“I don’t know your game,” Crown was saying, “but I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you with Camilla … I don’t trust you with any of them. I don’t know who you’re for at the end of the day, and I never did. I knew that from the moment I saw you. I don’t think you’ve had a sensation in the last myriad. Did you have a family, once? Have you thought about them in the last hundred years … in the last thousand?”
“No,” said Pyrrha. There was silence. Then Pyrrha said, “I don’t trust you either.”
Crown laughed. Even over the crackly audio, Nona could tell it was not one of Crown’s nicer laughs. It was still a lovely, musical, rich sound, but Crown said, a little hysterically: “Nobody should ever trust me. Oh, poor old Gideon … poor Nav. It’s disgusting, what you’re doing. Why are you dressing her up like a doll and wheeling her around? Who’s it for? The troops don’t buy it, surely?”
“Wouldn’t know,” said Pyrrha. “Ask the Saint of Awe.”
“Don’t call her that … it’s ridiculous. Who’d want to be the Saint of Awe? It sounds like something you say about a puppy or a baby … Why do you keep the corpse locked up? This was all a dreadful plan to lure out the Ninth, wasn’t it? I’m a little heartbroken, you know. I thought Ianthe had come for me, but it was only a mission, after all. A honey trap.”
“Yes,” Pyrrha said. Did her voice sound a bit closer now? “It’s a trap.”
“You know why it won’t work.”
“Doesn’t matter. None can get at that corpse.”
“Oh, go away … stop sounding portentous and go away and stand guard over wherever they’ve stashed her … and leave Judith to me. When the sedative wears off there’s going to be hell to pay. She can do a real number on herself, you know. I’m the only one who can make sure she’s secure.”
Pyrrha said, “Nice try.”
Crown made a petulant sound.
“Okay. Fine. Stay here and watch while I do it, then … but I think you’re being stupid. If it had been me I would have put Nav in a suitcase and put the suitcase in a cupboard and locked the cupboard door. She’s a corpse. It’s not like you need to let her out to use the bathroom.”
“I put all the corpses in the morgue,” said Pyrrha.
“What? What’s that got to do with anything—”
“If I find you in here again with this necromancer, alone,” said Pyrrha, “she will join them.”
Another silence. Another burst of laughter from Crown. Then a third voice broke in, much more distant: “What’s the joke?”
“Ianthe,” said Crown in a hurry, “this … thing won’t let us help Captain Deuteros. She’ll be waking up soon and the blue madness is really awful with her … she’s almost as bad as the necromancers downstairs.”
“Corona, dear, I told him not to let you touch her.”
“Ianthe, you’re making me mad,” said Crown pleasantly.
“And I sincerely love it … I’ve missed that face. Oh, for God’s sake, here…”
The voice had crossed over the room. There were more noises that Nona couldn’t parse because they were so loud so suddenly. They were right up close to whatever was picking up the conversation, and both Camilla and We Suffer’s faces went tight. But then Crown’s voice said with sudden steel: “Don’t do anything to her.”
“It’s a ward, my paranoid little pumpkin.”
“A ward for what? I’ve never seen a ward like that.”
“How you managed to fool anyone you were a necromancer I do not know,” said the voice, “except that I do … it was because of me. Think back to class, Corona. I’m only going to dab here, and here and here…”
“Use her spit,” said Crown, still firm as steel.
“Forgive me. She did pay attention in class. All right … this is much closer than I ever wanted to get to Judith Deuteros’s tongue, mind. As far as I know, this counts as sex on the Second. Yuck. There we go, it’s with her material so it can’t be deleterious to her body … top marks, Coronabeth, I really am impressed. D’you remember that pop-eyed tutor asking you what would be a good substance for a regenerative ward and you kept making rude suggestions in the sweetest little voice?”
“Yes,” said Crown, whose voice had softened just a little. “Marcus Trio, right?”