Palamedes rounded on her with a sudden fury that made everyone jump,
even Gideon. “Then maybe I’ll
“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—”
“
“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.”
Everyone’s heads followed the sound—except for Ianthe Tridentarius, who was lounging in her chair with one eyebrow raised, and Naberius Tern, who had issued the challenge. He vaulted to the table in one lustrous movement, swinging himself up to stand on it, even as Judith Deuteros very carefully eased her cavalier down into an empty seat. He looked down at them all with a hard sneer and the one stupid curl that he always managed to get right in the middle of his forehead.
“No, you don’t,” said Coronabeth faintly.
“Yes, he does,” said Ianthe, rising to stand. “You need a facility key, don’t you? Here’s our chance. I suspect we won’t be given a better.”
There was an expression of grim alarm rising on Judith Deuteros’s face. She had both hands across the oozing slit on her cavalier’s chest, and she had paused in her work out of sheer annoyance.
“You have no cause,” she said.
“Neither did you, if we’re all being honest with ourselves. Sextus was perfectly right.”
“If you want to cast me as the villain, do it,” said the captain. “I’m trying to save our lives. You’re giving in to chaos. There are rules, Third.”
“On the contrary,” Ianthe said, “you’ve amply demonstrated that there are no rules whatsoever. There’s only the challenge … and how it’s answered.”
When she looked at her sister’s stricken face—Corona was somewhere beyond fury and shame now, and had lost every atom of her poise—she only said, quite softly: “This is for you, dear, don’t be picky. This may be the only chance we have. Don’t feel bad, sweetheart—what can you do?”
Corona’s face changed—the struggle gave way to exhaustion, but at the same time there was a weird relief in her. Her teeth were gritted, but one of her hands tangled in her sister’s long, thin, ivory-blond locks and she drew their heads close. “I can do nothing,” she said, and Gideon realised they’d just lost her, somehow.
“Then let’s do this together. I need you.”
“I need you,” echoed her twin, rather piteously.
Camilla hauled herself up to stand. She had taken Palamedes’s handkerchief and bound her arm, but the blood was already showing through and she held it in a funny way. Palamedes looked close to vibrating out of his skin from fear or anger. “Right,” she said laconically, “second round.”
But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of
everyone’s shit. She unsheathed her sword. She slid her gauntlet over
her hand, and tightened the wrist straps with her teeth. And she looked
over her shoulder at Harrowhark, who was apparently breaking out of a
blue funk to experience her own dominant emotion of
And Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star.
