admit that she was badly shaken; and she said lowly: “We now avoid Pent and Quinn at all costs. For the sake of the Ninth House, and of the sanctity of the Locked Tomb. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, my Lady Harrowhark,” said Ortus.
“If I believe they pose a threat, or that they intend us direct harm—frankly, on any minor excuse—I will invoke Tomb retribution. I’ll kill Pent where she stands if I need to, and you will swear that there was no sin of unjustified House war, no matter the circumstances.”
Only a pause. “Yes, my Lady Harrowhark,” said Ortus.
This calm agreement made her all the more furious. She did not examine why. “And it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two,” Harrow added, taking bloody satisfaction in cruelty. “Not whichever you happen to feel like at the time. It’s amateurish.”
Her cavalier stopped immediately, like a beast of burden shying before a jump. He said, “Yes, my Lady Harrowhark. I am flattered by your attention to my craft. It’s consciously archaic. Emphasising my commitment to spoken performance.”
“For God’s sake, Ortus, please stop sounding as though I’m about to whip you. I am taking care of our affairs, despite your ignorance.”
“Let me not be unpleasing to my lady,” he said. “Let the unseeing eye of the Locked Tomb gaze down upon me, and see me guard her with the unmoving aegis of a cavalier’s love. But I will not modulate my tone for you.”
She rounded on him. Harrowhark knew that she was being unfair; she knew that she was being petulant—had been scared into it, and could not soothe herself, and was using any means fair and foul to try to do so now. But when she was scared, she was a child again, and she was more afraid of being a child again than anything else in her life. Almost.
“I have every right to correct you. We are at the gates of the Tomb, even now,” she said. “I carry it with me, and its rules hold clear.”
“Let us never leave it,” said Ortus. “My lady, I follow your every order … I will accept your chidings gratefully. I will watch you slay whomsoever you feel the need to slay, and I will sponge the blood from your brow … but when I lay me down to sleep, I am a fully grown man who is allowed to feel precisely what I want, about anything I want. There has never been a rule against doing so, and that has always been my deep and unyielding relief with regard to you—to my lady mother—to Captain Aiglamene. Your final will be done, my lady.”
Then he bowed to her—the very correct bow of a Ninth House tomb swordsman; his paint a perfect, if sad and melting, skull, his attitude sombre, his face the blankness of the grave. And just when his Lady might feel the pain of any reflective empathy for him, he saved her by establishing his position as the biggest source of passive aggression her House had ever produced. “I might also note that synizesis is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody. I’m certain your studies have kept you from the full breadth of the classics.”
Harrowhark looked at him, chose to make that look her final word, and then drew him into an alcove. The alcove was shallow, but he provided good cover. Her fingers shook a very little, so she withdrew them into her sleeves, so it might not be too obvious. She took the innocuous piece of paper that Abigail Pent had given her to examine, and she unfolded it.
When she saw what was inside her eyes seemed to strobe; the streaked red writing almost hovered above the page, the letters crowding and cramping themselves together as she read—
THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED AND YOU LIED TO ME SO I DID THE IMPLANTATION MYSELF YOU SELF-SERVING ZOMBIE AND YOU STILL SENT HIM AFTER ME AND I WOULD HAVE HAD HIM IF I HADN’T BEEN COMPROMISED AND HE TOOK PITY ON ME! HE TOOK PITY ON ME! HE SAW ME AND HE TOOK PITY ON ME
AND FOR THAT I’LL MAKE YOU BOTH SUFFER UNTIL YOU NO LONGER UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THAT GODDAMNED WORD
They were totally alone. Harrowhark nonetheless made her fingers very still, and made the sign she had taught to Ortus—the one that asked the question, What am I seeing? He instantly took the paper from her shivering