Gideon the Ninth

“I still don’t get how this whole test is meant to work.”

The Reverend Daughter gave this consideration, for once. “All right. Let me—hmm. You know that a bone construct is animated by a necromantic theorem.”

“No way! I assumed you just thought super hard about bones until they happened.”

Ignoring this, Harrow continued: “This particular construct is animated by multiple theorems, all—woven together, in a sense. That enables it to do things normal constructs can’t possibly.”

“Like regenerate.”

“Yes. The way to destroy it is to unpick that tapestry, Nav, to pull on each thread in turn—in order—until the web gives way. Which would take me ten seconds, if I only had it at arm’s length.”

“Huh,” said Gideon, unwillingly starting to get it. “So I unpick it for you.”

“Only with my assistance. You are not a necromancer. You cannot see thanergetic signatures. I have to find the weak points, but I have to do it through your eyes, which is made infinitely more difficult by you waving a sword around the whole time while your brain—yells at me.”

Gideon opened her mouth to say My brain is always yelling at you, but was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door.

“Winnowing,” she said. “I’m a fool. It wants the wheat from among the chaff—or the signal from the noise, if you like. But why? Why can’t I just do it myself?”

She swayed lightly, and swabbed a pink line across her face with one sleeve. Her cultist paint was looking distinctly sepia, but she looked elated, grimly satisfied somehow.

“I now know how to complete this trial,” she said meditatively. “And we’ll do it—if I work out the connection and rethink what I know about possession theory, I can do it. Knowing what to work on was the battle, and now I know. But first, Griddle, I’m afraid I have to pass out.”

And she crumpled neatly back onto the floor. Pure sentiment found Gideon kicking out one leg to catch her. She ended up lightly punting her necromancer on the shoulder but assumed that it was the thought that counted.

“The hell,” said Gideon, “was that?”

“It’s the test.” Harrow’s lips were pink where she had bitten off the paint. She seemed to be having trouble swallowing, and she was staring right through her cavalier. She said unsteadily, “You’re the test.”

“Um—”

“Frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, hippocampus—I fought with them all inside you,” she said. “I’m not equipped to deal with a living spirit still attached to a nervous system. You’re so noisy. It took me five minutes to peel away the volume just to see. And the pain is so much worse than skeleton feedback—your spirit rendered me deaf! Your whole body makes noise when you fight! Your temporal lobe—God—I have such a headache!”

This entire speech was incoherent, but the bottom-line realisation was humiliating. Heat rose rapidly up Gideon’s neck. “You can control my body,” she said. “You can read my thoughts.”

“No. Not remotely.” That was a relief, until it was followed up with: “If only I could. The moment I get a handle on even one of your senses, I’m overwhelmed by another.”

“You are banned from squatting in my lobes and my hippocampus. I don’t want you pushing all the furniture around in there.”