004.

[outsidebones]

The movie we are watching today features Harrowhark Nonagesimus, a few years younger, in her mid teens. Despite her age, she stalks the gloomy halls of the underground stone castle with confidence, and every person she meets behaves as though she is more than royalty, something more akin to a saint or a saviour. Often she is alone, though from time to time she is flanked by the Reverend Mother and Father, who are treated with deference but not the effusive adoration Harrow receives.

The Reverend Mother and Father, her parents, are regal and imposing. They walk silent and still, always turning away when spoken to. Harrow has explained they have taken a vow of silence. There vows grow stricter each year, requiring deeper solitude from them. Harrow must do the work of managing the household, of ensuring it is well supplied and communicating with the rest of the Empire, of seeing to the people of the House, as her mother and father are often indisposed.

They are also several years dead. It is not a ritual Harrowhark is meant to have known, the technique to preserve them as well as she has, to keep them mobile enough to at least make an appearance now and again and maintain the pretense that they are still alive. But they are very dead, and underneath their long dark robes, they're rotting and fragile, and she often must store them in one of the crypts for preservations. The ritual was imperfect, but then again, she was ten when she did it. They hung themselves from the rafters in their quarter, and if anyone had come to learn that the lady of the Ninth House was a ten year old orphan with no other necromancers available to speak of, it would have meant the end of their independence and their way of life. So she did what she had to do.

Harrow's daily life is the work of a lady of a small estate, the ruler of a nation with the population of a small town and not enough resources to feed and preserve even that many, many of them elderly, battle wounded, or refugees and pilgrims from other Houses. She does this work while ensuring almost no one knows she's the one doing all of it, lying to the rest of the Empire and to all of her people. And she does it even though from time to time she experiences things that aren't supposed to be there.

One person who knows her secrets is the old marshal, Crux. He looks like a corpse himself, so ancient and brittle it's hard to believe he's still alive. And he shouldn't be. From time to time, over the years, she's mended things. She's repaired his hip, altered his heart and his lungs, given him a little more time. She isn't supposed to. But he is one of the only ones who knows about her parents, and all of the other secrets she keeps, and he loves her despite all of it, and she cannot bear to lose him.

She leads chapel one day, the voices of all of the pilgrims and penitents chanting in prayer, her blind old aunts clacking their bone prayer beads. She does well, as always, but after she doesn't feel well. She heard a voice speaking to her, and she could tell from the expressions of those present they didn't hear it. The things it was whispering, the hundreds of smaller voices wailing and crying layered beneath it - it upset her. And when she turned she could see her in the back of the chapel. The woman, the Body, tall and dead and encased in ice and chains, her cold dead eyes staring at Harrow from under her frost covered lashes. Harrow knows she isn't there, either, but she doesn't mind seeing her. She loves the Body, feels blessed and at peace when she sees her, but today she can see her mouth working to say something and she can't hear it above the wailing. It is hard to concentrate on the responsibilities she has and to not see and hear the things she isn't supposed to.

She loses time for a little while, after the sermon, but wakes to Marshal Crux, placing a cool cloth to her forehead.

“Lady,” he says, in his soft creak of a voice. "You’ve gone away again, my Lady. Where have you run? Remember your catechism and your lesson." Harrow can see she's been brought back to her quarters and starts to come to, letting the sound of the old man's voice ground her. "Remember them well now. You may have your little escape, but you’ll feel better for coming back."

She takes a breath, pulls herself together, sits up. "Forgive me. I've returned."