Читаем Gideon the Ninth полностью

Six necromancers had tried to raise them, singly or in concert, simultaneously or sequentially. Gideon had squatted in a corner and watched the parade. In the beginning a group of them had opened their own veins in a bid to tempt the early hunger of the ghosts. That period ended only when the teens, mad with rage at the inadequacy of only Isaac’s blood, both started stabbing at Jeannemary’s arm. They stood screaming at each other wordlessly, corseting belts above each other’s elbows to make the veins stand out, until Camilla took the knives from their hands and began dispensing rubber bandages. Then they held each other, knelt, and wept.

Harrow did not open herself up. She walked the perimeter like a wraith, measuring her steps for Palamedes to draw by, swaying minutely with what Gideon knew was exhaustion. Nor did Coronabeth spill her blood: she only drew close to the work to pull Ianthe’s hair away from her face, or to take a tiny knife from the twins’ bags to replace the one her sister was using. They had both come from their beds without bothering to dress, and hence were wearing astonishingly flimsy nightgowns, the only solace of the night. The air was full of chalk and ink and blood and strong light from the electric torches that the Sixth had rigged up.

The Sixth had been painfully useful. Palamedes, wearing a scruffy bedrobe, had put up lights and marked the ladder with bits of tape at obscure places. He had stained the fluff on his dowdy old slippers pink as he walked quietly among the bodies, saying excuse me once when he stepped too close to Abigail’s arm. He held the light up for Camilla as she sketched the whole unlovely scene on a big sheet of white flimsy, from the side, from the top, from their feet. He shed his scruffy bedrobe to reveal button-up pyjamas when Dulcinea drifted in wearing only a short shirt and trousers too big for her, and wrapped the robe around her shoulders without prompting. Then he went back to work.

A tableau of magicians and their guardians revolved around the corpses. Books were hauled out of pockets or the insides of coats, read, abandoned. People would go in, work, leave, be replaced, return, stay, leave as more of the inhabitants of Canaan House arrived. Harrowhark worked for nearly two hours before fainting abruptly into a puddle of congealing blood, at which point Gideon had removed her from the scene: upon waking she shadowed the Sixth instead, much to the ill-concealed annoyance of Camilla, who seemed to regard all incursions on Palamedes’s personal space as probable assassination attempts. For his part, Palamedes talked quietly and briskly to Harrow as though to a colleague he had known all his life.

The Third princesses worked like musicians who couldn’t help but return for the encore: a spell, retirement, another, another. They knelt side by side, holding hands, and for all that Ianthe had made fun of her sister’s intellect Corona never broke a sweat. It was Ianthe who ran wet with blood and perspiration. At one point she beckoned Naberius forward and, in a feat that nearly brought up Gideon’s dinner (again), ate him: she bit off a hunk of his hair, she chewed off a nail, she brought her incisors down on the heel of his hand. He submitted to all this without noise. Then she lowered her head and got back to work, sparks skittering off her hands like fire off a newly beaten sword, every so often spitting out a stray hair. Gideon had to stare pretty hard at skimpy nighties to get over that one.

The horrid Isaac worked, but Gideon didn’t like to look at him. He was sobbing with his entire sad teen face, mouth, eyes, nose. Dulcinea reached out as though to join the fray until Protesilaus drew her back with a hand as inexorable as it was meaty. The revolving parade of necromancer after necromancer went on, until just Palamedes was left; then he slumped as though his strings had been cut, blindly reaching for the bottle of water Camilla held out, pulling long gasps of liquid.

“Coming down,” said a voice from the top of the ladder.

Down the ladder came the jaundiced, faded cavalier of the Eighth House, dressed in his leathers with his sword at his hip; he helped his uncle, who was white and silver and alight with distaste, to the bottom. The Eighth adept primly rolled up his alabaster sleeves and skirted the corpses, considering, licking two fingers as though to turn a page.

“I will try to find them,” he said, in his strangely deep and sorrowful voice.

Harrow said, “Don’t waste your time, Octakiseron. They’re gone.”

The Eighth necromancer inclined his head. The hair that fell over his shoulders was the funny, ashy white you got when a fire burned away; a headband kept it scraped back and away from his sharp and spiritual face.

“You will pardon me,” he said, “if I do not take advice on spirits from a bone magician.”

Harrow’s face slammed shut. “I pardon you,” she said.

“Good. Now we need not speak again,” said the Eighth necromancer. “Brother Colum.”