by Tamsyn Muir
“Ninth cavs are necro suitcases. Who’re you?”
It was good that she had already practised how to be quiet, because the traditional Nav response would have been one of any number of pieces of crude backchat. She resented the contempt with which his mouth rounded over Ninth; she resented suitcases; she resented his hair. But Coronabeth was singing out, “I call for Gideon the Ninth!” and they were marking five paces—six—seven.
She had only a moment to size Naberius up. He was about an inch shorter than her, with a frame that had been whipped within an inch of its life into perfectly sculpted muscle. He was narrow shouldered with long, long arms, and she was beginning to believe that he was not simply a douchebag who used lip balm, but a douchebag who used lip balm and had a very long reach. He stood perfectly: more perfectly even than her teacher, who had partially fused her spine with standing to attention. His rapier was a froth of silver wire and tracery at the loop of the hilt, and the blade shone notchless, perfect as the line made from his shoulder to its tip: her answering stance felt slouchy and half-assed, and the black knuckle-knives brutish, unsurgical. The hard moue of his mouth told her that he was used to making people feel that way, but also that he definitely used lip balm. Her heart sped up: slowed: renewed, arrhythmic with anticipation.
“Begin!” called Corona.
In the first ten seconds, Gideon had known that the fight with the Fifth House was hers to lose. It took her twenty seconds to come to a very important discovery about the House of the Third: it valued cleanliness. Each twitch of the sword was a masterpiece of technique. He fought like clockwork: inevitable, bloodless, perfect, with absolute economy of movement. The first time the black sword of the Ninth flicked into action, the line of his rapier slicing hers to the side—a simple semicircle arc with the blade, bored, contemptuous, exact—would have brought an expert to tears. His advance and retreat were like lines from a manual, fed directly into his feet.
Stop blocking every blow, her brain told her. Her arm ignored her brain, and sparks glittered as Naberius’s sword clanked against the obsidian glass of her defending knuckle-knives; the force of the blow reverberated up Gideon’s arm and shuddered into her spine. Her sword sang forward in what she knew to be a perfect thrust, aimed true and hard at his side; she heard an oily shnk!, and then another blow quaked its way into her elbow and up to the base of her skull. The blade she had taken for a dagger had separated into three, trapping hers neatly: a trident knife, which was so hopelessly obvious that she probably had to offer to save time and kick her own ass for him. Naberius smiled at her, blandly.
It was the most irritating fight she’d ever had. He wasn’t as fast as she was, but he wasn’t wearing robes, and anyway he didn’t have to be as fast as she was. He just had to keep her at arm’s length, and he was a master at it. This to the touch nonsense was pissing her off. If she had been wielding her longsword she would have simply smashed through him like a brick through a windowpane. But she had a needle in one hand and a handful of black glass in the other, and had to skip and hop around like he was wielding poison; and he had been a cavalier probably since the day he was born. At some points he could stand there completely still, completely bored, his sword held in perfect form as though he were doing dressage. The light beat down on her robes and her head. She couldn’t believe she was being held at bay by someone who had eaten every cavalier manual and chewed dutifully twenty-five times.
Naberius toyed with her languidly—he had a trick where his sword licked out like a cat’s claw, immediate, before pulling back again with a measured half step—and he kept her at sword’s length, never letting her enter his space. He kept up his litany of parry; quick attack for space; pressure the sword with the offhand until she was sick to death of it.
Gideon ran her rapier down the length of his—lightless black on silver—with a shrill squeal, but he circled it deftly down and away. She thrust again, high, and found that the upper breadth of her blade was caught neatly within the fork of that goddamned trident knife: he used the leverage to push her down.… down … and she found that his rapier was sliding forward, over her arm, through the tuck of her elbow. Aiglamene had taught her to anticipate a death blow. She flinched to the side immediately, letting it press tight against her, swearing mentally all the way: in a real fight he’d be able to slice a hot ribbon over her chest and shoulder, but couldn’t kill her either way. And he couldn’t touch her with the point, just the edge. She was still in the duel.
But then he did something perfect. It was probably recorded in some shitty Seventh-style swordplay book as TWO CROWS DRINKING WATER or THE BOY STRANGLES THE GOOSE. He pivoted her sword downward with his three-bladed knife, jerked the wrist of his rapier-hand forward, and flicked the black blade of the Ninth from her grip. It clattered to the worn-out flagstones and was still. Jeannemary gulped off a yelp in the background. Her heart trickled like prayer beads sliding down a string.
Naberius stepped out of his lunge and smiled that irritating smile again.
“You cut too much,” he said.
He did not smile when Gideon unwound her sword-arm from his rapier in a swift wheel of movement, ducked forward, and punched him in the solar plexus. The breath wheezed from his lungs like he was an open airlock. Naberius crumpled backward, and she kicked her robes aside to touch one booted foot to the place beneath his knee: he staggered, spat, and fell. She dropped for her sword and backpedalled for space, as he thrashed like a fallen animal trying to rise. Gideon fell into stance, raised her sword, and let it come to rest at his collarbone.
“Match to the Third,” said Coronabeth, which startled her.
Her sword was shrugged away; Naberius, furious and wobbly, was finally up on both feet.
“Babs,” his princess said hurriedly, “are you all right?”
He was coughing throatily. His face was a dark, velvety red as he sheathed his sword and squeezed down on his knife, causing some mechanism to snockt the side blades back into place. When he bowed to her, it was amazingly scornful. Gideon slid her own sword back into her scabbard, somewhat discombobulated, and bowed in return; he tossed his head back haughtily and coughed again, which somewhat ruined the effect.
“She’s not some Nonius come-again, she’s just a brawler,” he said in throaty disgust. “Look, idiot, when I disarm you, match is over, you bow, all right? You don’t keep going.”
The sharply dressed Cohort cavalier said: “You let your guard down, Tern.”
“The match was over the moment I got her sword!”
“Yes,” she said, “technically.”
“Technically?” He was getting even redder-faced now. “Everything’s the technicals! And that’s Prince Tern to you, Lieutenant! What are you playing at, Dyas? I held her at bay the whole time, I won, and the cultist fouled the match. Admit it.”
“Yes,” said Dyas, who had relaxed into an arms-behind-the-back at ease position. It looked more at home in a military parade line-up than at an informal fitness match. She had a neat, mellifluous voice. “You won the bout. The Ninth is the less able duellist. I say she is the better fighter: she fought to win. But, Ninth,” she said, “he’s right. You cut too much.”
The cavalier from the Third looked like he was very close to violence: this, for some reason, had made his eyes bulge with sheer resentment. He looked as though he were about to unsheathe his sword and demand a rematch, and backed down only when one golden arm was slung about his shoulders and he was pulled into a half embrace from his necromancer. He submitted to a hair ruffle. Corona said, “The Third showed its stuff, Babs—that’s all I care about.”
“It was a convincing win.” He sounded like a huffy child.
“You were brilliant. I wish Ianthe had seen you.”
Jeannemary had risen to stand. She was a brown, bricklike young thing, Gideon had noticed, seemingly all corners: her eyes were alight, and her voice was piercing when she said:
“That’s how I want to fight. I don’t want to spend all my tim
e in show bouts. I want to fight like a real cavalier, as though my life’s on the line.”
Naberius’s expression shuttered over again. His gaze met Gideon’s briefly, and it was somewhere beyond hostile: it was contempt for an animal that had crapped indelicately in the corner. But before any more could be said, Magnus coughed lightly into his hand.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we should fall to exercises, or paired work, or—something that will make me feel like I’m practising to be fighting fit. How about it? Sparring may be the meat of a fighter’s training, but you’ve got to have some—well—vegetables and potatoes?”
(“Magnus. Potatoes are a vegetable, Magnus.”)
Gideon stepped from the dais, unbuckling the knuckle-knives from her wrist, easing her fingers out of the grips. She wondered what Aiglamene would have thought of the fight; she almost wanted to see that disarm again. If Naberius hadn’t looked at her like she had personally taken a whiz on his nicest jacket, she would have asked him about it. It was sleight of hand rather than brute force, and she had to admit that she’d never even thought about a defence, which was stupid—
Some sixth sense made her look upward, beyond the skeleton still swabbing industriously at the glass door, out past the pit where centuries of old chemicals were being wiped away. In the aperture before the tiled room, a cloaked figure stood: skull-painted, a veil pushed down to the neck, a hood obscuring the face. Gideon stood in the centre of the training room, and for a second that emasculated minutes, she and Harrowhark looked at each other. Then the Reverend Daughter turned in a dramatic swish of black and disappeared into the flickering vestibule.
12
“EXCELLENT TO HAVE YOU with us,” said Teacher one morning, “excellent to see the Ninth fitting in so well! How beautiful to have all the Houses commingled!”
Teacher was a fucking comedian. He often sat with Gideon if he caught her at table for later meals—he never showed up to breakfast; she suspected he had his much earlier than anyone else at Canaan House—with the jovial, I find vows of silence very restful! Constant questions were still being asked of Teacher and the Canaan House priests, some coaxing, some curt, all in varying stages of desperation. He was implacably ignorant.
“I do enjoy all this bustle,” Teacher said. (Only he and Gideon were in the room.)
By the end of that week, Gideon had met nearly all of the adepts and their cavaliers. This did not break down barriers and form new friendships. They nearly all gave her wide berths in the dim Canaan House corridors—only Coronabeth would greet her breezily according to Coronabeth’s whims, which were capricious, and Magnus was always good for a cordial Good morning! Er, excellent weather! Or Good evening! Weather still excellent! He tried pathetically hard. But most of them still looked at her as though she were something that could only be killed with a stake through the heart at midnight, a half-tame monster on a dubious leash. Naberius Tern often sneered at her so hard that he was due a lip injury.
But you got a lot of information by being silent and watching. The Second House acted like soldiers on unwilling leave. The Third revolved around Corona like two chunks of ice about a golden star. The Fourth clustered by the Fifth’s skirts like ducklings—the Fifth necromancer turned out to be a fresh-faced woman in her mid-thirties with thick glasses and a mild smile, who looked about as much the part as a farmer’s wife. The Sixth and Seventh were perennially absent, ghosts. The Eighth’s creepy uncle–creepy nephew duo she saw seldom, but even seldom was more than enough: the Eighth necromancer prayed intensely and fervidly before each meal, and if they passed in the corridor both flattened themselves to the furthest wall as though she were contagious.
Small wonder. The way to the Ninth’s living quarters—the corridor that led to their front door, and all about their front door, like ghoulish wreaths—was now draped in bones. Spinal cords bracketed the door frame; finger bones hung down attached to thin, nearly-invisible wires, and they clinked together cheerlessly in the wind when you passed. She had left Harrowhark a note on her vastly underused pillow—
WHATS WITH THE SKULLS?
and received only a terse—
Ambiance.
Well, ambiance meant that even Magnus the Fifth hesitated before saying Good morning, so fuck ambiance in the ear.
As far as Gideon could tell, Dulcinea Septimus spent 100 percent of the time on the terraces, reading romance novels, being perfectly happy. If she was trying to psych out the competition, she was doing so with flair. It was also very difficult to avoid her. The Ninth’s cavalier elect would walk past an open doorway, and a light voice would call out Gideon—Gideon! And then she would go, and no mention of her sword would be made: just a pillow to be moved, or the plot of a romance novel to be related, or—once—a woman seemingly lighter than a rapier to be picked up and very carefully transferred to another seat, out of the sun. Gideon did not resent this. She had the sinking feeling that Dulcinea was doing her a favour. Lady Septimus was, delicately, showing she did not care that Gideon was Gideon the Ninth, a paint-faced shadow cultist, a Locked Tomb nun apparent: or at least, if she cared, she viewed it as the delight of her days.
“Do you ever think it’s funny, you being here with me?” she asked once, when Gideon sat, black-hooded, holding a ball of wool for Dulcinea’s crocheting. When Gideon shook her head, she said: “No … and I like it. I send Protesilaus away a good deal. I give him things to do: that’s what suits him best. But I like to see you and make you pick up my blankets and be my scullion. I think I’m the only person in eternity to make a Ninth House cavalier slave away for me … who’s not their adept. And I’d like to hear your voice again … one day.”
Fat chance. The one half-glimpsed vision of Harrow Nonagesimus was all that Gideon had seen, after that first spar. She didn’t appear again, in the training room or at the Ninth quarters. Her pillow was rumpled in a different way each morning, and black clothes heaped themselves untidily in the laundry basket that the skeletons took away at intervals, but she did not darken Gideon’s door.
Gideon went back to the training room regularly—and so did the cavaliers of Fourth and Fifth, and Second and Third—but the Sixth and Seventh cavaliers avoided it, even now that it was laminated to a high shine and smelled of seed oils. The skeletons had moved their efforts to cleaning the floors now. The burly Eighth cavalier had come in once when she was there, but on seeing Gideon, bowed politely and left posthaste.
Gideon still preferred to train by herself. It was her habit of long years to wake and wedge her feet under some piece of furniture, and do sit-ups until she had counted them out in their hundreds, and then press-ups: a hundred normal, a hundred clapping. Standing upside down, on her arms with her feet in the air. Sitting on the heels of her hands with her legs extended, testing to what degree she could stretch her toes. You didn’t need half of what she’d done to gain medical entry to the Cohort, but she had fed her entire life into the meat grinder of hope that, one day, she’d blitz through Trentham and get sent to the front attached to a necromancer’s legion. Not for Gideon a security detail on one of the holding planets, either on a lonely outpost on an empty world or in some foreign city babysitting some Third governor. Gideon wanted a drop ship—first on the ground—a fat shiny medal saying INVASION FORCE ON WHATEVER, securing the initial bloom of thanergy without which the finest necromancer of the Nine Houses could not fight worth a damn. The front line of the Cohort facilitated glory. In her comic books, necromancers kissed the gloved palms of their front-liner comrades in blessed thanks for all that they did. In the comic books none of these adepts had heart disease, and a lot of them had necromantically uncharacteristic cleavage.
This had all played out in Gideon’s imagination on many solitary nights, and often she had indulged in a wilder flight of fancy where Harrowhark would open an envelope galaxies and galaxies away, and read the news that Gideon Nav had won a bunch of medals and a huge percentage of prize money for her role in the initial strike, a battle in which she was both
outstanding and very hot. Harrow’s lip would curl, and she would drawl something like, Turns out Griddle could swing a sword after all. This fantasy often got her through a hundred reps.
Back in the Ninth she would have ended the day with a jog around the planting fields, as the photochemical lamps dimmed for the end of their cycle, running through the fine moisture mist spritzed out at even times to wet the soil. The mist was recyc water and smelled ureal. It was a before-bedtime smell to her. Now the scent was old wood, and the sulfide reek of the sea, and water on stone.
But not even Gideon could train all the time. She amused herself by exploring the huge, sinuous complex of Canaan House, often getting profoundly lost. That you could only explore so far was her first discovery. There must have been floors beneath floors all the way down, many hundreds of feet of building, but as you descended the prevalence of *** CAUTION *** printed on yellow plastic tape and crosses spray-painted onto big iron blast doors only grew. You could only get about fifty metres below the dock layer before all ways were closed. You could only go up so far too, about an equivalent hundred metres up: there was a broken lift you could walk into, and there was a staircase up the tower that branched off in two directions. To the left was where Teacher and the other two priests of Canaan House slept, in a whitewashed network of corridors where potted succulent plants grew lasciviously in long tendrils. She had not yet tried the right.
After two silent, ironed-out days of exploring and squats, Gideon did not exactly get bored. It took a hell of a lot more to bore a denizen of the House of the Ninth. It was a lack of change at the microscopic level that made her suspicious: one morning she realised that the rumples on Harrow’s bed and the top layer of black clothes in the laundry hamper had not changed for over twenty-four hours. Two nights had passed without Harrow sleeping in the Ninth quarters, or changing out of dirty clothes, or refreshing her paint. Gideon cogitated: