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To Gideon Nav, there’s nothing like the ring of steel on steel. She loves wine, she loves women, she loves sleep, but her true love is the sword. Even as a child, growing up an orphan…living at the palace was no hardship, her chores were always reasonable and her caretakers kind, but every spare moment she had was spent lingering on the edges of the yards, watching pages and squires and knights study the sword and lance and bow, and she’d always been determined to join them someday. Now that she’s here in the yards in the sunlight, legal and true, a knight in her own right, she can’t help but think back to her childhood, the nights she used to sneak in here.
There used to be a girl. Gideon always thought they were similar in age, but she never met anyone like her in training. She always wore a full face of necromancer’s makeup, and a proper necromancer she was—the girl occasionally pulled out a dagger, but she mostly fought Gideon with blood and bone, appearing like a ghost on moonless nights. The girl—she never gave Gideon her name, only allowed herself to be called Nine after weeks of badgering—she would have made a great knight, Gideon’s sure, and she must have been lesser nobility at least, to be garbed like a true necromancer and brimming with talent even in her youth. Nine had a powerful destiny ahead of her, not like Gideon. Well-treated as Gideon was at the palace, proper knight’s training was expensive, and without any thanatic ability of her own she never dreamed of being sponsored, and yet. At the age of twelve she was pulled from her serving quarters and put in front of Knight-Master Crux who examined her, tested her, even dueled her briefly before throwing up his hands as if in defeat and assigning her quarters for a page. Nine years later—nine years of study in weaponry, mathematics, strategy, and more, nine years of few friends and occasional lovers, nine years of mysterious sponsorship—Gideon stands here in the yard, finally knighted and prepared to go wherever the King so desires. It turns out that what the King desires is a new cavalier to the Princess Harrowhark Nonagesimus.
There’s no lack of honor in being the personal swordsperson to the heir, but it is a little…boring. And frustrating. Princess Harrowhark is beautiful but cruel, self-assured to the point of arrogance, and never misses an opportunity to look down her nose at Gideon, an attitude for which Gideon has little patience. She also hasn’t given Gideon any opportunity to put her skills to use—the Princess is supposedly a great necromancer, but Gideon’s never seen her work and she’s never asked to train. It’s wasteful, when Gideon could be out on the front lines, to hang around the palace and spar with other palace knights, especially when she can’t serve as faux-cavalier to any necromancing squires now that she’s been bound to the Princess. As disrespectful as Gideon may be to her scowling charge in her head, she’s always tightly courteous in public, addressing the Princess by title and no more. Unfortunately, Harrowhark doesn’t give Gideon anywhere near the same respect.
“Griddle,” she starts one evening out of nowhere. Gideon doesn’t acknowledge her charge. “Griddle. Hey. Gimme your sword.”
“Excuse me?” Gideon’s proud of her cavalier’s blade. It may not be her best weapon, but it’s solid, well-made, and she can hold her own. Harrowhark would probably drop it.
“Sword. Let me see it.” She holds out her hand and doesn’t drop it, actually, when Gideon reluctantly hands it over, no—she holds it like a burgeoning swordswoman, like she knows how to hold the sword but not use it. She examines it, turning it over and over in her hands, then looks at Gideon with the most neutral expression Gideon’s ever seen. “Get a better one.”
“Excuse me?” There really isn’t anything else to say to that, at least, nothing polite enough. Fuck you, would be what Gideon would prefer to be saying. Harrowhark sighs, like she’s the one being maligned here.
“You’re dismissed, Griddle. I’ll take care of it myself.” Gideon gapes at the Princess, but accepts the sword back into her hands and walks away having no idea what just happened. When she tries to ask the next day, Harrowhark just tilts her head, looks confused, and mocks Gideon’s intellect and sanity. She doesn’t try again, and doesn’t see any sign of the almost-normal-human version of Harrowhark who’d held her sword again for several weeks.
Gideon follows the same routine every day. She wakes before dawn and heads to the yards, where she warms up for the day and spars against any available knights or particularly enterprising squires. She runs through form routines with the cavalier’s blade, the broadsword, and whatever polearm is on hand before retreating to wash and eat and arrive at the Princess’s door by the time she’s ready to breakfast herself. The yards are sparsely populated this morning, though, and just as the sun begins to rise Gideon turns with her blade and is confronted with the strangest sight, Princess Harrowhark in squire’s leathers and necromancer’s face, holding a cavalier’s blade. She holds a finger to her lips which Gideon eventually acknowledges with a slow nod, and takes up a stance inviting a spar. The Princess, she’s…bad. Gideon duels her as she would a squire, but even with that allowance she loses quickly, again and again, before Gideon calls the spar ended. Without thinking, she grabs Harrowhark by the arm and drags her to the perimeter fence.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she hisses, before dropping the Princess’s arm like it burns. Instead of berating her, though, the Princess holds out the blade hilt-first towards Gideon. The lack of speech almost has Gideon wondering if this is the Princess at all—perhaps she was mistaken, the Princess Gideon guards would never be so silent and calm. As soon as Gideon accepts the blade, the…the necromancer squire simply turns and exits the yard. But if she wasn’t the Princess, what silence was she requesting? Gideon finishes her routine and brings the second blade back to her rooms with her, and when she unsheathes it she gasps. It’s perfectly balanced for her, even more than her current blade, and by the hilt it shows the mark of the Crow, the most expensive and skilled weaponsmiths in all the land. She sits on her bed admiring the sword, even running through a couple forms, until the absolute last moment, begrudgingly leaving it behind. Gideon will keep the blade in her rooms until she can return it to the Crow; there’s no way she can ever afford a sword like that. The Princess frowns when she sees Gideon, but that’s normal.
The necromancer squire returns the next morning, with dual short swords and a beleaguered look. “Where’s your new sword?” Gideon is fairly confident the necromancer squire is the Princess, the voice is so similar, but the behavior is so bizarre.
“Pr-My lady,” Gideon corrects when the squire glares, “I can’t afford to own such a blade. I would have brought it back today, if I knew you’d be here.” The squire stomps her foot.
“You’re an idiot. It’s a gift, Nav. Are you too stupid to understand the concept of gifts? I can explain it in small words if you’d like.” She pulls out her swords, holds one out towards Gideon and the other in front of her face. “Start carrying it. You’re going to be the best fucking cavalier ever known if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.” Gideon has an indignant reply on her lips, that Harrowhark never wants to train and she needs to learn to work with her necromancer to be that, but the squire comes at her and her annoyance shifts to swordwork. Dual swords is a rare style, not used by any knight or necromancer Gideon can think of, and yet the Princess excels with them. The cavalier duel from the previous day made Gideon cocky; she’s easily defeated when her blade is captured by the squire’s two and flipped away. By the time Gideon retrieves her sword, the squire—the Princess, for sure—is already gone. She does hang up her old sword for the new one, though, and thinks she sees a quirk to the Princess’s lips on her arrival for morning escort. Not a smile, but something.
A new routine is settled as the weather grows warmer. Gideon still wakes before dawn (a dawn which comes earlier and earlier) and goes to the yard, but instead of picking up a spar with whichever knight wants to try their luck, she spars exclusively with the Princess. Once she’s able to defeat the dual short swords, the Princess starts bringing a curved sword, then strangely curved daggers. Metal wheels with blades affixed, an oversized kitchen knife, a stick with spikes on one end, Gideon meets and fights a bevy of weapons with her cavalier’s blade that she’d never even learned about in class before she recognizes that the solstice has passed and the weather’s growing cold again. Her relationship with the Princess has improved, too—names are still called, rudeness still exhibited, but Gideon no longer feels like she’s grimacing through the whole day, her cordial politeness is instead mostly answered in kind. And yet.
“Why don’t you ever raise, when we fight?” The training yards are a burial ground, so it’s not for lack of supply. Harrowhark—the Lady Squire, as Gideon tries to think of her in this guise—stops drinking from her waterskin abruptly, and stares.
“Skeletons freak you out.”
“What?” Gideon laughs. “My lady, I’m a fucking cavalier. To the Princess Harrowhark. She’s a bone mage. How could I possibly be freaked out by skeletons?”
“You’re asking me,” she mutters. She’s looking at Gideon with newly calculating eyes, though. “You don’t raise either, though.”
“You don’t know?” Gideon feels taken aback. Everyone knows. “I’m dry. Not a single drop. Can’t feel anything.”
“But you’re so good with the blade?”
“For fuck’s sake, you subscribe to that nonsense too?”
“It’s not nonsense, all the best swordspeople are that way because they focus their magic towards—”
“Self-manipulation of thalergy, yes, my lady, I know the concept.” Gideon’s eyes roll. “Nevertheless, here I am.” She hops off the fence and raises her blade again. “Ready for the next round?” The Princess is shaking her head though.
“No. I need to—I’ll see you later, Gideon.” When she arrives at the Princess’s door for breakfast, the handmaiden tells Gideon that Harrowhark is already in the library with plans to be there all day, so she can have the day off. Only then does Gideon realize the most unsettling thing about the morning—the Princess has never used her bare name.
The Lady Squire doesn’t show the next morning, or the next, and Gideon finds herself bored dueling against the same weapons she herself has mastered. The Princess emerges again, but quieter, with a lot of long stares in Gideon’s direction. The days grow shorter. One evening, though, Gideon escorts the Princess to the Bone Halls, and when she turns to leave and stand guard outside Harrowhark grabs her shoulder.
“Stay.” Gideon does. She stands to the side and watches fascinated as the Princess animates skeletons to fight each other, reconfigures them into new shapes, creates new beings out of bone and flesh. Far from freaked out, Gideon is entranced by the power Harrowhark exhibits. As the bones swirl Gideon’s fingers itch for her blade, to fight against and alongside these constructs as a cavalier does, but the moment she grabs for the hilt everything falls. The Princess turns to her, flushed and smiling hazily. “Not freaked out, then.”
“Someday you’ll tell me where the fuck you got that idea, Princess.” For the first time, they share a laugh.
“What does it look like? If you can’t see?”
“Beautiful,” Gideon blurts out without even thinking. It is. She is. The magic is—even without the lines that she knows in theory are the connections, the points of power everyone except Gideon can see with enough effort—even without any of that, it’s all beautiful. The Princess blushes, and grins up at Gideon.
“See you in the morning,” she whispers when Gideon drops her off at her rooms. And she does. The Lady Squire returns, and more than that, in the evening the Princess has Gideon accompany her to the Halls and actually fight with her. By the time Gideon hits her mattress that night, she’s tired all the way down to her soul, but wakes up feeling satisfied if sore, and does it all again. The new routine makes Gideon feel even stronger and more durable than she was before, and the slumber even more restful, until she wakes abruptly the night of the solstice to see the Lady Squire climbing in her window.
“The fuck, Princess.” Gideon tries to shove her out, half-asleep and impolite, and Harrowhark—Harrow—cackles, rolling out of the way as Gideon taught her.
“Come out, Griddle, I have something to show you. It’s Midwinter!”
“Midwinter doesn’t mean my door stopped working,” Gideon mumbles, and she laughs again, bright as the moon, before scampering out the window. “Can I use the door, my lady?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, my cavalier?”
“Asleep.” Gideon looks out the window and sees the delicate staircase of bone, the platform keeping Harrow on her level. “That’s not staying, right?”
“After all this time you still think me such an amateur, I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t know it was just because you’re so stupid.” Gideon reflects as she dresses, how far they’ve come in a year that the Princess’s insults are warm instead of cold, that her beauty is tempting instead of offputting, that Harrow grabs for her hand as they walks down the bone steps together instead of walking a step ahead. No torches are left lit the night of the solstice, and seeing the moon shine down on the fresh-turned earth of the training yard Gideon has a sudden revelation, stopping dead in her tracks.
“Nine?” Harrow turns and claps giddily.
“You are truly so stupid, cavalier of my heart.” Gideon blushes, and Harrow shapes some fresh bone into stools, beckoning Gideon to sit. “I’ve been thinking—“
“Hope it didn’t hurt too much.”
“Hush. You’re so disrespectful, honestly, Griddle, how you made it to be knighted is beyond me.” Harrow’s hair is too long, it needs to be cut. Long hair is a weakness in battle. Gideon will tell the handmaid in the morning. Suddenly, Gideon feels like she’s been poked in the eye, and her attention swings back to grinning Harrow. “Good, excellent. This should work then.”
“What should work, dire mistress?” Harrow rolls her eyes.
“Cross your legs, like you’re meditating. I know you know the theory, all the pages learn it. Close your eyes and breathe. Whatever you feel, just keep breathing.” Gideon does as commanded, and focuses on Harrow’s muttering. “Samhain would have been better for this, of course, but there’s no harm trying now.” Gideon feels…something. It feels like magic, which is nonsense, because Gideon can’t feel magic, but it’s pressing on her bones, in her hair, behind her eyes. “Okay, open.” Gideon does, and sees Harrow recoil and close her own eyes. “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck that’s weird, hang on, close again.”
“Princess. Whatever you’re doing. Is this dangerous?” Harrow doesn’t reply, but Gideon feels the magic moving. “You know my entire job is to keep you out of danger?”
“Yes, idiot, shut up, I’ve almost got it.”
“Princess…”
“Okay! Open your eyes now!” What Gideon sees when she opens her eyes is…well, it’s overwhelming. The soil of the yard is teeming with light, the air is full of it. The light, the energy, the magic, it’s buried in the core of Harrow’s constructs and in Gideon’s own hands, lines of yellow and purple and green and blue, and Harrow herself…Gideon thought Harrow was beautiful before, but the way magic bends and swirls around her like a gown, crowns her like a queen, she looks…there really aren’t words. And she’s smiling. “Happy Midwinter, Gideon Nav.”
“Do you—” Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been shouting. “Do you see like this all the time?” Harrow shakes her head.
“Fuck, could you imagine? But this is…it’s how I know where things go. Watch.” She waves her hands just so, and Gideon sees how the light guides bone into place to turn their stools into a bench, how the colors blend and lock together. In the skeleton Harrow raises she sees the joints where it’s held together, not made of bone but of energy. “Most people can learn to see echos of this, after a lot of meditation. It’s the other thing that makes for great skill with the blade, supposedly, being able to see where to cut to release thanergy or thalergy from the enemy. But you do it all on your own.” The look on Harrow’s face, so mystified and approving, the magic around her, it’s all too much, and Gideon leans forward and takes her face in her hands. Harrow doesn’t move away—instead she tilts her head up, and meets Gideon’s lips with her own.
Even with her eyes closed, Gideon feels the magic as she drops one hand to rest on Harrow’s shoulder. Harrow wraps her arms around Gideon’s neck, and her kiss…it’s sweet, it’s soft, it’s everything that neither Harrow nor Gideon have been a day in their lives. Gideon leans back and feels Harrow’s hands moving and suddenly there’s a support behind her, and Gideon laughs but pulls Harrow closer all the same. It’s intoxicatingly heady, the feel of Harrow’s hands in her hair and tongue on her lips and the magic, all the magic, Gideon’s hands slide down to whisper against Harrow’s chest and she gasps. The gear they’re wearing is too covering, too solid, there’s no skin to be found but that doesn’t stop hands from roaming and kisses growing bolder, deeper, darker, and when Harrow bites down on her lower lip Gideon falls back completely. Gideon, of course, bites back, because she’s never been in a fight she hasn’t done her best to win, but suddenly the bone bench collapses and both princess and cavalier fall to the ground amidst the rattling of bones. Harrow is, of course, the first to start laughing, raucous and reckless. Gideon’s head hurts, and it takes a few moments before she notices that the magic-sense is gone. Harrow’s rubbing her head, too.
“All right, my cavalier, time to get you to bed. That backlash isn’t going to be pretty for you.” Gideon takes her offered hand and gets to her feet, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t feel like she should be so casual after kissing her charge, princess, and necromancer, even if she can make an excuse for the magic. “Oh, fuck’s sake, Griddle.” Harrow sighs and then kisses her again, and Gideon thaws. The staircase under Gideon’s window collapsed as well, of course, but Harrow rebuilds it quickly and walks all the way to the edge of the window with Gideon before releasing her hand. “Be responsible in the morning, Gideon Nav. It’s Midwinter.”
Gideon falls asleep with the memory of magic on her lips.