Sometimes you found yourself standing, gorge risen, staring at the great sword left untidy and naked on the floor. You would not remember rising. You would not remember how you had come to be there. Sometimes you would forget who you were, and at recalling yourself, weep like a child.
The hand touched her face, her mouth, her eyebrows, smoothed her temples. As if knowing her thoughts by her face, the voice whispered: “Don’t. It’s very easy to die, Gideon the Ninth ... you just let it happen. It’s so much worse when it doesn’t. But come on, chicken. Not right now, and not yet.”
What could she do with the little selfish thought that now Camilla and Palamedes were gone—even if they had left behind Paul, which was probably quite nice of them—and Pyrrha was broken somehow, it was hard to want to live, hard to want everyone else to live, even lovely Crown?
It was the morning of the third day in a universe without her cavalier: it was the morning of the third day—and all the back of her brain could say, in exquisite agonies of amazement, was: She is dead. I will never see her again.
You may hate me all you wish; I still don’t even remember about you half the time.
“Lieutenant Crown Him with Many Crowns, good luck. Pyrrha Dve … I am amazed to say this, but I wish you luck. Nona … I wish you luck. You…”
We Suffer paused. Camilla-and-Palamedes cocked their burnt head to one side.
“Paul,” they suggested.
“Paul. Good luck, Paul,” said We Suffer.
“I say, here’s to Pyrrha, the woman I cultivated a smoking habit to impress—the cavalier, the legend, the stone-cold fox … John, please stop joggling my elbow, I have heard stone-cold fox from your own holy lips.”
The Emperor protested, “Respectfully! Respectfully.”
“Good girl,” the voice was saying. “Oh, good girl. She’s got it, Gideon! And I’ve got you … Gideon of the golden eyes. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault … I’m so sorry. Stay with me,” the voice said more urgently, “stay with me.”
“As you promised me, so I promise you—I will devote every resource I have to the attempt. Tell me what you need.”
“A pair of scissors,” said Camilla. “Iris dye.” She looked at Nona’s button-up shirt, which was unbuttoned to show the T-shirt underneath. “And the blackest clothes you can find.”
“Oh—” He used a word you did not understand. “Harrowhark, no theorems!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She can’t be using theorems,” said Mercy. “She’d be barely awake and it’s totally beyond her at this poi—John, stop her, she’s using theorems!!”
“But first, Griddle, I’m afraid I have to pass out.”
And she crumpled neatly back onto the floor. Pure sentiment found Gideon kicking out one leg to catch her. She ended up lightly punting her necromancer on the shoulder but assumed that it was the thought that counted.
And so Alecto took that iron sword, and with one hand pierced John’s chest with it, even to the heart.
At which John awakened and said, Annabel, good morning.
You found your mouth and eyes screwing up, as though against the light, or a sour taste; you could not help it. But the vile course of action was obvious. You leant down and—holy shit—kissed her squarely on the mouth.
This, at least, she hadn’t expected—how could she, what the fuck—
Camilla came through, and with her, upright and calm, was Harrow. For one wacky moment Gideon thought that she and Camilla had been holding hands and that today was one huge rash of interhousal hand fondling, but then she realised that their wrists were cuffed together.
“Oh, I’m Camilla’s partner. But I can’t stay.”
“I see! Lovely to meet you,” said the Angel, unaware of how her eyebrows betrayed her, like everyone else in the world to Nona seemed unaware of how their eyebrows betrayed them, by immediately saying plain as day: Camilla?? Really??? Camilla????
Harrow, the last time I chose to die, I died with your face the last thing I ever looked at. Let me tell you a secret: it was easy to die thinking I wouldn’t have to see you go. It was so easy to check out before you did.
“Hail to the Lady of the Ninth House,” warbled a voice delightedly, bringing the count of people who had ever been happy to see Harrow up to three. “Hail to her cavalier. Oh, hail, hail! Hail to the child of the far-off and shadowed jewel of our Empire! What a very—happy—day.”
She looked back beyond, and she saw Anastasia, tucked where nobody would find her: Anastasia, all bones. Not really Anastasia. But Anastasia’s body without the meat on it, snuggled right into the curve of the rock, ready to close the door whenever it was opened. She remembered Anastasia.
LEMBREI A SENHA
Then everything changed, abruptly, forever. Harrowhark fell in love.
“This won’t work,” she said. “I’ve never had to work with something so small before.”
“That’s what she said,” murmured Gideon, sotto voce.
Then she counted, and at the end of five counts there was Pyrrha at the door saying, “Ah, my darling hearts, my sleeping babes, Daddy’s own treasures,” and Camilla saying without opening her eyes, “Go to bed. I just got her to sleep.”
Nona fell asleep and was happy.
I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE
“You’re a nice girl,” the Lyctor said. “I had a nice girl as a cavalier too … once. She died for me. What can you do?”
You know the worst part? She cried. She and A— both cried. In each other’s arms, like babies. They were so fucking scared. And I was right there, and I couldn’t do piss. Everything I was and everything I had done, and I couldn’t do a damned thing.
Magnus said quickly: “Jeanne said to tell Gideon hi. If you see her before we do—”
“Though try not to with any great hurry,” said the Fifth spirit-caller.
“Or—you can go back home again,” he said. “I have not assumed you’ll
agree with me. I will not force you or buy you. I will keep covenant with
your House whether you come with me or stay at home.”
Harrow said, “We can’t go home again.”
“Have you been eating sand again?”
“I haven’t eaten sand in months,” Nona protested, then more truthfully: “Weeks,” and more truthfully than that: “One week.”
There was no betrayal of any emotion on his face: not the surprise that had dawned over his heavy-lidded eyes earlier, nor anger, nor even dissatisfaction. He caught your gaze. You held his.
And the Saint of Duty lifted his lit cigarette to you in an unmistakable salute.
Harrow said—
“I cannot do this.”
“You already did it,” said Gideon. “It’s done. You ate me and rebuilt me.
We can’t go home again.”
