#third read

Gideon is escaping. She stole a security cuff key but left the cuff on until the morning of. She's taking her sword, her "shoes" - later called steel toed boots- , and her smut mags. Her clothes are all synthetics. She has enough hair to brush. She knows about chocolates and fancy hotels, somehow ... from mags? From Wake/mom's niche is 22 flights of stairs up to the landing field, which is still at the bottom of a deep tunnel. There are lamps on but they're low. She's kicking apart lumps of "rubble" but that's not further described. She eats porridge from a plastic bag then throws the bag over a rail somewhere. There's a balcony area. Skeletons with red eyes go to pick snow leeks.

There are white castle doors at the bottom, "three bodies wide and six bodies tall". She talks about the figures carved into the area above the doors and remembers screaming as a kid about them creeping her out. I wonder what they are, maybe related to the killed generation? How much trauma from a two year old survivor of all the kids dying?

Muster call (20 Bells) calls back the skeletons.

That's when the Marshall/Crux stomps in to accuse her. Gideon says, "say my shuttle exploded, I died and it was such a shame". 😳 (Crux thinks great idea, will do) Introduces Frontline Titties of the Fifth. He calls her chattel. He wears a big knife over a shoulder.

He gives an impressive number of threats. Gideon wasn't bothered by Crux's threats. But then he invoked Harrow and her "palms prickled". He leaves and Aiglamene enters. Gideon says she's tried to enlist 33 times. Aiglamene has a badly repaired missing leg and a scarred face.

Gideon lists what's happened when she's tried to leave before: jammed in lift, turned off heat frostbite in three toes, poisoned. She clarifies that she's indentured not a slave and claims she's not of fiscal use there. She says she will "you can quote me 'do my duty to the ninth' ". Gideon goes on a rant about "your lady" with a host of great insults, then gets slapped.

"Nobody had ever loved her in the ninth". Aiglamene was the reason she got to have a sword and training. "I'm naturally demeaning". Aiglamene walks away and Gideon falters a bit but sticks.

"Nav was a Niner name". Mentions the prison as a bubble halfway up in the atmosphere. At the end of the chapter we get the limited story of day-old Gideon being in a bio container plugged into the suit of a braindead woman who had fallen in a suit down the shaft 18 years ago. None of the Ninth necromancers could get her ghost to do more than scream Gideon three times then she fled.

"They chipped her, surnamed her, and put her in the nursery". I don't think they mention the chips again, interesting. She was kid #201. Where did the kids come from? Had they been harvesting gametes and growing them? Because the "old" people going into the doors were heavily outnumbered by skeletons. Then two years later it was just her, Harrow (who still hasn't been directly introduced as other then Lady), and Ortus. By 10 she "knew too much and that she could never be allowed to go". Of course. Because that's when Harrow had opened the tomb and her parents had died. She had started trying to escape when she was 4.

Situps and magazines. Harrow shows up after a week.

Gideon is sulking in her room, cuff back on.

"Go choke on a dick"

"I have a job for you"

"Nonagesimus. The only job I'd do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it." Then she continues on with a few more graphic but less foreshadowy suggestions. Then Harrow uses a bone stud turned into a hand to undo the lock.

Harrow takes Gideon to the catacomb. Gideon has to wear her "church gown". Why? Because of the cold? They get in the lift. They go down deep into a level where there were cages with machines "that nobody knew how to work anymore". Aiglamene is there sorting through swords. She says Ortus was a terrible swordsman. She and Harrow disagree about offhand weapons, Harrow likes powder or chains. Gideon doesn't catch on quickly to what's happening. She cracks up when Harrow explains. Then "Like hell I will, Nonagesimus".

Harrow tries to offer riches.

"You don't own me". "Oh Griddle, but I do!".

Gideon points a sword at her head.

"I. Will never. Trust you. Your promises mean nothing. You've got nothing to give me."

Remember that for the later discussion of earning trust.

Then Harrow goes for the guts.

"Oh, I have hurt your heart"

"I boo-hooed for hours"

Then the kicker: "It won't be the last time I make you weep" At this stage in first read I took it for the shallow face. With a recent reread behind me, this one stings. That damned splinter again.

Aiglamene yells at them, then tells Gideon to take the deal, then vouchsafes the deal. Then says to Harrow, "If she satisfies you, you must let her go". Another one that seems shallowly plot relevant but is meant for rereaders. Harrow nails that down saying Gideon can be anything she likes, have all the glories, preferably on the other side of the universe from where she is. 😳

I'm imagining this song in a tennis match style duet.

After Harrow leaves, Aiglamene lets Gideon know the Ninth House is in big trouble, "I think we're waiting to die". And reiterates that she thinks Gideon should do it. Hidden in there is an amazing compliment about Gideon being "the best swordsman that the Ninth House has produced, maybe ever".

Love that the first line of this says so much about Gideon: five minutes to go when her "87th" escape plan got messed up. Pretty sure last chapter said 33 previous attempts. No I'm wrong, she had tried to enlist 33 times. She was headed for "Trentim"?

Here's where we hear "Griddle" for the first time. Harrow's introduced as being 17, wearing slightly soiled black robes of the house, and sneering. She has a hood and gloves on. Short-cropped hair ("dead crow colored").

Duet -style, focusing on one then the other:

The two start throwing their plots at each other. Gideon threatens to squeal, "I'll tell them everything. You know what I know. And I'll tell them the numbers." Harrow is likened to a bird. They have a moment of 'you'd do all that, get in all that trouble, all because...' and Gideon finishing "BECAUSE I completely fucking hate you. BECAUSE you are a hideous witch from hell. No offense". I love the strange no offense thrown in. I expected it to be no offense to witches. 😂 But it's followed with the painfully snide big quote, "But I don't even remember about you most of the time". Which is at the moment just shitty, minimizing bullshit. But with later context is of course lovely foreshadowing.

Gideon's lopsided smile is introduced (seen later in AUs). They start bargaining, and Gideon's interpretation of what Harrow's offers would be is snarky and hilarious. We're shown how impressive real paper is: Harrow offers bond, basically buying Gideon an officer seat. The terms show just how ridiculous the indenture is: that G would be bought clear in 5 years of good behavior ... instead of 30(!).

Another exchange, "you can't say I don't care". "You Don't care. You'd have the nuns eat each other if you got bored. You are a psychopath."

We're shown how much effort Gideon put into this escape attempt. Gideon refuses Harrow's offer, saying she won't go into Drearbruh.

Harrow's clothes are described more, we have the white human ribcage with silver snaps, the robes are called ornate. Bone bracelets, teeth necklace, bone studs in ears. She takes them off and is in shirt, trousers, gloves and boots. Gideon wears a bandeau under her shirt.

Harrow is signing the paper with her mother's name but her own blood - from her cheek.

Gideon recognizes that to take the terms of the fight offered would be a mark of cruelty, being an asshole, a douchebag. Of course she takes it. "You didn't get anywhere through softness. The house was hard as iron. You smashed iron where it was weak."

She asks Harrow to swear it's a fair fight. Harrow says she swears there's "nothing on her". (Oops) Aiglamene tries to intervene, maybe to save G? Gideon says, "I gave her my whole life". Ohhhhh. I know I hear that again. That's when Harrow lets on that she knew and had planned and dug all night. All it took was Gideon seeing Harrow's hands to know. This is where we hear first about blood sweat, and where we see how good Harrow is: tidal wave of skeletons.

Gideon passes out.

They're taken into the First House and Gideon's description shows both the dramatic differences between First and Ninth, and the sequestered life she's experienced. She's amazed by the fountain, the staircase, the abundance of wood and marble and glass. All old and moldering, abandoned, but immense and rich. It is apparent to her that the best of the Ninth was bad when it was new. You can hear her sense of perspective stretching.

The priests gather everyone. There's tea, which is another new experience: Gideon's first hot drink. Can you imagine, in a place cold enough that your room heat turned off will kill you, to never drink something hot?

Then there's religion. Teacher leads a prayer, and everyone but Pro, the Third House twins, and Harrow+Gideon join in. Gideon has never heard it. Then teacher asks for a Ninth prayer and Harrow obliges. As Gideon watches everyone, she notices how odd the Ninth religion actually is.

They're given one key (given to the cavaliers), and the instructions. Gideon's thoughts are humoring her, imagining the necromancers excited for training with "Dr. Skelebone". Instead they're just told the skeletons would attend to their needs, and they have one rule: don't go into locked rooms without permission.

They're led to their rooms which are huge and musty. Gideon abandons the cavalier bed at the bottom of the adept bed and puts her things down in the next room. She's looking out the window when she sees the shuttles being pushed over the edge into the sea by skeletons. Why? Huge weird waste when they're remote piloted anyway.

Crux hauls Gideon down all the stairs to the sanctuary. She rouses and makes a feeble escape attempt, but he kicks her in the head and she passes out. She comes to sitting or laying on a pew. It's so cold that she can see her breath and her skin is frozen to the pew. The church service is explained, and it sounds so weird. Maybe less weird to Catholic people, dunno. All of the nuns are using bones knotted on cords for prayers. However they're not praying out loud, so you can just hear a bunch of bones rattling. Gideon says that half of the sanctuary is filled with skeletons. She said that the sanctuary could fit a thousand so that suggests like 500 skeletons. The section made me really wonder about who is left on the 9th period and what happened after all the kids were killed. Did all the parents commit suicide after that, or were there not really parents there. Or did they find some way to make their peace and now they are nuns or what do they say, hermits? Solitairies? The sanctum has one row of gas light that is dim, and there is bioluminescent powder dusted on arches. Harrow has the bioluminescent powder dusted on her face, which sticks to the blood trails coming from her nose. Gross.

The nuns are described so oddly. Two are blind, and have black strips of cloth across their faces with eyes painted on.

Then ... Then we become A-okay with Gideon hating Harrow, and we hate her too. Except for a little tiny piece of knowing her that slips in beside. And that piece hurts like a splinter.

Harrow at church is simpering. She reads the summons from Jod. [[It is such a lie, Cytherea or no Cytherea, such a lie]]

Ortus and his mother are sad and loud. Harrow obviously plotting more. Then at the end, when Harrow tells Gideon that she's known for a week. That she chose not to do it then because she wanted to wait until Gideon thought she was actually away, to take it from her. Harrow's expression, Gideon thinks, is the same as it was the day they found Harrow's parents' bodies: blank.

Then Harrow yanks us back from that splinter of sympathy, "Because I completely fucking hate you. No offense."