mirror. Gorgeous. Hot. “I know you said ‘First House’ like three times,” she said, “but I thought you were being metaphorical.”
“I thought it would fill you with a sense of adventure.”
“It damn well doesn’t,” said Gideon, rewetting the wadding, “you’re taking me to the planet where nobody lives. I thought we’d end up on the Third or the Fifth, or a sweet space station, or something. Not just another cave filled with old religious nut jobs.”
“Why would there be a necromantic gathering on a space station?”
This was a good point. If there was one thing Gideon knew about necromancers, it was that they needed power. Thanergy—death juice—was abundant wherever things had died or were dying. Deep space was a necro’s nightmare, because nothing had ever been alive out there, so there were no big puddles of death lying around for Harrow and her ilk to suck up with a straw. The brave men and women of the Cohort looked on this limitation with compassionate amusement: never send an adept to do a soldier’s job.
“Behold the last paragraph,” Harrow said from the sofa, “turning your benighted eyes to lines five and six.” Unwillingly, Gideon turned her benighted eyes to lines five and six. “Tell me the implications.”
Gideon stopped painting and leant back in her chair before thinking better of it, easing it back down to the chill tiles of the floor. There was something a little soggy about one of the legs. “‘No retainers. No attendants, no domestics.’ Well, you’d be shitted all to hell otherwise, you’d have to bring along Crux. Look—are you really saying that nobody’s going to be there but us and some crumbly old hierophants?”
“That,” said the Reverend Daughter, “is the implication.”
“For crying out loud! Then let me dress how I want and give me back my longsword.”
“Ten thousand years of tradition, Griddle.”
“I don’t have ten thousand years of tradition, bitch,” said Gideon, “I have ten years of two-hander training and a minor allergy to face paint. I’m worth so much less to you with pizza face and a toothpick.”
The Reverend Daughter’s fingers locked together, thumbs rotating in languid circles. She did not disagree. “Ten thousand years of tradition,” she said slowly, “dictates that the Ninth House should have been at its leisure to produce, at the very least, a cavalier with the correct sword, the correct training, and the correct attitude. Any implication that the Ninth House did not have the leisure to meet even that expectation is as good as giving up. I’d be better off by myself than taking you qua you. But I know how to fake this; I can provide the sword. I can provide a smattering of training. I cannot even slightly provide your attitude. Two out of three is still not three. The con depends on your shut mouth and your adoption of the minimal requirements, Griddle.”
“So nobody realises that we’re broke and nearly extinct, and that your parents topped themselves.”
“So nobody takes advantage of the fact that we lack conventional resources,” said Harrow, shooting Gideon a look that skipped warning and went straight to barrage. “So nobody realises that the House is under threat. So nobody realises that—my parents are no longer able to take care of its interests.”
Gideon folded the paper in half, in half again, and made it into corners. She rubbed it between her fingers for the rare joy of feeling paper crinkle, and then she dropped it on the desk and cleaned paint off her fingernails. She did not need to say or do anything except let the quiet roll out between them.
“We are not becoming an appendix of the Third or Fifth Houses,” continued the necromancer opposite. “Do you hear me, Griddle? If you do anything that suggests we’re out of order—if I even think you’re about to…” Here Harrow shrugged, quite calmly. “I’ll kill you.”
“Naturally. But you can’t keep this a secret forever.”
“When I am a Lyctor everything will be different,” said Harrowhark. “I’ll be in a position to fix things without fear of reprisal. As it is, our leverage now is that nobody knows anything about anything. I’ve had three separate communiques already from other Houses, asking if I’m coming, and they don’t even know my name.”
“What the hell are you going to tell them?”
“Nothing, idiot!” said Harrow. “This is the House of the Ninth, Griddle. We act accordingly.”
Gideon checked her face, and put down the paint and the wadding. Act accordingly meant that any attempt to talk to an outsider as