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ACT ONE
1
IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty azines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth
She didn’t run Gideon never ran unless she had to In the absolute darkness before dawn she brushed her teeth without concern and splashed her face ater, and even went so far as to sweep the dust off the floor of her cell She shook out her big black church robe and hung it fro done this every day for over a decade, she no longer needed light to do it by This late in the equinox no light would make it here for months, in any case; you could tell the season by how hard the heating vents were creaking She dressed herself from head to toe in polymer and synthetic weave She coh her teeth as she unlocked her security cuff, and arranged it and its stolen key considerately on her pillow, like a chocolate in a fancy hotel
Leaving her cell and swinging her pack over one shoulder, she took the tihts to her mother’s nameless catacomb niche This was pure sentiment, as her mother hadn’t been there since Gideon was little and would never go back in it now Then cahts the back way, not one light relieving the greasy dark, heading to the splitoff shaft and the pit where her ride would arrive: the shuttle was due in two hours
Out here, you had an unimpeded view up to a pocket of Ninth sky It was soupy white where the atmosphere was puht bead of Do vertical tunnel In the dark, sheamble of the field’s periainst the cold and oily rock of the cave walls Once this was done, she spent a long tile innocuous drift and hummock of dirt and rock that had been left on the worn floor of the landing field She dug the shabby steel toe of her boot into the hard-packed floor, but satisfied with the sheer ih it, left it alone Not an inch of that huge, eenerator lights gruht She clihts and checked the blindly behind the rimly comforted by what she didn’t find
She parked herself on one of the destroyed humps of rubble in the dead centre The laht They explosively birthed malform shadow all around The shades of the Ninth were deep and shifty; they were bruise-coloured and cold In these surrounds, Gideon rewarded herself with a little plastic bag of porridge It tasted gorgeously grey and horrible
Thehad started in the Ninth since the Ninth began She took a turn around the vast landing site just for a change of pace, kicking absently at an untidy drift of grit as she went She moved out to the balcony tier and looked down at the central cavern for signs of e froue After a while, there was the faraway upward clatter of the skeletons going to pick mindlessly at the snow leeks in the planter fields Gideon saw them in herover the ground, eyes ared pinpricks
The First Bell clanged its uncanorous, co as always like it was getting kicked down some stairs; a sort of BLA-BLANG … BLA-BLANG … BLA-BLANG that had woken her up everythat she could recall Movement resulted Gideon peered down at the bottoathered over the cold white doors of Castle Drearburh, stately in the dirt, set into the rock three bodies wide and six bodies tall Two braziers stood on either side of the door and perpetually burned fatty, crappy sures in a multitude of poses, hundreds to thousands of the soht at you Whenever Gideon had been h those doors as a kid, she’d screa
More activity in the lowest tiers now The light had settled into visibility The Ninth would be co ready to head for orison, and the Drearburh retainers would be preparing for the day ahead They would perform many a solemn and inane ritual in the lower recesses Gideon tossed her e over the side of the tier and sat doith her sword over her knees, cleaning it with a bit of rag: forty o
Suddenly, the unchanging tediuain: BLANG … BLA-BLANG … BLA-BLANG … Gideon cocked her head to listen, finding her hands had stilled on her sword It rang fully twenty ti Huh; muster call After a while ca obediently tossed down pick and hoe to ular current, broken up every so often by so black Gideon picked up her sword and cloth again: it was a cute try, but she wasn’t buying
She didn’t look up when heavy, stu footsteps sounded on her tier, or for the rattle of rusting armour and the rusty rattle of breath
“Thirty whole minutes since I took it off, Crux,” she said, hands busy “It’s almost like you want h”
“You ordered a shuttle through deception,” bubbled the marshal of Drearburh, whose main claim to faitiled with indignation “You falsified docu this house, you oods, you steal its stock”
“Coe at it critically for nicks “You hate ht and you can retire in peace Take up a hobby Write your memoirs”
“You wrong this house You oods You steal its stock” Crux loved verbs
“Say my shuttle exploded I died, and it was such a sha you here—I’ll trade you a skinFrontline Titties of the Fifth” This rendered the hast to respond “Okay, okay I take it back Frontline Titties isn’t a real publication”
Crux advanced like a glacier with an agenda Gideon rolled backward off her seat as his antique fist caravel Her sword she swiftly locked within its scabbard, and the scabbard she clutched in her arms like a child She propelled herself backward, out of the way of his boot and his huge, hoary hands Crux ristle hat seemed like thirty knuckles to each fist He was old, but he was goddahastly
“Easy,in the dirt “Take thisyourself”
“You talk so loudly for chattel, Nav,” said the marshal “You chatter so much for a debt I hate you, and yet you are s for the Ninth I have all for the Ninth Your brain is a base and shrivelled sponge, but it too is for the Ninth Come here, and I’ll black your eyes for you and knock you dead”