the years. She’d fought Gideon so often, bone to steel, that she thought she understood Gideon as well as anyone could. She knew that it took determination to beat her cavalier when wielding that hateful two-hander, but she’d never seen Gideon work with a rapier before. She’d never seen her cavalier constrained by the rules of a duel, by stance and protocol. To Harrow’s untrained eye, Gideon looked like she’d been working with a rapier for years. She never would have guessed it had been just those few short months.
Gideon fought in her robe, her hood pulled up over her hair, her eyes covered by her sunglasses despite the darkness of the training room. Gideon did not speak a word, and every second of continued silence astonished Harrow. When Harrow had demanded that Gideon stay silent, Harrow had been certain that Gideon would be talking to absolutely everyone by the second day, but there she stood, soundless, perhaps even stalwart.
Of course, then Harrow remembered her cavalier lounging on a terrace with the Seventh and all of that slipped right back down the drain.
Harrow saw the way that the others watched her cavalier, their awe at this black clad vestal, this silent and ominous wraith. Gideon cut a striking image, even with the sunglasses. She was the Ninth personified, the Ninth as it should be. Harrow, in her own quest for perfection, had made Ortus’s brand of cavalier obsolete. Harrowhark Nonagesimus didn’t need panniers stuffed with bone. Her parents’ actions had ensured that Harrow was a necromancer who could raise an army from a handful of bone fragments. She could carry all that she needed in her pockets without it ever weighing her down. What the Ninth needed now was someone dangerous, someone that fight--really fight and mean it--and that was Gideon Nav through and through.
Aiglamene had done well. What had she said at the start of all of this?
A House cavalier--with all her proper training--is a handsomely dangerous thing.
Had Harrow ever looked at Gideon and felt pride before? Surely not. It sat like a tumor in her chest, a cancerous lump that had grown where it did not belong. It swelled terribly as Harrow watched her cavalier maneuver around the Third. She almost wished that Gideon would do something inappropriate, would shout or swear or make a rude gesture. Something, anything, that would deflate this bubble of horrific good feeling that pushed up against her rib cage at the sight of Gideon the Ninth. Gideon the Ninth, broken down to her elements, was just the same old Griddle in a costume doing whatever she had to do to get away from Harrow once and for all.
Just when Harrow thought that she’d have to leave to stop the alien mass from bursting irreparably within her chest, from contaminating her through and through, just when she didn’t think she could bear another moment of watching Griddle’s robes swirl artfully around her as she moved, the Third did something with his knife that Harrow couldn’t see clearly. Whatever it was, it caught on Gideon’s rapier and tore it from her hand. The sword fell to the floor with a metallic ring that echoed against the walls, across the empty pool, like the bells of Drearburh loud in Harrow’s ears.
Harrow took a step forward before she remembered that this was just a duel, that there were rules and Gideon was not in any real danger.
The Third mouth stretched in an oil slick of a smile. His lips moved and then Griddle moved. She pulled her arm back from the Third’s rapier, and then she punched him, right in his center. Harrow could almost see the way his solar plexus shook at the blow. Harrow had seen Gideon perfect this move over the years, punch her way through crowds of constructs, but she’d never seen it like this. Gideon dropped smoothly to the floor, retrieved her rapier, and was back on her feet before the Third could recover, the tip of her sword pointed somewhere in the vicinity of his neck.
Harrow sucked in the slightest gasp and closed her mouth tight on that stale salty air. She couldn’t help herself. She swallowed it.
Gideon the Ninth stood close-mouthed and tight-lipped. She did not offer an apology (Thank the Emperor). She didn’t lash out with snappy backtalk. She was absolutely silent as the room around her rushed with words, as they coddled the Third and debated her skill. Harrow thought she heard the Third cavalier call Gideon an idiot, which rankled. It was true, but uncalled for, unnecessary. It crossed a line that was not the Third’s to cross and Harrow would not forget it.
Still, Gideon stood strong and Harrow felt that terrifying lump of pride return to her chest, swelling and pulsing, living within her unwanted and unbidden. She pulled down her veil in an attempt to assuage it.
She’d done the right thing, bringing Gideon Nav as her cavalier. She’d maneuvered the pieces in the correct way to ensure the continuation of the Ninth, a future for the House. What happened to Ortus and Glaurica was unfortunate and unforeseen, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d made the right choice. She made the right choice even if Aiglamene held Harrow to her word, even if it meant she’d lose her cavalier to some far off frontier in the end.
Gideon looked up then, at exactly the wrong moment, and saw Harrow standing there. It felt like they stayed like that for a very long time, staring at each other through doors and across the empty pool, past the other cavaliers, past the constructs still scrubbing away. Gideon’s face was unreadable through Harrow’s veil, through Gideon’s paint and those dark glasses. Gideon was always so easy for Harrow to read and now she just stood there, dark and inscrutable. She looked dangerous. She looked deadly.
Harrow was horrified to realize that she felt proud of Griddle for that too.
If Harrow stayed where she was someone else would notice her. If she stayed where she was, Gideon’s resolve would break and she would move toward Harrow. If Harrow stayed where she was, her cavalier would come into focus, that idiot face, and the perverse lump of pride in Harrow’s chest would be twisted and crushed, absolutely annihilated. It might never come back.
Harrow didn’t stay. She turned on her heel and walked away.