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Isaac did not stop and he did not run. It was one of the bravest and stupidest things Gideon had ever fucking seen. The construct teetered, getting its footing, cocking its great head as though in contemplation. The long straight spars of teeth hovered above the necromancer, bobbing and warping occasionally as though about to be sucked into his fiery gyre. Then at least fifty of them speared him through.
Blue fire and blood sprayed the room. Gideon sheathed her sword, set her shoulders, put one arm up above her eyes, and charged through the field like a rocket. It was like running through a landslide. A thousand fragments of bone ripped her robes to shreds and tore at every inch of exposed skin. She didn’t pay them any mind, but crashed into Jeannemary Chatur like the vengeance of the Emperor. Jeannemary had no intention of stopping: she was tearing into her unbeatable foe as though running away had never been in question. She barely seemed to notice that Gideon had grabbed her, her limbs thrashing, her throat one long howl that Gideon only translated later: Fidelity! Fidelity! Fidelity!
How she scrambled through that hallway, the other girl clutched to her bosom, long tendrils of bone snaking after them from the central room, she did not know. The fact that she shinnied up the ladder with Jeannemary attached, kicking and screaming, was even more unlikely. She tossed the cavalier down—she would have been surprised if the girl had even felt it—slammed the hatch lid, and turned the key so frantically that it made gouges in the metal.
Jeannemary rolled over on the cold black tiles, and she threw up. She pulled herself up on her bone-whipped, cut-up, bashed-in arms and legs, wobbling, and she began to shake. She sank back to her knees and screamed like a whistle. Gideon caught her up again—the grief-stricken teenager thrashed and bit—and started off on a jog away from the hatch.
Jeannemary kept kicking in her arms. “Put me down,” she wept. “Let me go back. He needs me. He could still be alive.”
“He’s seriously not,” said Gideon.
Jeannemary the Fourth screamed again. “I want to die,” she said afterward.
“Tough luck.”
She did, at least, stop kicking. The myriad cuts over Gideon’s hands and face were starting to really sting, but she paid them no mind. It was still a deep black night outside and the wind was howling around the side of Canaan House; she carried Jeannemary inside and down the big rotting staircase, and then she absolutely blanked on what to do next. The Fourth House cavalier couldn’t even stand: she was reduced to the small, disbelieving sobs of someone whose heart had broken forever. It was the second time Gideon had listened to Jeannemary really cry, and the second time was a lot worse than the first.
She had to get her to safety. Gideon wanted her longsword and she wanted Harrow. There were the Ninth quarters—but bone wards could be broken, even Harrow’s. She could march straight to where the others were guarding Dulcinea—but that was a long way to go with her catatonic cargo. And if she met an avaricious Naberius, or an overobedient Colum—she’d still prefer them to whatever was down there, in the facility, in the dark. Gideon’s hand was still gripping the key ring with the facility key she had just now so frantically used, and the red key on it—and lightning struck.
Jeannemary did not ask where they were going. Gideon ran down the soggy Canaan House staircase, and across silent nighttime corridors, and down the sloping little passage that led to the foyer for the training rooms. She pushed aside the tapestry and sprinted down the hall to the great black door that Harrow had called X-203. The door and the lock were so black in the night, and she was so slippery with fear, that for an excruciating minute she couldn’t seem to find the keyhole. And then she found it, and slid the red key home, and opened the door to the long-abandoned study.
The rail of spotlights all lit up, illuminating the clean laminate countertops of the laboratory and the still-shining wooden stairs to the living room. She slammed the door shut behind them and locked it so quickly that it ought to have broken the sound barrier. Gideon half-heaved, half-carried Jeannemary up the staircase and put her down on the squashy armchair, which wheezed with the sudden use. The sorrowful teen curled into a foetal position, bleeding and hiccupping. Gideon barrelled away and started taking stock of the room, wondering if she could haul the big wooden bookcases down as barricades.
“Where are we?” the Fourth eventually said, drearily.
“One of the key rooms. We’re safe, here. I’m the only one with a key.”
“What if it breaks down the door?”
Gideon said bracingly, “Are you kidding? That thing’s three-inch-thick iron.”
This neither comforted nor satisfied Jeannemary, who had possibly seen a makeshift blockade in the other girl’s eyes, but her crying diminished—every five seconds another sob would rack her, but she had swapped weeping for hysterical sucked-in breaths. Until she said: “It’s not fair,” and started up again with the great lung-filling fits of tears.
Gideon had moved before the aged gun, frightened into wondering whether or not it worked. Who knew? The swords still all held edges. “No. It’s not.”
“You d-don’t understand.” The cavalier was fighting for control, fierce eyes wet with hate and despair. She was shivering so hard that she was vibrating. “Isaac’s cautious. Not reckless. He’s not—he didn’t— He was always so careful, he shouldn’t have— I hated him when we were little, he wasn’t at all what I wanted—”
She gave in to crying again. When she could, she said, “It’s not fair! Why did he get stupid now?”
There was absolutely nothing Gideon could say to this. She needed more firepower than bookcases and antiques. What she badly needed was Harrow Nonagesimus, for whom a gigantic construction of bones would be more fun opportunity than hellish monstrosity, and she needed her longsword. But she couldn’t leave Jeannemary, and right now Jeannemary was a liability.
She mopped her hands over her bleeding face, demolishing her face paint and trying to get her thoughts straight, and settled on: “Look. We’ll stay in here until you’re fighting fit—don’t try to tell me you’re fit, you’re exhausted, you’re in shock, and you look like hot puke. Take half an hour, lie down, and I’ll get you some water.”
It took an enormous effort to get Jeannemary onto one of the dusty, mattress-squeaking beds, and much more effort to get her to take even tiny sips of the water that came out of the tap at the laboratory—the pipes rattled in shock that they were being used—in a little tin mug that had probably not had anybody’s lips near it since the Ninth House was young. The recalcitrant teen drank a little, rested her head on the spongy old pillow, and her shoulders shook for a long time. Gideon settled down in the overstuffed armchair and kept her rapier out over her knees.
“What was that thing?”
Gideon startled; she had been lulled into a fug of reverie, and Jeannemary’s voice was thick with weeping and the pillow.
“Dunno,” she said. “All I know is that I’m going to kick its ass for it.”
Another moment’s silence. Then: “This is the first time Isaac and me really left the House … I wanted him to sign us up to go out to the front ages ago, but Abigail said no … and he wouldn’t … I mean, he’s got three younger brothers and four younger sisters to look after. He had, I mean.”
