Her teacher made a noise in her throat somewhere between disgust and desolation. “What are you doing with your other hand?” Gideon compensated. “No! Oh, Lord. Put that down until I formally show you how.”
“The sword and the powder,” said Harrowhark eagerly.
“The sword and the knuckle, my lady,” said Aiglamene. “I’m dropping my expectations substantially.”
Gideon said, “I still have absolutely not agreed to any of this.”
The Reverend Daughter picked her way toward her over discarded swords, and stopped once she was level with the pillar that Gideon had reflexively flattened her back against. They regarded each other for long moments until the absolute chill of the monument made Gideon’s teeth involuntarily chatter, and then Harrow’s mouth twisted, fleetingly, indulgently. “I would have thought you would be happy that I needed you,” she admitted. “That I showed you my girlish and vulnerable heart.”
“Your heart is a party for five thousand nails,” said Gideon.
“That’s not a ‘no.’ Help Aiglamene find you a sword, Griddle. I’ll leave the door unlocked.” With that languid and imperious command, she left, leaving Gideon lolling her head back against the frigid stone of the pillar and chewing the inside of her cheek.
It was almost worse getting left alone with the sword-master. An awkward, chilly silence spread between them as the old woman grumpily picked through the pile, holding each rapier up to the light, pulling rancid strips of leather away from the grip.
“It’s a bad idea, but it’s a chance, you know,” said Aiglamene abruptly. “Take it or leave it.”
“I thought you said it was the best idea we have.”
“It is—for Lady Harrowhark. You’re the best swordsman that the Ninth House has produced—maybe ever. Can’t say. I never saw Nonius fight.”
“Yeah, you would have only been what, just born,” said Gideon, whose heart was hurting keenly.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”
Swords rattled into a leather case as Aiglamene selected a couple at hand, shaking a few of the knuckle-knives in to boot. The case creaked and she creaked as she had to tip herself forward, painful with dignity, getting on her one half-good knee in order to pull herself up to stand. Gideon moved forward automatically, but one look from the woman’s working eye was enough to make her pretend she’d just been getting back into her robes. Aiglamene hauled the case over her shoulder, kicking unwanted swords back into a niche, yanking the useless sword from Gideon’s nerveless hand.
She paused as her fingers closed over the hilt, her haggard face caught up in her consideration, a titanic battle apparently going on somewhere deep inside her head. One side gained the upper hand, and she said gruffly: “Nav. A word of warning.”
“What?”
There was something urgent in her voice: something worried, something new.
“Things are changing. I used to think we were waiting for something … and now I think we’re just waiting to die.”
Gideon’s heart sagged.
“You really want me to say yes.”
“Go on and say no,” said her captain. “It’s your choice … If she doesn’t take you, I’ll go with her and gladly. But she knows … and I know … and I think you damn well know … that if you don’t get out now, you won’t even get out in a box.”
“So what happens if I agree?”
Breaking the spell, Aiglamene roughly shouldered the leather case into Gideon’s arms, slapping it there before stalking back the way that Harrow had left them. “Then you hurry up. If I’m to turn you into the Ninth’s cavalier, I needed to start six years ago.”
5
THE SECOND LETTER THAT they received care of the Resurrecting King, the gentle Emperor, was somewhat less prolix than the first.
They were lurking in the personal Nonagesimus library, a stone-arched room packed tight with shelves of the musty and neglected books Harrowhark didn’t study and the musty, less neglected books that she did. Gideon sat at a broad, sagging desk piled high with pages covered in necromantic marginalia, most of them in Harrow’s cramped, impatient writing. She held the letter before her with one hand; with the other, she wearily painted her face with a piece of fibre wadding and a pot of alabaster paint, feeling absurdly young. The paint smelled acid and cold, and working the damn stuff into the creases next to her nose meant sucking globs of paint up her nostrils all day. Harrow was sprawled on a sofa spread with tattered brocade, robes abandoned, scrawny black-clad legs crossed at the ankles. In Gideon’s mind she looked like an evil stick.