008.

[outsidebones]

This movie starts with Harrowhark and Gideon, who are in the company of the Sixth House necromancer and cavalier. The energy is cautious cooperation - these people don't trust each other, necessarily, although Harrow is the one who trusts leasts and everyone is is being kind of normal - but they do appear to be working together, exchanging information.

Before Palamedes and Camilla depart, Palamedes meets Gideon's face. "Keep an eye on her, Nav," he says grimly, and then the two walk away.

Harrow is trying to decide whether she should be offended by this. "Well, he's getting presumptuous," she sniffs, annoyed.

"I think he wasn't -- talking about you," Gideon says, with some awkwardness and embarrassment.

Harrow is also embarrassed by the comment, because she instantly realizes Gideon is right. The person both Palamedes and Gideon are desperate to protect - she was stupid, thinking it was about her, and the feeling of being a fool quickly translates to anger.

"Good point," she says, her voice clipped. "That reminds me. I now officially ban you from seeing Lady Septimus."

Gideon reacts in anger, which Harrow probably could have predicted would happen. "Are we really having this conversation?"

Harrow swallows, and her thoughts flash to Septimus' cavalier, the muscular brute whose head is currently in a box shoved away in the back of Harrow's closet. She pushes the thought away; that isn't information she can trust Gideon with, when it's clear where her loyalties lie. "Nav, take it from me. Dulcinea Septimus is dangerous."

"You're nuts! Dulcinea Septimus can't blow her nose." The Seventh House necromancer does happen to be dying of an incurable illness, constantly fainting and confined to bed, but Harrow still doesn't trust her. "I'm sick of how weird you're getting over this!"

"And yet you never considered how she managed to get a key. How am I being weird?"

"I don't know," Gideon snaps. "Maybe because whenever she's mentioned you effortlessly tick the boxes for jealous and creep?"

Harrow sniffs. She knows Dulcinea is a powerful necromancer, and rather effortlessly wraps others around her finger with her charm, but not as powerful as Harrowhark, who therefore doesn't need the charm. "If you'd looked in the dictionary, you'd find it's envious, and I'm hardly envious of -- "

"No, it's one hundred percent jealous, on account of how you're always doing this when it looks like she's taking up my time."

Harrow musters all the dignity she can, ignoring this last statement like it's a dump Gideon just took in the hallway. "I have been lax," she intones, pulling her gloves on and off. "I have indulged myself in apathy while you have attached yourself to every weirdo in Canaan House." ("You cannot possibly call anyone a weirdo," Gideon mutters.) "No more. We now have less to hide, but more to lose."

"She's got nothing if anybody comes after her," Gideon insists, indignant. "It's a death sentence."

"Yes. She has no cavalier now. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Let the dead reclaim the dead. You won't take my word when I've proven my judgment before? Fine, but you are still banned from her sickroom."

"Nope," says Gideon. "Nah. Denied."

"You're not her bodyguard," Harrow insists, pulling her gloves off.

"Yeah, well, I never pledged to be yours either," Gideon points out. "Not really."

This comment hurts, because she knows it's true. Despite the fragile peace they've managed to achieve between the two of them, she knows Gideon hasn't actually made any genuine vows to her; none that were not made in duress, out of a desire to turn her back on the Ninth House and Harrowhark forever.

"Yes you have," she snaps. "You agreed to act as my cavalier primary. You agreed to devote yourself to the duties of a cavalier. Your misunderstanding of those duties does not make you any less beholden to what that duty actually is -- "

"I promised to fight for you," sniffs Gideon. "You promised me my freedom, and there's a hell of a good chance I'm not going to get it, and I know it! We're all dying here! Something's after us! The only thing I can try to do is keep as many of us alive for as long as I can, and hope that something works out! You're the ignorant sack of eyeballs that doesn't know what a cavalier is, Harrow, you just take whatever I give you and - "

"Melodrama, Griddle, never suited you," Harrow says icily, putting her gloves back on again. "You've never complained about any of our previous transactions."

"My ass, transactions," she snaps back. "What happened to 'I cannot afford to not have you trust me, now I'm going to make awkward eye contact and act like I just broke your nose just because I hugged you once'?"

Harrow draws a breath sharply. "Don't mock my - "

"Mock you? I should kick your ass for you!"

"I'm making a reasonable request," Harrow hisses, pulling her gloves off for the third time yes that wasn't a mistake she really pulls them on and off again three times during this conversation like a person who isn't upset or mad would do, and is now examining her fingernails as though bored. "I ask you to draw back and reprioritize the Ninth in what -- as you've said -- is a dangerous time."

"I've got my priorities straight."

"Nothing you've done in the past two days suggests that."

Harrow knows as soon as she says this that she's crossed a line, without even meaning to.

"Fuck you," Gideon snarls. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I didn't mean to let Jeannemary die."

"For God's sake, I didn't mean - "

"Fuck you," she emphasizes, laughing in a way that is completely devoid of humour. "Fuck. We don't deserve to still be around, have you realized that yet? Have you realized that this whole thing has been about the union of necromancer and cavalier from start to finish? We should be toast. If they're measuring us on the strength of that, we're the walking dead. Magnus the Fifth was a better cavalier than I am. Jeannemary the Fourth was ten times the cavalier I am. They should be alive and we should be bacteria food. We're alive through dumb luck and you're acting like me letting Dulcinea die is all that's standing between you and Lyctorhood -- "

"Stop worshipping the sound of your own voice, Nav, and listen to me -- "

"Harrow, I hate you. I never stopped hating you. I will always hate you, and you will always hate me. Don't forget that. It's not like I ever can."

Harrow's mouth twists; she closes her eyes and shoves her hands back in her gloves. The tension between them goes shiny and hot, and Gideon swallows six times in ten seconds before Harrow responds, her voice calm and even.

"Griddle, you're incorrect. Nothing stands between myself and Lyctorhood, and you are not part of the equation. The tests are not concerned with some frankly sickening rubric of sentiment and obedience; they're testing me and me alone. By the end, neither I nor the Ninth will need you for this pantomime. You may hate me all you wish; I still don't even remember about you half the time."

She turns away, showing her back to Gideon; knowing that Gideon can bury her sword into her and she might do nothing to stop it. Knowing that the act of showing this vulnerability to her will be perceived as arrogance. "You're banned from seeing Septimus. The quicker she shoves herself off this mortal coil, the better. If I were in her position I would have already jumped out a window."

"Stand in front of a window, and I'll do the hard part," mutters Gideon.

"Oh, take a nap," Harrow says dismissively.

"If you don't need me, release me to the Seventh House," she says, though Harrow can tell she's itching to strangle her. "I'd rather serve Dulcinea dying than the living Reverend Daughter."

Harrow turns to leave, breezily and casually, but before she goes she turns and fixes Gideon with a dark, blank gaze. "When I release you from my service, Nav, you will know about it."

Harrowhark stalks off, still feigning casual disdain, despite the fact that her hands are trembling and a hot, terrible, pathetic part of her wants to cry. Things had been going well up until now. Well enough. They're being picked off one by one and many of them are dead and she and Gideon fight constantly but less badly than they always have.

She knows that Gideon will be of no use to her. She doesn't trust Septimus, and she considers going to her sick bed there and then and challenging her to a duel, finishing her off.

And then what? Gideon will come after her, and she won't listen, and she'll raise her sword, and -

She takes a deep breath and tries to collect her thoughts, unsure why any of that conversation happened at all. She doesn't trust Septimus, for good reason. Her cavalier came here as a corpse, disguised as a living man, and only a very dangerous necromancer would know how to do that. But she saw Dulcinea Septimus, fainted, after her cavalier's disappearance, and she could feel the weakness and death roiling off her in droves and she knew no one in that condition would have the power to do all of the things the one picking them off must be doing.

Palamedes Sextus, then. No matter that he's been generous with them, shared information. No matter that he seems to care about Gideon, at least. He's by far the most brilliant person here, other than Harrowhark herself, and that makes him the greatest threat.

Or the Third House necromancers, perhaps. The twins - the outgoing, dominant, charismatic one and her thin sister who clearly understands so much more than she admits. Or the Eight House, they've had it against them from the start, but how could -

It must be two of them working in tandem, she thinks. Sextus and Septimus? Or Sextus and the Tridentarii twins? Some combination? She can't trust Gideon to have her back and she can't put Gideon in danger again, not after what happened with Jeannemary and Isaac.

A duel is what she needs. She'd considered it before, when she sent Gideon and the Fourth House teenagers to the basement, out of the way, where she thought she'd be safe. If she confronts Sextus, or Septimus, or Octakiseron - they may have a numbers advantage, they may have the benefit of their cavaliers, but she doesn't need anything but her own skill and strength to win. If only she knew the right person to challenge. If only she knew that once she bested them, she wouldn't be immediately cut down by the rest. All of these heirs of wealthier houses grew up together, trust one another, attended one another's birthday parties, and she's Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the heir to a secretive, cultist, withered and dying House, and the only person here who knows her hates her and wants to be released to the service of Dulcinea Septimus.

She starts to head towards the quarters, calculating in her head who she ought to duel first, when another thought occurs to her.

Perhaps the problem is - all of these secrets between them, is that all it is? If she told Gideon everything, is there a chance, even a chance, that she might - that she might be willing to listen? The thought utterly terrifies her. If she truly offers to tell her everything, there are questions Gideon could ask with answers that would lead her to cut Harrow down with her sword, and she would deserve it. That's the risk. But on the off chance she could somehow convince her, tell her the truth about the Seventh House cavalier, then couldn't she -

From behind her, Harrow senses the thanergy before she even hears the sound. Something approaching; a construct, ghosts, but - no, this close, it isn't ghosts, is it? A necromancer is doing this. A necromancer, doing all of this? Harrowhark is the greatest necromancer of her generation and what she's feeling is a power she can't fathom.

The fight is brief; Harrow summons skeletons and opens her veins to spread blood and bone to draw wards and she sees bone fragments and feels something draining and she can see the patterns of the theorems being used laid out before her, magic but almost tangible to her, and as she's lying flayed on the ground, blood and meat and bone from her body coming apart, she can almost untangle it. If she just picks the threads, she thinks she can unravel it and see who's doing it, but - it repairs too quickly every time. Her vision grows dark and she feels blood in her mouth and her nose and in her sweat and she can't create any more bone to defend herself, can't pick apart the theories anymore.

She dies without even seeing the face of the one who did it.