He had taken off his glasses to polish them, huffing once on one lens, then on the other. Everyone’s eyes were on him by the time he put his spectacles back on his beaky nose. Camilla perched on the table behind him like a grey-coated crow, haunting his shoulder. “No,” he repeated. “We’ll proceed scientifically. Nothing can be assumed until we have a better sense of how they both died. With everyone’s permission, I’ll examine the bodies; anyone who wants to join me can do so. Once we ascertain the facts we may plan a course of action, but until then, no conclusions. No monsters, no murder, no accidents.”

Coronabeth said warmly, “Hear, hear.”

“Obliged, Princess. We now all know about the existence of the facility,” he continued. “I imagine this will lead to it being explored freely. We should all keep an eye out for—unusual danger, and agree that information is the best gift we can give one another.”

Harrowhark said, “I have no intention of collaborating.”

“You won’t be forced to, Reverend Daughter. But it’s not orthogonal to the Lyctor experiment to warn your colleagues if you think there’s something out of place,” said Palamedes, leaning his chair back. “Exempli gratia, a horde of vengeful ghosts.”

“There is one final matter of keys,” said Teacher.

Everyone, now probably getting neck strain, looked back to him. They waited for a punchline, but there was none. Then they followed his line of sight: he was looking straight at Princess Ianthe in her clinging nightgown, pallid hair falling in two smooth braids down to bloodless shoulders, staring back with eyes like violets on dialysis.

“I am also in possession of one,” she said, unruffled.

“What?”

She did not lose composure. “Don’t act the jilted lover, Babs.”

“You never said a damned word!”

“You didn’t keep your eyes on your key ring.”

“Ianthe Tridentarius,” said her cavalier, “you are—you’re—Corona, why didn’t you tell me?”

Corona stopped him, one slender hand on his shoulder. She was looking at her twin, who calmly avoided her gaze. “Because I didn’t know,” she said lightly, chair scraping as she rose to stand. “I didn’t know either, Babs. I’m going to bed now—I think—I’m somewhat overwrought.”

Courteously, Palamedes stood too: “Cam and I want a look at the bodies,” he said. “If Captain Deuteros and Lieutenant Dyas would like to accompany us—as I assume you’re going to?”

“Yes,” said Judith. “I’d like a closer look.”

“Cam, you go on ahead,” Palamedes said. “I want a quick word.”

The scene broke up after that. The salt-and-pepper priest was talking to Isaac very quietly, and Isaac’s shoulders were shaking as he tucked himself into his seat. The Third left with dislocated proximity and the clenched jaws of three people on their way to have an enormous tiff. Dulcinea was whispering quietly to her cavalier, and they surprised Gideon by following the mob to the freezer. Maybe not that surprising. Dulcinea Septimus could out-morbid the Ninth.

The word Palamedes wanted turned out to be with Harrow; he plucked her sleeve and beckoned her off to the corner of the room, and she went without a cavil. Gideon was left alone, watching Teacher join the whey-faced Silas as he knelt before his cavalier. His lips moved in silent prayer. Colum was now greyish all over, and his eyes had the thousand-yard stare of a man in a stupor. Silas did not appear to be worried. He had clasped one of those big hard-bitten hands between his own and murmured to him, and Gideon caught some of the words: I bid you return.

Teacher was saying: “He’ll have a hard fight to come back, Master Octakiseron … harder than he may have anticipated. Is he used to the journey?”

“Brother Colum has fought harder and in colder climes,” said Silas calmly. “He has come back to me through stranger ghosts. He has never once let his body become corrupted, and he never shall.” Then he went back to the mantra: I bid … I bid …

For some reason that image stayed with her: the mayonnaise magician and his thickset nephew, older than him by far, staring out of empty eyes as Teacher watched with the air of a man with front-row seats to back-alley dental surgery. Gideon watched too, fascinated by an act she couldn’t understand, when a hand closed around her wrist.

It was Jeannemary Chatur, her eyes red-rimmed, sticky and stained, her hair in a frizz. There was no sign of pluck in her now, except maybe a wild hardness around the eyes as she looked at Gideon.

“Ninth,” she said hoarsely, “if you know anything, tell me now. If you—if you know anything, I’ve got to— They meant too much to us, so if you know—”

Gideon felt very sad. She put her hand on the bad teen’s shoulder, and Jeannemary flinched away. She shook her head no, and when Jeannemary’s big eyes—lashes clumped with last night’s makeup, irises an inky brown—filled with tears she tried to furiously blink away, Gideon stopped being able to even slightly deal. She put her hand on top of the other cavalier’s head, which was damp and curly like a sad puppy’s, and said: “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“I believe you,” said Jeannemary thickly, not seeming to register the fact that the Ninth had spoken. “Magnus likes you … liked … He wouldn’t have let anything happen to Abigail,” she added all in a rush. “She hated heights. She never would’ve risked falling. And she was a spirit magician. If it was ghosts, why couldn’t she—”

From before them, Colum gave such a racking and explosive cough that it made both Jeannemary and Gideon jump. His eyes rolled back in his head as he choked, staccato gasps, pulling in reeking smoke, while his adept said merely: “Fifteen minutes. You’re getting tardy,” and nothing more.

* * *

Gideon would have liked Jeannemary to finish her sentence, but Harrow was limping over with an expression like trouble. She had the distant, brow-puckered frown of a woman untying gruesomely knotted shoelaces. Gideon watched the cavalier of the Fourth walk away with hunched shoulders and a hand clasped around the grip of her rapier, and she fell into Harrow’s wake, a half step behind her.

“You okay?”

“I’m sick of these people,” said Harrowhark, ducking down a passageway and away from the central atrium. “I am sick of their slowness … sick to death. I can’t wait here for one of them to grasp the implications of everything they have been told”—Gideon couldn’t wait to grasp those implications either, but it didn’t seem likely anytime soon—“because we will be far ahead of them by then. We have a door to open.”

“Yes, tomorrow morning after at least eight hours’ sleep,” Gideon suggested without hope.

“An admirable attempt at comedy in these trying times,” said Harrowhark. “Let’s go.”

19

THE KEY THEY HAD purchased so dearly from the construct gave very little away, other than its unusual colour. It was big; the shaft was as long as Gideon’s middle finger, and the clover head satisfactorily heavy to hold, but it had no helpful tag saying, e.g., FIRST FLOOR. This did not seem to give Harrowhark pause. She whipped out her stained journal and brooded over her maps, hiding in a dark alcove and making her cavalier keep watch. Considering that there were exactly zero people around, this seemed stupid.