23

PROTESILAUS THE SEVENTH WAS MISSING. Dulcinea Septimus was critically ill. Left stranded when her cavalier failed to return, then threatened by the rain, she had tried to walk by herself and slipped: now she was confined to bed with hot cloths on her chest and no good to anybody. Teacher moved her to one of the tiny rooms in the priest wing, and she had to be laid on her side so that whatever was choking her lungs could drain out of her mouth and into a basin. Teacher’s two nameless colleagues sat with her, replacing the basin and boiling noisy kettles.

Everyone else—the Second House with their brass buttons; the twins of the Third and their now-bouffant cavalier; the Fourth teenagers, gimlet eyed; and the Fifth asleep forever in the mortuary; the Sixth in grey and the mismatched Eighth; and the Ninth, with Harrow roused and tight lipped in her spare habit—was accounted for.

The ashes in the incinerator had been raked out and combed over, and the confirmation that they were human remains was not illuminating. The surviving necromancers had gathered around a bowl of them, and they had all pounced on it like a bowl of peanuts at a party. Only Coronabeth disdained fingering a bunch of smuts and crumblings.

“They’re much older than they ought to be,” said Ianthe Tridentarius, cool as a cucumber, which was the first sign of hope for Protesilaus. “I would have said these belonged to a corpse three months dead.”

“You’re out by about eight weeks,” said Palamedes, brow furrowed. “Which would still predate us significantly.”

“Well, in either case it’s not him. Has anyone else died? Teacher?”

“We have not held a funeral in a very long time,” said Teacher, a bit prissily. “And at any rate, we certainly would not have consigned them to the waste incinerator.”

“Interesting you should say them.”

Ianthe had two small fragments on her palms. One of them was recognisably part of a tooth. For some reason, this dental fact had Harrow looking at Ianthe’s palms, then Ianthe, then Ianthe’s palms again as though both were suddenly the most fascinating things in the world. Gideon recognised this sudden diamond focus: Harrowhark was reestimating a threat.

Ianthe said, idly: “You see? There’s at least two people in there.”

“But the time signature’s consistent throughout the remains—”

She tipped both fragments into the palms of Palamedes. “Happy birthday,” she said. “They must have died at the same time.”

Captain Deuteros said tersely: “The incinerator is a snare. I’m as curious as anyone to know what’s in there, but the fact remains that Protesilaus is evidently not, so where is he?”

“I have set the servants to find him,” said the First House priest. “They will search every nook and cranny, apart from your rooms … which I ask you to search yourselves, on the bizarre chance that Protesilaus the Seventh is there. I will not breach the facility, nor will my servants. If you want to go down there, you must go down there yourselves. And then there is the outside of the tower … but if he left the tower, the water is very deep.”

Corona turned her chair around and straddled the seat, crossing her slim ankles at the front. Gideon noticed that she and Ianthe had not entirely made up in the wake of whatever fight they must have had; their chairs were close together but their bodies were angled away from each other. Corona shook her head again, as though to clear it of cobwebs. “He must be alive. There’s no motive. He was— I mean, any time I met him, I thought—”

“I thought he was, perhaps, the most boring man alive,” supplied her twin, languidly, wiping her hands. Corona flinched. “And not even a classic Seventh House bore; he hasn’t subjected us to even one minimalist poem about cloud formations.”

“Consider this: maybe there’s no motive,” said Jeannemary Chatur, who refused to sheathe her rapier. She had positioned herself and Isaac nearly back-to-back, as though united they could take all comers. “Consider this: they went through the hatch, just like Magnus and Abigail, and now he’s dead and she’s about to kick the bucket.”

“Would the Fourth drop this insane monster theory—”

“Not insane,” said Teacher to Naberius, “oh, no, not insane.”

Captain Deuteros, who had been scribbling in her notepad, leant back in her chair and tossed down her pencil. “I’d like to supply a more human mens rea. Yes, the Duchess Septimus and her cavalier had accessed the facility. Did they have any keys?”

“Yes,” said a voice at the door.

Gideon hadn’t noticed the chain mail–skirted, whitewashed figure of Silas Octakiseron leave, but she noticed him come back in. He entered the eating-atrium from the kitchen side looking pallid and unruffled, his bladed face as pitiless as ever, free from a normal human emotion. “Yes, she does,” he repeated, “or rather, she did.”

“What the hell did you just do,” said Palamedes quietly.

“Your aggression is unseemly and unwarranted,” said Silas. “I went to see her. I felt a certain responsibility. I was the one who asked for satisfaction, and Brother Asht had been ready to duel her missing cavalier. I did not want bad blood between us. I feel nothing but pity for the Seventh House, Warden Sextus.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Silas felt about in his pocket and raised his hand to display its contents. It was one of the iron key rings, and on it were two keys, one grey, one a familiar white.

“If foul play has befallen her cavalier,” he said, in his curiously deep voice, “then the culprit will get no joy of it. I found her conscious, keeping hold of this. She’s surrendered it to me for safekeeping.”

“That’s dubious in the extreme,” said Captain Deuteros. “Surrender them to me now in a show of good faith, Master Silas. If you please.”

“I cannot in good conscience, until I know the fate of Protesilaus the Seventh. Anyone here could be guilty. Brother Asht. Here.” The chain mail–kirtled boy tossed the ring to his cavalier, who caught it out of the air and fished his own heavy key ring out of his pocket. Gideon noticed that their ring held a facility key and one other, in black wrought iron with curlicues. Colum the Eighth locked the two rings together with a very final click. “I’ll keep these until such a time as she wants them. Judging by our conversation, that may well be never.”

This was received with a brief silence.

“You callous bastard,” shouted Naberius, “you just went and heavied a nearly dead girl for her keys.”

Jeannemary said, “You’re just sorry you didn’t think of it first.”

“Chatur, if you say one more bloody word I’ll make sure you never get through puberty—”

“Hold your tongue, Prince Tern,” said Captain Deuteros. “I have bigger fish to fry than listening to you abuse a child.”

She stood. She took them all in, with the face of a woman who had come to a final conclusion.

“This is where the tendon meets the bone. This—key hoarding—cannot continue. I told you before that the Second House would take responsibility if nobody else had the stomach for it. That begins now.”

The slender necromancer in his pure Eighth whites had slid into a chair proffered by his nephew, and he sat straight-backed and thoughtful.

“Is that a challenge to me, then, Captain?” he said sorrowfully.

“You’ll keep.” The Second adept thrust her chin toward Palamedes, who had been sitting with fingers steepled beneath his jaw, staring through the walls as though discord was so intensely distasteful that he could only distance himself from it. “Warden, the Sixth is the Emperor’s Reason. I asked you earlier, and I’m telling you now: hand over what keys you’ve won for my safekeeping.”

The Sixth, the Emperor’s Reason, blinked.

“With all respect,” he said, “piss off.”

“Let the record state that I was forced into a challenge,” said Lieutenant Dyas, and she peeled off one white glove. She threw it down on the table, looking Palamedes dead in the eye. “We duel. I name the time, you name the place. The time is now.”

“Duel the Sixth?” squawked Jeannemary. “That’s not fair!”

A perfect babel broke out. Teacher rose with a curious, resigned expression on his face: “I will not be party to this,” he said, as though that was going to stop anyone, and he left the room. In the vacuum of his exit, Corona slapped both of her hands down on the table: “Judith, you coward, pick on someone your own size—”

“This is what happens, isn’t it?” The bad necromancer teen was in a stupor, still: he sounded wondering, not angry. “This is what happens with Magnus and Abigail gone.”

“Yes, I’m sure Magnus the Fifth would have issued us a strongly worded memorandum—”

“Ianthe! Not helping!—Sixth, you mustn’t accept—the Third will represent the Sixth in this, if they’ll consent. At arms, Babs.”

Her twin sister’s voice was thin and soft as silk: “Don’t unsheathe that sword, Naberius.”

“Ianthe, what—are—you—doing.”

“I want to see how this plays out,” she said with a pallid shrug, heedless of the growing ire in her twin’s voice. “Alas. I have a bad personality and a stupefying deficit of attention.”

“Well, Babs, thank God, has much better sense than to listen to you—Babs?”

Naberius’s hand was hesitating hard on the hilt. He had not sprung into action as proposed, nor had he flanked the commanding twin. He was staring at her pale shadow, knuckles white, hand still, with a resentment very near hate. Corona’s smile flickered. “Babs?”

Through all this, Palamedes had slopped the weight of his head into one hand, then into the other, scrubbing his fingers down his long face. He had taken his glasses off and was tapping the thick frames against the table. His nail-grey stare had not left Judith Deuteros, whose own gaze was as resolute as concrete.

“Default, Warden,” said the captain. “You are a good man. Don’t put your cavalier through this.”

Palamedes seemed to snap out of it all at once, squeaking his chair legs horribly on the tiled floor as he scooted it backward and away from the table’s edge.

“No, we’re doing this,” he said abruptly. “I pick here.”

The captain said, “Sextus, you’re mad. Give her some dignity.”

He did not even stand; just crooked his fingers at his cavalier. Rather than tensing up in anticipation, as Gideon might have, Camilla had relaxed. She shook her dark fringe off her forehead, shivered out of her hood and her cloak, swung her neck back and forth like someone limbering up to dance.

“Oh, I am,” he said. “Cam?”

Camilla Hect stepped on to the wooden table with one long, lean movement. She wore a long grey shirt and grey slacks beneath her cloak, and she looked less like a cavalier than an off-duty librarian. Still, this startled her audience except for Lieutenant Dyas, who vaulted up to the opposite side of the table, which creaked crossly beneath the strain. Dyas had not bothered to take off her jacket. She slid her utilitarian and bone-sharp knife out of its cross-hip sheath and laid it there for display. With her main hand she drew her rapier, plain-hilted, polished until it hurt.

The Sixth stared at her for a moment as though she had no idea of the protocol—and then she drew both of her weapons at once in a way that nagged at the back of Gideon’s brain. The rapier looked, like Gideon’s, maybe a million years old. It was the first time she had seen it in a good light, and here it looked as though it had never been designed to take an edge blow; the blade was light and delicate as a cobweb. The offhand looked like Camilla’s whole House had gone searching down the back of the sofa for weapons. They had come up with what looked more like a long hunting or hacking knife than a duelling dagger: thick, meaty, cross-guarded, with a single sharpened edge. The whole effect was sadly amateurish.

The lovely and miserable Coronabeth had shouldered forward to stand at the table too, positioned in the space between them. She called to Judith and Palamedes: “Clav to sac—?”

“Hyoid down, disarm legal, necromancer’s mercy,” said the Second’s necromancer calmly. Coronabeth sucked a breath through her teeth. “Sextus. Do you agree to the terms?”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” said Palamedes.

Gideon drew forward to them, leaning in to hear Corona saying in an urgent whisper: “Warden—that means she can hit your cavalier anywhere below the neck, and it ends only when you give in. She’s being an absolute cad, and I’m not even slightly sorry for pantsing her when we were eight.”

“Nor should you be.”

“Don’t let her make an example of you,” said the princess. “She’s picking on you because you can’t fight back, like a bully kicking a dog. She’s given herself leeway to hurt your cavalier very badly, and she will, just to scare Octakiseron and Nonagesimus—no offense, Ninth.”

The Warden of the Sixth drummed his feet on the floor percussively. He said, “So you’re saying her cavalier can do more or less anything to my cavalier, all in the name of making me cry uncle?”

“Yes!”

From across the table, Captain Deuteros said sternly: “No more waiting. Default or fight. Corona, if you insist on arbitrating, arbitrate.”

Those exquisite eyes would have persuaded a stone to roll uphill, but finding no purchase with Palamedes, Corona raised her voice reluctantly: “To the mercy call. Hyoid down. The neck is no exception. Point, blade, ricasso, offhand. Call.”

“Marta the Second,” called Lieutenant Dyas.

Camilla did not call. She looked down at her necromancer and said, “Warden?”

“You can’t hit her in the head,” he said. “I think. I choose when you’re done.”

“Just tell me how to play it.” Camilla raised her voice: “Camilla the Sixth.”

Gideon had moved back to her necromancer. Everyone else in the room looked grave. For a moment she thought the Fourth were holding hands, but she realised Isaac was holding Jeannemary back: his hand around her wrist was a clamp, and her face the picture of outrage. There were bleakly hungry faces—the pale Ianthe, and Naberius licking his lips—and then there were the Eighth, who were filling their own bingo sheet by praying.

Harrowhark looked as taut and distant as a hangman’s rope, but something in Gideon’s face must have caught her attention: she went from distant to bemused, and from bemused to something even a little bit offended. Gideon couldn’t blame her. The general atmosphere was of a disapproving crowd before an execution, but she was trying and failing to smother a grin of savage anticipation.

Corona was saying, “Two paces back—can’t turn, damn!—this is so hard to do on a table—”

“Cam,” Palamedes said. “Go loud.”

“—and begin,” said Coronabeth.

Gideon had to give Dyas her due; it took her much less time than it had taken Gideon, fighting Naberius Tern, for the Second to realise she was in trouble. Lieutenant Marta Dyas was in every line of her a smart, efficient fighter: not given to folderol or showboating, at the very peak of her fitness. Unlike the Third, she was a soldier, far more used to fighting people who weren’t moving to a playbook of legal duelling moves. She had trained her whole life with the front in mind, with veterans and bloodthirsty recruits. Her sword arm was balanced and light, her posture neat but not starchy. She was incredibly reactive, ready for any gambit her opponent could bring.

Camilla hit her like a hurricane. She exploded forward with her rapier wide and her butcher’s knife held close, knocking the lieutenant’s hurried parry out the way and sliding away from a belated lunge with the dagger. She sliced a red gouge down Dyas’s immaculate white jacket and shirt, bashed her across the knuckles with the hilt of her rapier, and kicked her in the knee for good measure.

The kick was Cam’s only mistake. The pain clearly set every neuron in Dyas’s body shrieking with adrenaline. Someone like Naberius would have been prone on the table from shock, probably bleating and shitting. But the Second kept her wits about her—she took the pain with a stagger, kept her footing and held her blade, and parried another sweeping blow from Camilla’s knife. She moved back for breathing space—Camilla harassing her with strike after strike to get back inside her guard—until she could move no more: she was, after all, fighting on a table. Camilla’s foot lashed out to her offhand, and the dagger clattered to the ground. The Second, with an honestly beautiful dodge and a perfect reaction, took her one opportunity and lunged.

Dyas was desperate, and Dyas was of the Second House. Cam fought like a grease fire, but she left herself too many openings. Dyas’s thrust would have pierced a lesser fighter right beneath the collarbone and run her through. It caught Camilla Hect low in the right forearm as she nearly dodged it—piercing the meat next to the ulna and making her snarl. She dropped her cobweb-light rapier, grabbed Marta’s wrist, and yanked. The arm dislocated with a bright pop.

Lieutenant Dyas didn’t quite scream, but she got most of the way there. She windmilled at the edge of the table. Still holding the wrist, Camilla stepped past her, kicked her legs out almost dismissively, and drove her down facefirst into the wooden boards with a crunch. This left Camilla standing over her opponent, one foot pressed into the back of her neck, the dislocated arm pinned up at an angle that looked seriously uncomfortable. Dyas made a strangled, agonised noise, and Judith Deuteros snapped: “Mercy!”

“Mercy called, match to the Sixth,” said Coronabeth, as though saying it faster would make it over sooner.

There was silence, except for Camilla’s ragged breathing and the lieutenant’s tiny, half-amazed gasps. Then Jeannemary said, “Hot dog.”

Both cavaliers were oozing blood. It dripped from Camilla’s wound where the sword had stuck her, and it was soaking through Lieutenant Dyas’s shirt and dribbling from her nose, the exact same colour as her neckerchief. She had her eyes screwed up tightly. Palamedes was already standing beside the table, and with another excruciating noise he set Marta’s arm back inside its joint. This time she really did scream. Captain Deuteros watched, face absolutely blank.

“Your keys,” he said.

“I don’t have—”

“Then your facility key. Hand it over.”

“You have its exact copy.”

Palamedes rounded on her with a sudden fury that made everyone jump, even Gideon. “Then maybe I’ll throw it out the fucking window,” he snarled. “Two good cavs hurt, yours and mine, all because the Second tried to beat up the weak kid first.” He jabbed a finger at Judith’s immaculate waistcoat with intent to impale; she didn’t flinch. “You have no idea how many keys we’re holding! You have no idea how many keys anybody’s holding, because you haven’t paid any damn attention since the shuttles landed! You picked on us because the Sixth aren’t fighters. You could have fought Gideon the Ninth, or Colum the Eighth. You fought Camilla because you wanted a quick win, and you didn’t even watch her first, you just assumed you could take her. And I can’t stand people who assume.”

“I had cause,” said the Second, doggedly.

“I don’t care,” said Palamedes. “Isn’t it funny how it took the Second, of all houses, to blow this whole thing open? You’ve stuck a target on the back of everyone toting a key. It’s a free-for-all now, and it’s your fault, and you’ll pay for it.”

“For God’s sake, Warden, you misunderstand my intention—”

“Give me your key, Captain!” roared the scion of the Sixth. “Or is the Second faithless, as well as dense?”

“Here,” said Lieutenant Dyas. She had mopped most of the blood away from her mouth and nose, although her once-white shirt was drenched with scarlet. She fumbled in her jacket pocket with her unhurt arm and held out a key ring, adorned with a single key. Palamedes gave her a curt nod, plucked it from her fingers, and turned his back on them both. Camilla was sitting on the edge of the table, her hand clapped over her wound, blood seeping freely from between her fingers.

“Missed the bone,” she said.

“Remember that you’re using a rapier, please.”

“I’m not making excuses, but she was quick as hell—”

A voice interrupted: “I challenge the Sixth for their keys. I name the time, and the time is now.”