“Because he’s a prig and a nasty weirdo,” said Gideon.
“Intriguingly put,” said Palamedes, “but although he is a prig and a nasty weirdo, Dulcinea Septimus has two keys. Silas has made her a target.”
This was all getting unreal: a weird mathematics that she hadn’t even been counting. But she was still Ninth enough to hold her tongue. She said instead: “No offense, but what the hell are you doing?”
He had taken a fingerful of jelly out of a little tub Camilla had proffered. He was rubbing it over, bizarrely enough, the dull gold hoop of Magnus Quinn’s wedding ring. With a stick of grease he made two marks above and below the band of metal, and then held his hand over it like someone cupping a flame. Palamedes closed his eyes, and—after a pregnant pause—steam began to curl above his knuckles.
All at once, he muttered crossly to himself and took his hand away. This time the grease went beneath the ring, and he started to ease it off the sad dead finger.
“I need more contact,” he said to his cavalier. “This touched the key ring, but there’s too much jumble.” And to Gideon: “Our reputation doesn’t precede us, I see. Thanergy attaches to more than just the body, Ninth. Psychometry can track the thanergy lingering in objects—when you get to it early and when there’s a strong association. Give me the scissors, I’m going to take some of his pockets.”
“What are you—”
“Quinn’s key ring, Ninth,” said Palamedes, as though her question was really hopelessly obvious. “There was nothing on the bodies yesterday. The Second came to look, but they haven’t got my resources.”
“That or they took the evidence,” said his cavalier gloomily, but her adept countered: “Not their style. Anyway, if I couldn’t find anything after yesterday’s examination, they wouldn’t.”
“Don’t get cocky, Warden.”
“I won’t. But I’m fairly sure, here.”
Gideon said, “But—hold up. Magnus had only just picked up his facility key the night—you know. He hadn’t reached any challenge labs. The facility key was all he had. Who’d take that?”
“That’s precisely what I want to know,” said Palamedes. He dropped the wedding ring into a small bleached pouch that Camilla was holding open, and then took a tiny pair of scissors and started clipping at the dead man’s trousers. “Your vow of silence is conveniently variable, Ninth, I’m very grateful.”
“Turns out I’m variably penitent. Hey, you should be talking to Nonagesimus.”
“If I wanted to talk to Nonagesimus, I’d talk to Nonagesimus,” he said, “or I’d talk to a brick wall, because honestly, your necromancer is a walking Ninth House cliché. You’re at least only half as a bad.”
Palamedes glanced up at her. His eyes really were extraordinary: like cut grey rock, or deep weather atmosphere. He cleared his throat, and he said: “How much would you do for the Lady Septimus?”
Gideon was glad of the paint; she was thrown off balance, unsure of her footing. She said, “Uh—she’s been kind to me. What’s your interest in Lady Septimus?”
“She’s—been kind to me,” said Palamedes. They stared at each other with a kind of commingled weariness and embarrassed suspicion, skirting around something juvenile and terrible. “The Eighth is both determined and dangerous.”
“Protesilaus the Seventh is uncomfortably hench, though. She’s not alone.”
Camilla spoke up: “The man’s a glorified orderly. His hand’s never on his rapier. First instinct’s to punch, and he moves like a sleepwalker.”
“Just bear witness,” said Palamedes. “Just—keep her in mind.”
The scissors went snip, snip and tiny squares of fabric were added to a new linen bag. With more reverence than she’d given him credit for—he had just given a corpse an invasive massage and stolen its jewellery—Palamedes softly pulled the sheet back over the abdomen and legs of Magnus the Fifth. He said, quite gently: “We’ll get to the bottom of this one, if you give us a little time,” and Gideon realised he was speaking to the body.
Gideon suddenly ached to hear one of the Fifth’s terrible jokes, if only because it would be a refreshing trip back to the status quo. She had to leave—her hand was on the door—but something in her made her look back and say: “What happened to them, Sextus?”