Rather than the neatly sectional space that had constituted Laboratory Two, with its Imaging and Response chambers and orderly empty shelves, Laboratory Eight opened up on an enormous grate. A lattice of thick black steel barred the first part of the room from the second, which—espied through the holes—proved to be a long space with a claustrophobic ceiling. It was like stepping into a pipe. The door led to a metal platform on struts and a short flight of stairs leading down into the space, barred by the huge grate. The Seventh necromancer went to the wall and flicked a switch, and with a low vibrating moan, the grate slowly began to tuck itself up into the ceiling.
With the removal of the grate, the room seemed enormously grey and empty. Only two things broke up the vast monotony of grey metal and white light: far off at the other end of the chamber was a metal plinth, boxed on top with what looked like clear glass or plex; and at the bottom of the stairs, about a metre away from its base, was a yellow-and-black-striped line that had been painted horizontally from wall to wall.
It was easily a hundred metres from the stripe to the plinth: a long way to walk. It looked simple enough, which was how Gideon knew it was probably a huge pain in the ass.
And yet her adept was already gliding down the stairs, standing before the yellow-and-black-emblazoned line as though at the edge of a fire. Dulcinea came after, leaning more heavily on her crutches as she swung herself down the stairs. Protesilaus came last.
“If you put your hand through,” she said, “you’ll see—there.” Harrow had bitten off a cry of pain. She had stuck her gloved fingers tentatively over the line, and now she was yanking off her glove to see the damage. Gideon had been the victim of this once before, through Palamedes Sextus, but it was still a disquieting sight. Harrow’s fingertips had shrivelled: the nails had split horribly, and the moisture looked as though it had been siphoned forcibly out, wrinkling the skin like paper. Her adept shook her hand in the air like you would with a burn; the wrinkles smoothed out, slowly, and the nails knit themselves back together.
“Hardly insurmountable,” said Harrow, having regained her composure.
“Very hopeful! What would you use?”
“A corporeal ward; skin-bound, tight focus.”
“Try it.”
Harrowhark flexed her fingers slowly. Gideon watched as she narrowed her
eyes into obsidian slits, fringed thickly with blunt black lashes, and
then extended her hand beyond the line again. There was a brief shower
of blue sparks; Harrow snatched her hand back, amazed and furious. The
fingers had withered into puckered twigs; her little nail had fallen off
entirely. The edges of her sleeve had holed and frayed as though
assaulted by moths. Gideon lunged out of a sheer desire to do
Harrow shook a bracelet over her hurt hand, and bands of spongy osseous matter wrapped around her knuckles before forming thick plaques of bone. Gauntleted, she reached her hand out again—
“It won’t work,” said Dulcinea, dimpling.
—The gauntlet exploded into fragments of bone. Those that passed the
yellow line fragmented further, and those bits degraded into dust and
that into powder. The glove fell away in hunks, dwindling into fine sand
before it even hit the ground, and Harrow yanked her hand back to stare
at its sad puckered appearance a third time. She sat heavily on the
stairs, and a bead of blood sweat trickled down one temple as, away from
the barrier, her hand relaxed back into wholeness. Gideon longed to say:
“It’s two spells, overlaying each other,” said Dulcinea.
“You can’t have two spells with coterminous bounds. It’s impossible.”
“But true. They’re really coterminous—not just interwoven or spliced. It’s truly delicious work. The people who set it in place were geniuses.”
“Then one half is senescence—”
“And the other half is an entropy field,” said Dulcinea simply.
Gideon followed Harrow’s gaze over the long, dully gleaming field of corrugated metal, and the plinth shining at the end like a beacon. She saw Harrow suck in and bite the inside of one cheek, always a sign of furious thinking, flexing her fingers all the while as though still worried about their integrity. She took an old, ivory-coloured knuckle from her pocket, and she passed it to Gideon. “Throw,” she commanded.
Gideon obligingly threw. It was a good toss—the knuckle hit the field high and travelled for about half a metre before fragmenting into a rain of grey particles. Harrow’s gaze fixed on the crumbling shards: more tiny spikes and spurs of bone burst out of them and shrivelled, stillborn—another burst as Harrow curled her fist into a ball—then nothing. There was no more bone left.
Dulcinea breathed in admiration: “It’s
