Chapter Text
ONE DAY AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
It took more than a dozen trips to ferry everyone from the Mithraeum to the nearby planet where the others waited, plus enough of the stored food to provide for everyone, for however long it might take to contact Wake’s people and obtain their help in returning to Dominicus.
They’d considered, briefly, bringing everyone to the Mithraeum instead. It would have been more convenient. But its halls held too many bad memories, for too many of them. Inconvenience was to be preferred.
Gideon and Harrow had stayed behind on the station while Pyrrha took the shuttle back to the planet for the thirteenth time, with the cabin packed with boxes of food. They’d offered to prepare the next load of provisions, ready for when the shuttle returned.
Pyrrha winked, and said: “No hurry.”
They’d held hands almost constantly. No less, and also no more. There’d been so much to organise, such confusion, such a joyous cacophony of reunions all around that there had seemed to be no space for them. They were small, quiet, tentative with one other.
Now they were alone, truly alone, for the first time since Alecto had brought them back to each other.
Gideon didn’t know what else to do, so she led Harrow to her rooms. The moment she opened the door, however, she regretted the choice. The bed loomed large before them, and that hadn’t been her intention, not at all.
She took a deep breath, preparing to speak, though she didn’t know what she was going to say. As she did, her nose wrinkled faintly.
“You’re covered in River, and so am I. Let’s get cleaned up?”
Harrow made her way to the bathroom, steps sure and unhesitating as if she’d walked these floors for months, and Gideon realised anew that Harrow had been there and seen her, for as much of these last months as she had been there within Harrow. She wondered what Harrow had seen, and what she’d thought. Had she watched her adept wallow in self-pity, despaired over her self-absorption?
By the time she could bring herself to follow Harrow in, the water was running, and Harrow had already taken off her robe, and was unbuttoning her shirt. Gideon shouldn’t have been surprised; how many times had they slept naked together in the huge bed at Canaan House, falling asleep only-just-touching, and waking up pressed together like the pages of a book?
Still, Gideon found herself suddenly shy, and instead of starting to strip off her own clothes, she went to the mirrored cabinet hanging over the sink.
Over the months, in an attempt to make her bathing less traumatic, Gideon had scavenged all sorts of oils and unguents from the other Lyctors’ rooms. It felt slightly more strange to use them now that those Lyctors were alive again, but she tried not to think about that. It wasn’t like any of them were going to come back here to claim centuries-old bubble bath.
Her hand lingered over her favourite, the one which filled the room with a scent like the peppermint candies Harrow had once pressed, stickily, into her hands during services, and which covered everything in such a profusion of bubbles that Gideon could sometimes almost forget the water beneath. But she shook her head - Harrow would undoubtedly find the smell unpleasantly overwhelming.
Instead, she picked up the box of bath salts. They were lavender-scented, but only mildly. She poured a little into the bath, then shrugged, and upended the box.
Harrow was naked entirely now, and she seemed to sense Gideon’s hesitation. With a confidence that took Gideon by surprise, she closed the space between them in a few short steps, and put her hands to the hem of Gideon’s top, meeting her eyes with a question.
“I’ve changed a lot,” Gideon cautioned.
“So have I.” And Gideon didn’t resist when Harrow pulled her top off over her head, or when she unclasped the bindings around her breasts, or tugged at the zipper of her trousers.
They went into the steaming salt-water together, and Gideon reached for the sponge, but Harrow was faster. She cleaned each inch of Gideon’s body with reverence, handling her as though she were a holy relic, learning each new curve and contour.
When Harrow finally surrendered the sponge, Gideon found she had just as much to learn; not the smooth lines of Harrow’s limbs, which were as strong, and familiar, and beloved as ever, but in the fearlessness with which she offered herself up to be touched.
When they were both clean, and caressing each other for no reason beyond the joy of being together, Harrow whispered into the lavender-scented curve of Gideon’s neck: “You aren’t scared.” Then, when Gideon’s only response was uncomprehending silence, she continued: “Of the water, I mean.”
“How could I be scared with you here to protect me, my lugubrious love?”
Harrow snorted
“What about you?” Gideon continued. “You aren’t scared, of the… salt?”
“You already have all of my truths, and you still love me; I felt it. What do I have to be afraid of?”
Harrow raised her head, met Gideon’s eyes, and they both knew that it was time. Harrow tilted her chin up, and Gideon leaned down, and kissed her.
It was strangely hollow; a single, pure, note in an empty room, after the symphony their souls had sung together, but it was everything.
ONE WEEK AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
The necromancers among them were no longer necromancers. But, as it turned out, the cavaliers were very much still required to be cavaliers. The great and terrible threat that the former-necromancers needed protecting from? Themselves. Millennia of life as basically invulnerable Lyctors did not instill a person with solid self-preservation instincts.
Nigella found Cassiopeia covered in blood near the campfire their first night on the planet. She’d sliced her hand, preparing vegetables for dinner several minutes earlier, and hadn’t thought to wash or bind the wound, or even elevate her hand or apply pressure to stop the bleeding. She sat staring at the injury in something like confusion. Once Nigella had her properly bandaged, she’d warned the others.
A good job too, because the next day, Titania had to remind Ulysses that eating unidentified native berries, just because they looked ‘interesting’, was not a good idea for someone newly susceptible to poisoning.
Camilla, with two ex-adepts to shepherd, had the least trouble of all, and Gideon smiled to herself, hearing several of the older cavaliers talking about Cam with an awe that was almost akin to hero-worship. Gideon had a good idea exactly how Camilla was keeping Dulcie and Palamedes too busy to get into trouble, but she didn’t reveal her friend’s secrets.
Then again, perhaps there was something more to it, because Cam certainly wasn’t the only cavalier taking that approach to necromancer-wrangling. Gideon learned quickly to make deliberate noise if she walked away from camp, to avoid any unfortunate encounters.
In the end, it wasn’t a former-Lyctor, or even a former-necromancer, who got themselves into the worst trouble. Nobody realised that Coronabeth had missed the no-swimming memo, until everyone was awoken early one morning by her screaming, and the whole camp had to run, half-awake and half-dressed, to the beach to free her from the oversized tentacle which had gripped her ankle and was pulling her out to sea.
Gideon and Harrow missed the whole thing; they’d been staying in one of the shuttles during the nights, since Harrow still couldn’t bear to sleep on bare, live, earth, beneath the open sky. They emerged that morning to a camp in chaos, but it was an equable chaos. Everyone had bonded over the excitement of saving Corona from tentacled predation, and some of the last barriers had been broken down between the original Lyctors and their cavs, and the survivors of the recent Lyctor trials.
That night there was a party atmosphere around the campfire. Cristabel found a bag of marshmallows in the supplies they’d brought from the Mithraeum, and was showing Isaac and Jeannemary how to toast them over the fire, while Abigail made a production of becoming mock-appalled at how profoundly sticky the pair were ending up. Pyrrha had even persuaded Wake to join them - though Gideon had no idea how - and now she sat between Pyrrha and the former Saint of Duty, with the disgruntled look of someone disappointed to not be having a worse time.
Sometime after Abigail and Magnus eventually persuaded the Fourth to clean up and go back to their shuttle to sleep, the mood around the campfire changed. Harrow lay curled with her head in Gideon’s lap, watching the fire with something she thought might be contentment, and not really listening to the conversation when Gideon coughed, awkwardly, and the hands she’d been running through Harrow’s hair stilled.
“Hey, cut that out,” Pyrrha said. When Harrow tilted her head back to look, she seemed to be speaking to Ulysses. “Not in front of my kid. She doesn’t need to hear that stuff. Let’s keep the anecdotes family friendly, huh?”
Harrow felt the tension in Gideon’s body at my kid, and she remembered.
“You should talk to her,” she whispered to Gideon.
“But what if-”
“It’s okay to be scared, but I don’t think you need to worry. Besides, whatever happens, you aren’t alone now. You’ll always have me.”
Gideon took a deep breath, and then another. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
The next time conversation came to a natural pause around the fire, Gideon caught Pyrrha’s eye, and gestured to the side with her head. Pyrrha nodded, handed her beer to Wake, and got to her feet.
Harrow sat up, to allow Gideon to rise, and was surprised when Gideon took her hands to pull her to her feet.
“You don’t have to include me, Gideon. I know this is a family thing. I can survive on my own for five minutes.”
“You are my family, Harrow. Come on.”
They walked a few paces into the shelter of the trees, staying in sight of the campfire, since it was a dark, cloudy night.
“What’s up?” Pyrrha asked. “If it’s about Ulysses - he never did have a connection between his mouth and his brain. I’ll get Titania to talk to him. He usually listens to her.”
“That’s not it,” Gideon said, and Harrow gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “I need to tell you something.”
“Sure, love. Go ahead.”
“I’m not actually your child.” Gideon spared a moment to hope she wasn’t doing anything permanently damaging to Harrow’s fingers, now that she couldn’t fix them. She knew she was holding on too tight, and she wasn’t sure whether she wished that they were closer to the campfire, so that she could see Pyrrha’s face better, or whether she’d rather not see Pyrrha’s face at all as she told her the truth. “I don’t know how much anyone told you about what happened there, at the end, and I don’t really know the full story myself because - fuck - I really don’t want to know the details. But I’m John’s child. Biologically speaking, I mean. That’s why Harrow could open the Tomb, she had my arm, and look, I know I should have told you before, I’ve known for a while I wasn’t yours, but I didn’t know what to say, and I was scared you’d go away again and-”
“Shh,” Pyrrha interrupted. “Answer me one question.”
She’s going to ask when I found out, Gideon thought, or why I thought it was okay to lie to her like this. But she squared her shoulders, and nodded.
“Do you want to be mine?”
“Of course I do,” Gideon said, startled.
“Then you are.”
“It’s not that easy,” Gideon insisted. “I lied to you.”
“I lied to my necromancer for thousands of years. If you’re looking for someone to tell you that lying is never excusable, or necessary, you’re talking to the wrong woman. As far as I’m concerned, you’re mine in every way that matters. I understand if this is a deal-breaker for you, but I hope it isn’t.”
“It’s not, I just… I didn’t expect you to take it so well.”
“I contain multitudes.” Pyrrha said, wryly. “And while we’re on the subject of your parents…” Pyrrha turned to face back towards the campfire, and yelled, with the lungs of a drill sergeant, “Wake, get your cute butt over here.”
“What are you calling her for?” Gideon asked, dismayed. If Pyrrha was about to call Wake out for her lies, Gideon very much did not want to be there to see it.
“I think it’s time you two had a talk, properly.”
“What? No! She hates me.”
“She doesn’t,” Pyrrha said. At the skeptical look on Gideon’s face, she amended: “Any more.”
“What, because I’m not a necromancer now?” Gideon didn’t think she was interested in having a mother whose love was so explicitly conditional. Against all the odds, she had Pyrrha, and that was enough for her.
“Because you did good, kid. You did the right thing,” came a gravelly voice from the underbrush. Wake sounded grudging, but sincere.
“Isn’t there something else you want to say?” Pyrrha prompted the Commander.
Wake stepped up next to Pyrrha, and turned to face Gideon squarely, though she had the air of a child being forced to apologise for playground hair-pulling.
“I’m glad I didn’t kill you when you were born.” Wake admitted, though the admission seemed to cost her. She turned back to Pyrrha. “There, are you happy?”
“That’s it? You’re not gonna hug it out?”
Wake caught Gideon’s eye, and Harrow saw how strong the resemblance was between them, not just in their features, but in the way those features carried their thoughts. They both wore matching looks of absolute horror, before bursting out laughing.
“Such disrespect from my daughter!” Pyrrha mock-scowled at Gideon, but they were all smiling as they made their way back to the campfire.
ONE MONTH AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
“I need you to break my nose.” Wake’s voice drifted to Gideon and Harrow as they came into the clearing.
“Uh,” Gideon said, wanting Wake and Pyrrha to know they weren’t alone, in case this was some sort of weird sex thing that she very much did not want to walk in on. “Should we come back later?”
“You’re fine,” Wake said. “This won’t take a minute.”
Wake and Pyrrha had asked the pair to meet them near the shuttle Cam and Dulcie had arrived on. As Gideon and Harrow skirted around the shuttle to the open hatch, Pyrrha and Wake were standing side by side, studying the poster there, of Wake’s face.
“You’re sure?” Pyrrha asked her.
“An unavoidable necessity. It won’t be the first time it’s been broken.”
“Won’t even be the first time I’ve broken it,” Pyrrha conceded, and they exchanged a secretive smile.
“We really can come back later.” Gideon interjected.
~
They came back later.
“Want to explain what that was about?” Gideon asked, settling down in the grass opposite her mothers. Wake’s nose had been set fairly well, but her eyes were both swollen with bruises, and Gideon reflexively reached for the power that was no longer there, itching to heal the injury.
“If we have a chance of coming to an agreement that doesn’t result in my people bombing yours from orbit, then no one can know that I died.” Wake said, words distorted but intelligible. “If they think I’m some sort of reanimated puppet they’ll kill me along with the rest of you.”
“Nice,” Gideon couldn’t help but blurt. “They sound like real friendly folks.”
“Can you blame them?”
Gideon didn’t reply to that. Instead she said: “But I still don’t understand why that means you had to get your nose broken.”
“Look at my picture," Wake gestured through the open hatch to the portrait in the shuttle."
Harrow and Gideon both looked. "The nose is wrong," Harrow said after a moment
"Yep," Wake confirmed. "Not your fault, kids. Whatever cloning shit it was you pulled - and don’t give me details, I’d rather not know - you couldn’t have known how the nose was supposed to be. I’ve broken it so many times I didn't even remember what it looked like originally.”
“So you can’t go back to your people with a nose that’s never been broken, or they’ll know something’s up.” Gideon said, with dawning understanding.
“Yes, and it’s better if it’s freshly broken, because it won’t heal exactly the same as it did before, and it will add verisimilitude to my tale of spending twenty years deep under cover, infiltrating your organisation. We’ve got less than a week before Blood of Eden arrive, so it’s time to start getting our stories straight. Holiday’s over, folks.”
~
The meetings weren’t going well. BoE were due in less than a day, and they hadn’t so much as agreed who should act as spokesperson for the Nine Houses. Gideon personally thought that Magnus and Abigail would have been perfect, being level-headed, and accustomed to bureaucracy, but they’d ruled themselves out on the basis that they were not yet recovered from their period of near-starvation, and simply didn’t have the stamina for days of endless meetings.
Surprisingly, Coronabeth - who had been subdued since her rescue from tentacled doom - put herself forward for the job, and on the face of things she seemed like the perfect candidate. She was charming, charismatic, with the training of a princess. She might have even succeeded in her bid, had it not been for Ianthe, hovering on the edge of each conversation and subtly undermining her. Gideon had no idea what all that was about, and she didn't want to know.
The original Lyctors, and their cavaliers, had grudgingly agreed that those who had been dead for more than a few hundred years didn’t have the requisite familiarity with current affairs in the Nine Houses, but they’d come out in support of Augustine, almost invariably. Who could be better, they argued, than the man who’d known the empire the longest?
Mercymorn probably would have opposed Augustine’s bid for power, had she not stormed off with a strangled expletive when Gideon - bored and peckish - had opened a sealed bag of peanuts and started idly tossing them, one by one, into her mouth.
Wake had scoffed at the idea of Augustine representing the Nine Houses: “That smarmy bastard is the epitome of everything we hate about you,” Wake had muttered, sidelong to Gideon. Gideon had not protested the ‘we’, or the ‘you’. They were doing better, but it was early days. “I bet my right hand that he’d end up in the brig, or out the airlock, within an hour.”
Gideon was about to protest that she’d worked too hard on that right hand for Wake to forfeit it so easily, when the meeting broke again into shouting, and she had to intervene before someone got punched.
~
BoE were arriving in less than six hours, and no consensus could be reached. They’d blown their whole supply of coffee on a single pot of foul tarry liquid that sat bubbling portentously over the fire, but even periodic cups of the stuff couldn’t keep everyone from yawning.
“We’re just going to have to wing it,” Cassiopeia said. “We need to get some sleep, or we’ll be zombies when they arrive.”
“And if you look like zombies, you will get shot.” Wake quipped.
“This is ridiculous!” Palamedes stood up, running an agitated hand through his hair, before taking off his glasses to glare at Gideon. Gideon had been pushing for him to try and take the lead role in negotiating with BoE - as heir of the Sixth, he knew the Nine Houses and their history about as well as anyone could, and she trusted him far more than Augustine. “Gideon, you know it has to be you.”
Gideon glanced hopefully over at her elder namesake, sat beside Pyrrha, but it was all too clear that the Saint of Duty was not who Palamedes was referring to.
“Why me?” Gideon protested. She looked to Augustine’s little coven of cronies for support, expecting them to speak up again in his favour, but they remained silent.
“You can be trusted not to take advantage of power, if you’re offered it.” Palamedes said, holding up a hand and touching his first finger, as though starting to tick off points in a list.
“Yeah, because I don’t want it.”
Palamedes merely nodded, as if she’d agreed with him. “You’re the closest thing we have to someone impartial, being born of both the Nine Houses and Blood of Eden.”
“You think my parents are a selling point? I’m god’s kid! There’s no way BoE aren’t going to burn me at the stake for that.”
“Actually, that isn’t really our style,” Wake remarked, casually. “We’re more about the firing squads. More efficient.”
“You’re not helping.” Gideon scowled.
“You’re a House heir; you’ve got leadership experience.” Palamedes continued. He was going to run out of fingers soon, but Gideon had little hope that he’d run out of arguments at the same time.
“So have you!”
“You’re the only one we all trust, Gideon! I’m sorry, you deserve a break, you really do, but the work’s not done yet. You’ve taken the machine of empire apart, and thrown out the broken bit, but you have to put it back together, or none of it means anything.”
“I can’t do this,” Gideon whispered, looking around at each face around the campfire, desperate to find a single note of dissent, but each pair of eyes met hers levelly. She came at last to Harrow.
“I can’t do this,” she said again, just to Harrow now. “I can’t.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” Harrow said, sardonically. “And we’ll all be there to help you.”
Gideon set her mouth in a mulish line, refusing to let her face answer Harrow’s smile with one of her own. It was difficult; her lips kept pulling up at the corners. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be capable of looking at Harrow, her Harrow, without wanting to laugh with astonished joy.
“No.” It was a plea, more than a statement. The last gasp of a soldier who knows the battle is lost.
“Personally,” Harrow said, smile getting wider until Gideon could see each sharply-pointed tooth. “I find diplomacy very sexy.”
Dulcie, sitting on Harrow’s other side, had unfortunately been taking a sip of coffee; she snorted with such mirth that half the coffee came out of her nose, and Camilla had to pound her on the back while she coughed up the other half.
Gideon barely noticed, unable to look away from Harrow’s dark, predatory eyes.
"I know what you're doing," Gideon muttered. "I'm not an idiot."
"I never said you were," Harrow said, making a remarkably successful attempt at being coy, considering it was something she'd never before attempted. "Is it working?"
Gideon stared, seeing not just Harrow's bizarre and unprecedented coquettishness, but the absolute, unwavering faith beneath it. She saw that, far from being a cynical ploy, aimed at manipulating Gideon into something she didn't want to do, there was something breathlessly honest happening, right there in front of everyone. Harrow would joyfully give herself to the last intimacy they had not yet shared if Gideon stepped up to do her duty, because in stepping up Gideon demonstrated that her essential character was unchanged by the loss of her power. Gideon would do what was right, as she always did, and so Harrow would trust her, as she always secretly had.
“Uh, fine,” she said at last, still without breaking eye contact with her former cavalier. “I’ll do it. Got to go now. Very late. Big day in the morning. Time for bed. Night all.”
Gideon didn’t look around the fire to see who chuckled, because if she did, she’d have to stop and punch each and every one of them, and she had far more important things to do. Harrow stood, and took Gideon’s had to pull her to her feet. She didn’t let go as she led Gideon, stumbling over roots in the darkness and her haste, back to their bed in the shuttle.
SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
“I think I’ve been poisoned.” Gideon said to the medic. Or, that’s what she tried to say. What she actually said was I thi’k I’b beed poiso’ed. There was something wrong with her nose, and it was making her sound like she’d broken it, but she definitely hadn’t.
She’d never visited the ship’s medbay before, and she didn’t like it. She couldn’t smell it, - she couldn’t smell anything - but she could just tell there was a funny smell in here. She could taste the antiseptic on her tongue.
“Mm,” said the medic. She gave Gideon a thermometer to put under her tongue, but didn’t seem particularly concerned about Gideon probably being mere moments from an ugly demise. “Have you eaten or drunk anything suspicious? Or is anyone else around you showing symptoms?”
Gideon opened her mouth, nearly losing the thermometer. She closed her mouth again, and shook her head.
The medic made another mm sound, and tapped at her tablet for a minute, before taking the thermometer from Gideon’s mouth and looking at it.
“Well, based on your scans, and on this,” she said at last, “you’ve got a cold. Half the third deck is out with the sniffles; you probably caught it from them.”
“The sniffles?” Gideon protested. “That can’t be right. I never get sick. And there’s no way this is a cold. I feel like I’m dying .”
“Colds can be pretty miserable,” the medic said, turning to rummage through a drawer, then she handed Gideon a small bottle of pills, and a smaller version of the thermometer she’d just used. “Here, check your temp every few hours if you’re concerned, and take a couple of these before you go to sleep. Come back if you aren’t feeling better in a few days, or if this flashes red when you check your temperature.”
“That’s it? No offence, but can I get a second opinion? I know the captain has been intercepting threats - I was sure it was poison.”
“Most of our formerly necromantic patients have been experiencing improved health, but I’ll be honest, we just don’t know enough about you people, physiologically, to know all the possible reactions. I don’t see any reason for you to be concerned, though.”
When Harrow found her later, she was curled up on the bunk they shared and wrapped in every single blanket they owned.
“Gideon? What’s wrong?”
“I went to see the medic, and she fobbed me off. Look at this-” she brandished the tablet she was holding. “I put my symptoms in on this page on the shipnet, and it says I could have a tumor pressing on my sinuses, or swelling in my hypothalamus, and I still think it’s probably poison and-”
“Gideon, Griddle. Talk to me. What symptoms? You didn’t tell me you were sick.”
“I thought it was just because I was out with Dulcie last night, and I was a bit hungover, so I didn’t say anything this morning, but my throat is sore, and I can’t breathe through my nose, and my head hurts so much, and the medic even said I have a fever, but she still didn’t take me seriously.”
If Gideon hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn she saw a faint twitching at the corners of Harrow’s mouth, as though she was suppressing a smile. But Harrow wouldn’t smile while Gideon was probably dying. Maybe I’m hallucinating too, Gideon thought, and reached out to take the tablet back, so she could input her new symptom.
“Griddle, what did the medic actually say?”
“She said there was a cold going around on third deck, and I probably had that.”
“Third deck,” Harrow said. “Isn’t Dulcie staying on third deck?”
“I don’t have a cold.” Gideon said, mutinously. “I don’t get colds.”
“You’ve never had a cold,” Harrow said, gently. “But you’ve also survived nerve gas, and mortal wounds, because your dad was, well, god. Your power was always more than just necromancy - but it faded when necromancy did, all the same. I think maybe whatever it was that stopped you getting sick might be gone.”
Harrow climbed onto the bed, to take the blanket-wrapped bundle of misery in her arms.
“I don’t want to be sick.” Gideon said eventually, voice small.
“I know.”
“This is bullshit. I feel awful. This can’t just be a ‘sniffle’.”
“Colds are horrid, but you’ll be better in a few days, and I’ll cancel all our meetings so I can take care of you - on one condition.”
“What?”
“You have got to stop looking up your symptoms. I used that thing once - you remember, when I started bleeding.” Harrow blushed a little at the memory. The combination of her unrecognised necromancy, plus the rigors she’d put her body through, had meant she hadn’t menstruated for the first time until after they’d been on the Freedom for a few months.“I was convinced I was going to die.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me? Or speak to a medic?”
“I was embarrassed. And I ran into Abigail and burst into tears. I was completely mortified, but she got me sorted out in the end. But there’s a reason we have medics, not just tablets. So stay off the ‘net, okay?”
“Fine,” Gideon grumbled. But she didn’t resist when Harrow took the tablet from her hands and put it away.
“Now, why don’t you get settled comfortably in bed, and I’ll see if I can go scrounge up some soup?”
ONE YEAR AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
“You can’t be serious,” said Harrow. “I’m not sleeping here.”
“I know a mattress on the floor is a little grim, but it’s not forever. Besides, we grew up sleeping on cots. Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft.” Gideon grinned, and elbowed Harrow in the side. A side that was, in fact, a lot softer than it used to be.
“At least a cot isn’t on the floor! There could be… things… on the floor.”
“What things?”
Harrow shuddered. “Rodents. Or insects. Or anything! This planet has a whole ecosystem of horrid, wriggling, crawling, slithering…”
“Harrow.” Gideon caught Harrow’s fretful hands between hers in an attempt to stop her meltdown before it could properly get going. “I know it’s not much, but my moms cashed in all their savings, and a bunch of favours, just to get us this place. I know this is all new to you; it’s new to me too, but it’s going to be okay. Do you know how I know that?”
Harrow shook her head, but Gideon could tell she wasn’t paying attention; her eyes kept darting off to the shadowed corners of the room and the imaginary horrors they contained. Gideon squeezed her hands, half in reassurance, half to get her attention.
“I know it’s going to be okay, same as how I know this is home now, even if we’re not with our people, even if everything here is strange, and new. Harrow, it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together. You are my home.”
This, at last, was enough to break Harrow out of whatever scuttling, many-legged thought had gripped her, and she tilted her face up, like a flower seeking the sun, for Gideon to kiss her.
Still, when they went to bed a short while later, Gideon could tell feel that Harrow was tense and unsleeping, long after she’d normally have snuggled into Gideon’s chest and drifted off.
“You’re still worrying about being on the floor, aren’t you?” she said, eventually, into the darkness.
“No,” Harrow lied.
Gideon climbed to her feet, and ran her hands along the wall, searching for the switch, then winced, as the light came on, far more sudden and bright than she was used to, from the bare bulb.
“Come on,” Gideon said, starting to gather the pillows and blankets from the bed. Harrow followed her in mute confusion as she traversed the small, unfamiliar interior space of their flat, and started piling bedding on the kitchen counter.
“Hop up,” Gideon said, patting the counter in encouragement.
“What?”
“It’s this or the tub, and the tile in the bathroom is cold. Sleep on the counter for tonight, and we’ll work out something better for tomorrow.”
“Sleep on the-”
“It’s wider than a cot; you won’t fall.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll sleep on the floor, and protect you from any creepy crawlies that come to menace you in the night.”
Harrow made a face, but gave in quickly enough that Gideon know she’d done the right thing.
The counter was higher than Harrow could comfortably get up to; it took a few minutes, and a leg-up from Gideon before she was settled. Harrow fussed with her blanket for a while, but had to admit that that it wasn’t too uncomfortable, and she was already more relaxed than she had been on the mattress.
She rolled onto her side, to tell Gideon that she could turn out the lights, and instead saw Gideon kneeling, on one knee, holding out a small velvet box. Inside the box was something that shined almost as bright, and almost as golden, and almost as precious, as Gideon’s eyes.
“Gideon. What?”
“This is our home now, so I thought I’d try adopting some local customs. This is how they decide to get married, here. With a ring. Harrow, will you marry me?”
“Of course I will. Griddle! Of course I’ll marry you. Only-”
“I know, it was stupid to spend the money. We need it for furniture. I’ll return the ring tomorrow and get us a proper bed instead, I promise. I just - I wanted to do this right.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. And you’re not giving my ring away. The bed can wait.” Harrow held out a hand, and the brush of Gideon’s fingers, as they slipped the ring onto her finger, still made her heart flutter. It had been a year, but she didn’t think she’d ever stop being amazed that Gideon had chosen a life with her.
There was a moment of silence, as they each looked at the ring, where it fit perfect and snug around Harrow’s finger, as if it had been made for her, or she for it.
Then: “What were you going to say?” Gideon asked.
“What? Oh, just that I’m not your cavalier any more.”
“Like you being my cavalier would ever have stopped me.”
“No, I mean, it’s too late to use the pun.”
Gideon swore.
SEVENTY YEARS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
Gideon and Harrow lay curled together in bed. Age had taken their steady hands and keen eyes from them, and set their joints to aching, but it couldn’t erase the ease and comfort they found in togetherness. They’d been human, only human, for seven decades. Seventy long, and difficult, and beautiful years.
They knew that the end was near. They felt it coming, like the River lapping at their toes.
“Do you regret it?” Harrow asked. It was the one thing they’d never asked each other.
Not through the endless meetings, trying to find common ground between stubborn House leaders and cohort officials, and their equally entrenched BoE counterparts.
Not when their own people had branded them traitor.
Not when they’d had to settle, in secret, on Wake’s home planet, far from the Nine Houses’ settlements.
Not when Magnus and Abigail had been forced from their own home with the re-settled Fifth for associating with the ‘god-killers’.
Not when Dulcie’s cancer had come back, and she’d suffered through months of painful treatment, coming out of it alive, but weak.
Not even as they’d felt their own bodies start to fail, losing the strength and vigor they could have held forever.
It had been a hard life, and a good one. A long life, and so very short. And through it all, the question, never spoken, did we make the right choice?
“I don’t regret a thing,” said Gideon. “Do you?”
“No regrets,” Harrow agreed, and then continued, with a smirk, “except maybe letting you eat the expired shrimp that time…”
Gideon laughed, and the breath rattled a little in her chest. Harrow reached out, running crabbed, arthritic fingers through Gideon’s hair, the vibrant russet of it long since faded to silver. They both leaned in for a kiss.
One last kiss.
When their bodies were found several days later, they were still kissing. They were whole, untouched by decay, as if death itself had taken their spirits so gently that the flesh hadn’t felt the loss, and they were both smiling.