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_bring_hell]

"She is very reserved and composed," Harrow says, with a twist of smile. "And powerful. And ruthless, I think. She told me, 'death is lighter than a feather; duty is heavier than a mountain.'"

"But she is kind in her cautious way. She has trusted me, and given me good advice, about magic and about Warders and about... about my inheritance." Harrow stills, as she prepares herself to say something extremely embarrassing. The pattern is perhaps becoming obvious.

"If I had had a mother who was... who was not what my mother was," she says carefully. "She is what I would--imagine."

[we_do_bones]

She truly cannot conceive of a less maternal figure than the Reverend Mother, so she just nods.

"You must have trusted her, if you brought her into Canaan House," she says, and wonders at a world where Harrow was so worried about her she risked bringing a healer from a universe away.

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"I was desperate," she says. "I thought I had broken you."

She does not try to look in Gideon's face; it would be embarrassing for both of them. She stays curled where she is, cradled and pressed against the simply ridiculous number of abs Gideon seems to have fit into her long torso.

"I am nothing without you, Nav. I hope you know that. I emptied my fear and hatred out on you, and you took it, and never flinched. You were indomitable, and I wasted your strength on digging ditches and escape attempts."

"You should have been my cavalier long ago."

[we_do_bones]

"You say the sweetest things," says Gideon, profoundly embarrassed despite Harrow's tact. She's flushed red to her ears, and she doesn't know what to say.

But Harrow is baring herself and it seems only fair that Gideon do the same, or, barring that, at least accept her confessions with the solemnity with which they're offered. "Harrow, there's no universe where you're nothing. If I'd never been born, or my mother had never fallen into the Ninth, you'd still be incredible."

And then, because she can't not: "It would just be a much less interesting, much less hot universe."

[we_bring_hell]

"I won't argue with that," she says.

After a long, lazy pause: "I could sleep like this, I think, although it is objectively the stupidest way to make use of the available surfaces."

To wit: laying half on and half off of both beds, with a jumble of dishes at one end, the lights on, and no pillows or blankets.

[we_do_bones]

"We should probably clean up," suggests Gideon, who doesn't move and seemingly has no intention of doing so.

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Harrow hmms and burrows in closer; her already ridiculous temperature seems to spike.

The skeleton on the stand in the corner stirs and creaks forward to deal with the dishes and rescue the pillows Harrow kicked off the bed.

[we_do_bones]

It's like cuddling a radioactive bomb. Gideon's chuckle rumbles through her chest as the skeleton does their chores for them.

"Do you want me to move?" she asks, after a moment. Her own bed is perpendicular to Harrow's and as much as she'd hated the thought of sleeping at Harrow's feet before, she finds she no longer minds.

On the other hand, she's pretty damn comfortable right here.

[we_bring_hell]

The skeleton is not programmed with any particular theorem, so in truth it's Harrow doing the chores through mental puppet strings instead of her own bony hands.

It drops the pillows a little further up the bed from Gideon and creaks to the light switch, and back towards its stand, and only once it has fallen still again does Harrow respond.

"This is fine," she says. "For tonight, at least." And if Gideon doesn't regret cuddling the world's boniest hot water bottle.

"I don't want to lose track of you, Griddle."

She rolls over though, rotating within the circle of her cavalier's arms into a classic little spoon position; she is becoming uncomfortably conscious of Gideon's mix of hard muscle and soft flesh pressed against her face and front side, and theorizes it will be better facing the other way. Her shoulder blades, sharp and raw though they may be, are certainly less sensitive than her chest.

[we_do_bones]

"Like you could," says Gideon, embarrassed by her own relief. As a distraction, she drags herself and Harrow up the mattress so she can slide a pillow under her head and curl around Harrow like an overprotective calyx.

They lie there together in the big warm dark, Gideon counting Harrow's breaths as they push her back gently into Gideon's chest, and after a long while, Gideon says:

"Did you try to kill me, back on the Ninth? With the shuttle?"

[we_bring_hell]

She's very nearly lulled to sleep, Gideon's powerful form backstopping, her breath grazing over the stubble of her tonsure. And then the question goes off like a forgotten landmine. Harrow goes very still.

"No. That wasn't supposed to happen. Not to you, not to Ninegad."


"He was supposed to be discovered and returned. Stripped of his title and given penance. We had... arranged it."

[we_do_bones]

"But – then –"

If not Harrow, trying to off Gideon finally and spectacularly, then who?

[we_bring_hell]

"Crux," she says, in a voice like a weary sigh.

Crux was the only person who took care of Harrow after her parents decided to exit existence; yet Harrow knows perfectly well he was beastly to literally every other person on the Ninth.

"He meant it for Ortus, not you. Ninegad and I were perfectly agreed that he had no business going to Canaan House, but Crux..."

Crux, who had sold his soul with the rest of them but was the only who didn't direct his guilt onto the child they created; who instead created a monument to service where his conscience should be and washed his hands of it.

"He could never bear any sign of disloyalty."

[we_do_bones]

So that was it. The rotten old seneschal with his implacable fury and grasping devotion to his House had sent Sister Glaurica's ghost screaming back to the Eighth, and now Silas Octakiseron knew too much.

She doesn't say so. If Harrow heard what Silas had told Gideon, she'd be straight through the door in her nightdress with a sack of emergency bones and a very focused expression. “What a dope,” Gideon says instead. “I was never loyal a day in my life and I still saw you in the raw.”

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow exhales.

Gideon's arm is draped across her like a safety belt on a shuttle, Harrow's hands clasped loosely around the wrist, the powerful hand flat against her stomach, unbelievable in its span.

On the whole, it is not necessarily any less... disturbing... than facing the other way.

"Go to sleep, Gideon," Harrow says in a slightly strangled voice.

[we_do_bones]

Likely to her adept's surprise...

Gideon does.




And for once, she doesn't dream of anything.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow takes longer to get to sleep, but eventually her mind and body quiet enough to let her go.

She has the same dream she always has.

I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human skulls
On a cliff above the ocean, howling wind and shrieking seagulls
And the dream went on forever, one single static frame

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.