She would remember each word later, loud and clear.
Her forehead and face were being mopped. Touch did not register. She had lost control of her limbs, and each was flailing independently of the others, a roiling mass of nerves and panic. Her hair was being stroked—softly—and she did not want to be touched, but she was terribly afraid that if it stopped she would roll away into the field and dissolve just to get away. She held on to the sound of talking, so that she didn’t go mad.
“She’s all the way across,” said the voice. “She’s made it to the box … can you see the trick of it, Reverend Daughter? There is a trick, isn’t there? Gideon, I am going to put my hand over your mouth. She needs to think.” A hand went over her mouth, and Gideon bit it. “Ow, you feral. There she goes … perhaps they thought that if it was easy to obtain, someone could finish the demonstration some other way. It’s got to be foolproof, Gideon … I know that. I wish it were me. I wish I were up there. She’s got the box open … I wonder … yes, she’s worked it out! I was afraid she’d break the key…”
Clutched in the thin lap, Gideon could make no response that was not retching, gurgling or clamouring, silenced only by one rather skinny hand. “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.”
Gideon was suddenly aware that she was very cold. Something had changed. It was getting harder to suck in each breath. “She’s stumbled,” said the voice, detached, and Gideon heaved: not against the connection, but into it. The consequent pain was so intense that she was afraid she might wet herself, but the spike of cold faded. “She’s up … Gideon, Gideon, she’s up. Just a little bit more. Darling, you’re fine. Poor baby…”
Now Gideon was scared. Her body had the soft, drunken feeling you got just before fainting away, and it was very hard to stay conscious. Three seconds before you die, Palamedes had calculated. Anything less than Harrow crossing the threshold would make the struggle meaningless. 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.”
It felt like all the pressure in her ears was popping loose. The voice said, musical and distant: “Gideon, you magnificent creature, keep going … feed it to her … she’s nearly made it. Gideon? Gideon, eyes open. Stay put. Stay with me.”
It took an infinity amount of seconds for her to stay put: for her to crack her eyes open. When her eyes opened Gideon was distantly worried to discover that she was blind. Colours swam in front of her vision in a melange of muted hues. Something black moved—it took her a moment to realise that it was moving very quickly: it was sprinting. Mildly startled, Gideon realised that she was starting to die. The colours wobbled before her face. The world revolved, then revolved the other way, aimlessly spinning. The air stopped coming. It would have been peaceful, only it sucked.
A new voice said: “Gideon?… Gideon!”
When she opened her eyes again there was a dazzling moment of clarity and sharpness. Harrow Nonagesimus was kneeling by her side, naked as the day she was spawned. Her hair was shorn a full inch shorter, the tips of her eyelashes were gone, and—most horrifyingly—she was absolutely nude of face paint. It was as though someone had taken a hot washcloth to her. Without paint she was a point-chinned, narrow-jawed, ferrety person, with high hard cheekbones and a tall forehead. There was a little divot in her top lip at the philtrum, which gave a bowlike aspect to her otherwise hard and fearless mouth. The world rocked, but it was mainly because Harrow was shaking her shoulders.
“Ha-ha,” said Gideon, “first time you didn’t call me Griddle,” and died.
* * *
Well, passed out. But it felt a hell of a lot like dying. Waking up had an air of resurrection, of having spent a winter as a dried-out shell and coming back to the world as a new green shoot. A new green shoot with problems. Her whole body felt like one traumatised nerve. She was lying within the cradle of thin and wasted arms; she looked up into the soft and weary face of Dulcinea, whose eyes were still the dusty blue of blueberries. When she saw that Gideon was awake, she sparkled to life.