then she fell asleep. It’s all one piece, no wonder she’s out. Is this normal for her?”
“You can tell all that with Sixth necromancy?”
Shockingly, both he and Camilla laughed. They had gruff, barking little laughs, and Camilla took this opportunity to roll the wire back up into its wallet, pinching Harrow’s blood off one end. “Medical necromancy,” said her adept drily, “there’s an oxymoron for you. No. Being a necromancer helps, but no. It’s curative science. Don’t you have that on the Ninth? Don’t answer, I was joking. You can move her now.”
The Reverend Daughter was very light as Gideon folded her (both Palamedes and Camilla winced) into an over-shoulder lift. Air wheezed out of Harrow’s lungs, and the bone cocoon dissolved into a shower of chips and pebbles pattering onto the floor like hail. This seemed to be the one thing to really unnerve the Sixth House necromancer. He swore under his breath and then actually whipped a ruler out of his pocket, measuring one of the chips on the floor.
Gideon shifted, so that the weight and heft of Harrow was more evenly distributed. Her brain had not come back online enough to register that weight, or to save it for later detail in her fantasies where she dropped the Ninth House scion off the side of the docking bay. Her necromancer smelled like sweat and blood and old, burnt bone; her corselet of ribs poked painfully into Gideon’s shoulders. Ascending a staple-wall ladder with a body in tow was a hell of a lot more difficult than descending without one. Palamedes ascended first, then she did, each rung a fight with her awkward load; Camilla followed, and by the time they got to the top Gideon’s jaw hurt from clenching.
The cavalier of the Sixth took Harrow’s shoulders when she reached the top so that Gideon could get out, which was decent of her. Maybe it was just so they could hurry up and close the huge metal trapdoor, turning the key in the lock with a satisfying click. She sat down next to the unconscious figure and rolled one shoulder in its socket, then the other.
Palamedes was shouldering the zip-up bag and saying, “Give her water and food when she wakes up. She’ll take care of the rest. Probably. She needs eight hours of sleep—in a bed, not a library. When she asks how I knew she was in the library, tell her Cam says she clinks when she walks.”
Gideon reached down to take her burden up again, slinging Harrow’s limp and speechless body to occupy her other shoulder. She paused at the foot of the stairs, measuring in her mind’s eye the distance back down the corridor, to the terrace, down the zigzag flights of steps and back through to the Ninth House quarters. Plenty of corners to concuss Harrow with, on the way.
“I owe you one,” she said.
It was Camilla who said, in her quiet, curiously deep voice, “He did it for free.” It was the first time she had looked at Gideon without the flat, stony aggression of a retaining wall, which was nice.
Palamedes said, “What Cam said. Just—look, take a word of advice, here.”
As she waited, he pressed the pads of his fingertips together. His cavalier was looking at him dead on, tense, waiting. In the end, he said: “It’s unbelievably dangerous down there, Ninth. Stop splitting your forces.”
“Dangerous how?”
“If I knew,” said Palamedes, “it’d be a hell of a lot less dangerous.”
Gideon was impatient with vagaries. She wasn’t in Drearburh now. “How do you figure?”
The Sixth House necromancer walked forward and paused before her in the stairwell. He was washed in dilute light from above and behind Gideon, and it showed that he really was thin—the kind of thin made thinner by his grey, shapeless robe, the thinness of trousers cinched too tight to hips. Camilla hovered a perfect half step behind—the half step Aiglamene had trepanned into Gideon—as though suspicious even of the steps.
He said coolly: “Because I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation.”
The unconscious figure sacked across Gideon’s shoulder muttered, “Like hell you are.”
“Thought that would wake her up,” said Palamedes, with no small amount of satisfaction. “Well—I’m off. Like I said, liquids and rest. Good luck.”
13
EITHER HARROWHARK FELL BACK unconscious, having used her last remaining energy to spite Palamedes, or she was just already such a dick she could spite him in her sleep. Or maybe she was playing dead. Gideon didn’t care. Her necromancer remained heavy and unmoving all