“Understood,” said the Reverend Daughter, in the tones of someone who neither understood nor intended to.
Silas had not left.
“In that case,” he said, “I consider it my bounden duty to take watch over the morgue, in case the Ninth forgets what constitutes defilement of the bodies. I will take the remains. You may find me there.”
Captain Deuteros did not roll her eyes. She gestured to her lieutenant, who handed over the box: Silas took it and winced faintly, and then passed it to his nephew. Gruesome parcel secured, they finally turned and left. The Third were already starting to bitch—
“I always said he didn’t look right,” said the cavalier.
“You said no such thing,” said the first twin.
“At no point did you ever say that,” said the second twin.
“Excuse you, I did—”
Captain Deuteros cleared her throat over the fresh internecine squabbling. “Does anyone else want to take this opportunity to admit that they’re already dead, or a flesh construct, or other relevant object? Anyone?”
Palamedes had been wiping Dulcinea’s mouth very gently with a white cloth. He laid his hand at her neck. She was still. Her face was now the thin blue-white colour of Canaan House’s milk, and for a moment Gideon expected him to add her to the already dead list. She would decide to go out with an audience, with her hair done, and with her miserable secrets revealed. Now she knew that Dulcinea had always been alone, carrying on an even greater farce than Gideon’s, knowing the impossibility of the odds. But the dying necromancer sucked in a sudden, rattling, popped-balloon breath, her whole body surging in spasm. Gideon’s heart started up again. Before she could move, Palamedes was there, and with terrible tenderness—as though they were alone in the room and the world alike—he kissed the back of Dulcinea’s hand.
Gideon looked away, blushing with a shame she didn’t interrogate, and found Teacher in the doorway with his hands folded before his gaudy rainbow sash. Nobody had heard him enter.
“Maybe later, Lady Judith,” he said.
She said, “You’ll need to contact the Seventh House and have her sent back home. It’s morally and legally out of the question to leave her this way. Is that clear?”
“I cannot,” said Teacher. “There was only ever a single communications channel in Canaan House, my Lady … and I cannot call her House on it. I cannot call the Fifth, nor the Fourth, nor now the Seventh. That is part of the sacred silence we keep. There will be an end to all this, and there will be a reckoning … but Lady Septimus will stay with us until the last.”
The Second’s adept had stopped all of a sudden. For a moment Gideon thought she was going to lose her carefully buttoned rag. But she cocked her dark head and said, “Lieutenant?”
“Ready,” said Marta the Second, and they both marched out as though they were in parade formation. They did not give the rest of the room a backward glance.
Teacher looked at the tableau before him: the bed, the blood, the Third. Palamedes, still clutching Dulcinea’s fingers within his own, and Dulcinea out cold.
“How long does Lady Septimus have?” he asked. “I can no longer tell.”
“Days. Weeks, if we’re lucky,” said Palamedes bluntly. Dulcinea made a little hiccupping noise on the bed that sounded half like a giggle and half like a sigh. “That’s if we keep the windows open and her airways clear. Breathing recyc at Rhodes probably took ten years off her life. She’s been sitting on the brink without shifting one way or the other—the woman has the stamina of a steam engine—and all we can do is keep her comfortable and see if she doesn’t decide to pull through.”
Harrow said to him, slowly: “Undoing the cavalier’s bodywork should have killed her. It would have been an incredible shock to her system.”
“Spreading it between multiple casters may have diluted the feedback.”
“That is not remotely how it works,” said Ianthe.
“Oh, God, here comes the expert,” Naberius said.
“Babs,” said Ianthe’s sister hurriedly, “you’re getting hangry. Let’s go find some food.”
Gideon watched her necromancer’s gaze fix on Ianthe Tridentarius. Ianthe did not notice, or affected not to notice; her eyes were as pale and purple and calm as they ever were, but Harrowhark was quivering like a maggot next to a dead duck. As the Third traipsed out—as noisy as if they were leaving a play, not a sickroom—Harrow’s eyes went with them. Gideon said aloud, “Hey. Palamedes.