Introducing Gideon Nav, Cavalier Primary to the Ninth House, Keepers of the Locked Tomb...

[ninth_cavalier]

...House of the Sewn Tongue, The Black Vestals. We pray that the tomb is shut forever. We pray the rock is never rolled away. We pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain. We pray it lives, we pray it sleeps, we pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying King...

One minute Gideon is doing the stupidest and most perfect thing she has ever done, heroically sacrificing herself so her necromancer can eat her and achieve true Lyctorhood and break Cytherea the First's body into so many little shards of bone and ribbons of fat and flesh that even her own mother (thousands of years dead, and most likely a huge bitch) couldn't recognize her, and the next she's—standing. Whole, the aches in her leg and shoulder gone, her sunglasses perched on her nose, the comforting weight of her longsword¹ on her back. She takes a breath, just for the novelty of it, and looks around.

The first thing she notices is how clean it is. No blood, no mold, no grime, no layers of bone dust. When she breathes, she just breathes air, and it feels like extra clean air, which—she looks further around—is probably due to the actual grass on the actual ground. In the distance there are trees. With birds in them.

Is this—this can't possibly be what the inside of Harrow's brain looks like. The inside of Harrow's brain is undoubtedly as spooky as the outside of Harrow's brain, because where would she even have found the imagination to dream up something this—idyllic?? There's nothing even close to it in any of her experience on Drearbruh, and Gideon would know, having been there and actively making that experience worse for all of Harrow's sorry little life.

No, what she's looking at is—a house. A big, boring, white-painted house, not a bone to be seen. "Okay," says Gideon. "What the fuck."

Anyone looking at her will see a tallish (though not for Mansion standards), broad-shouldered and very ripped butch woman, dressed all in black (black tank top, black pants, black stompy boots). She has short-cropped red hair, medium-brown skin, and her face has been painted with stark black and white skull makeup, atop which she has incongruously perched very old-looking aviator sunglasses. Slung over her back is the aforementioned sword.

¹ Typist note: the books consistently refer to this as both a "longsword" and a "two-hander," and from the way its weight and length is constantly emphasized I interpret it to be more toward zweihander than longsword. Also, bigger sword sexier.

Comments

[ninth_cavalier]

"Solomon's the bitch who cut a baby in half, right?" asks Gideon. She considers. She's feeling a little strange, above herself somehow, the room around them mysteriously larger and/or smaller than before. "I think," she says slowly, "my hope is I'm the baby."

[futaille]

"Well, he didn't cut the baby in half. He said he would, the baby's actual mother said to give the baby up instead of letting it get cut in half, and that's how he knew the baby was hers. It's supposed to be a sign of wisdom, insofar as humans can be wise, which is somewhat doubtful. That said, if you are the baby, you're probably reasonably safe."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Wait," says Gideon dubiously. "He didn't cut the baby in half? You sure?"

[futaille]

"He definitely didn't cut the baby in half. It's the entire point of the story."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon frowns at her empty glass, then pushes it away and pulls the one full of better wine toward her. "Well then I'm not the baby. The whole point of being the baby is to be cut in half."

[futaille]

He takes another drink. "Then you can be Simon Zelotes, and be sawn in half all you like. Martyrdom is a bloody business, after all."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon snorts, dropping her head with the force of it. "Fuck, don't I know it." When she straightens up, she feels a little lightheaded, so she drinks more wine to fix it.

[futaille]

He nods. "It's a strange thing, people throwing themselves at death so eagerly."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Sometimes," says Gideon, "you throw yourself at death because death is already throwing itself at you." Damn, she thinks a little fuzzily. That was profound.

[futaille]

"And a tremendous clash in the middle, I'm sure." He smiles wryly. "On the other hand, death is always throwing itself at everyone. I'm not sure hastening it is necessarily the best way to counter that. Not that I'm one to talk."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, I was gonna say," agrees Gideon, and then, curiously, "If they'd found you sleeping, or if you'd pretended, rather than going out there. Would they have killed you anyway?"

[futaille]

He frowns, staring at his wine. "I don't know. Maybe. I suppose there's a chance they may have just arrested me until finding out I didn't actually do any fighting. It doesn't matter, though. I woke up when I did and saw what I did and I wasn't going to let him die alone."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," says Gideon, "Fucking—exactly." She pours more wine on top of her wine, sips it, and realizes she's poured the shitty wine into the nicer wine, making some kind of mediocre wine mélange. "Whoops."

[futaille]

Grantaire huffs out a little laugh and pushes the bottle of nicer wine over to her. "If you want to balance it out a little. Don't know how much it will help."

[ninth_cavalier]

"What if we got some good wine," says Gideon, in the tone Harrow used to call her I'm having my one allotted Thought per hour voice, "and poured that in here, too, and then we'd have, like, the exact average wine." She opens her eyes wide and spreads her fingers to match, twiddling them a little. "Science."

[futaille]

And that would be a grin as he stands to return to behind the bar. "A fascinating experiment."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon lets her head sink into her palm as she watches him acquire new wine. "I can't believe I'm experimenting, and not even the fun kind," she says. "Sex Pal was such a bad influence."

[futaille]

He digs through wine bottles, trying to find the perfect one for the experiment. "Do I want to know who Sex Pal is?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Palamedes Sextus," says Gideon. "Psychometric specialist, Heir to the Sixth House, Master Warden of the Library, and exactly as much of a geek as all that sounds. He's not actually my sex pal," she adds, hastily, in case Grantaire thinks she might ever kiss a nerd.¹ "I just call him that because. You know. It's hilarious."

¹ She also has very little interest in kissing men, but the nerd part is more important.

[futaille]

He stands, placing a new bottle of wine on the bar. "Excellent choice of nicknames, and an interesting name on top of it, although I doubt very much your Sex Pal invented dice, or letters and numbers entirely, as with a namesake I can think of."

[ninth_cavalier]

"No, he mostly just invented new ways to give people horrific, turbo-charged diseases with his brain," says Gideon. "But, like, people who really deserved it. Well, one person who really deserved it."

[futaille]

Grantaire pours some of the good wine in Gideon's glass. "That sounds slightly terrifying," he says cheerfully.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Slightly," says Gideon, about one of the greatest necromancers of his generation. "Yeah. I think he made it to slightly terrifying, by the end." She raises the glass - now quite full. "To Sex Pal," she says. "Rest in...well, whatever." She's not sure 'peace' necessarily suits. She drinks, a larger gulp (to maintain percentage, for the science) and passes the glass unsteadily to Grantaire.

[futaille]

"To Sex Pal," he says companionably, taking the glass and having a gulp of his own. "Huh. That is... something."

[ninth_cavalier]

"It's wine," Gideon informs him helpfully, and lays her head down on the bar. It's refreshingly cool against her cheek.