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]

Oh, that's just too easy. "I'll bet you are," Gideon says, matching her grin.

[ravkanwitch]

“No, I am,” Nina says, laughing. “I once had to sit on this guy’s lap — Cornelius Smeet — and keep him gambling for hours. I wasn’t feeling well that day but I had to keep stuffing my face with shrimp, oysters, and champagne… Not to mention charming him. I thought I would throw up right on the table!”

[ninth_cavalier]

"That sounds fuckin' odious," says Gideon, which is a word she absolutely picked up from either Isaac or Jeannemary, and she immediately feels weird about using language stolen from dead teens while flirting. Oh well, too late now. "Did you at least get to kill him after?"

[ravkanwitch]

"No, it was all a distraction so we could rob him," Nina says, surprisingly pleased that she can talk about her criminal life with someone who's most likely seen and done worse.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Fuck yeah," says Gideon, holding out a hand for a high-five.

[ravkanwitch]

We’re assuming at some point that somebody had to have taught Nina what a high-five is, but it’s clear she’s still not quite not used to it and the high-five she gives Gideon is quite weak. “Wait,” she says, frowning. “Let me try that again.”

[ninth_cavalier]

"Please," says Gideon, "or I'm gonna think you secretly do have noodle arms." She raises her hand again. "It helps to watch my elbow."

[ravkanwitch]

This time, there is a satisfying smack when Nina gives Gideon a proper high-five. Nina's not one for working out but she has been practicing fencing lately, so she definitely doesn't have noodle arms. "There," she says, satisfied.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Fuck yes," says Gideon. She yoinks one of the dinosaur books out of Nina's other hand and whistles, flipping through it. "You really got skeletons this big around here?"

[ravkanwitch]

Nina brightens. "Do you want to go see the bone room? Laertes showed me."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins at her. "Yeah, baby," she says, "take me to the bone room."

[ravkanwitch]

"Don't worry," Nina says, with a cheerful little wink, "I'm an expert."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon gasps and presses both hands to her heart, staggering back as if struck by an arrow.

[ravkanwitch]

Nina laughs, delighted. "Well? You ready to go?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Lead on," says Gideon, and offers Nina her arm.

[ravkanwitch]

Nina takes her arm and somehow finds her way back to the same door that Laertes led her to not too long ago. "I think this is it," she says, pushing it open. Inside is a whole host of taxidermied creatures, bones, jars of who knows what, and other curiosities.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon immediately darts inside, looking around with glee. If they'd found this room in Canaan House, she would have given exactly two shits and no more, probably following Harrow around whispering that's you in sepulchral tones at every gross twisted thing in a jar. But here, in this weird, clean house with this weird, kind people, it feels almost like home.

She stuffs her hands in her pockets and leans in to examine a huge bug with pins through all of its legs, trying not to look too enormously relieved in front of a total babe. "Whose stuff is this?"

[ravkanwitch]

Nina shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine! But look at this--"

She pulls out one of the drawers with the dinosaur bones that she looked at before; it's a pretty hefty drawer, large in size with a couple of absolutely gigantic bones in it. "This bone," she says, pointing to a large scapula bone, "belonged to this creature." She turns to one of the dog-eared pages of the dinosaur book she's holding, depicting a Triceratops, and points at it.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon wolf-whistles, coming over to look at the drawer. "My necromancer would be out of her gourd over this shit," she says. "Usually she has to grow bones this big."

[ravkanwitch]

"She can grow bones?" Nina asks, mildly surprised. "I've never been able to do that. We can't create new matter, just control what already exists."

[ninth_cavalier]

"That's how it works for most bone adepts," Gideon admits, "and even Harrow can't make bone from nothing. But all she needs to make a full skeleton—human, behemoth, whatever—is a tiny scrap of bone. Usually she wears human teeth as earrings so she'll never run out. Right before I—um, ended up here, she'd cracked the code on constantly regenerating bone. Smash through it, it grows right back." She is aiming, throughout this speech, for casual, but she has a horrible feeling she's landed somewhere between yearning and dying of pride.

[ravkanwitch]

"Harrow sounds great," Nina offers, because Gideon is talking about Harrow like Nina would talk about Jesper's aim, or Inej's non-Grisha acrobatic abilities, or even Kaz's schemes. "Your necromancer with noodle arms?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," says Gideon. "That's her. Lady Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Heir to the Ninth House, topples over in strong wind. Bane of my fucking existence." She changes the subject a little too quickly. "This really came from a real animal? Have you seen any around?"

[ravkanwitch]

"I haven't," Nina says, a little sadly. "Apparently they were lizard and bird-like creatures that lived millions of years ago on... Earth? I think most of the people who've arrived here are from Earth."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, I've noticed fuckin' everybody talking about Earth," says Gideon. "You're not, though? Me neither."