Gideon the Ninth полностью

Next to Gideon, Harrowhark stiffened, very slightly.

“Ghosts and monsters,” the lady of the Seventh continued enthusiastically, “remnants and the dead … the disturbed dead. The idea that someone is still here and furious … or that something has been lurking here forever. Maybe it’s that I find the idea comforting … that thousands of years after you’re gone … is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice.”

Harrow said, “A spirit comes at invitation. It cannot sustain itself.”

“But what if one could?” cried Dulcinea. “That’s so much more interesting than plain murder.”

This time neither of the Ninth answered. Dulcinea moved forward, pressing her forearms into the clutches of her two metal poles, and blinked soft brown lashes at them. Gideon noticed that she looked tired, still: that the veins at her temples stood out, that her hands shook just a little bit on each crutch. She was wrapped up in a robe of some pale blue stuff, embroidered with flowers, but still shivered with the chill.

“Greetings, Ninth! You’re brave to come down here after what Teacher said.”

“One might,” said Harrow, “say the same of you.”

“Oh, by all rights I ought to have been the first one to die,” said Dulcinea, giggling a bit fretfully, “but once one accepts that, one stops worrying quite so much. It would be so predictable to bump me off. Hullo, Gideon! It’s nice to see you again. I mean, I saw you last night … but you know what I mean. Oh no, now I sound like a dope. Still vowing silence?”

Before that line of conversation could be pursued, the dark-hooded necromancer of the Ninth said in her most sepulchrous and forbidding tones: “We have business down here, Lady Septimus. Excuse us.”

“But that’s just what I came to talk to you about,” said the other necromancer earnestly. “I think we four should team up.”

Gideon could not hide an explosive snort of disbelief. There were maybe less likely targets for Harrow to team up with—Silas Octakiseron, maybe, or Teacher, or the dead body of Magnus Quinn. In fact, Teacher would be a far better candidate. But Dulcinea’s dreamy blue eyes were turned on Harrow, and she said:

“I’ve already completed one of the theorem labs. I think I’m on the path to cracking another. If we both worked together—why, then, there’s the key in half the time with just a few hours’ work.”

“This is not intended to be collaborative.”

Dulcinea said, smilingly: “Why does everybody think that?”

The women sized each other up. Dulcinea, leaning into her metal braces, looked like a brittle doll: Harrow, hooded and swathed in miles of black fabric, like a wraith. When she pulled away the hood the older necromancer did not flinch, even though it was a deliberately chilling sight; the dark-cropped head, the stark paint on the face, the bone studs punched halfway up each ear. Harrow said coolly: “What would be in it for the Ninth House?”

“All my knowledge of the theory and the demonstration—and first use of the key,” said Dulcinea, eagerly.

“Generous. What would be in it for the Seventh?”

“The key once you’re done. You see, I don’t think I can physically do this one.”

“Stupidity, then, not generosity. You just told me you can’t complete it. Nothing would stop my House from completing it without you.”

“It took me a long time to work out the theoretical parameters,” said Dulcinea, “so I wish you the best of luck. Because even though I’m dying—there’s nothing wrong with my brain.”

Harrow pulled the hood back over her head, returning her to a wraith, a piece of smoke. She swept past the frail necromancer of the Seventh, who followed her with the wistful, somewhat hungry expression that Dulcinea reserved for the shadowy nuns of the Ninth—for the black robes whispering on the metal floor, the green light reflecting off dark fabric.

Harrowhark turned around and said, curtly: “Well? Are we doing this or not, Lady Septimus?”

“Oh, thank you—thank you,” Dulcinea said.

Gideon was stupefied. Too many shocks in twenty-four hours shut down her thought processes. As Dulcinea stumped along the corridor, crutches clanging unharmoniously on the grille, and as Protesilaus hovered behind her a half step away as though desperate to just scoop her up and carry her, Gideon strode to catch up with her necromancer.

Only to find her swearing under her breath. Harrow whispered a lot of fuck-words before muttering: “Thank God we got to her first.”

“I never thought you’d actually help out,” said Gideon, grudgingly admiring.

“Are you dim,” hissed Harrow. “If we didn’t agree, that bleeding heart Sextus would, and he’d have the key.”

“Oh, whoops, my bad,” said Gideon. “For a moment I thought you weren’t a huge bitch.”