outsidebones

Today's movie features Harrowhark and Gideon. They arrive, from a spaceship, onto a strange planet - a world with grey-blue skies and roiling sees, and a compound on a rock sitting above it. The bright sunlight causes them to squint; neither of them is used to light.

And they aren't alone. Harrowhark is taking in the others who arrive. One of the last to arrive is a man and woman who exit a ship together. Harrowhark is focused on the man. He's muscular and tall, powerfully built, wielding the traditional cavalier sword, though his movements are stiff and ungainly. And instantly Harrow can tell what the others gathered cannot - he is dead. He has been dead for some time, but has been preserved, and someone is causing him to move. This is a technique Harrow knows well, but that most necromancers aren't meant to know.

It doesn't show on her face, but she's panicked, slightly, trying to understand. Whoever did this, and she can't even tell who, must be very powerful, but she also can't admit she understands what's happening. No one here is an ally, not even Gideon, who came here under duress and is only helping her to the extent that -

Suddenly, as she's thinking through all this, Gideon moves. The girl, the sickly Seventh House necromancer, who was with the corpse collapses as she steps off her ship, and Gideon rushes to catch her and help her up. And the large corpse cavalier moves instantly, automatically, drawing his sword and pointing it at Gideon.

"Yo, step off," Gideon says, unconcerned. "Give her some air."

The girl who fainted seems slightly embarrassed, but in a way that strikes Harrowhark as insincere; she's clearly enjoying the drama. "Protesilaus," she says, addressing the corpse. "Stand down, you goof. You're going to get us in trouble."

Harrow stalks over there as fast as her feet can carry her, still panicked, but calculating quickly, drawing upon as much of her Ninth House ominous aura as she can and placing her hand down on Gideon's neck.

"Your cavalier," she says icily, "drew on my cavalier."

The girl breaks into miserable coughs, still giving Harrowhark the annoying impression she finds this all funny. "I'm so sorry, he's just overprotective - Oh my God, you're black vestals!" She looks at Gideon. "Oh God, you're the Ninth Cav! You're done it now, Pro. They could demand satisfaction, and you could end up a mausoleum centerpiece! Lady of the Ninth, please accept my most heartfelt apologies. He was hasty, and I was a fool." She waves her hand like she's having the vapors, plainly enjoying herself.

"Come on," Gideon says, "You fainted."

"I do do that," she said with a chuckle. The conversation changes, everyone expressing concern for the Lady Septimus and her advanced illness, but Harrow can't stop focusing on the corpse cavalier, trying to understand whether his lady is simply somehow unaware, or if she could be the one puppeting him.

She doesn't tell anyone. No one will believe her, and she can't trust anyone, and, as it turns out, Gideon is quite fond of the flighty, insincere, dying Lady of the Seventh House.

Later, days later, Harrow find him alone, and she can't help it - she pulls the thread of the necromancy she senses, using her own ability to unravel whatever it is she can sense holding him together, trying to test the theory. And just as she thought, he's dead; he comes apart instantly, crumbling into pieces. She should be relieved, but she's even more horrified. Whoever did this is dangerous, and it makes no sense Lady Septimus had simply missed that her cavalier was dead, but there's no one who will trust Harrowhark over the charismatic dying girl.

She panics and cremates the pieces; takes the head, as that can be used by the other necromancers to find what she did. She hides the head in a box and leaves it in her room.

006.