Chapter Text
Approximately two hours after Gideon Nav’s sixty-eighth escape attempt from the great House of the Ninth, Harrowhark Nonagesimus marched up to the library, sat down in the corner between the old archival notes and the history books and cried.
To be clear, the Reverend Daughter did not under any circumstance cry . Gideon had once described her as allergic to emotion. Harrow had knocked her over with a homegrown femur, but nonetheless agreed with the assessment. And so this whole particular affair would be better described as a pathetic shedding of a few tears and the ruins of some truly horrific face paint than a real cry.
Mercifully, her only audience was an archaic book collection. If there was anything Harrow hated more than crying, it was other people seeing her do so. To their credit, the books reacted to her unseemly state with the very book-like behavior of staring at her in silence, and Harrow retaliated by throwing several priceless editions off of the shelves while screaming. Once she had satiated her urge to scream (she physically could not make sound anymore due to the hoarseness of her throat) she went back to curling up in a ball in the corner.
The incident didn’t last long. Ten minutes (and four mangled literary artifacts later) Harrow had wiped her eyes, redone the paint with a meticulous hand, and marched back outside to practice constructs like the day was any other. She raised skeleton after skeleton, biting her lip until she drew blood in a sort of desperate frustration as each appeared more disfigured than the last. After all, there was no reason they shouldn’t be perfect. Everything was exactly the same as it always was. She was in Drearburrh, the Tomb was closed, her parents were dead.
Except every time Harrow turned her head at the slow scuffle of feet down a hallway, or a draft ruffling the cloth of her robes, expecting a lock of red hair and an annoying grin, she was reminded that something, someone , was missing from that particularly depressing lineup.
It had now been approximately four hours since Gideon Nav had attempted her sixty-eighth on the long list of her mad escape attempts, and approximately three since she had had her greatest wish fulfilled and gotten away. This was not something Harrow wanted to dwell on, but something that at the same time her brain outright refused to let go of.
No matter how many times she redirected her focus to the task at hand, she found her treacherous thoughts drifting back to Gideon.
Appx. Four Hours Prior - The Far Drearburrh Drainage Pipe
“Groveling at your feet for me?” Harrow was standing in about two inches of filth, arms crossed, with five masterfully crafted bone constructs awaiting her commands behind her. She’d been waiting at the end of the larger of the two drain pipes long enough that her boots had begun to leak, but it was all about to become worthwhile.
Gideon looked up from where she was crawling along the ground and groaned. “Fucking seriously Harrow?” Five feet tall pipes were suddenly Harrow’s new favorite thing.
Harrow directed one of her bone constructs to grab Gideon by the hood of her cloak and watched with exuberance as Gideon flailed around in the muck trying to get away. “Harrow I will fucking kill you.”
Harrow raised a singular smug eyebrow. “Yes, it looks like you’re making excellent progress on that account.”
Gideon snorted. “Put the bones away and let’s see who ends up rolling in the mud.” She lunged for her sword, but another construct moved to block her way.
“Griddle, all you’ll ever be is the one oscillating in the mud like a plain fool.” She turned to make back towards the castle.
“Oscillating, Harrow? Seriously?”
Appx. Three Hours Prior - Drearburrh Main Doors
The soldiers were marching out of their shuttle before Harrow could so much as take a step. There were five of them. Four men dressed in formal Cohort attire and one woman who by the authority in her step and the gold lining on her uniform was clearly in charge.
When they reached her, the woman bowed stiffly, looking around at the castle disdainfully. Harrow eyed her offered hand in silence. Gideon was practically bouncing up and down beside her in excitement, although she was trying to hide it.
“Reverend Daughter, we are here by the King’s command.” The woman had retracted her arm and was now staring at Gideon even as she addressed Harrow.
“Does his Majesty wish for my or my parent’s assistance in some matter?”
All five of the officers were looking at Gideon now, she shifted a bit uncomfortably from foot to foot. Harrow cleared her throat, and the head officer directed her attention back to her. “Your servant, he requires her.” She indicated at Gideon who balked. Without waiting for an answer, the officer turned and gestured for her companions to follow her back to the shuttle. She stopped momentarily to call to Gideon, “You coming or what?”
Gideon clearly didn’t have to be asked twice. She wrenched her sword out of Crux’s hand where he was standing dumbstruck mid-lecture, and took off towards the shuttle, whooping. The officer ducked to avoid the blade as she swung herself around for one last glance at Harrow. “Fuck you Harrowhark, and good fucking riddance!” She shouted. And Harrow, Harrow couldn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything but stand rigidly in the dust and watch as her life was uprooted in a little less than ten minutes.
Harrow wasn’t sure why the Cohort had been sent, and why of all people they wanted Gideon, but she wasn’t one to question orders from the King. So she had let her go without complaint. Gideon was surely loving the entire affair. Her whole life had been dreams of joining the Cohort, and now she had everything she’d wanted. At least until she arrived at the Royal Palace. The number of unsavory reasons she might have been summoned were likely as high as the favorable ones.
Harrow was unsettled by her surge of anger at that thought. Why should Harrow care what happens to her anyway? Alive or dead Gideon was out of her life now, one less annoyance Harrow would need to deal with, and one less mouth for the castle cook to feed. But despite all this, Harrow continued to be plagued by images of Gideon’s face.
So Harrow did what she always did when faced with something which was equally unacceptable and unavoidable, she pushed herself harder.
When she could feel the blood sweat begin to run down her face she finally felt herself relax. Being emphatically obstinate had never failed Harrow, and she was pleased to find it continued the trend even now. She closed her eyes for a moment, blinking back the blood threatening to obscure her vision, and pulled another skeleton out of the earth.
The ground clawed at it as it rose slowly and crookedly, unfolding itself in a horrific mimicry of a flower. Harrow studied it for a moment, breathing hard. The construction seemed lacking in imperfections at first glance, but she refused to be satisfied until she’d tested its mobility. She raised her hand again, cursing under her breath as it shook without her permission, and her vision finally failed her as she collapsed unceremoniously into the dirt, looking an awful lot like a rotting sack of potatoes.
After the fifth incidence of Crux and Aiglemene finding Harrow passed out in a pile of collapsed constructs and covered in blood, Aiglemene sat down next to her in the library and gave her what Harrow presumed was supposed to be a pep talk.
“Harrowhark I know you miss her. I do too. Weirdly enough. But you need to get your ass over it. Stop pretending you don’t care and instead accept that you do and learn to deal with it, because if I find you’ve pushed yourself to unconsciousness one more time I will not be carrying you back. You need to face up.”
Harrow thought this advice was absolutely atrocious and not at all accurate to her feelings on the matter. Mainly because, as the Reverend Daughter and Gideon’s lifelong enemy, she didn’t have any feelings on the matter. Gideon was gone, which meant no more daily fights to the death, but otherwise her life was more or less the same.
To her extreme contempt this was the moment that her hippocampus decided to dredge up the past. She was twelve and hadn’t yet learned to raise a construct in defense fast enough, allowing the unyielding flat surface that was the front of Gideon’s sword to connect with her arm with a crack. She could practically hear Gideon’s voice. The mocking tone, the slight heightening of her pitch in what might have been concern when she looked down at the deformed mess that was now Harrow’s humerus. “ Be all Paragon of Indifference you want bitch, I know it hurts.” Harrow stopped herself before she remembered what had happened after that.
Aiglemene was wrong, of course. Harrow went on as usual, practicing bone magic with a fervor even more fever pitched than before Gideon’s disappearance. Eventually she stopped fainting as frequently as her body’s endurance increased, and everything truly went back to normal.
Until, inevitably, one awful dreary Drearburrh day on which Harrow was studying antique construct building methods in the library, something unanticipated occurred. Which was extremely odd, considering Harrow valued her routine greatly and everyone in the castle knew it. To interrupt her was to call upon her displeasure, which most were loath to do. Although apparently, on this day, Crux was not one of them.
“Reverend Daughter?”
Harrow turned around at the sound of Crux’s voice, finding his face oddly tinged with excitement.
“This better be a matter of absolute importance, you’ve interrupted my studies.”
Crux only spared a moment’s glance at Harrow’s ghastly state, she’d neglected to sleep for the past several days in lue of reading this particularly engaging bone magic anthology. “Oh no, Lady, I assure you it is, I would never be an obstacle to your work.” After a moment of hasty scrambling for something in his robes, he pulled out what appeared to be, of all things, a letter. Harrow reached out an arm, palm open, and raised an eyebrow when Crux didn’t immediately place the object in her hand.
If Crux had taken any notice of her exhaustion he knew better than to speak of it. “My apologies, Lady, I meant no disrespect.” Harrow didn’t respond, taking note of his behavior as he finally handed over the bundle, the way his eyes narrowed almost unnoticeably in disapproval at her appearance. Harrow wanted to slap him, but her face gave no indication that she was anything but immensely bored with the entire ordeal.
The envelope itself was at once intriguing. The material was thick and tawny colored, impressed with an intricate pattern of whorls and markings like none Harrow had ever seen, and when she turned it over, the amber wax of the seal immediately caught her attention. Embedded into the wax was a sword with the Roman numeral one for the First House carved into the handle. Harrow stared for a long moment, then she carefully lifted the wax from the envelope and pulled out a scrap of real, honest to god paper. She held it tenderly, and suppressed the urge to take off her gloves and find out what it felt like.
Ignoring Crux’s anxious breathing, she drew her attention to the swooping cursive of the lettering on the page, and began to read.
To the Reverend Daughter, Lady of the House of Nine, of the keepers of the Tomb and with many salutations:
From the house of the Undead King, First of the Necromancers, the kindly Lord of death, is sent this invitation. Be it knowest that the origin is true by the seal of our House.
The message is thus: The Prince Kironia of the First House has come of age and is to be married. Her father the King Undying calls for any willing suitors of notable birthright to attend a ball for contenders to win the Prince’s hand in this matter.
The ball shall be held three weeks from today, in the royal palace at First House. Any who have decided to answer to summons may send note and will be provided transport for their travel.
Conclusions,
First
Harrow scanned the letter once more, then looked up at Crux’s eager face with a frown.
“Well my Lady? Is it good news?” Harrow was beginning to be annoyed by the mere sound of his voice. If Gideon were here, Harrow thought absentmindedly, she would have had a fit from witnessing his excitement. Probably Harrow would have found her rolling in the dust from laughter and Crux storming away to fume over some remark regarding his degree of loyal service to the Ninth. But, Harrow reminded herself, Gideon wasn’t here, and it was more than a little bothersome that she hadn’t yet completely put her out of her mind since last year. This was, she decided, something she would need to focus more mental effort on.
“The First Prince is to be wed. It’s a call for suitors.” She finally answered, almost having forgotten of Crux’s existence.
His eyes, if possible, got even bigger. “Oh my, what marvelous news, Lady. You must go, what an honor to our House!”
“Yes, an honor.” Harrow mused, her expression thoughtful. To put it frankly, she was disgusted by the thought of marriage, especially to some unknown Prince. But it might be a bearable inconvenience, she supposed, for the opportunity of becoming relative to the King himself.
The Ninth House would no longer be in ruin, on the contrary it would flourish. She could obtain everything she needed to allow for a new prosperity to come to the Ninth with royal resources, and the King Undying would never have to be aware it had ever been otherwise if she played it right. And if all of her efforts paid off, she would become a daughter to the King, and as is the tradition, gain herself a place among his advisors.
She would be trained to perfection by the first of the necromancers himself, and finally be able to become one of the most powerful necromancers alive. All she had to do was give up her life of the last seventeen years.
She thought of her parents, and of the tomb, and in the back of her amygdala she let herself think, if just for a moment, of Gideon, and knew that she had decided. She would marry the Prince, she would be the King’s daughter, and the souls sacrificed for her would finally have at least an ounce of gratification in return.