Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 31

[we_bring_hell]

Harrowhark stands in the hallway and watches the Third retreat, her brow furrowing a wrinkle into her paint. She has an uncomfortable feeling she's been underestimating Ianthe Tridentarius all along, and her head whirls with being suddenly hurled back into the unforgiving meatgrinder of House politics.

But the secret is out and she is vindicated; she did not kill Protesilaus Ebdoma, and Dulcinea Septimus is a liar.

She hears the unmistakable footsteps of Gideon Nav joining her, and forgets all that. She turns in a swish of black cloth and says, “Follow me.”

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[we_do_bones]

"Bite me," says Gideon, who has had it up to her eyebrows with Harrow's shit and is in the mood to fight.

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Her stomach ties in a knot.

Harrow meets her eyes -- her own eyes, reflected in those godforsaken sunglasses -- and says: "The note, Nav."

Her voice doesn't even shake. She cannot show weakness here, among the other heirs.

[we_do_bones]

The last thing she wants to do is obey. Because of Harrow, two children are dead and Gideon has spent the last few days in a lather of panic and being slammed out of sleep by nightmares. Harrow is capable of absolutely anything except kindness, except trust, except faith.

I will fail you, Nav. You will lose trust in me.

Her mouth tightens. But she shoves her hand into the pocket of her voluminous, dusty black robe, and pulls out a sheet of flimsy, folded over itself.

She reads it once. And then once more, because her eyes are stinging and Harrow's handwriting is blurring out except for one word that sticks into her beating heart like a bone splinter.

She clears her throat, refolds the flimsy, and pockets it again. "...Fine."

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Harrow nods, quick and curt, feeling like a parody of herself.

So close to the finish line now. "Then come."

Harrowhark sweeps down the stairs two at a time, the treads creaking in panic, as they proceed down the grand flight that leads them to the atrium: from there, down one corridor, down another, one right, to a deserted corridor and a door that is plain and unassuming.

If it doesn't open now, Harrow thinks, barely coherent, but it does--and noise and light of Milliways Bar sweeps over the empty, haunted hallway of Canaan House. Harrow's shoulders drop a full inch in relief, and she barrels through the door.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon follows her in silence. She had more or less expected Harrow to lead with “What were you doing in my closet,” at which point Gideon might well have shaken her until the teeth in her head and the teeth in her pockets all rattled, but Harrow doesn't say anything, only leads the way through corridor after corridor, down and down.

She doesn't know how Harrow finds the door and makes it open – she's only stumbled into Milliways by mistake – but what's to know? If anyone can do the impossible, it's Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and sole keeper of all its mysteries.

After the silent tension of Canaan House, Milliways feels like a migraine about to happen: gaudy, loud, cheerful in a way that makes Gideon want to punch something.

She keeps her eyes on Harrow. They must be here for a reason.

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They are. Harrow moves like a dart through the noise and color, to the back door, and into the night, which is blessedly dark and cool and shotgun blasted with stars.

Harrow paces along the curve of the lake until the texture of the ground changes underfoot, going soft and sandy, and the sound and smell of the water is different too.

"The time has come," she says, stripping out of her robe and letting it pool at her feet, standing like a wraith in the moonlight.

"To tell you everything."

[we_do_bones]

Outside, she breathes deep. The air tastes fresh and smells of green, growing things and, once they're near the inlet, very lightly of salt and something sweetly floral.

Except then Harrowhark starts to disrobe and Gideon's attention is brought aggressively back to earth just so she can panic.

“Oh, thank God for that,” she says hysterically, profoundly embarrassed at how her heart rate is spiking.

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"I have a bathing suit upstairs," she says in passing. "But I am past caring, Griddle."

She kicks off her boots and stalks into the surf without her robe but with stiff dignity flowing behind her like a cloak, right up until the point the tide comes back with and crashes over her cropped head and she resurfaces spluttering.

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A what? But then Harrow steps into the water and founders like a twiggy black branch getting washed ashore, and it's all so unanticipated that Gideon sheds robe, boots, rapier, gauntlet, and sunglasses without question to follow her adept into the waves.

It's warmer than she expected. This place is extremely weird. She ducks under a wavelet and comes up spitting out a mouthful of salty water. "Why are we here? Couldn't we do this on land?"

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"The Ninth House has a secret, Nav," she says. Her voice is measured and calm, even as her muddied paint drips down her pointed chin. "For seventeen years, only my family has known it. And by my mother's rule, we could only speak of it when immersed in salt water. She kept a pool for the purpose."

"I hated it. But as you know, my mother is dead, and I--have tried to keep this rule."

[we_do_bones]

"Oh shit," says Gideon, blinking in surprise. "This is it. It's go time."

Even after holding a shaking Harrowhark Nonagesimus in the library, she never really thought they'd ever come to this.

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"This is go time," Harrow agrees solemnly. The water is up to her shoulders, and her breath is coming slow and deep; when she wipes a sleeve over her face, half her painted skull comes with it.

"I have intended to tell you for some time. I prepared myself here. Tried telling others, to whom it was only a ghost story. But it was always you. Only you. And then you came here, from too early... and everything went to hell."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon sweeps both of her hands through her hair, trickles going down the back of her neck and into her sodden collar, trying to contemplate a world where Harrowhark can say, with a straight face and all signs of sincerity, it was always you.

Eventually, all she says is, “Why?”

[we_bring_hell]

"Because if I had been open with you from the start... if I had told you about Protesilaus the Seventh on the first day, everything would have been different."

[we_do_bones]

She's ready for almost anything – she thinks – but not for that.

"The first day?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Griddle," she says wearily. "I have not puppeted my own parents around for all these years without learning anything."

"I knew it the moment she pointed a sword at your neck while you held her." Does she sound crazy jealous? She doesn't sound crazy jealous, does she?

[we_do_bones]

Gideon wants to respond to Harrow's second statement, but anger is seeping into her the way saltwater crept beneath her clothes.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me then? Or, better question, why the hell didn't you tell me when you killed him?"

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"I didn't kill him!" Harrow protests. "Don't you understand? He arrived here dead. I tested the theorem, and the body collapsed. It appears he had been stabbed through the chest, but I didn't have long to examine him. Someone was coming; I took the head and ran."

"It was the night we completed the entropy field challenge."

[we_do_bones]

“No, you monster’s ass,” says Gideon coldly. “I mean, why didn’t you tell me you’d killed him before you sent me and the Fourth down to the facility to look for the guy who was in a box in your closet? Why didn’t you take the moment to say, I don’t know, hey, maybe we shouldn't send two children downstairs to get fucked up by a huge bone creature.”

But there's something else that's niggling at her, too, stoking her fury, and her stomach goes cold. "Wait. Fuck. Did you know? You said you were ahead of me, that I came in from before you –

"Harrow. Did you know?"

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She swallows, and looks down into the water. "Yes," she whispers.

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Something horrible is happening to Gideon's face. Beneath what's left of her paint, she's gone paper-pale right to the lips, and her eyes are wide and hurt. She looks, more than anything, like she's about to cry.



"Could I have changed it?" she whispers, after a long moment. "If you'd told me. Could I have saved them?"

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"No," she says. She sounds sure. She wishes she was as sure she sounds. But it has to be true. The people who know told her it was. It has to be.

"There are--I did the research. There are different ways it could go. But they died. It happened. I saw the bodies. It can't be undone. I'm not the Emperor, Griddle."

"It happened once because of me," she says, her voice wavering. "I thought... I thought it was a blind tunnel and nothing would happen. So if Septimus made her move you would be safe." She's pleading, almost. "The Ninth is deep in the blood-debt of the Fourth... and then I did it again. I had to do it again."

She wipes furiously at her eyes.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon swallows hard against a painful lump in her throat and nods because she has to believe it. She has to believe Harrow in this, because if it isn't true, if there had been a way...

But it happened. It happened again. "All you had to do was tell me," she says, and her voice sounds funny but it's no longer either the raw whisper or the ramping fury of before. "All you had to do was say you were freaking out, that the Seventh was a mummy man –"

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Harrow looks up, her face an open wound. "I had reason to believe," she says in a low voice, "you would trust her more than you trusted me."

"I played it all wrong from the start. By the time I dismantled the puppet, I... I thought you were compromised. I thought you would go straight for the Seventh if I told you. I had to have proof, proof she did it and proof of why."

"I didn't want to hurt you unnecessarily, Griddle. I didn't want to disturb your--equilibrium."

[we_do_bones]

"Harrow," says Gideon, hurting keenly despite – apparently? – her adept's efforts, "if my heart had a dick, you would kick it."