Gideon sat slumped among the skeletons, having given up on trying not to look bored. It was fooling no one. This whole plan wasn't going to work. She was an idiot for ever thinking it could, that some pious posing might get her a proper sword. A glance at the altar, where Harrow was performing the Pelleamena and Priamhark puppet show, proved that nothing could be set right ever again. Yet Gideon had suffered sermons for the past two weeks in that absurd hope.
Well, today would be the last one. Seriously, she should just have broken into the storage and helped herself to a sword. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission and all that, as there was no chance of either. But Aiglamene would be pissed and Gideon couldn't exactly hide a sword from her sword master.
One of her escape plans finally working was a better fantasy. They'd give her a sword in the Cohort – she could hardly cut down the Necrolord Prime's enemies without one. She'd be away from here at long last. Contemplating that prospect would get her through the service.
O
Later that day, Aiglamene stomped onto the training field. Gideon quit her push-ups and leapt to her feet to make her case again. She was thirteen, she'd had her final growth spurt, the training sword was bullshit, she wanted something of her own. Aiglamene would call her a baby, but she was as sympathetic an ear as Gideon would get on the Ninth.
But Gideon had barely opened her mouth when Aiglamene cut in, "Spare me your whining. Our lady has graciously acquiesced to your request."
"Wait, Nonagesimus is dead? Who's this gracious replacement?"
"Lady Harrowhark is gracious, you imbecile."
All evidence suggested otherwise, but Gideon knew better than to push her luck as Aiglamene pulled a folded piece of flimsy from her pocket. It was a filled in requisition form. Harrow's name was scrawled at the bottom, spiky and black, like her soul. (Gideon was working on perfecting her imitation of the signature.)
There didn't even seem to be a catch. Sure, the sword would be added to her debt, but that wasn't a real number anyway.
O
The sword was still boxed, unused. It was thirty years old, but on the mouldering corpse of the Ninth, Aiglamene had found her something new. Gideon would have hugged her, if that wasn't such a patently terrible idea. She hugged the box instead.
Aiglamene was certain to be rolling her eyes, but who cared? This was the closest Gideon had ever come to having all her dreams fulfilled.
She lifted her prize out of its box, which still belonged to the Ninth. Scabbard and sword were hers now. (Technically, she was indebted to the Ninth, so Harrow might argue that her property, by transitive property, also belonged to the Ninth, but fuck that noise.)
She unsheathed the blade. Shiny. Overwhelmed by it all, she took position, to test the weight and feel. The two-hander sat perfectly in her grasp. Her stance also had to be perfect, because Aiglamene offered no criticism. She locked the sword back into its scabbard and rested it on her shoulder.
Gideon grinned. Next, she'd tell her mum all about it. Not only was the sword amazing, it also offered a new topic of conversation. If her mother hadn't died before arrival – and who could blame her – death by boredom would have been a real worry.
O
A few days later, Gideon was practising her diagonal cuts when Harrow appeared on a walkway. "And here I was hoping that you might have at least tried mending your ways and joined the fold of the Locked Tomb," she said while descending on Gideon.
Gideon took a step back. Having already killed a good part of the Ninth nobility, she didn't want to be within a sword's stroke of murdering another. (She'd then have to do in the great-aunts too, because at that point she'd better finish the job.) "If you really thought that, then you're completely delusional."
Harrow sighed dramatically. "Hoped, Griddle, is not the same as thought. I expected you to abuse our generosity and squander the token of faith placed in you. You are you, after all."
"I'd hate not to live up to your expectations."
"And yet, however low I set them, you always find a way to disappoint. Are you at least enjoying your new toy?"
Gideon would be enjoying it rather more if she could swing it without cutting Harrow down to size. She was small enough as it was. "It's a weapon, not a toy. I could really hurt someone with it."
"Yourself, probably," Harrow said, steadfastly refusing to take the hint.
"I do like it though." Like was not nearly strong enough a word, but she wasn't going to tell Harrow she loved something. Gideon held the sword as a horizontal barrier between them. She'd polished it to a high sheen. Even in the Drearburh gloom, it could have served as a mirror, if Harrow needed to fix her shitty skull paint. "What do you think?"
Harrow looked disgusted. "It's awful." She turned on her heel and swept off, leaving Gideon mercifully alone again. The word she'd been looking for was surely awesome, but then, what did Harrow know about swords?
The End