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ONE
Camilla was fourteen and she was sitting on the gymnasium floor, clutching her right hand to her chest.
“Come on, Hect,” Seis was saying. “I have to take you to the infirmary.”
“Probably just needs ice,” Camilla said evenly. Her fingers hurt very badly. It was a novel sensation — she didn’t get hit very often.
Seis rolled her eyes straight up the ceiling and sighed. “Take a year of leave, they said. Train the Aspirants, get away from the front lines for a bit. Hect, we’re not negotiating this. I will not be held responsible for any crooked fingers on the Warden’s sword-hand.”
“Might not be broken,” Camilla countered. “They’re not bent.”
“They’re already twice the size of the fingers on your other hand,” Seis said. “Either come to the infirmary with me, or I will send for Kiana and have her drag you out of here.”
Threatening to bring Cam’s half-sister into this was a serious escalation of the situation. Camilla reassessed. “Send for the Warden,” she said. “If he thinks I need the infirmary, I’ll go.”
Seis muttered something about teenagers with God-complexes, then said, “Fine. But stay right there. And do not move your hand. If I see you so much as twitch those fingers, I’m getting Kiki.”
"Alright.” She stretched her legs out in front of her, flexing and un-flexing her calves. “I’d still like that ice.”
The Warden arrived twenty minutes later, breathing hard.
“You’re going to give yourself another asthma attack,” Camilla observed.
“I’m fine,” he said, still panting. “I wasn’t that far away.” He crouched next to Camilla and held out one hand, palm up. “What’s the damage? If I have to amputate a finger, whoever’s responsible is going to face a tribunal. I don’t even have a cavalier secondary picked out.”
She gingerly placed her right hand in his left palm, and he ran his other hand very lightly over her knuckles, barely making contact. His necromancy left a faint, tingling sensation across her skin, like static on a view screen. “Oh, that’s not too bad. Two fractures, both stable.” He turned over his shoulder to Seis. “I can handle this,” he said. “Won’t take more than a few minutes.”
“Okay, great,” Seis said, rocking back onto her heels.
“So, if there’s anything else you need to attend to,” Palamedes said pointedly. “That’s fine.”
“I — sure, Warden,” she said. She hesitated, then bowed. “Take care, Hect.”
As soon as she walked away Palamedes said, “Emperor himself, I thought she was going to burst a blood vessel.”
“These lot get nervous about my hands,” Camilla said. “Also, Seis is always wound tighter than a clockwork. After this, you should check she doesn’t have an ulcer.”
“I may delegate that job to someone else,” he said dryly. He’d re-focused his attention on her hands again. “Hm. Two fractures, third and fourth proximal metacarpal. How badly does it hurt?
“It’s fine,” Camilla said. She held the pain at a distance, letting herself become a thing detached.
“You’re a pretty good liar,” the Warden said. “But I happen to know you’re a hardass. I’ll numb them a bit.”
“If my fingers fall off, I’m bringing you up on a tribunal,” Camilla said.
“Lucky for both of us then, that I know what I’m doing,” he said briskly. He closed his eyes, and her middle and index finger went static-y and then very cool. When he pulled his right hand away, still cradling her fingers in his palm, the pain was almost entirely gone. “Keep the ice on them. It’ll take a bit for the swelling to go down.”
Then Palamedes glanced around the empty gymnasium. There was a mischievous little glint in his eyes when he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a whisper-soft kiss to her swollen knuckles. “All better.”
Camilla’s stomach felt static-y for reasons entirely unrelated to necromancy. “Thanks, Warden.”
“At your service, Scholar.” He stood and offered her a hand up. “Now, let’s go find some dinner. I’m famished.”
TWO
Camilla was six, and it was free hour at the creche.
"Okay, now you fall down," Camilla demanded.
"Why?" Palamedes asked, shoving his glasses up his nose. He'd recently graduated from plex safety-frames with a little tie on the back to real, grown-up, metal and glass ones.
"Cause, you died," Camilla explained.
"What? That's not right."
"No, you died. The rebels got you, and now I get all your books.”
"That is not how it goes in the stories," Palamedes said impatiently. He drew himself up to his full height — Camilla had grown two inches this year but Palamedes had grown three and a half so he was still in the lead. "We have to play it like the stories."
"People get killed by the rebels in the stories,” Camilla said. Kiki had been reading her one chapter a night from a big book of fairy tales. In exchange, she’d agreed to stop trying to wander out of their dormitory when she couldn’t sleep at night.
"No, we’re the protagonists, Cam. The protagonists don’t get killed by rebels,” Palamedes argued. “In our story, you would jump in front of the rebels and save me, and then you'd get stabbed in the shoulder."
"Not fair, why do I get stabbed?" Camilla demanded.
"No, keep listening. You get stabbed in the shoulder, but in the end, you take the rebels down. Then you collapse into the dust." At this he paused, waiting. "Go on, collapse into the dust."
Camilla glared at him but dropped onto the creche’s stubbly carpet. It smelled old snacks and the rubber on the bottoms of shoes. "Okay."
Palamedes crouched down next to her. "And then I say, oh Camilla, you saved me, you are the bravest cavalier who ever lived! And you say I was only doing my duty, my duty to you and to the Empire."
"You're not going to heal my shoulder with necromancy?" Camilla asked. "Isn't that your job?"
"I will," he insisted. His glasses had started to slide down his nose, and he shoved them back up his nose and let out an irritated puff of breath. “But that's not this part of the story. That's after we walk off the battlefield arm and arm. In this part of the story, you say I was only doing my duty and then I say I could find the courage to walk backwards into hell, would I know that you were behind me."
"If you're walking backwards, I’d be in front of you,” she pointed out.
Palamedes rolled his eyes again. "You’re not taking this very seriously. I say would I know that you were behind me, and then I take your hand -" at this, Palamedes took her hand and brought it towards him "-and I kiss it." Then he paused. The flow of the story had left him, his brash confidence gone. Now it was just him and Camilla on the floor, each considering the other.
"Are you gonna kiss it?" Camilla asked.
"Well, I don't have to," he said. "It's just pretend."
"Not fair," Camilla said. "I had to really fall down into the dust. Don't be a pansy, Palamedes."
A little worry crease formed between Palamedes brows, then unformed as he committed himself to action. He brought up Camilla's knuckles and, for the tiniest of seconds, pressed them to his lips. "There, and then you say-"
"One flesh, one end," Camilla said. "I know that part.” They sat like that for a moment longer. Then Camilla said, “Hurry and fix my shoulder. I’m tired of being in the dust."
The creche teacher chose that moment to interrupt them, which Camilla thought was rude, since they hadn’t finished the story yet. "Your sister is here, Camilla."
Kiana scooped Camilla into a hug, pressing their foreheads together. "How was creche, Cammie?"
"Good," Camilla said, taking a moment to appreciate how Kiki always smelled like their apartment, much nicer than the sticky scent that permeated the creche. Kiana shifted her from her hip onto her back to carry her, even though Camilla was very nearly too big for that.
"And you Palamedes? Argue with any teachers today?"
"Twice," he said, proudly.
"Good man. You're coming with me too," she said, holding an open hand out to him. "The Archivist asked me to walk you back to her office."
"Oh, it's her day. She never has good snacks," Palamedes said dolefully, which made Kiki laugh her tiny, warm laugh.
"Sorry scholar, Zeta's the boss. I just do what she tells me." She hooked one arm under Cam's knee to balance her and took Pal’s little hand with the other, and she took them home.
THREE
Camilla was nineteen, and she had her feet up on the little cavalier bed in their small, but elegantly decorated, guest quarters on Trentham.
The Warden was reviewing correspondence, which meant he was talking to himself while Camilla occasionally said hmm? or hmm. or uh-huh. His very large stack of flimsy was too much for the small table in their quarters, and several pieces had already fluttered to the floor, their motion flummoxed by the artificial gravity. He was perpetually paler and more pinched than Camilla would have liked, but looked even paler and more pinched at the moment.
“How’s the space exposure?” Camilla asked. They’d been off planet for more than forty-eight hours, the longest they’d ever spent outside the necromantic halo of the Houses.
“Mh-hmm,” the Warden said.
She took the crumpled-up ball of flimsy she’d been forming and tossed it at his head. When it made contact, he blinked for a moment, then turned around as if he was expecting to see someone other than Camilla responsible for the projectile. “What was that for?”
“You didn’t answer my question. How’s the space exposure?”
“Oh, fine now. Much better than yesterday.”
“You look peaky, is all. Is your House Dirt losing its juice?”
“Scientifically speaking, I think it’s called complex thalergy and thanergy resonances, not juice.”
“Four hours ago, you called it a placebo,” Camilla reminded him.
He took off his glasses and tapped them on the edge of the table. This made it even easier to see that he was rolling his eyes. “The data on the effects of House dirt— “
“Don’t start— “
“Are minimal at best. It only outperforms a placebo in three of the six papers I’ve looked at— “
“Warden.”
He sighed, putting the glasses back on and settling them on his nose. “I am fine. I have my scientifically dubious house dirt, and I will drink more water before we leave.”
“Thanks.”
“Speaking of which, how much longer until the main event?”
“We need to leave in twenty minutes,” Camilla said. “Do you know who else is here?”
"Oh, the usual suspects," Palamedes said. "Delegations from the Second, Third, and Fifth. Nobody here on behalf of the Fourth or the Seventh officially, but I'm sure there'll be some social attendees. No Eighth. Or Ninth, obviously."
"So, we should try and find Lady Pent, and pretend you have important House Business if I see Princess Ianthe?" Camilla asked.
"I would love that," Palamedes said. "But we actually need to be exceptionally nice to the Princesses tonight, because I’m in the middle of a trade negotiation with the Third and need all the help I can get sweet-talking their mother. Maybe you could dance with Princess Coronabeth?”
This was a request that would have made other people laugh. “Sorry, have we met before?”
“You know how to dance,” the Warden insisted. “We took lessons. I was there.”
“I took more lessons on dueling than dancing. Maybe we could try that, instead.”
“I don’t think the Houses have fallen quite so low as to resort to duels to settle import treaties, but if things dissolve further, I’ll bring that suggestion up to the Oversight Body.” He tapped his pencil on the edge of the desk a few times, then scratched something out. “We should do something about that.”
“About my dancing?”
“Not yours specifically. But nobody from the Sixth ever dances at these things, and it makes us all look like a House of miserable fuddy-duddies.”
“We are a House of miserable fuddy-duddies,” Camilla said.
“Well, yes, we are. Need we embrace it so thoroughly, though? Maybe I could start a committee. The Committee on Cultural Affairs, something to that effect.”
“Maybe you could dance with Princess Coronabeth,” Camilla suggested. “If you’re so keen.”
Palamedes scoffed. “You’re a much better dancer than me, and you know it.” He looked sadly at his stacks of flimsy then said, “I better wrap this up and get changed, or we’ll be late. I always manage to fuck up the buttons on my formal robes.”
They made the usual entrance; the Warden in front of a triangle of a half-dozen scholars representing the House, and Camilla just a half-step behind his shoulder.
As far as she was concerned, Camilla had long ago fulfilled her lifetime quota for galas, balls and any other military pomp and circumstance events. They were all the same, just painted in different colors. Since the Second was hosting, the walls and the tables were all decked with banners of deep crimson, offset with crisp, military white.
“Ah, there are the Princesses,” Palamedes said over his right shoulder. He didn’t look behind him as he said this — he never needed to check if she was there.
“Can’t we say hello to someone else first?” Camilla asked.
“No time like the present!” Palamedes said briskly, walking straight towards the Third House’s table. With that battle already fought and lost, Camilla followed dutifully.
The twins were draped in resplendent purple and gold robes and had in turn draped themselves carelessly over a couple of chairs towards the center of the room. They were taking turns eating off a plate of little grapes, each one fresh and perfectly round. There must have been a hydroponics lab somewhere on the station.
“Master Warden, I’d heard the Sixth House was making an appearance.” Ianthe drawled, as they approached. She added, “Lovely to see you,” in tones that made it clear she did not find this fact particularly lovely.
Palamedes bowed very appropriately, first to Coronabeth and then to Ianthe. “Crown Princess. Princess. Good to see you both as well.”
Coronabeth, still leaning into Ianthe’s shoulder, looked over the Warden’s shoulder and waved to Camilla. “Hello, Warden’s Hand.”
Camilla bowed slightly less appropriately at the shoulder.
“I appreciate your cavalier, Warden,” Ianthe said, crisply. “I appreciate a cavalier who understands what her role is at these kinds of functions. I’ve already had to send Babs off to go dance with someone. He wouldn’t stop opining on everyone’s outfits, and it was driving me absolutely batty.”
“Neither of us have much to offer in that arena,” Palamedes said, with forced cheer. He turned slightly towards Camilla and added, “Though you offer excellent commentary on duels, when we get the chance to watch those.”
The edge to his tone, and the fact that he’d staunchly shifted the conversation out of third person and addressed Camilla directly, did not go unnoticed by Ianthe. Her face went sour. So much for being very nice to the Princesses.
“Yes, quite,” Ianthe said dismissively, dragging the conversation back to her. “How are things on the Sixth? I for one am desperate for this import treaty to be ratified so that mummy will stop moaning about it.”
Palamedes took the opportunity to sit down and begin a back and forth with Ianthe about the cost of short-hop space flights and the practicalities of introducing sub-luminary flights to the outer planets.
Camilla stood behind him, making a good show of not listening, until Coronabeth eventually leaned away from Ianthe and said, “You can sit, you know.”
“I’m fine.”
Coronabeth smiled. “She speaks! Please, I insist. Have some fruit.”
So, in the name of diplomacy, Camilla Hect sat and ate some grapes.
They only had fresh produce on the Sixth every few months, right after the supply shipments arrived. And calling that fruit “fresh” was overstating it — it had been on a spaceship for weeks by that point. Camilla bit into the first grape and it burst in her mouth. It was so many textures at once – soft pulp, sour juice, crisp skin, the crunch of seeds buried within.
The Princess leaned it and said, somewhat conspiratorially, “They’re incredible, right? It’s some kind of military tech they use for growing food in deep space, to keep the troops fed. Proprietary Second House tech, and they won’t share. The Third grows some of our own produce, out on the moons, but not a lot.” She paused and popped another grape in her mouth, leaned in a bit closer and smiled, keeping her purple eyes fixed on Camilla. This close, Camilla could see the little clumps of mascara sticking to her lashes. “I’d imagine the Sixth doesn’t grow anything — though I’ve never been to The Library.”
Camilla was considering a possible response to that speech — yes, your highness probably wasn’t going to be sufficient — when Ianthe turned around and said, “Coronabeth I cannot hear the Master Warden over your inane asides about fruit. Take some interest in the family business, would you?”
Palamedes stood up. “That’s quite all right, Princess. If you’ll excuse us, Camilla and I need to find Abigail Pent, I promised her I’d save her a dance.” He gave another proper bow. “Nice to see you both.”
As they walked away Camilla heard Coronabeth whisper, just a little too loudly for her to believe she wasn’t meant to overhear it, “Isn’t she handsome? I just wish they’d dress her in something pretty.”
“I’m surprised they’re not pimping her out on the front lines for 'genetic diversity,’ Ianthe said. “I wonder what Sextus traded to keep her all to himself.”
Luckily, the Warden had already shifted his attention to something in the center of the room, so he didn’t hear that comment. If he had, Camilla would have spent the rest of the evening preventing an inter-House war from breaking out, which would have been a lot of inconvenience.
“I don’t see Lady Pent,” Camilla said.
“No, I don’t even think she’s here yet,” Pal said, readjusting his glasses. “But I was about five minutes from challenging Ianthe to a necromantic duel, which wouldn’t have helped very much with the import treaty."
“What did you say earlier, about the Houses not stooping so low?” Camilla said. The band transitioned from some calming elevator music into something a bit jauntier, and people started taking to the dance floor.
“Yes, yes” he said. “Now I’m the big hypocrite of the evening and you win. As always,” he added fondly, and without a hint of malice. They were standing by a table right on the edge of the dance floor, now in motion, a riot of colors, swirling robes and glittering military uniforms. He was tapping his hands against the table a little nervously, almost, but not quite, in rhythm to the music. Then he said, “Dance with me,” quite suddenly, and immediately looked as shocked that he’d asked as Camilla felt.
“What? Here?”
The Warden blinked, then seemed to recover from his self-induced panic. He glanced around the room and then back to Camilla, “Sure. I know you know how. I’ve watched.”
Camilla shifted her weight onto her back foot, then her front, considering possible reasons that was a terrible, stupid, idiotic idea. “Giving your first dance of the night to your Cavalier? You’ll cause a scandal.”
“Not like anyone else from the Sixth is offering,” he said, jerking his chin toward the little puddle of gray that had coalesced next to the dessert table. Suddenly his eyes were alight, his smile crinkling up the edges of his face. “Come on, just one. For me.”
She couldn’t say no to that. She could never say no to him.
She offered him her hand.
He tugged her onto the dance floor and the crowd flowed around them like water, pushing them into the rushing circle of people, hand in hand.
“You’re going to have to lead — I don’t remember this one,” he said, very close to her ear.
“I assumed, Warden.”
At first, she was so painfully aware that they were in public that the back of her neck prickled. She consciously reminded herself to keep moving.
Then the crowd thickened around them, tucking them neatly into the anonymous tide of people. Her muscle memory was as stalwart and reliable as always, and her feet traced the steps of the dance instinct. And then it was just them, moving in unison as always, his grey eyes crinkled into a smile behind his smudged glasses.
He leaned in towards her and said, a little out of breath, “See? Not so bad, is it?”
“Sure, Warden,” she said, and she gave him the tiniest of smiles in return. “Almost as fun as a duel.”
The music reached a crescendo, then began to fade. Just before the crowd began to break apart, he lifted her hand to his mouth and left a kiss on the second knuckle of her right hand and whispered, “Thank you for the dance, Scholar.”
FOUR
Camilla was twenty, and she was hiding at a party, one of her chief skills.
After seven years as the Wardens’ Hand, Camilla Hect had learned to tolerate parties under the best possible circumstances. She did not enjoy parties, wasn’t even neutral on parties, but after repeated exposure she no longer found them agonizing.
That was only under ideal circumstances though, and a party in which she was fifty percent of the party’s honorees was very far from ideal circumstances.
“What do you think?” the Warden asked, sotto voce, catching her by the arm. “All this just for us?”
It was the first moment they’d had to speak in hours. Camilla had finally dragged herself out of the crowd and was holding the edge of the dessert table, as if the chocolate biscuits might keep her from drifting into the void of space. It seemed the whole of the Sixth House had turned up for their sending off party, which mean Camilla was trying to avoid every enemy she’d ever made, and worse, every acquaintance she’d ever met.
“All this for you, you mean,” Camilla said. “They’re hardly here for me. I’m your security attaché, sent to keep the other scions from assassinating you.”
“Anyone attempting a coup d’état on the Sixth House would really be scraping the bottom of the barrel for resources,” Palamedes said evenly. “But if you think I’d have even on quarter of a chance of doing this without you, you’re madder than this lot here,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the chaos around them.
This filled Camilla with something small and warm at the bottom of her chest, despite herself. “I suppose you will need someone to remind you to eat,” she admitted.
He gave her an indulgent eyeroll. Then he leaned in close again, his gray eyes twinkling in the artificial lantern light, and said, “How would you feel about a Fourth House goodbye?”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “And do what instead?”
“Well, I was thinking about hiding in the stacks and getting inadvisably drunk. But I’m open to suggestions.”
“Do you have booze?”
“No, but you do.”
This was correct — Camilla had a decent stash of bootleg liquor, most of which she’d won at duels.
“What about an exit strategy?” She asked.
“You haven’t already calculated the fastest way to get me to each of the four exits in this room?” He asked, mock incredulously. “Slacking on your duties, Warden’s Hand.”
“There’s five exits in this room,” she said. “You forgot the stairwell in the cupboard.” She crossed her arms, shifted her weight to her back foot. “How did this become my plan?”
“I’m just the ideas guy,” Palamedes said.
“Undoubtedly, Warden.” Camilla surveyed the room, considering possible allies and enemies in the gathered crowd. “Go over there and talk to Jessamine,” she said. “Her cavalier owes me a favor. I’ll be over a minute.”
He grinned at her and said, “Understood, Scholar,” before slipping back into the tide of people.
She watched him cross the room, ate two more strawberries, then steeled her nerves and went after him. She was only waylaid briefly by one of the Aspirants she’d trained at the Spire who wanted to offer her congratulations. Since said Aspirant was all of eleven, it felt a little too mean to brush her off.
“Oh, there you are,” Palamedes said casually when she finally made it to the other side of the room. “I was just telling Jessamine about those files downstairs that we’d forgotten to pack. Terrible oversight on my part.”
“I told him that you’ve been spending too much time in the Spire,” Jessamine said, with a knowing wink. “Lord knows I can’t keep my own head screwed on whenever Jace is on the other side of the House.”
Jace then leaned in toward Camilla and said, “If you go now, we can distract the Archivist, and I’ll call that even.”
Camilla gave him a tiny smile. “I think you still owe me at least two. But I’m feeling magnanimous and am willing to make a deal.” She took the Warden’s arm and said, “Now or never.”
They slipped back into the crowd and glided away, easy as breathing.
An hour later they were blissfully alone in the dusty quiet of the stacks, with less than half a bottle of liquor left between them.
The Warden took a sip and passed the bottle back to her. “This is truly awful.”
“Well, it was brewed in one of the decommissioned sonic showers on level four. So.”
“They do say necessity is the mother of all invention,” Palamedes said, then hiccupped. His formal robes were very rumpled, and there was a mysterious stain near his collar. His hair had lost the plot entirely. “Did you get to see Kiana, before we left the party?”
“I talked to her earlier,” Camilla said. “And she’ll be at the launch tomorrow.”
“Good. That’s good.” He glanced at her sideways, his glasses a little askew. “For some reason, this feels like goodbye.”
“That’s awfully pessimistic of you, Warden,” Camilla said.
“Not for you and me, obviously,” he added quickly. Then he reached across and took her wrist. “But for everyone else, this feels like goodbye.”
The words nagged at her, made her feel like she was drifting again. She concentrated on how warm his hand was on her wrist. Pal was always so warm. She slid a little closer to him.
“If I come back a Lyctor,” he added, speaking slowly and pensively. “Or even we fail, and I don’t come back a Lyctor, but come back having learned even a small part of those divine mysteries, the person coming back won’t really be the same at all, will he? No matter what happens, it won’t be the same you and I, the same Camilla and Palamedes.”
“Philosophically speaking,” she said. “That’s true every day.”
“You can never step in the same river twice,” he quoted sagely. “Or so I’ve heard. I think I’m pretty drunk.” He leaned into her, then gave up and tipped over into her lap, catching her hand in both of his and placing it on the center of her chest.
“Warden,” she said a bit warningly, glancing around the library, checking they were still alone.
“Everyone’s upstairs, Cam,” he assured her. “It’s just us.”
She could feel the rise and fall of his chest under her hand. It made her so calm, to feel him breathing, to know he was right there even if she closed her eyes. She kicked away her thoughts about decorum and appearances, tried to let herself have this moment.
He was staring straight up at the ceiling and running his thumb over her knuckles. Others might think it was absentminded, but she knew the Warden and she knew the care and the intention behind the gesture. Finally, he said, “I haven’t felt like this since the night you became my cavalier.”
That was the day before he became Master Warden, but whenever he talked about that day, that was how he put it. That was always the turning point he referenced, the night you became my cavalier.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
“Absolutely scared shitless. What about you?”
“’Bout the same.”
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “You and me against God, and his Divine Mysteries, and the whole of the rest of the Nine Houses. Sounds like a regular Tuesday resource committee.” He quit fidgeting with her hand and brought it up toward himself instead, looking at her from under his eyelashes as he brought her right knuckles gently to his lips. “We’ll be fine, Camilla. I promise.”
FIVE
Camilla was thirteen, and her formal robes did not fit.
“One more pin,” Kiana said. “Hold still.”
Camilla resisted the urge to shift her weight from foot to foot, or move her arms, or crack any of the four bones her body she knew she could get to crack loudly enough that Kiki would make a face, which brought Camilla great joy.
“Alright, got it,” Kiki said. “You can turn around.”
Camilla spun around toward the mirror, her new gray robes on full display, now with the hem brought up to a reasonable length and no longer at the perfect height to cause hazards to the wearer and nearby bystanders.
“I hope someone hemmed Palamedes’ as well,” Cam said. “Or I’m going to trip trying to follow behind him.”
Kiki put an arm around her shoulder so that they were both in the mirror. It provided a comforting preview of what Camilla might like look like at twenty-three, given their very nearly identical features. “You, trip? Never.” She smiled at their reflections, and Cam gave a tiny, twin smile in return. “You look so handsome. Marcus is going to cry when he sees you.”
“That doesn’t take much,” Camilla said. Marcus was the father she and Kiana did not share, and the parent Camilla decidedly didn’t take after.
“You’re going to make Palamedes cry,” she said, now teasing.
“Am not,” Camilla said, mildly horrified by the idea. She didn’t think she looked particularly handsome, but then again, it wasn’t something she thought about much. She was pleased to realize the formal robes did make her look older.
Kiki had switched to fiddling with the buttons on Camilla’s collar when there was a knock at the door.
Kiana gave a very proper bow when Palamedes entered, which Camilla noted with a hint of pride, and said, “Master Warden.”
Pal puffed up a little at this. “Nice to see you, Kiana. Can I borrow the Warden’s Hand for a moment?” Which made Camilla roll her eyes.
“Of course.” She nudged Camilla’s shoulder, “I’m going to go check on dad and Marcus. I’ll see you at the ceremony.”
“Technically,” Camilla said once Kiana left, “I’m not Warden’s Hand until after tonight’s ceremony.”
Palamedes waved his hand dismissively. “You’ve been my cavalier in all the ways that matter for a long time, Cam.” Someone had hemmed Palamedes’ robes, so Cam wouldn’t have to worry too much about stepping on them. Someone (Zeta, probably) had also tried and failed to force their will upon his hair. “These are all just formalities, but God forbid we deny the Sixth House the opportunity for a little pomp and circumstance. They’ve got at least fourteen speeches lined up in the next forty-eight hours, and I’m sure each one is going to run at least fifteen minutes over.”
Palamedes had been acting with the authority of Master Warden since he’d passed his exams, but the formal titling happened at the very end of the commencement ceremony for the entire House, which was a multi-day affair. There would be opening exercises, speeches, awarding of academic honors and titles, degree conferral ceremonies for every level of classes, and of course, atrocious receptions and horrible parties in-between.
Traditionally, her and the Warden’s vows would be a piece of all that, but Palamedes had pulled some strings and arranged for a private ceremony. When the Master Scholar had looked down his glasses and said, “Kicking against the goad already, are we Master Warden?” Palamedes had said, very politely, “I’d suggest making peace with that now, or you’re going to find the next few decades very stressful.” He'd given a wonderful list of reasons why a private ceremony made the most sense, but she knew they were all excuses.
The real reason was that Camilla had asked, and so the Warden had gone to war to make it happen.
“How many of those speeches are yours?” Camilla asked.
“I negotiated them down from five to two,” he said. “And none of mine will be over length, since you edited them all, so thank you Scholar.”
“My sworn duty to my House,” Camilla said. “Mitigating long speeches.”
“And keeping me alive.”
“A secondary concern, Warden.”
“Obviously. Glad you’re keeping your priorities straight.” He glanced at himself in the mirror again and scrubbed at his hair, trying to get it off his forehead but only succeeding in making it stick up in the back. “Oh, and I have something for you.” He patted his robe pockets and produced a small envelope.
She took it and realized immediately that it was real paper, creamy white, the little imperfect swirls of pigment and fiber still faintly visible in the light. It was addressed, in elegant, familiar script, The Warden’s Hand.
“Dulcie’s congratulations,” he said.
Camilla turned the envelope over in her hand, tracing her thumb against the indents of the beautiful wax seal, green and silver and stamped with a rose. “I’ll open it after,” she said, tucking it into the front pocket of her robes, then looking down to fix the buttons on the front of her shirt.
“You’re a better man than me, then,” Palamedes said. “I couldn’t wait.”
Then, a pause. Camilla looked up and found the Warden staring at her. “Something in my teeth?”
“No at all.” He paused, look at her a second longer, then added, “As a matter of fact, you look very handsome.”
“If you get sappy on me, Kiana is going to win a bet.”
That got a smile out of him. He stepped a little closer to her and took both her hands in his. “We’re really going to do this, Cam.”
“We’ve already done it,” Camilla said, automatically. “Tonight’s just window dressing.”
“I know we have,” Palamedes said. “But after tonight, everyone else will too. That’s what all this ceremony is about. We’re giving everyone else fair warning for all the trouble we’re about to cause.”
Camilla’s mouth crept up into what only he knew was a smile, and she said nothing. With him, she didn’t have to.
There was a knock on the door. “Are you two ready?” Kiana called through the door.
“Just a moment!” Palamedes called back. “Ceremony be damned,” Palamedes said. “Tonight is for us.” He smiled at her, gave her that wild grin, a twinkle in his eye. That smile was the reason she was about to pledge her whole life to this mad-genius, and she wasn’t even nervous. “Are you ready?”
“Have been for a while,” Camilla said, honestly.
He lifted Cam’s right hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckle, his eyes warm and clear. “Then let’s not keep everyone waiting.”
SIX
Camilla was twenty, and Palamedes had woken up in the middle of the night. She could tell he’d tried not to wake her, but it hadn’t worked. What with all the serial murders, she had been sleeping knife in hand and one-eye open for days.
“Warden,” she called from the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just had a thought. Go back to sleep.”
“Dear Oversight Committee,” Camilla said. “Scion of the house was murdered because I was taking a nap. Oops, sorry.” She shook off any last remnants of sleep (there hadn’t been much) and sat up. “I’ll make a cuppa.”
“I can be trusted to properly ward a door,” Palamedes said, but there was no real argument in his voice.
Camilla made tea — because what else was she supposed to do? — put one cup down in front of the Warden and one cup in front of herself. Sat down. Stirred some powdered milk into it, taking no real joy in the prospect of the tea, but for want of something to do with her hands.
“Tell me what you’re working on,” Camilla said.
“It’s not the Lyctorhood formula,” Palamedes said, without looking up from his scribbling. “It’s an older project. I just had an idea I wanted to get down, that’s all.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“If I tell you, you’re not allowed to yell at me.”
“I am, actually. The Master Archivist said so.”
This was enough to get Palamedes to look up from his notes. He nudged his glasses up his nose. “I outrank her.”
“Undoubtedly, Warden.”
He took his glasses all the way off and tapped them against the table a few times, a gesture of furious indecision. “I’m looking at the Sex Theorem again. Which, given the gravity of this whole situation, I now regret not re-naming.”
“Why,” Camilla said, her voice much calmer than the rest of her, “Would you be looking at that?”
“Why would I be thinking about revenant theory and soul preservation? At a time like this? I can’t imagine, surely it has nothing to do with all the murders,” he snapped. Then guilt washed over his face, violently and immediately. “Sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”
“It’s fine,” Camilla said.
“It isn’t, actually. Nothing is even a little bit fine, but I appreciate the sentiment.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair and abandoned his glasses on the table. “I don’t know why I’m bothering. I don’t know what we’re doing anymore, Camilla. We might as well seal ourselves in with Dulcie and the priests and let the rest of them kill each other off. At least then there’d be a chance we could survive long enough to make it back home.”
These existential outbursts had been happening with increased frequency the last several days. She waited a moment, to see if he’d talk himself down. When he didn’t, she said, “You don’t mean that, Warden.”
“Like hell I don’t,” he said. Then he sighed, defeated. “No, you’re right. Obviously. You’re better at telling me my own business that anyone else, myself included.”
“We’ll keep working on the theorem,” Camilla said. “You’re close.”
“Close,” Palamedes said. “But running out of time, and it’s time I need, Cam. I can’t work when we’re being picked off one by one, when the imminent deadline is whoever gets murdered next. I need time….” He trailed off, staring into the air.
Out of habit, Camilla’s eyes flicked to the door again, the locks still locked, the wards still unbroken. They were still safe. She didn’t feel the need to say anything (she so rarely felt the need to say something to him, he always said he provided enough conversation for the both of them) and for a while they sat in silence.
Then the Warden said, “Cam, I need you to promise me something.”
And because everything was awful and broken, because their world had crumbled on them so many times in so few days, because they’d become untethered and were drifting through space, Camilla did not say, always, of course, anything, Warden, anything for you and anything for us.
Everything was ending, so Camilla said, “Don’t ask me, Warden. Please.”
He plowed ahead, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Promise me, Cam, you’ll let me do it. Promise me that if it’s the end of the line, if we’re all out of choices, you will live.” He was looking past her, his eyes a thousand miles away.
“I can’t promise you that, Warden.” She knew the question was coming. It didn’t make it feel any less like a sword straight through the sternum.
“You can’t? Or you won’t?”
“Can’t. If we have no other options, I need to save you. We know how to do it.” She hesitated, reaching for the words. He was the persuasive one, not her. She was unpracticed in the art of convincing. “Let me be your cavalier, Warden.” Her hands were shaking, and she gripped her mug of tea a little tighter to hide it.
“Do you understand what you’re asking me to do?” There were tears in his eyes — she was making him cry. It was a terrible power to have over a person, to make them cry, and she hated it. “I cannot spend eternity burning your soul, knowing I will live forever but never see your face again. I will do anything else for you – anything in this life or the one hereafter — but not that. Never that.”
She said nothing, because every word she could conceive of was even worse than this awful, broken silence.
The Warden reached over the table and pried her hands off her mug, then took her right hand in both of his. Ever so gently, he pressed it to his lips. Then he looked at her, over their clasped hands, and looked her in the eye. “I won’t do it, Camilla. I will not live forever without you. It’s not living at all.”
And Camilla said, “Alright, Warden,” and something within her broke, defeated. They’d learned so much together over the years — but they’d never learned to say no to each other.
He stood up, pulled her roughly into a hug, and she was grateful because she couldn’t look at him any longer. “I promise I will do my utmost, I will do everything in my power and then some to get us both home.”
Camilla said nothing, and eventually he said into the silence, “Cam, do you trust me?”
He didn’t let go of her, so he couldn’t see the tiny smile at the very corner of her mouth when she said, “Indubitably, Warden.”
PLUS ONE
Nona had smiled so sweetly, so genuinely, before she said Palamedes said, give this to Camilla, please, and pressed her lips to Camilla’s knuckles. Somehow, by some magic or power that was beyond the arts of the Sixth House, beyond any aptitude Camilla had observed, it was him. It was him in her lips, and her hands, and her gestures.
Camilla had caught a glance of Nona’s crestfallen expression as she’d backed out of the room, and later she was going to feel very bad about it. Later, when Nona asked her why she’d spent an hour in the bath without taking a bath, and Camilla would say well, water’s scarce right now, and Pyrrha would make a crass joke about spending all that time in the bathroom.
Right now, though, she didn’t have it in her to feel bad. What mattered right now was that she was alone, blissfully alone in the only niche of this tiny apartment in this giant city on this broken-ass planet where she might get a moment of peace and fucking quiet, where she might scrawl in the stained pages of her notebook unbothered.
I’m fine I just
It was a nice gesture, Warden but I
Wanted to say something before Nona
Rogue behavior, that was, Master Warden.
I just wish it had really been you.