of the Seventh and Second. Every so often she would say something terse to Protesilaus, who would take sixty seconds to think about it before making replies so uninflected and curt that they made Harrow sparkle by comparison.
The mayonnaise uncle was talking to the anaemic twin, his probable future bride. “I was removed by … surgical means,” Ianthe was saying calmly, her long fingers toying with the stem of her glass. “My sister is a few minutes older.”
The white-kirtled young uncle was not eating. He had taken a few priggish sips of wine, but spent most of his time with his hands folded quietly over each other and staring. He had the posture of a metre ruler. “Your parents,” he said, in his unexpectedly deep and sonorous voice, “risked intervention?”
“Yes. Corona, you see, had removed my source of oxygen.”
“A wasted opportunity, I’d think.”
“I don’t live alternate histories. Corona’s birth put my survivability somewhere around definite nil.”
“It wasn’t on purpose, mark you,” drawled her cavalier from across the table. His hair was so perfect that Gideon kept staring at it, mesmerised, hoping some specific bit of the ceiling would break down and squash it flat.
Ianthe affected shock. “Why, Babs, are you part of this conversation?”
“I’m just saying, Princess, you don’t have to be so down on her like that—”
“You don’t have to contradict me in public, and yet—and yet.”
Naberius flicked his eyes very obviously over to the other end of the table, but Coronabeth was busy with Magnus: probably swapping new jokes, Gideon thought. He said, “Stop being a pill.”
“I repeat, Babs, are you part of this conversation?”
“Thank God, no,” said the hapless Babs sourly, and turned back to his previous conversation partner: the thickset nephew cavalier, stolidly refilling his bowl. He did not look thrilled to repossess the Third’s undivided attention. Next to the spruce Naberius Tern, he looked shabbier and more worn-out than ever. “Now, look, Eighth, here’s why you’re wrong about the buckler…”
Gideon would have liked to know what was wrong about the buckler; but as she reached over for her glass again, she felt a tug on her sleeve. It was the disagreeable teen who was sitting on her other side, looking at her with a particularly fierce expression, emphasised with near-Ninth quantities of black eye makeup. Jeannemary the Fourth screwed up her mouth as though expecting an injection, all the little corners of her face more angular in ferociousness, her jillion earrings jingling.
“This is going to be a weird question,” said Jeannemary.
Gideon dropped her arm and tilted her head quizzically. A little bit of blood drained from the teen’s face, and Gideon almost felt sorry for her: hood and paint and robes on the priesthood around her had put her off dinners at the same age. But the teen stuck her awful courage to its sticking place, breathed out hard through her teeth, and blurted very quietly:
“Ninth … how big are your biceps?”
It seemed to be long after Gideon was forced to supinate and flex at the whim of a teenage girl that their bowls were replaced with new ones, these filled with confections of cream and fruit, and mostly sugar; the Fifth had obviously been busy. Gideon ate three helpings and Magnus, not bothering to hide his amusement, pushed a fourth her way. Magnus was inarguably a much better cook than a duellist. Before she had come to Canaan House, Gideon had considered getting full a grim process of gruel and spoon and mouth that had to be done in order to maximise chances of not having her ass later kicked by Aiglamene in some dim room. It was one of the first times that she had felt full and fat and honestly happy about it.
Afterward there was a tray of the hot, grassy tea to clear the mouth, and the various Houses stood around with warm cups in their hands to watch the skeletons clear up.
Gideon looked around for Harrow. Her necromancer was ensconced in a corner with, of all people, Teacher: she was talking to him in low tones as he alternately nodded or shook his head, looking more thoughtful than giddy for once, his thumbs stuck in his gorgeous rainbow sash.
Someone touched Gideon’s hand, very lightly, as though afraid of startling her. It was Dulcinea, who had taken refuge in a chair; she was shifting her hips a little awkwardly in the hard wooden seat with the tiny, restless motions Gideon suspected she made when she was sore. She looked tired, and