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It was just as bad as the first time, but unquestionably shorter than Harrow’s long and awful walk from one side of the avulsion room to the other; and now Gideon knew what to expect. The pain was a familiar brand of terrible. She did not cry out, though that probably would have been more dignified: instead she toned it down to a series of wheezes and grunts as her necromancer took something from her that sandpapered her soul. Her blood boiled in her veins, then froze abruptly and grazed her innards with each pump of her heart.
Harrowhark curved her fingers, and she pulled. At the end of a very long moment she held an inert sphere of compressed ash and bone, grey and pockmarked, tamed to submission. The lock was as clear and as clean as though the obstruction had never existed. The pair from the Sixth stared at them. Eventually, Palamedes leaned down to squint through the newly cleared keyhole.
“Don’t get used to using her that way, Nonagesimus,” he said, and disapproval had crept into his voice. “It’s not good theory and it’s not good morals.”
It was Gideon who said, “You’re sounding more and more like Silas Octakiseron.”
“Ouch,” said Palamedes, sincerely. Then he straightened up. “Well. It’s off, for good or for ill. Maybe we should’ve left it on, but I want to make it—them—whatever—nervous. Even a supernatural force is vulnerable.” He let his finger rest on the lock. “Did you hide the last key too?” he asked it quietly. “Or are we racing you to it? Well, move faster, dickhead.”
Camilla cleared her throat, maybe because her necromancer was talking to a door. He dropped his hand. “Owe you another one, Ninth,” he said to her skull-faced necromancer. “You get a free question.”
“It’s unattractive to set yourself up as the repository of all knowledge, Sextus.”
“‘Set up’ nothing.”
“How many keys are in play now?”
Palamedes suddenly grinned. It was a curious act of alchemy that turned his raw-boned, plain face into something magnetic: very nearly good looking, instead of being the act of three jawbones meeting a chin. “We’ve got three,” he said. “You’ve got two—or, you did, until you gave one to Lady Septimus, as per the agreement she’d offered me first. You should have haggled for more, by the way—she offered me a look at the keys she already had. But I suspect you didn’t need her to sweeten the deal.” Harrow didn’t react, though Gideon bet she was swearing up a storm in some vile crypt of her brain. “The Eighth had one, and now they’ve got two more through trickery—Dulcinea’s. But that still leaves one spare.”
“The Third?” suggested Harrow.
“Nope. Cam heard them talking this morning, they’ve got nothing. And it’s not the Second unless they lied to me after the duel, which, you know, Second. So watch your back. The Second are still looking for a way to shut the whole thing down, the Third don’t like coming last, and the Eighth will take anything and justify the cost.” He frowned. “It’s the Third I’m least certain of. I don’t know which twin to watch out for.”
“The big one,” said Harrow, without hesitation. Gideon was pretty sure both twins were the same size, and was surprised to discover that even the anatomist’s gaze of Harrowhark Nonagesimus was not immune to the radiance coming off Princess Corona. “They’re both only middling necromancers, but the big one is the dominant. She says I; the sister says we.”
“Honestly a good point. Still not sure. Meet me tomorrow night and we’ll start the theorem exchange, Ninth. I’ve got to think.”
“The missing key,” said Harrow.
“The missing key.”
After the brief goodbyes, both of the Sixth House turned away in their drab greys—until, much to Gideon’s acute dislike, Palamedes spun around. He had not met her eye the whole time, maybe out of service to the fact that she was avoiding his, but now he looked her dead in the face. She swallowed down the urge to say: I’m sorry, I don’t hate you, I just kind of hate me right now. Instead, she coolly looked away, which was the opposite of an apology.
“Keep an eye on her, Nav,” said Palamedes quickly. And then he turned to catch up with Camilla.
“He’s getting presumptuous,” said the Reverend Daughter, watching their retreating backs.
“I think he wasn’t—talking about you.”
They kept a long and drawn-out silence, as unwillingly stretchy as the ashes and bone shards that had been clumped over the keyhole. “Good point,” said Harrow. “That reminds me! I now officially ban you from seeing Lady Septimus.”
“Are we having this conversation? Are we really having this conversation?”
Harrow’s face was pinched into an expression of deliberate patience. “Nav,” she said. “Take it from me. Dulcinea Septimus is dangerous.”
“You’re nuts. Dulcinea Septimus can’t even blow her nose. I’m sick of how weird you’re getting over this.”
“And yet you’ve never thought about how she still managed to get a key—how am I being weird?”
“I don’t know,” said Gideon, heartily fed up with the whole thing. “I don’t know! Maybe it’s because whenever she’s mentioned, you effortlessly tick both boxes for jealous and creep?”
“If you looked in a dictionary you’d find it’s envious, and I’m hardly envious of—”
“No, it’s one hundred percent jealous,” said Gideon recklessly, “on account of how you’re always doing this when it looks like she’s taking up my time.”
There was a horrible pause.
“I have been lax,” said her necromancer, steadily ignoring this last statement like it was a dump Gideon had taken in the hallway. She took her gloves from Gideon’s awkward hands and slipped them back over her fingers. “I have indulged myself in apathy while you attached yourself to every weirdo in Canaan House.” (“You cannot possibly call anyone a weirdo,” said Gideon.) “No more. We now have less to hide, but more to lose.”
“She’s got nobody if that thing comes after her. It’s a death sentence.”
“Yes. She has no cavalier now,” said Harrow. “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when. Let the dead reclaim the dead. You won’t take my word when I’ve proven my judgement before? Fine. You’re still barred from her sickroom.”
“No,” said Gideon. “Nah. Nope. Denied. That’s not me.”
“You’re not her bodyguard.”
“I never pledged to be yours either,” said Gideon. “Not really.”
“Yes, you did,” snapped Harrowhark. “You agreed to act as my cavalier primary. You agreed to devote yourself to the duties of a cavalier. Your misunderstanding of what that entailed does not make you any less beholden to what your duty actually is—”
“I promised to fight for you. You promised me my freedom. There’s a hell of a good chance that I’m not going to get it, and I know it. We’re all dying here! Something’s after us! The only thing I can do is try to keep as many of us as I can alive for as long as I can, and hope that we work something out! You’re the ignorant sack of eyeballs who doesn’t understand what a cavalier is, Harrow, you just take whatever I give you—”
