Between Chapter 27 and Chapter 28

[we_bring_hell]

Observe Harrowhark Nonagesimus, flopped full-length on a sofa in Milliways, moaning into a cushion. She looks like a heap of coal-filthy laundry, like a bad black snake trying to wriggle into a crack in the fabric of reality and never return.

(When I release you from my service, Nav, you will know about it.)

She fucked up.

(It's just me. Go back to sleep.)

She fucked up so bad.

(Never work with children, Griddle. Their prefrontal cortexes aren't developed.)

She wants to die. For one golden moment she had done something right. Something worthy of what she's been given.

(Death first to vultures and scavengers.

It was good. You were good.)

She is a dullard. An imbecile. A fool. She had screamed herself hoarse upbraiding herself, then left Griddle with that viper Septimus to go do--what? Nothing useful. Nothing to bring back the flower of the Fourth. All she'd done is give Dulcinea Septimus more time to thieve the loyalty of her cavalier.

She wants to die, but she isn't allowed to die, not until she has redeemed the deaths of two hundred (and two!) children. Not until she's sold her poor mortgaged soul to the Emperor and the Corse of the Locked Tomb and renewed the Ninth. All of their hopes ride on her, and she is sinking under them, and the golden eyes of Gideon Nav are all their eyes; the eyes that can't believe that God and chance have entrusted their fate and their fidelity to this failure.

(Harrow, I hate you. I never stopped hating you. I will always hate you and you will always hate me.)

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

He doesn't know. Of course. He has no idea what he's seeing. She closes her eyes.

Harrowhark is a genius. She knows this like she knows the bones of her hand. She knows it is the only thing that makes the crime of her even marginally redeemable.

So why can't she stop being stupid?

"What you see is not because I'm a necromancer," she manages, before the chains of the Locked Tomb wrap around her throat again.

[lightamidchaos]

He remembers thinking that it was unlikely a fierce corpse would be so polite.

(Wen Ning's face floats in his mind's eye for an instant before he forcibly puts the image aside.)

"Why, then?"

[we_bring_hell]

She raises her hands to to press against her eyes. Behind the veil her mouth works soundlessly.

"I cannot," she says finally. "I thought you already knew."

"I cannot confess it, even now. I thought perhaps I could." Her voice sounds compressed; almost frantic. "Ask Wei Wuxian. Tell him I give him permission. You do not lie, isn't that true?"

[lightamidchaos]

"Lying is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses. It is a sect rule."

He pours a little more energy into the music, concerned at her rising tension.

She is like me. Doesn't that bother you?

"I will ask him. You need not say."

[we_bring_hell]

She exhales, and her cruel mouth strikes again without her conscious intent. "You are an upright young man, Hanguang-jun," she says, images of Silas the Eighth and his white robes flashing before her eyes.

(Good. Now we need not speak again.)

"You may not wish to share your gifts with a black nun once you know what I am."

[lightamidchaos]

He goes pale as the blow strikes true, intended or not.

I think you are Hanguang-jun. I think you are upright, and decent, and I think what Gusu Lan believes I do is not decent--

Lan Wangji shakes his head. The music continues, this time without faltering.

Rule Fifty-Two! Do not befriend the traitorous and evil!

He can still taste the blood in his mouth from the blows falling on his back as he'd challenged his uncle in the same way Wei Ying had challenged him.

I dare to ask, Shufu – who’s just, and who’s evil? Who’s wrong, and who’s right?

"I make my own choices, Reverend Daughter. I will continue to play for you."

[we_bring_hell]

Mortification steals over her again, chilling her blood. The intoxication of self-loathing fades and tension coils back into her shoulders and elbows.

"Thank you," she says softly. She closes her eyes and lets the music rise around her. In her mind's eye, she crosses again the wards, the water, the ice, to the slab; to the body at the heart of her world that her soul is pledged to.

O corse of the Locked Tomb, my heart is broken. Let me be sheathed in ice like you. Let me endure. Make of me a sealed tomb, and I pray that the Rock will never be rolled away. I pray--

And in the lens of her mind's eye, the girl with the sword chained to the slab of ice opens eyes that pierce her with the golden pupils of Gideon Nav.

[lightamidchaos]

He turns his attention inward as the Reverend Daughter closes her eyes, focusing with all his skill on the beauty of the song.

Back to Cleansing, this time, to clear the mind of trouble, then again into Tranquility, to bring peace.

He is grateful, to have this. To do this. To be able to.

[we_bring_hell]

In the flickering flame of her prayer, she embraces the object of her worship, the sword between them like a chaperone, the salt-water scent of the water all around her.

And the corse of the Locked Tomb whispers in her ear:

Have you realised that this whole thing has been about the union of necromancer and cavalier from start to finish?

We're alive through dumb luck and Jeannemary isn't--stop worshiping the sound of your own voice and listen to me--

And she tries to pull away, but the cold fingers grip her tight.

When I release you from my service you will know about it.

I love you. I have never stopped loving you. I will always love you, and you will always love me. Don't forget that.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus opens her eyes--her own eyes, black as the Plutonian shores of a Ninth night--and dabs away tears.

"Forgive me a question that will sound coarse--do you know where Wei Wuxian sleeps?" Only once it's out of her mouth does she realize he may not.

[lightamidchaos]

His eyes narrow.

"In his room."



"Why?"

[we_bring_hell]

Her face creases in frustration with herself. "Because if I knew rooms were available, I would not have wept on the sofa like a ch--"

Ow.

"Like a fool."

"It only now occurred to me to wonder."

[lightamidchaos]

"They are upstairs."

Although he has no intention of showing her to Wei Ying's room.

"Bar-gūniang holds keys, as an innkeeper."

[we_bring_hell]

She sighs deeply. "I see."


"I have not distinguished myself today," she says wearily. "I am not familiar with inns, I suppose."

[lightamidchaos]

She must have been thinking of this place as a teahouse, he realizes.

"There are rooms," he tells her. As he talks, he softens the volume of the music and ceases pouring spiritual energy into it as intensely as before.

"Upstairs. Ask Bar-gūniang for a key. It is marked with symbols that match the door."

Not familiar with inns, she had said, and it suddenly strikes him she may not have traveled much, if that is the case.

"Do you wish assistance?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Now that I know, I believe I can manage," she says wearily.

"I think I should remove myself from Canaan House until I regain my equilibrium. Time will wait there for me to return. I am--compromised. Clearly."

[lightamidchaos]

"Mn."

He does not ask. She had not wished to speak of it before, and he will not pry. If she does now, she will do so.

"I am here in the evenings," he says, with a nod to the guqin. "If you need."

[we_bring_hell]

"I appreciate it greatly," she says. It occurs to her that there is such a thing as an audio recording, and logically such things must be used for recording, say, music as well as lectures on theology or necromancy.

"If you wished to call me Harrowhark," she says tentatively. "Or perhaps just Harrow." The hark particle only reminds her of her father, who she hoped to lay to rest once and for all when she left the Ninth. "I believe we have passed the point of familiarity by now."

[lightamidchaos]

"Harrow," he says, a little cautiously, as if to be certain she means it.

"I am Lan Zhan, courtesy Wangji. Most people--"

Everyone, in fact, who doesn't call him by one of his titles or who isn't Wei Ying.

"--call me Wangji."

He leaves off his family name, as he's explained it before. If she chooses not to use it, well, they are not disciples near in age of the same sect, but in the odd ways of this place perhaps it would be fitting all the same.

[we_bring_hell]

No one but Gideon Nav has ever called her that; her parents always remembered the -hark, and everyone else, even Marshal Crux, had called her Reverend Daughter.

Hearing it sends a pang through her, but it might be a good kind of pain. Necromancy is an art of infinite pains. "Wangji," she says, imitating his pronunciation as best she can.

"I will look for you," she says, with all the weight of a thank you.

[lightamidchaos]

He nods, and stops playing in order to rise to his feet and give her a small, courteous bow as opposed to the deeply formal ones of before.

"I will be here."

[we_bring_hell]

The Bar seems to ponder long, before giving her a key marked with a 99. She thanks it and mounts the stairs.

The room is spartan; sufficient to her needs. There is a single painting on the wall, painstakingly straight. It seems to be a mounted jigsaw puzzle of a tower at sunset. There is the faintest smell; some kind of organic ash, mixed with the oil of a mechanism. It's not unpleasant.

Her robe has somehow transitioned to the closet, and there's a skeleton on a stand in the corner; she recognizes the ribs. It grins at her familiarly. In the closet there are rows of long-sleeved shirts much like her usual habit, and some other shirts she frowns at. In a drawer there are trousers and spare niqabs and gloves and socks. Her journal is here on the desk.

This is all burying the lede: perpendicular to the white, crisp bed is a second one. She glares at it. There is also a set of free weights in one corner, which get their share.

On the table by the bed is a device she only vaguely recognizes the function of, but it seems to be active. She presses the universal glyph for play.