Then she turned and plunged through the
barrier, and there was the jolt. It started in Gideon’s jaw:
starbursts of pain rattling all the way from mandible to molars,
electricity blasting over her scalp. She was Harrow, walking into
no-man’s-land; she was Gideon, skull juddering behind the line. She sat
down on the stairs very abruptly and did not pay attention to Dulcinea,
reaching out for her before drawing back. It was like Harrow had tied a
rope to all her pain receptors and was rappelling down a very long drop.
She dimly watched her necromancer take step after painstakingly slow
step across the empty metal expanse. There was a strange fogging around
her. It took Gideon a moment to realise that the spell was eating
through Harrow’s black robes of office, grinding them into dust around
her body.
Another lightning flash went through her head. Her immediate instinct
was to reject it, to push against awareness of Harrow—the sense of
crushing pressure—the blood-transfusion feel of loss. Bright lights
danced in her vision. She fell to the side and became disjointedly aware
of Dulcinea, her head on Dulcinea’s thin thigh, the glasses slipping off
her nose and rattling down onto the next step. She watched Harrow walk
as though against a wind, blurred with particles of black—then she found
herself snorting out big hideous fountains of blood. Her vision blurred
again greyly, and her breath stuttered in her throat.
“No,” said Dulcinea. “Oh, no no no. Stay awake.”
Gideon couldn’t say anything but blearrghhh, mainly because blood was
coming enthusiastically out of every hole in her face. Then all of a
sudden it wasn’t—drying up, parching, leaving her with a waterless
and arid tongue. The pain moved down to her heart and massaged it,
electrifying her left arm and her left fingers, her left leg and her
left toes. It was beyond pain. It was as though her insides were being
sucked out through a gigantic straw. In her dimming vision she saw
Harrowhark, walking away; no longer haloed by fragments but limned with
a great yellow light that flickered and ate at her heels and her
shoulders. Tears filled Gideon’s eyes unbidden, and then they gummed
away. It all blurred grey and gold, then just grey.
“Oh, Gideon,” someone was saying, “you poor
baby.”
The pain went down her right leg, and to her right toes, and then up her
spine in zigzags. She dry-heaved. There was still that pressure—the
pressure of Harrow—and the sense that if she pushed at it, if she just
went and fucking knocked at it, it would go away. She was sorely
tempted. Gideon was in the type of pain where consciousness disappeared
and only the animal remained: bucking, yelping an idiot yelp, butting
and bleating. Throw Harrowhark off, or slip into sleep, anything for
release. If there had been any sense that she had to try to hold the
connection, she would have lost it already; Gideon was just overwhelmed
with how badly she wanted to shove against it, not huddle in a corner
and scream. Was she screaming? Oh, shit, she was screaming.
“It’s all right,” someone was saying, over the noise. “You’re all right.
Gideon, Gideon … you’re so young. Don’t give yourself away. Do you
know, it’s not worth it … none of this is worth it, at all. It’s cruel.
It’s so cruel. You are so young—and vital—and alive. Gideon, you’re all
right … remember this, and don’t let anyone do it to you ever again. I’m
sorry. We take so much. I’m so sorry.”
She would remember each word later, loud and clear.
Her forehead and face were being mopped. Touch did not register. She had
lost control of her limbs, and each was flailing independently of the
others, a roiling mass of nerves and panic. Her hair was being
stroked—softly—and she did not want to be touched, but she was terribly
afraid that if it stopped she would roll away into the field and
dissolve just to get away. She held on to the sound of talking, so that
she didn’t go mad.
“She’s all the way across,” said the voice. “She’s made it to the box …
can you see the trick of it, Reverend Daughter? There is a trick,
isn’t there? Gideon, I am going to put my hand over your mouth. She
needs to think.” A hand went over her mouth, and Gideon bit it. “Ow, you
feral. There she goes … perhaps they thought that if it was easy to
obtain, someone could finish the demonstration some other way. It’s got
to be foolproof, Gideon … I know that. I wish it were me. I wish I were
up there. She’s got the box open … I wonder …
yes, she’s worked it out! I was afraid she’d break the key…”
Clutched in the thin lap, Gideon could make no response that was not
retching, gurgling or clamouring, silenced only by one rather skinny
hand. “Good girl,” the voice was saying. “Oh, good girl. She’s got it,
Gideon! And I’ve got you … Gideon of the golden eyes. I’m so sorry. This
is all my fault … I’m so sorry. Stay with me,” the voice said more
urgently, “stay with me.”
