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“Duel’s off,” she said, by way of hello. “Seventh never turned up, and they’re not in their quarters. Let’s move.”
They moved. Gideon’s heart hammered in her ears. Her rapier swung against her leg as persistently as the rain peppering the walls of Canaan House. By instinct Gideon led them through a row of dark, dismal antechambers, door handles slippery with rain, and out into the storm itself: the conservatory where Dulcinea liked to sit. It was stultifyingly hot and muggy in there: like walking into the jaws of a panting animal. Rain sleeted off the plex in sky-obscuring sheets. Beyond the conservatory door—under an awning that had long since tipped into the rain—was Dulcinea.
She was sprawled across the wet flagstones. Her crutches lay on either side of her, as though they had slipped from her grasp. Gideon’s insides interlaced, lungs into kidneys into bowels, then rubber-banded back with a twang. It was Camilla who first dropped to her knees beside her and rolled her over on her back. A bruise popped on her temple, and her clothes had soaked right through, as though she had been lying there for hours. There was a terrible bluish tinge to her face.
Dulcinea gave an enormous, tearing, terrible cough, pink spittle foaming from her mouth. Her chest jerked, staccato. It was not a pretty sight, but Gideon welcomed it with open arms.
“He never came back,” she said hopelessly, and fainted.
23
PROTESILAUS THE SEVENTH WAS MISSING. Dulcinea Septimus was critically ill. Left stranded when her cavalier failed to return, then threatened by the rain, she had tried to walk by herself and slipped: now she was confined to bed with hot cloths on her chest and no good to anybody. Teacher moved her to one of the tiny rooms in the priest wing, and she had to be laid on her side so that whatever was choking her lungs could drain out of her mouth and into a basin. Teacher’s two nameless colleagues sat with her, replacing the basin and boiling noisy kettles.
Everyone else—the Second House with their brass buttons; the twins of the Third and their now-bouffant cavalier; the Fourth teenagers, gimlet eyed; and the Fifth asleep forever in the mortuary; the Sixth in grey and the mismatched Eighth; and the Ninth, with Harrow roused and tight lipped in her spare habit—was accounted for.
The ashes in the incinerator had been raked out and combed over, and the confirmation that they were human remains was not illuminating. The surviving necromancers had gathered around a bowl of them, and they had all pounced on it like a bowl of peanuts at a party. Only Coronabeth disdained fingering a bunch of smuts and crumblings.
“They’re much older than they ought to be,” said Ianthe Tridentarius, cool as a cucumber, which was the first sign of hope for Protesilaus. “I would have said these belonged to a corpse three months dead.”
“You’re out by about eight weeks,” said Palamedes, brow furrowed. “Which would still predate us significantly.”
“Well, in either case it’s not him. Has anyone else died? Teacher?”
“We have not held a funeral in a very long time,” said Teacher, a bit prissily. “And at any rate, we certainly would not have consigned them to the waste incinerator.”
“Interesting you should say them.”
Ianthe had two small fragments on her palms. One of them was recognisably part of a tooth. For some reason, this dental fact had Harrow looking at Ianthe’s palms, then Ianthe, then Ianthe’s palms again as though both were suddenly the most fascinating things in the world. Gideon recognised this sudden diamond focus: Harrowhark was reestimating a threat.
Ianthe said, idly: “You see? There’s at least two people in there.”
“But the time signature’s consistent throughout the remains—”
She tipped both fragments into the palms of Palamedes. “Happy birthday,” she said. “They must have died at the same time.”
Captain Deuteros said tersely: “The incinerator is a snare. I’m as curious as anyone to know what’s in there, but the fact remains that Protesilaus is evidently not, so where is he?”
“I have set the servants to find him,” said the First House priest. “They will search every nook and cranny, apart from your rooms … which I ask you to search yourselves, on the bizarre chance that Protesilaus the Seventh is there. I will not breach the facility, nor will my servants. If you want to go down there, you must go down there yourselves. And then there is the outside of the tower … but if he left the tower, the water is very deep.”
Corona turned her chair around and straddled the seat, crossing her slim ankles at the front. Gideon noticed that she and Ianthe had not entirely made up in the wake of whatever fight they must have had; their chairs were close together but their bodies were angled away from each other. Corona shook her head again, as though to clear it of cobwebs. “He must be alive. There’s no motive. He was— I mean, any time I met him, I thought—”
“I thought he was, perhaps, the most boring man alive,” supplied her twin, languidly, wiping her hands. Corona flinched. “And not even a classic Seventh House bore; he hasn’t subjected us to even one minimalist poem about cloud formations.”
“Consider this: maybe there’s no motive,” said Jeannemary Chatur, who refused to sheathe her rapier. She had positioned herself and Isaac nearly back-to-back, as though united they could take all comers. “Consider this: they went through the hatch, just like Magnus and Abigail, and now he’s dead and she’s about to kick the bucket.”
“Would the Fourth drop this insane monster theory—”
“Not insane,” said Teacher to Naberius, “oh, no, not insane.”
Captain Deuteros, who had been scribbling in her notepad, leant back in her chair and tossed down her pencil. “I’d like to supply a more human mens rea. Yes, the Duchess Septimus and her cavalier had accessed the facility. Did they have any keys?”
“Yes,” said a voice at the door.
Gideon hadn’t noticed the chain mail–skirted, whitewashed figure of Silas Octakiseron leave, but she noticed him come back in. He entered the eating-atrium from the kitchen side looking pallid and unruffled, his bladed face as pitiless as ever, free from a normal human emotion. “Yes, she does,” he repeated, “or rather, she did.”
“What the hell did you just do,” said Palamedes quietly.
“Your aggression is unseemly and unwarranted,” said Silas. “I went to see her. I felt a certain responsibility. I was the one who asked for satisfaction, and Brother Asht had been ready to duel her missing cavalier. I did not want bad blood between us. I feel nothing but pity for the Seventh House, Warden Sextus.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
Silas felt about in his pocket and raised his hand to display its contents. It was one of the iron key rings, and on it were two keys, one grey, one a familiar white.
“If foul play has befallen her cavalier,” he said, in his curiously deep voice, “then the culprit will get no joy of it. I found her conscious, keeping hold of this. She’s surrendered it to me for safekeeping.”
“That’s dubious in the extreme,” said Captain Deuteros. “Surrender them to me now in a show of good faith, Master Silas. If you please.”
