black knife. She disappeared beneath the surface, then emerged, gasping, spluttering in a way that ruined everything about the portentous entrance. She faced Gideon and trod water, flapping her arms a little before she managed to get her toes touching the bottom.
“Are we in here for a reason?”
Their voices echoed.
“The Ninth House has a secret, Nav,” said Harrow. She sounded calm and measured and frank in a way she’d never been before. “Only my family knows of it. And even we could never discuss it, unless—this was my mother’s rule—we were immersed in salt water. We kept a ceremonial pool for the purpose, hidden from the rest of the House. It was cold and deep and I hated every moment I was in it. But my mother is dead, and I find now that—if I really am to betray my family’s most sacred trust—I am obliged at the least to keep, intact, her rule.”
Gideon blinked.
“Oh shit,” she said. “You really meant it. This is it. This is go time.”
“This is go time,” agreed Harrowhark.
Gideon swept both of her hands through her hair, trickles going down the back of her neck and into her sodden collar. Eventually, all she said was, “Why?”
“The reasons are multitudinous,” said her necromancer. Her paint was wearing off in the water; she looked like a grey picture of a melting skeleton. “I had—intended to let you know some of it, before. An expurgated version. And then you looked in my closet … If I had told you my suspicions about Septimus’s meat-puppet on the first day, none of this would have happened.”
“The first day?”
“Griddle,” said Harrow, “I have not puppeted my own parents around for five years and learned nothing.”
Anger did seep into Gideon then, along with a couple more litres of salt water. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me when you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him,” said Harrowhark sharply. “Someone else did—blade through the heart, from what I saw, though I only got a few minutes to look before I had to run. I only had to push the theorem the most basic bit before he came apart. I took the head and left when I thought I heard someone coming. This was the night after we completed the entropy field challenge.”
“No, you monster’s ass,” said Gideon coldly. “I mean, why didn’t you tell me you’d killed him before you sent Jeannemary Chatur and her necromancer down to the facility to look for the guy who was in a box in your closet? Why didn’t you take the moment to say, I don’t know, Let’s not send two children downstairs to get fucked up by a huge bone creature.”
Harrow exhaled.
“I panicked,” she said. “At the time I thought I was sending you down a blind tunnel, and that the real danger was Sextus and Septimus; that either one might ambush you, and that the sensible solution was to take them both on myself. My plan was to get you clear of a necromantic duel. At the time I even thought it elegant.”
“Nonagesimus, all you had to do was delay, tell me you were freaking out. All you had to do was say that Dulcinea’s cav was a mummy man—”
“I had reason to believe,” said Harrow, “that you would trust her more than you trusted me.”
This answer contorted Gideon’s face into her best are you fucking kidding me expression. Opposite, Harrow smoothed her forehead out with her thumbs, which took away another significant portion of skeleton.
“I thought you were compromised,” she continued waspishly. “I assumed you would assume that I dismantled the puppet as an act of bad faith and go straight to the Seventh. I wanted to do enough research to present you with a cut-and-dry case. I had no idea what it would mean for the Fourth House. The Ninth is deep in their blood debt and I am undone by the expense. I—I did not want to hurt you, Griddle! I didn’t want to disturb your—equilibrium.”
“Harrow,” said Gideon, “if my heart had a dick you would kick it.”
“I did not want to alienate you more than I already had. And then it seemed as though—we were on a more even footing,” said Harrow, who was stumbling in a way Gideon had never before witnessed. It looked as though she were ransacking drawers in her brain trying to find the right set of words to wear. “Our—we— It was too tenuous to risk. And then…”
Too tenuous to risk. “Harrow,” said Gideon again, more