Dramatis Personae
In order of house appearance
The Ninth House
Keepers of the Locked Tomb, the Black Vestals, House of the Sewn Tongue
Caleb Nonagesimus - Heir to the house of the Ninth, Reverend Son of Drearbruh
Beatrice Nova - Reverend Daughter of Drearbruh
Edith Novenarius - Reverend Mother of Drearbruh
Neil Noniusvianus - Reverend Father of Drearbruh
Albert Nigenad - Cavalier primary to the heir
Astoria - Captain of the guard of the Ninth
The First House
Necromancer Divine, King of the Nine Renewals, our Resurrector, our Necrolord Prime
THE EMPEROR
HIS LYCTORS
AND THE PRIESTHOOD OF CANAAN HOUSE
The Second House
The Emperor's Strength, House of the Crimson Shield, the Centurion's House
Eric Deuteros - Heir to the House of the Second, Ranked Captain of the Cohort
Peter Dyas - Cavalier primary to the heir, Ranked First Lieutenant of the Cohort
The Third House
Mouth of the Emperor, the Procession, the House of the Shining Dead
Mimette Tridentarius - Heir to the House of the Third, Crown Princess of Ida
Cassandra Tern - Cavalier primary to the heir, Princess of Ida
William Tyzira - Cavalier secondary, Lord of Ida
Valentina Tatunia - Queen of Ida
Dorian Tineter - King of Ida
Elizabeth Tinatu - Lady of Ida
Kira Talana - Lady of Ida
Christina Natantin - Lady of Ida
The Fourth House
Hope of the Emperor, the Emperor's Sword
Lauren Tettares - Heir to the House of the Fourth, Baroness of Tisis
Tobias Chatur - Cavalier primary to the heir, Knight of Tisis
The Fifth House
Heart of the Emperor, Watchers over the River
Johanna Pent - Heir to the House of the Fifth, Lady of the Koniortos Court
Jack Quinn - Cavalier primary to the heir, Seneschal of the Koniortos Court
The Sixth House
The Emperor's Reason, the Master Wardens
Gwendolyn Sextus - Heir to the House of the Sixth, Master Warden of the Library
Amar Hect - Cavalier primary to the heir, Warden's Hand of the Library
The Seventh House
Joy of the Emperor, the Rose Unblown
Felix Septimus - Heir to the House of the Seventh, Duke of Rhodes
Damascus Ebdoma - Cavalier primary to the heir, Knight of Rhodes
The Eighth House
Keepers of the Tome, the Forgiving House
David Octakiseron - Heir to the Eighth House, Master Templar of the White Glass
Matthew Asht - Cavalier primary to the heir, Templar of the White Glass
In the myriadic year of our Lord – the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the Kindly Prince of Death! – Beatrice Nova was running laps around the snow leek fields with her two hander strapped to her back. She was meant to be getting used to the rapier. She was used to the rapier; it was just that she liked to feel the steady press of her longsword when she did her laps. It had been the first sword she'd trained with, back when everyone still thought she'd get bored.
Eighteen laps in under a half hour. A new record. She caught sight of the lithe form of Astoria – who had always just been Tori to her – watching from a distance. She waved and dug the point of the sword into the ground to lean casually against it.
"You're sure I can't use this for the challenge?"
Tori let out her breath through her nose, an expression of frustration that Beatrice was well familiar with.
So she started speaking again before she could be chastised, "Kidding, kidding. Don't give me that look." She gently lowered the longsword to the ground and picked up the rapier she'd left discarded earlier, still in its scabbard with her offhand beside it. Both were pitch black, true ninth steel.
"You still don't have to do this, Beatrice," the voice of the woman who had first put the sword in her hands cut through her admiration of the blade. "You can just stop."
Beatrice rounded on her sharply as she tried to affix the scabbard to her belt. "Stop?! I can just stop, it's that simple?! I can just stop and be left here?! You know I can win."
"Not the point," said Tori, completely unimpressed with her outburst. She moved forward to help Beatrice with the scabbard. "I swear I should have never let you pick up that damn sword."
Caleb being born the adept made him the heir, Caleb being born the adept made him everything and here was Beatrice: the spare. For now.
She left her two hander out by the fields as she stormed toward the halls of Castle Drearbruh. It's not like the skeletons would get much use out of it. Tori followed, reminding her what a bad and dumb idea this was. But when had that ever stopped Beatrice before?
When the letter from the Emperor had come not a week before, Beatrice all but jumped from her seat in shock. The heirs to the nine houses and their cavaliers were being summoned to the first house to learn the secrets of lyctorhood. Caleb was going to be immortal.
He was going to be immortal and Beatrice would be stuck on this dusty goddamn rock for the rest of her cold, dark days with no one but Tori and the skeletons for company. So, armed with the rage and terror of being left, she began to scheme of course. When she and Caleb were children, Beatrice and trouble were attached at the hip. Some would say that they still were and this day wouldn't do anything to change that opinion.
Albert Nigenad was twice her size, twice her weight, nearly twice her age, but didn't have half her skill. He couldn't have looked more miserable when she drew her rapier and pointed it at him, her knuckle-knives against her collarbones in the middle of Drearbruh's grand chapel. She actually thought for a second that one older nun was going to have a heart attack from shock when she stormed in.
Before her parents could begin to yell at her, but not before Tori could groan in preparation of what was to come, Albert said, "Beatrice, we don't have to do this."
"Then stand down, Nigenad," she growled.
"Beatrice!" exclaimed the Reverend Mother. "This is an outrage! Sit down!"
She did not take her eyes off of Albert. "Withdraw your vow and acknowledge me as cavalier primary."
Albert had always been kind to her. He wasn't born for the sword, he'd just inherited it from his father. But the kindness stopped here, because now he was in her way.
"To the ground, Nigenad, or to the pain?"
He didn't even give her the grace of putting his hand upon the pommel of his dull heirloom sword. "I'm not doing this with you."
"Beatrice!" The Mother's voice came again. "That's enough!"
Edith Novenarius and Neil Noniusvianus had said on more than one occasion that they had been too indulgent of her growing up. When she rubbed her sacramental paint off on her sleeve, they let her. When she ran from the shears until her hair grew wild, they let her. When they'd taken away her two hander at eleven and she'd climbed the damn Marcaseun monument to retrieve the sacred blade used by Evelyn, the servant and sword of the first tomb-keeper, they let her. Tori gave her the silent treatment for four months straight, but she kept the sword and had even gotten the other one back. She could see in their eyes now that they regretted every kindness they spared her.
She finally took her eyes away from Albert's lumpy mass to find the gaze of the Reverend Son. He was cringing, shrinking into his seat like he could break their blood relation just by wanting it bad enough. She wished she could have said she was doing this because she loved her brother, older by a whole sixteen minutes and sometimes years wiser. But honestly he could be kind of a rat and had a snow leek permanently shoved into his ass. But he was still her ticket out of here and toward the Cohort. She didn't care about immortality, she didn't care about oaths; what she cared about was not being stuck in this dusty hell until the mold from the corners finally ate its way into her brain.
Albert looked back at the Reverend Parents with some mix of hope and exasperation. He wasn't about to charge at her in the middle of service; he wasn't about to charge at her period. Even the oldest and blindest of the dwindling Ninth congregation could call this fight in Beatrice's favor. In response, the Reverend Mother stood. Her ancient black robes trailed along the more ancient floor as she made her way toward Beatrice, who still stood with every muscle tense.
In her old age, Edith had developed a tremor in her hands, but she still refused help with her paints in the morning. The angles of the skull made her sharp features sharper. Caleb had a face like hers.
"Beatrice Nova," she said with all the power and gravitas that the Mother of the Ninth should have, "put that fucking sword down."
When Beatrice was young, she had asked if the bones of the living could be manipulated like the bones of the dead. It had seemed like a fair enough question, but Caleb had laughed at her and then they'd gotten into a fight. To this day, she wasn't totally sure. She wanted to believe that it was her mom's theorems that made her hands shake.
"I'm not staying here," she said through gritted teeth.
"Beatrice–"
"He yields!" exclaimed another voice before her mother could lose her temper. An ancient woman came creaking through the crowd of geriatric penitents to grab Albert's arm. It was his mother, who had been ghostly the day the letter came and looked no better today. She held her son with all her strength as though he would crumble to dust this second.
"Sister Laradine, please." Her mother's hair had gone gray years ago from the stress of trying to keep this dying house afloat.
"I know what happens to cavaliers, my lady! My husband served you well his whole life! Must you now take my son as well?!"
"Sit down, Laradine," barked Tori.
Laradine did not. She started to drag Albert bodily away, though if he really wanted he could have simply chosen to stay. He did not want to though. "Please, please, spare him! Let him stay!"
The Reverend Father said nothing, but he watched the scene play out with the same exasperation as his wife. He had never been able to speak, as far as Beatrice knew, or was just extremely committed to a vow of silence. His face always spoke for him though, and Beatrice knew with perfect certainty then that this was way worse than climbing the monument.
"QUIET!" the Reverend Mother roared after enduring several more seconds of Sister Laradine's sobbing pleas. She gestured to the mother-son pair with some aggression as she said, "Astoria, remove them. Beatrice, you have until the count of ten to sheathe your blasted sword and take your seat."
Astoria ushered Albert and Laradine away, and with them Beatrice's best chance of getting off-planet even as a corpse. She met her mother's gaze, letting her eyes burn with fury and hatred as she slid the black steel back into the scabbard and took off her gauntlet of knuckle knives. Then, like the chastened child she was, she took her seat on the dais with the rest of her family.
"Let us pray."
Caleb, pious little shit that he was, seemed to actually like leading the congregation in prayer. Even when they were kids he was mostly skeletal and while Beatrice had built muscle over the years from her time with Tori, he only seemed to grow on the vertical axis. A strong breeze could knock him over, but he still held himself with their mother's gravitas.
"I pray the tomb is shut forever," he recited with the ancient bone prayer beads clutched in his hands and fervidity on his lips. "I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives, I pray it sleeps. I pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying Kind, his Virtues, and his men. I pray for the Second House, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth."
Those other numbers were basically nonexistent to her. She'd never get to see another house and they would never see her. To live on the Ninth is to die on the Ninth and no one will remember her when she's turned into a servitor skeleton.
"I pray for the Ninth House, and I pray for it to be fruitful."
Now there was a thought. At this point, prayer may be the only thing that does bring the Ninth back. She and Caleb had been the last healthy children born on the Ninth, and the only ones to make it past eighteen. Now most of the population was too old to have children and it wasn't like new people were lining up to move into the cramped little hovels, more of which grew empty with each passing year. When she was younger, she thought she would have to marry Albert – another thing to encourage her to leave this place as quickly as possible – but now he was going too.
"I pray for the soldiers and adepts far from home, and all those parts of the empire that live in unrest and disquiet. Let it be so."
They all prayed for it to be so, heads bowed and prayer beads rattling. Beatrice had left hers in her other cloak.
The assembly drifted apart after that as some of the faithful went back to their meaningless jobs. Some of them stayed to pray for good fortune, as they had done every day since the letter came. Beatrice didn't need to look into the faces of her parents to know that the moment they were alone, she would be in for it. She tried to meet Caleb's eyes again, but he tucked his hands into his sleeves and pulled his hood up as he turned away. It was always cold on the Ninth, even in here. Beatrice had once nearly given herself carbon monoxide poisoning and burns from taking a heater to bed with her; Caleb's solution was just to wear enough layers that it almost looked like he wasn't an emaciated twig.
She wanted to run away, but that would have been dumb and gotten her nowhere. It wasn't exactly like she could just fly a shuttle out of here (though she tried sneaking onto one once. It was way harder than adventure novels made it seem). She followed her parents and brother into the study like the sullen loser that she was. Albert didn't even give her a courtesy sword fight. He wouldn't even let her look cool one last time before her parents bit her entire head off.
"That," said her mother in more of a clipped and reserved tone than Beatrice thought she would open with, "was by far the worst, loudest, and dumbest stunt you've pulled to date."
"Worse than the Marcasean?" she dared to joke. She'd never had much of a sense of self preservation.
In the background, Caleb sighed through his nose as her mother said, " So much worse than the Marcasean."
She couldn't read her father's face, despite having learned all of the nuances to his expressions over the years well, and he did not sign at her to clear things up. Caleb's hands were still in his sleeves and he was also giving her a weird look. But that was more because, as they got older, Caleb only seemed to have three expressions: repressive, brooding, and about to make some pedantic and unwanted addition to a conversation.
Beatrice braced herself for the explosion. She'd be lucky if they were able to salvage enough of her skeleton to farm snow leeks by the time her parents were done with her probably.
Then she caught a flash of movement from her father, he was signing at her mother. He said, "This is a bad idea."
The Reverend Mother legitimately laughed at that, which threw Beatrice off her rhythm even more. She started to open her mouth, but there was a crisp knock at the door. It was Tori.
"Everything go well?" Caleb asked even though their mother was supposed to be the one in charge.
"This is still a bad idea, my lord…respectfully."
"Neil was just saying that," added her mother.
That got Beatrice's stomach in knots even more. Caleb's ideas were never good. Well thought through, yeah, but he had a devious streak to him that only Beatrice seemed to be aware of.
"Uhhhhh," said Beatrice, mostly to remind people she was still in the room.
Tori came over to her and clapped a hand on her shoulder. She might have been proud; it was unlikely but a girl could dream. The corners of Caleb's mouth twitched up into a smile as he and their parents grew closer. Finally, Tori fished around in her pocket for a minute before coming out with a moldering black ribbon. Beatrice was really tired of this family's zest for drama.
"What's this for?"
Caleb looked at her incredulously and then, in a snooty voice that made Beatrice want to kick him, he said, "I thought you'd recognize the token that a cavalier bears on their sword?" When Beatrice didn't immediately seem to catch on he continued, "Albert practically threw the thing at Astoria, which if you ask me is just uncalled for, this house raised him after all. But," he shrugged, "a win is a win."
Astoria pushed the scrap into her hands and said in a tone that could have passed for pride or mocking said, "Congratulations."
"Uhhhhh," said Beatrice, very intelligently.
Her mother gripped her shoulder. "You have your brother to thank for all of this. He was the one who insisted."
Caleb preened under the acknowledgement like he always did while Beatrice continued to feel like she was a child with her first picture book. She knew all the letters, but they sure as hell didn't mean anything. Then Caleb's hands wrapped around hers which held the ribbon.
He said, "I am going to be a Lyctor. And now you get to help me." His hands squeezed hers. "Congratulations…sword sister."