“Oh, could’ve … should’ve,” she said. “You can could have and should have yourself back into last week … back into the womb. I could have kept Pro by my side, or I should have gone with him. I can go back and make things happen perfectly if I just think about what I should have or could have done. But I didn’t … you didn’t … that’s the way it is.”
“I can’t bear it,” said Gideon honestly. “It’s just such crap.”
“Life is a tragedy,” said Dulcinea. “Left behind by those who pass away, not able to change anything at all. It’s the total lack of control … Once somebody dies, their spirit’s free forever, even if we snatch at it or try to stopper it or use the energy it creates. Oh, I know sometimes they come back … or we can call them, in the manner of the Fifth … but even that exception to the rule shows their mastery of us. They only come when we beg. Once someone dies, we can’t grasp at them anymore, thank God!—except for one person, and he’s very far from here, I think. Gideon, don’t be sorry for the dead. I think death must be an absolute triumph.”
Gideon could not get behind this. Jeannemary had died like a dog while Gideon napped, and Isaac had been made into a big teenage colander; she wanted to be sorry for them forever. But before she could say anything to this effect, a great cough that filled up about two and a half handkerchiefs tore at Dulcinea. The contents of these handkerchiefs made Gideon envy the dead, let alone Dulcinea.
“We’ll find your cav,” she said, trying to sound steady and failing so completely she set a record.
“I just want to know what happened,” said Dulcinea drearily. “That’s always the worst of it … not knowing what happened.”
Gideon didn’t know whether she could get behind this either. She would’ve been devoutly grateful to live not knowing exactly the things that had happened, in vivid red-and-purple wobbling intensity. Then again, her mind kept flaying itself over Magnus and Abigail, down there in the dark, alone—over the when, and the how; over whether Magnus had watched his wife be murdered like Jeannemary had watched Isaac. She thought: It is stupid for a cavalier to watch their necromancer die.
Gideon felt hot and empty and eager to fight. She said without real hope, “If you want your keys back from Silas Octakiseron, I’ll deck him for you.”
The coughing turned into a bubbling laugh. “Don’t,” said Dulcinea. “I gave them up freely, by my own will. What would I want with them now?”
Gideon asked baldly, “Why were you trying to do this whole thing in the first place?”
“Do you mean, even though I’m dying?” Dulcinea gave a friable smile, but one with a dimple in it. “That’s not a complete barrier. The Seventh House thinks my condition is an asset. They even wanted me to get married and keep the genes going—me! My genes couldn’t be worse—in case they produced poetry down the line.”
“I don’t understand.”
The woman in front of her shifted, raising her hand to brush a few fawn-coloured strands away from her forehead. She didn’t answer for a while. Then she said, “When you don’t have it too badly—when you can live to maybe fifty years—when your body’s dying from the inside out, when your blood cells are eating you alive the whole time … it makes for such a necromancer, Gideon the Ninth. A walking thanergy generator. If they could figure out some way to stop you when you’re mostly cancer and just a little bit woman, they would! But they can’t. They say my House loves beauty—they did and they do—and there’s a kind of beauty in dying beautifully … in wasting away … half-alive, half-dead, within the very queenhood of your power.”
The wind whistled, thin and lonely, against the window. Dulcinea struggled to raise herself up on her elbows before Gideon could stop her, and she demanded: “Do I look like I’m at the queenhood of my power?”
This would’ve made anyone sweat. “Uh—”
“If you lie I’ll mummify you.”
“You look like a bucket of ass.”
Dulcinea eased herself back down, giggling fretfully. “Gideon,” she said, “I told your necromancer I didn’t want to die. And it’s true … but I’ve been dying for what feels like ten thousand years. I more didn’t want to die alone. I didn’t want them