said bluntly, “Why didn’t Sextus want to do the spell?”
The tools were wiped and put back in the bag. For a moment, the other cavalier didn’t answer. Then she pushed a strand of hair away from her grim, oval painting of a face, and said: “Warden did the calculations. He and I could have—completed it, but. With caveats.”
“Caveats like?”
“My permanent brain damage,” said Camilla shortly, “if he didn’t get it right immediately.”
“But I’m healthy.”
“Didn’t say your brain was.”
“I’m taking that as a very witty joke and want it to be known that I laughed,” said Gideon. “Hey—Septimus said the Eighth could have done it easily.”
“The Eighth doesn’t train cavaliers,” said Camilla, even more shortly than before. “The Eighth breeds batteries. Genetic match for the necromancer. He’s been accessing his cavalier since he was a child. The Eighth probably does have brain damage. It’s not his brain they need. And Lady Septimus … is too willing to believe in fairy stories. Same as always.”
This was probably the longest speech she had ever heard Camilla give, and Gideon was deeply interested. “Are you two friends?”
The look in response wasn’t quite withering, but it would suck all the moisture out of anyone it was aimed at. Camilla said, “Lady Septimus and I have never met. Look, you should eat.”
This turned out to be an invitation. Camilla—obviously used to being someone’s cav-of-all-work—helped her sling on her rapier, and waited as she applied a very cursory amount of face paint. She wouldn’t have passed muster with a glaucomic nun in a room with the lights shot out, but it was enough to get on with. She didn’t quite have to lean on Camilla’s arm, but every so often was the recipient of a brusque shoulder press to get her standing straight. They kept mutual and pleasant silence, and the sunset bled through all the windows and gaps of the House of the First and made puddles of red and orange before them.
Every so often a white-belted skeleton crossed their path with an easy, arm-swinging gait. Each time a bonely figure appeared from a corner or clattered through a doorway, Gideon noticed Camilla’s fingers close on her rapier out of pure reflex. When they stopped at the threshold of the dining hall, the cavalier of the Sixth was poised like a waiting shrike: there were voices within.
“—Princess Ianthe has one. It’s not at all the same thing,” someone was saying.
A tall and golden figure was standing before the tables, her saffron hair unbrushed and sleep in her eyes. Her clothes looked as though she had slept in them. Coronabeth was still magnificent.
She was talking to Teacher, who was sitting at one of the long polished tables—there was Palamedes next to him with an uneaten meal and a piece of paper scribbled almost to holes, and some of the sizzling tautness surrounding Camilla went off the boil. Her shoulders relaxed, just a fragment.
Teacher said gently: “Ah, ah, that is also not correct. The owner is Naberius the Third. If it is being held for him by Princess Ianthe—it’s still his. One key for the Third House and one only, I am afraid.”
“Then the Fifth’s key should be given to me. Magnus wouldn’t mind—wouldn’t have minded.”
“Magnus the Fifth had asked for his own facility key, and I do not know where it is,” said Teacher.
Scalded by the bright orange light of the setting sun coming down through the great ceiling windows, Corona looked like a grief-stricken king: her lovely chin and shoulders were thrust out defiantly, and her mouth was hard and remorseless as glass. Her violet eyes looked as though she had been crying, though perhaps from anger.
Palamedes’s chair clattered as he rose, saying courteously to this vision: “Princess, if you wish it, I’ll escort you down to the facility right now.”
Gideon caught Camilla’s low “The hell you will.”
More chairs scraped on the tiled floor. Gideon hadn’t noticed the duo from the Second House at the table farthest away, drinking hot coffee and looking, as they ever did, as though they had just trimly stepped from the pages of a military magazine. Captain Deuteros said: “I am surprised that the Warden of the Sixth House would break compact like this. You’ve said yourself that this can’t be solved communally.”
“And I was right, Captain,” said Palamedes, “but this is harmless.”
Coronabeth had crossed the floor to Palamedes, and though he was tall she towered a full half a head over him if you included the hair. Camilla had edged