[Honestly, she - has had her reasons, for doubting they were precisely what they said they were. But she can't deny that what they are saying is true. We are all other than what we say we are, herself included.
Anyway. Memshare back. You walk into the library at Canaan House, though you often avoid it. You had not bade Ortus not to speak to the other heirs, thinking he would not likely obey you, and you regretted it. Here was Ortus now, declaiming his amateurish poetry for the Abigail Pent, the Fifth necromancer and her cavalier husband, Sir Magnus Quinn. There was no one in Canaan House whose company you wanted less than the matronly and overfamiliar Pent and the curly-haired moron that is Quinn, both of them friendly and inviting, and wearing clothes the cost of which could have provided the Ninth with material resources for a decade.
But you must stay and speak, because Pent is remarkably clever, and she has devised some scholarship on the Lyctoral process that she is bewilderingly willing to share with you, her competitor. So you talk to her of Lyctors and history, defensive and ready to bolt at any moment, while Ortus humiliates you and every one of your ancestors by declaiming versus of the Nonius to Quinn's baffling delight.
"I would like to give you something," says Abigail. She takes a note and passes it to Harrowhark with her strong lovely hands, and smiles as though it did not hurt her to give you something so valuable. "Scholarship is best made as a communal effort," she says. "If you can tell me anything of interest about that paper, I’d be very grateful for it. If you could tell me anything tedious, I’d still be thankful. Bone adepts do have such a notorious eye for detail."
You are stunned, a little caught off balance. You take the paper, feel it in your gloved hands, and say, with genuine gratitude - "I -- am obliged to you, Fifth House."
Magnus was saying: “Ortus. What does happen to Nonius, after he faces the ensorcelled swordsmen? I assume they fight?”
You are surprised at how immediately you can answer in your cavalier’s stead, having heard these lines so many times before: "He cuts down seven men in about as many lines. Then the leader of the swordsmen approaches, carrying two swords. I would have assumed there was a swift rate of decay in the efficacy of additional swords. The others part to let Nonius and him fight. Nonius wins easily, though he takes eight pages to do so. The remaining onlookers he kills, rather more cursorily, as it only takes around four lines.”
Magnus stares at you for a moment, his expression strange. "Is this how it happens?"
Something about that unsettles you, because very much against your will, you have memorized most of the Noniad in the interminable amount of time you have spent in Ortus' company. Then, something happens that unsettles you even more.
"I say, Reverend Daughter, is it an ancestral Locked Tomb tradition for your spirit energy to be so diverse?” Abigail asks brightly. "I’ve counted up to almost two hundred signatures contributing to you, and there’s more. They’re stamps rather than complete revenants, of course, which means their spirits were manipulated to leave marks on you in some way, which is fascinating if it means . . ."
Your blood runs cold, as you calculate with immediacy how you might kill Abigail Pent. Against any other ghost-caller, their wards so exquisite and fatally slow, a single decisive strike would do the job. But Pent introduced that doubt, and that doubt makes you flee, a tactical retreat. Your heart hammering, feeling clammy and nauseated, you turn on your heels and walk out the door, as you hear the fool Quinn murmuring in your wake "My dear, you didn't have to - "
You shake in the corridor outside the library, and Ortus follows after you, reluctant. "We now avoid Pent and Quinn at all costs. For the sake of the Ninth House, and of the sanctity of the Locked Tomb. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, my Lady Harrowhark," says Ortus.
"If I believe they pose a threat, or that they intend us direct harm — frankly, on any minor excuse — I will invoke Tomb retribution. I’ll kill Pent where she stands if I need to, and you will swear that there was no sin of unjustified House war, no matter the circumstances."
Only a pause. “Yes, my Lady Harrowhark,” says Ortus.
This calm agreement makes you all the more furious, and cruel. "And it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two," you add, feeling some satisfaction. "Not whichever you happen to feel like at the time. It’s amateurish."
Ortus looks down shyly, like a beast of burden steadying himself for a jump. "Yes, my Lady Harrowhark. I am flattered by your attention to my craft. It’s consciously archaic. Emphasising my commitment to spoken performance."
"For God’s sake, Ortus, please stop sounding as though I’m about to whip you. I am taking care of our affairs, despite your ignorance."
"Let me not be unpleasing to my lady," he says. "Let the unseeing eye of the Locked Tomb gaze down upon me, and see me guard her with the unmoving aegis of a cavalier’s love. But I will not modulate my tone for you."
You round on him, knowing you're being unfair, knowing you are being petulant because you were frightened, and you cannot soothe yourself, and would use any means to try to do so now. When you are scared you become a child again, and you are afraid of being a child again more than almost anything else in your life.
"I have every right to correct you. We are at the gates of the Tomb, even now," she says. "I carry it with me, and its rules hold clear."
"Let us never leave it," says Ortus, gravely. "My lady, I follow your every order. I will accept your chidings gratefully. I will watch you slay whomsoever you feel the need to slay, and I will sponge the blood from your brow, but when I lay me down to sleep, I am a fully grown man who is allowed to feel precisely what I want, about anything I want. There has never been a rule against doing so, and that has always been my deep and unyielding relief with regard to you. Your final will be done, my lady.”
Then he bows to you — the very correct bow of a Ninth House tomb swordsman; his paint a perfect, if sad and melting, skull, his attitude sombre, his face the blankness of the grave. Except, seemingly unable to resist, he adds - "I might also note that synizesis is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody. I'm certain your studies have kept you from the full breadth of the classics."
You decide to ignore your cavalier's insolence, and instead you examine the note Pent gave you. It is, to your horror, covered in nonsensical ranting and ravings, letters crowded together, screeching in capital letters about betrayal and eggs. You make the sign you taught to Ortus, the discreet symbol that means What am I seeing, devised to hide your madness, and he takes the note from your hands.
"If you come to my study, I will make you the potato dish you liked," he reads. "How must we understand potato?"
"As your closest vegetable relative," you snap, even though you also have never seen a potato.
"You are a ready wit," Ortus says, with something like admiration. "I have always admired your facility for repartee, my lady. Oftentimes someone will say something to me, and later I will think up the perfect riposte — so perfect the hearer could not help but wilt, and be ashamed that they had set themselves up to receive it — but by that point it is often hours after the fact and I am lying in my bed. And in any case, I hate conflict, all kinds."
"The Tomb have mercy," you swear. "If only duels took the form of competitive passive aggression, I'd probably be a Lyctor already. For the love of God, Ortus, I need a cavalier with backbone."
"You always did," says Ortus gravely. "And I am glad, I think, that I never became that cavalier."
You spend the next few hours with that thought in your head, wondering what the hell he meant by that.
no subject
[Honestly, she - has had her reasons, for doubting they were precisely what they said they were. But she can't deny that what they are saying is true. We are all other than what we say we are, herself included.
Anyway. Memshare back. You walk into the library at Canaan House, though you often avoid it. You had not bade Ortus not to speak to the other heirs, thinking he would not likely obey you, and you regretted it. Here was Ortus now, declaiming his amateurish poetry for the Abigail Pent, the Fifth necromancer and her cavalier husband, Sir Magnus Quinn. There was no one in Canaan House whose company you wanted less than the matronly and overfamiliar Pent and the curly-haired moron that is Quinn, both of them friendly and inviting, and wearing clothes the cost of which could have provided the Ninth with material resources for a decade.
But you must stay and speak, because Pent is remarkably clever, and she has devised some scholarship on the Lyctoral process that she is bewilderingly willing to share with you, her competitor. So you talk to her of Lyctors and history, defensive and ready to bolt at any moment, while Ortus humiliates you and every one of your ancestors by declaiming versus of the Nonius to Quinn's baffling delight.
"I would like to give you something," says Abigail. She takes a note and passes it to Harrowhark with her strong lovely hands, and smiles as though it did not hurt her to give you something so valuable. "Scholarship is best made as a communal effort," she says. "If you can tell me anything of interest about that paper, I’d be very grateful for it. If you could tell me anything tedious, I’d still be thankful. Bone adepts do have such a notorious eye for detail."
You are stunned, a little caught off balance. You take the paper, feel it in your gloved hands, and say, with genuine gratitude - "I -- am obliged to you, Fifth House."
Magnus was saying: “Ortus. What does happen to Nonius, after he faces the ensorcelled swordsmen? I assume they fight?”
You are surprised at how immediately you can answer in your cavalier’s stead, having heard these lines so many times before: "He cuts down seven men in about as many lines. Then the leader of the swordsmen approaches, carrying two swords. I would have assumed there was a swift rate of decay in the efficacy of additional swords. The others part to let Nonius and him fight. Nonius wins easily, though he takes eight pages to do so. The remaining onlookers he kills, rather more cursorily, as it only takes around four lines.”
Magnus stares at you for a moment, his expression strange. "Is this how it happens?"
Something about that unsettles you, because very much against your will, you have memorized most of the Noniad in the interminable amount of time you have spent in Ortus' company. Then, something happens that unsettles you even more.
"I say, Reverend Daughter, is it an ancestral Locked Tomb tradition for your spirit energy to be so diverse?” Abigail asks brightly. "I’ve counted up to almost two hundred signatures contributing to you, and there’s more. They’re stamps rather than complete revenants, of course, which means their spirits were manipulated to leave marks on you in some way, which is fascinating if it means . . ."
Your blood runs cold, as you calculate with immediacy how you might kill Abigail Pent. Against any other ghost-caller, their wards so exquisite and fatally slow, a single decisive strike would do the job. But Pent introduced that doubt, and that doubt makes you flee, a tactical retreat. Your heart hammering, feeling clammy and nauseated, you turn on your heels and walk out the door, as you hear the fool Quinn murmuring in your wake "My dear, you didn't have to - "
You shake in the corridor outside the library, and Ortus follows after you, reluctant. "We now avoid Pent and Quinn at all costs. For the sake of the Ninth House, and of the sanctity of the Locked Tomb. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, my Lady Harrowhark," says Ortus.
"If I believe they pose a threat, or that they intend us direct harm — frankly, on any minor excuse — I will invoke Tomb retribution. I’ll kill Pent where she stands if I need to, and you will swear that there was no sin of unjustified House war, no matter the circumstances."
Only a pause. “Yes, my Lady Harrowhark,” says Ortus.
This calm agreement makes you all the more furious, and cruel. "And it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two," you add, feeling some satisfaction. "Not whichever you happen to feel like at the time. It’s amateurish."
Ortus looks down shyly, like a beast of burden steadying himself for a jump. "Yes, my Lady Harrowhark. I am flattered by your attention to my craft. It’s consciously archaic. Emphasising my commitment to spoken performance."
"For God’s sake, Ortus, please stop sounding as though I’m about to whip you. I am taking care of our affairs, despite your ignorance."
"Let me not be unpleasing to my lady," he says. "Let the unseeing eye of the Locked Tomb gaze down upon me, and see me guard her with the unmoving aegis of a cavalier’s love. But I will not modulate my tone for you."
You round on him, knowing you're being unfair, knowing you are being petulant because you were frightened, and you cannot soothe yourself, and would use any means to try to do so now. When you are scared you become a child again, and you are afraid of being a child again more than almost anything else in your life.
"I have every right to correct you. We are at the gates of the Tomb, even now," she says. "I carry it with me, and its rules hold clear."
"Let us never leave it," says Ortus, gravely. "My lady, I follow your every order. I will accept your chidings gratefully. I will watch you slay whomsoever you feel the need to slay, and I will sponge the blood from your brow, but when I lay me down to sleep, I am a fully grown man who is allowed to feel precisely what I want, about anything I want. There has never been a rule against doing so, and that has always been my deep and unyielding relief with regard to you. Your final will be done, my lady.”
Then he bows to you — the very correct bow of a Ninth House tomb swordsman; his paint a perfect, if sad and melting, skull, his attitude sombre, his face the blankness of the grave. Except, seemingly unable to resist, he adds - "I might also note that synizesis is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody. I'm certain your studies have kept you from the full breadth of the classics."
You decide to ignore your cavalier's insolence, and instead you examine the note Pent gave you. It is, to your horror, covered in nonsensical ranting and ravings, letters crowded together, screeching in capital letters about betrayal and eggs. You make the sign you taught to Ortus, the discreet symbol that means What am I seeing, devised to hide your madness, and he takes the note from your hands.
"If you come to my study, I will make you the potato dish you liked," he reads. "How must we understand potato?"
"As your closest vegetable relative," you snap, even though you also have never seen a potato.
"You are a ready wit," Ortus says, with something like admiration. "I have always admired your facility for repartee, my lady. Oftentimes someone will say something to me, and later I will think up the perfect riposte — so perfect the hearer could not help but wilt, and be ashamed that they had set themselves up to receive it — but by that point it is often hours after the fact and I am lying in my bed. And in any case, I hate conflict, all kinds."
"The Tomb have mercy," you swear. "If only duels took the form of competitive passive aggression, I'd probably be a Lyctor already. For the love of God, Ortus, I need a cavalier with backbone."
"You always did," says Ortus gravely. "And I am glad, I think, that I never became that cavalier."
You spend the next few hours with that thought in your head, wondering what the hell he meant by that.
The memory ends.]