of rubber hose into the pit room and even beheld them slowly glurking sea-smelling liquid into the cavity, but the end result was extraordinary. The tiles gleamed with spray as Naberius the Third and Coronabeth—both wearing light singlets and trunks—did laps up and down the pool.
If she’d thought the bath was mad, this blew her mind. Gideon had never seen anyone swim before. Both bodies cut through the liquid with efficient, practised strokes: she focused on the long golden arms of Corona Tridentarius as she sliced through water, propelling her as she hit the wall and pushed off hard with her feet. Beyond the glass doors in the sparring room, Colum the Eighth sat on a bench, polishing his targe with a soft cloth while Lieutenant Dyas knelt into a perfect lunge, over and over.
Isaac made a beeline for the water. He stood in front of where the Crown Princess of Ida was churning her way through the water. She slowed her pace and bobbed up to the edge of the pool, shaking water out of her ears quizzically, hair a wet and leaden amber.
“Princess Corona,” he said, “someone’s dead.”
The lovely face of the Princess of Ida made the exact same expression Gideon’s had wanted to, which was: What?? “What??” she said.
“Jeanne wants you,” he said dully, “specifically.”
Naberius had finished his length of the pool, too, and had struck through the water to come and see them. His swimming shirt was a lot tighter than Coronabeth’s, and his fifty-seven abdominal muscles rippled under it importantly. He gave a long and rather obvious stretch, but stopped when he realised nobody was looking. “What’s the holdup?” he said, rather pettishly.
“You’d better hurry up,” Isaac said. “I promised I’d only leave her for five minutes. She’s with the remains.”
“Isaac, slow down!” Corona had vaulted herself out of the water in a flash of warm golden skin and her exceedingly long legs, and Gideon made her first and only devout prayer to the Locked Tomb of thankfulness and joy. Corona wrapped herself in a white towel, still dripping feverishly. “Who’s dead? Isaac Tettares, what does this mean?”
“It means someone’s dead,” Isaac said curtly. “If you’re not coming, I’m out of here in the next ten seconds. I’m not leaving Jeanne by herself.”
Corona dashed over to the training room, sticking her dripping head through the door. Her cavalier was wrapping his body and head in his own white towels, sticking wet feet in his shoes. Coronabeth bothered with neither of these. By now she was being followed by Lieutenant Dyas, whose only nod to training kit involved undoing the top button of her military jacket, and by the scuffed wiriness of Colum the Eighth close behind.
This baffled gaggle was led outside to another broad terrace, though this one had not been built with beauty in mind. They weren’t far from the edge of the dock terrace. This place had possibly shared that function, once—there was room for maybe one shuttle—but it was now focused on a huge steel chimney, metal flue standing up like a flagpole. It was bricked and supported all about with big stone tiles, and there were buckets of old vegetation and filthy cloths. The latter looked as though they’d been used to clean out the pool: they were emerald with verdigris and black where they weren’t green. The chimney had a huge metal grate, about two metres tall, where you could shovel in rubbish. This grate was open, and the contents inside were still lightly smoking.
Isaac came to rest in front of the incinerator, beside Jeannemary the Fourth. He had looked stolid and dead, as though what was going on inside him had built up a thick crust, like a volcano; Jeannemary looked like a malfunctioning electric wire. You could practically see the sparks. Her rapier was naked, and she was pacing between the incinerator and the edge, every so often whirling around in a fit as though someone might attack her from behind. Gideon was beginning to admire her sheer animal readiness. When she saw the gang of idiots that her necromancer had brought her, she was intensely displeased.
“I wanted the Ninth and Princess Coronabeth,” she said. Her voice cracked.
“Everyone tagged along,” said Isaac. “I didn’t want to leave you—I didn’t want to leave you alone.”
Careless of her bare feet and her sodden clothes, Corona marched over to the first maladjusted teen. “Sword at ease, Sir Chatur,” she said kindly. “You’re fine.” (It was testament to Corona that the sword