Chapter the Ninth

The appearance of the new House – ghostly scion in green, empyrean chev in blue – was a welcome distraction from the thorn which had so plagued the chevalier of the Third these hours past. They had entered the reception hall with a quiet dignity which had been quite belied the rain which garbed her, the disquiet which he wore around his shoulders as another might bear a mantle. She had guided him to a choice place beside the fire, where caramel light clung to the soft fabric of the armchair and spilt across the black tiles of the hearth. She had knelt, and turned over her hands so that the warmth could catch her skin, and clearly hoped that no one would realise that she was drying herself with all the subtlety she could muster; he had sat rigidly on the edge of the chair, keeping his back rigid as the ricasso of a fresh-forged sword, his face frozen in a regally derisive expression as he surveiled those who had pipped them to the post. There was something pleasantly dazed about his eyes, even if it did not appear to extend to the rest of his face. His chevalier had been permitted to keep her bow, as Bahram had been permitted to keep his claymore. That they had entered this space armed seemed an obvious temptation of fate. Bahram himself had laid his sword across the main banqueting table in an ostentatious show of goodwill which did not seem to have been accepted by present company.

Bahram Jahandar found himself observing them as fixedly as the scion of the Fourth Land observed the room. It was a pleasant diversion from the unfriendly truth sprawled some dozen feet behind him: his damned scion was still lying on the steps which led to the Paper Throne, his coat spread across the flagstones, his hand slung across his face as though in guard against a piercing light which did not exist. Bahram was not certain if he was asleep or feigning it. Drunk, perhaps. Preferable. He was less a conversationalist than he was besotted with the sound of his own voice. Though Bahram had started their partnership brimming with interrogatives, his questions had dried after a long journey northwards wherein the man had offered an opinion on every matter which had crossed his feeble mind but that of his place in this world and in this Selection. Some partnership, Bahram had thought, some scion.

He had been dismay itself to return from the festivities on Listis to find that an upstart from the archipelago had challenged his sister for her position as scion – and won. How could the Third Lord have permitted this to pass? It was a dismay that had settled into his marrow as an unease greater than he could name; Adrina would have called it superstition, but Bahram knew it to be instinct and he knew it well.

Nonetheless – with the best of intentions had he forged forward, but the plague had set in from their very first interaction. Baron, the scion had said, extending a languid hand, and Bahram had corrected him politely as he could manage, it is pronounced Bah-ram, and Baron Vahakn had stared at him as a fisherman might regard a damp boot dredged with the day's haul.

As though he were a chevalier merely and always. That shouldn't have galled – for that was, precisely and always, what Bahram knew himself to be – and yet. Yet.

Bahram stood from his place at the banqueting table, and crossed the floor to the fireplace. The newly arrived chevalier saw him approach, but did not move to defend her scion, only rose from the tiles and moved around the mantle to ensure that she was not blocking the heat from the room. "Sir," she said, and Bahram had been compelled to wave away the word which had, only thirty hours ago, seemed as natural a companion as the sun or the sword.

"We are chevaliers alike." He infused the words with as much good cheer and friendliness as he could manage.

"You are Bahram Jahandar the Third," said the scion, his tone dubious and waning. He was wearing a long coat of green brocade embroidered with bronze filigree, though he wore the sleeves folded back to his elbows with the air of one for whom luxury has long ago grown tedious. "Are you not?"

"I am." Bahram smiled. "But we act according to our strengths."

The scion took in the breadth of Bahram's shoulders and decided not to dispute this statement. His chevalier watched him closely. Strands of damp hair had escaped her chignon and curled about a thin face, girlish enough that the prospect of combat seemed, for the moment, distant.

Bahram said, "how did you find the journey?"

The scion blinked at this open line of questioning, but recovered quickly. "Night falls fast this season. And you?"

The chevalier flicked a glance down at the tiles.

"Your scion?" said the young man, and if he had been speaking to anyone but Bahram, he might have gotten away with it. He was older than Bahram had first thought, nearing the end of his third decade rather than his second.

"Well enough," said Bahram, "though we had a little trouble at the gates." An understatement: his split knuckles and blackened eye could speak to that. The chevalier was still gazing at the tiles, though she managed to make it seem an honest and earnest fascination with the floor. He said, "how did you fare?"

"Well enough," said the scion.

"We asked nicely to be let in," said the chevalier. Her voice was as sweet and high as he had expected it might be: there was something of the nightingale in her tone. The fire had died down just a little, though there was still light a-plenty in this room: beautiful flint candelabra sustained nigh-eternal flames, casting a low-yellow gloom across the whole of the stone space. The night had roused itself into a rage outside, all gust and gasp against the stained glass windows, and Vahakn remained where he lay, as still as a corpse as though in sinless sleep. "And lo."

Bahram said, "I have been trying to put a House to your faces all this time and cannot: I fear Fourth."

"Fear, sir?"

"Fear," Bahram said, "only because I ought to know. I would not do you insult."

"Fourth indeed," said the scion, and extended a hand which was softer than Bahram had anticipated. His callouses were on his fingers, rather than his palms, which suggested a scholar. He still had his fingerprints, which suggested that he had spent less time on a dock or farm than others of his ilk. "Mikula."

He indicated his chevalier.

"Nedola."

He had introduced the girl by name, which boded well: Bahram had crossed paths with the scion of the First House only briefly over lunch, when the scion of the First House had passed by the Keep to examine the new arrivals and assess whether he wished to cross the threshold and begin his isolation as a member of the Selected. His shadow had beenchevalier only, even when he called to her.

Bahram had questioned to himself and himself alone the fairness of this first mandate – enter the Keep – when one of their number had resided there since he was a child, but this was the imbalance of the Selection and it had ever been so. Certainly Ezust had treated it with a brusqueness: he had eyed the four of them through the gate as though spectating at a zoo, only that green iris and the black war paint around it, and then he was away again and an uncomfortable feeling of apprehension had settled in Bahram's skin like a chill.

"A pleasure to meet you, Nedola," said Bahram, and the chevalier accepted his good tidings with a smile and a nod. He knew what they wanted to ask; he knew they were afraid to appear too eager, or ill-informed. "You are the third House to enter the Keep, just so far as I am aware."

"Third?" said Mikula, and Nedola's eyes flitted about the room in a silent headcount that took a fraction of a second: one, two.

"Third indeed," said Bahram. A man in white and a woman in black, to match this boy in green and his girl in blue. It was neat thus; it was orderly. Perhaps it would continue until they had quite run out of colours entirely, and that would be that. "The others have gone for a wander and an explore – I haven't seen them since lunchtime or thereabouts."

"We are allowed to wander?"

"No," said Bahram. He smiled. "I think that we are not."

"We must remain in here until the others arrive?" Mikula managed to strain out the words without betraying too much of the anxiety that had spiked in him at his opponent's words. "That could take weeks."

"We have passed most hours here," conceded Bahram.

"A holding pen," said Mikula, "as for livestock."

Nedola eyed him, clearly aghast at this comparison, but too mannerful a chev to speak a single chiding word in his direction whilst they kept company. The way she ordered her face reminded Bahram a little of a woman in his past; she always seemed on the verge of saying more than she had, as though she always knew a little more than she let on.

"There are some quarters in which we can wash and sleep," offered Bahram, aware that this would please them little.

Nedola said, quickly, before Mikula could shame their House much further: "then I shall appeal. My scion should withdraw, after such a journey, and rest."

"Hold fast for a few minutes more," Bahram said. Outwith the palace, the sky split open as lightning forked across it, white and perfect. The wind was beating the windows like a woman with fists bloodied. "They come about with – you know, tea, and wine, and desserts. Warm yourself before you brave the cold of this castle."

Mikula frowned. "How often?"

"Eighty minutes." Bahram paused, and then offered, in dry humour: "or thereabouts." As though it was not the very light of his existence these past days, each time that enormous door creaked open to admit fresh corpses and dead men walking.

Nedola pressed her lips together, and ran an eye from finger-tip to eyelash-edge. He had the unerring impression that he had been dissected, quite without his knowing. "As my scion prefers," she said, and cast a meaningful look towards the steps of the Paper Throne and Vahakn. When first they had entered the hall that evening, Bahram had feared that his scion's behaviour amounted to lese majeste or blasphemy; in recent hours, he was considering the prospect that the good baron intended to forfeit the Selection purposefully.

He always managed to rouse himself every eighty minutes, of course, when the dead girls came around with wine. It would have been uncanny, if it hadn't grated against Bahram's bones so. What had Amestris done so wrong? How had his sister lost the challenge to this rake?

He would learn.

"Thank you," said Mikula, and sounded quite genuine, "for this friendly welcome."

His sword was quite out of reach. Nedola's bow hand seemed to twitch, as though a shiver had run across her back. Bahram said, "of course."

There was an enormous clap of thunder, one that shook the flint candelabrum affixed above the mantle and sent the light rattling across the grey floor. Even above that sound, Bahram could hear clearly that a woman out in the courtyard had begun to scream and keen and wail, and did not stop: only went on, screaming and screaming and screaming, like the thunder had found its way into her head and would not leave.

"For the love you bear your brother, accord him this much: kill yourself after the Selection, and until then give him good counsel and keep his company and prevent his chev from killing him while he sleeps."

"My counsel is good, then?"

"He has yet to find better."

Syýa laughed, and laughed, and kept on laughing. Her fingers were curled tightly around the fragile shape of a plantling, her nails encrusted with the dirt she had raked up from the ground in finding a place to plant it.

Her headdress had been soaked and now clung tightly, showing every detail of her skull. Kohl had streaked about her eyes as though he had interrupted her in weeping, but when she smiled he could see that it had smeared across her teeth as well, so often had she laughed today. On any other occasion, Ezust might have been concerned: she had kept her own company the whole day long, and he knew for a fact that she had a paltry sense of humour. Tonight, however, he only slung his coat over her head, and stared at the orange lights which had lit up two windows of the Keep behind them, like the eyes of a great beast lurking in the dark. "You'll catch your death."

"Do you think I'd be sainted?"

"I would see to it that you never were. Come, Sy."

His sister resisted yet. She had a little pile of rocks beside her, stacked like a tiny cairn: a tomb for a mouse. "Where is Santora?"

"Creeping about, no doubt."

Syýa nodded. She leaned forward – she had drenched her skirts, and smeared them all with soil, so steadfastly had she been at work in this patch of her demesne as though ignorant of the storm at work all around her – and placed the cutting into the hole she had carved in the garden, packing dirt around it to keep it anchored in its place in the ground. She wrenched her brother's coat from his hands, and covered the plant with it, and weighed down its edges with the rocks she had accumulated, so that it rose and flapped with the wind but could not be lifted away.

She said, "how many now?"

"Three."

She rose, the familiar sound of coins ringing out as she did so. She brushed at the dirt on her skirts, and only managed to rub it further into the material. "Nine, and Three, and..."

"Four," Ezust said. Badb had admitted them in about ten minutes ago; they had slunk into the reception hall like two drowned rats, looking unkempt and recalcitrant. They would, he suspected, prove little trouble. Amusement, perhaps: the Fourth House had historically produced decent chevaliers and uninspiring scions, enough to bulk out the Selection without providing much by way of competition.

His sister leaned on him like an invalid as they began the short walk back towards the temple. She had been drenched through to the skin; she shook a little, as though she had taken cold already. "Do they look like much?"

"Not like much at all."

The Third House had the decency to put across a strong front, but such was to be expected from that backwater. It was the Ninth House which disconcerted him, and strongly so: no sooner had Morghon made up his mind that the Selection should take place than they had arrived at the doors of the keep, before the First Lord had even grasped the opportunity to man the battlements and reinforce the defences of the castle. Fifteen days they had resided now in the castle, and fifteen days they had eluded Ezust's assessment. The scion seemed a lordling, his chevalier a savage; they avoided each other for the most part, even as they separately catalogued the opened sections of the keep. Morghon had, it seemed, been correct: they were kept docile with the illusion of rebellion thus.

"Sixth should be here be now," said Syýa thoughtfully. "If only to keep me company in keeping you company." She glanced up at the sky, as another bolt of lightning curled up the edge of the horizon as a piece of paper curls while burning. It illuminated her face, her big dark eyes and her bloodied lips. "Do you know who they are sending?"

Sepideh. "One of their girls," said Ezust. "One of their chevaliers."

"Swanskin?"

He curled his lip, and said nothing.

The thunder was chasing the lightning, but it was a close race: it rumbled across the world now, and seemed for a moment to be a live thing in the sky roaring from behind the charcoal clouds.

Syýa said, "is that Santora screaming?"

He scoffed. "A chevalier does not scream."

"No," his sister agreed. The sky rattled over them. The screams keened ever higher. "I suppose they don't."