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Gideon had her trapped this time.
It seemed foolish to Harrow now that she had believed it to be her father that was coming to her room. But she had heard those footfalls, the way the heel struck, the cadence of the steps, the utter disregard for treading upon squeaky floorboards, and could not have named her visitor, let alone have guessed it was Gideon. Even the way she filled the doorway was as if a stranger was in her skin, using those tea-colored eyes to bore foreign holes in her. It had been strange enough that, upon catching the sight of that ridiculous hair over her shoulder, she had broken off her prayers completely to stumble to her feet. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to hide in or under that her reach could not penetrate. So, Harrow merely stood there, straight-backed and naked from the waist up, as if Gideon were only there to receive blessings and there was nothing amiss.
"Harrow, what the fuck was that?" Gideon demanded. Her voice was low, even though every other living soul on the compound was in the chapel praying fervently for the cleansing of the transgressions witnessed earlier today.
Harrow said, "I would think you were conversant with the concept of a belting, but perhaps you've hit your head one too many times.”
"No, fuck you. Put that smart fucking mouth away and tell me what the fuck you think you're doing."
In a series of decisive steps, she was in Harrow’s room completely, the door swinging shut with a quiet, practiced click of the latch without even a muted thunk of it against the frame. Harrow did not labor under the misapprehension that her room could be described as anything more generous than compact, but Gideon being in the room with her made her all the more aware of just how ill-suited it was to more than one body. Moving around each other would be more negotiation of space than acts of free will. She pointedly did not think about negotiations going sour.
Silence oozed between them, unspooling from their unbroken eye contact. Gideon wasn’t even taking potshots at Harrow’s near complete nakedness and, lord, Harrow almost wished she would. Something normal. Anything that was legibly and sufficiently Gideon to work from. Regardless, she crossed her arms over her chest to give herself some form of reprieve. Not that Gideon didn’t see it all earlier in the chapel, but it was different in her own room.
Apparently growing tired of this standoff, Gideon said, “Cut the shit. What’s the point of it? You didn’t need to tell them that I got the idea about the gully from you, and you sure as hell didn’t need to take my lashes for me. I hope you're not operating under the assumption that I'll trust you that easily, because that isn't happening.”
"That's your prerogative. It won't affect how I’ve decided to behave." For the first time in years, clarity bolstered her. Even Gideon could not move her from it.
"And how are you behaving, huh? Are you missing some requirements for sainthood?"
Harrow bristled. "I feel it's painfully obvious, if you would bend your neglected faculties to even the lowest effort form of comparing and contrasting."
Gideon turned away from her abruptly, bringing her hand up to clasp her face in that curious tilt of hers. Those shoulders worked restlessly as if desperate to be of use, the ease of action without thought, the tangible knowledge of a defenestratable body near at hand straining their fibers. Almost as an afterthought, she batted two of Harrow's—really Priamhark's—books onto the floor, but her nose wrinkled at the way they tumbled and flopped.
"What's obvious here is a clumsy attempt at a long con," said Gideon. "The beginnings of one, anyway. The problem is that you jumped the gun. You're coming on way too strong and you blew your chance. All you have to show for it is fifty lashes and—" she gestured down at Harrow's rolled up trousers and bleeding, rice-dimpled knees, "—whatever it is you're doing here."
"Praying in penance," Harrow supplied simply. Of course, Gideon wouldn't recognize it. They had learned early that no prayer, not in joy or in contemplation or in punishment, could reach Gideon's heart.
There was an indescribable and momentary lapse in Gideon's demeanor, but she gathered it back up and away. "Whatever. Giving me that lead was way too much, way too fast. Fuck, it’s so unbelievably overeager for you that I'm surprised I even decided to try it."
Harrow tilted her head, intrigued. "Why did you?"
Gideon's distrust of her was pure self-interested logic, as steadily fueled by Harrow's own hand as the hatred that burned beside it. As much as Harrow had debased her, called her stupid, rendered so many of her escape attempts to so much scrap, Gideon had a wicked cunning that could not safely be ignored.
"Truthfully?" asked Gideon.
"I think the truth is a fine payment for this ongoing violation of my modesty, yes."
Gideon gestured dismissively in the direction of Harrow’s wardrobe, pointedly not looking at her crossed arms. "I'm not stopping you from putting something on."
"Oh? Were you so eager to put a shirt on after you were served your lashings in the past?"
This touched a nerve. Gideon swerved away again, shoulders still working hard under her shirt until the joints popped. The shirt she wore was not so thin or so tight that Harrow could see the layers of scars her father had left on her, but she had witnessed enough that her memory laid a map of them across the topography of her muscles. Harrow supposed they were even now. Tit for tit, as Gideon herself might put it, given a better day, a better mood.
Gideon swore to empty air. She rounded back on Harrow, even closer than before.
"Don't scatter the rice," Harrow said.
"Fuck the shitty rice."
"They'll know you came here, which I imag—"
"God, fuck you. Let me fucking talk," spat Gideon.
Harrow took a steadying breath and nodded her head once, chin raised. She tried to stand straighter still, but her spine and ribs clamored like they had been flensed, their delicate tissues yawning into the sticky air. She was tacky with blood and sweat, rippling with riotous streaks of pain and numbness that, for her trouble, maintained her clarified state.
No satisfaction touched Gideon’s face as she said, "So I did go out to the gully, yeah. I went expecting one of your traps, naturally, so I was prepared to fight my way through any nasty surprises you might have left for me. Did you really not leave me any?"
Harrow shook her head.
"Well, I didn't trust that. Not a single bit. I left that gully alone for a bit then tried again. All of you got me trained so good, you know. I got a little further every time I went out there, but every time I came back because the lack of—of anything reeking of your tricks freaked me out. I hope you're so proud of that, by the way. But then I finally climbed up over the ridge today and saw the road. Actual passing cars. Perfect for hitchhiking." Her voice broke a little and she turned away yet again. If Harrow had ever thought she had broken Gideon's heart before, it did not compare to the here, to the now. It wasn't even her doing this time. "Of course, I'd gone out one too many times. Crux was waiting for me. And here we are, Harrow."
"Here we are," she confirmed.
"Your turn," said Gideon. When she'd gotten herself put back together, she cut a fiercer glare than any fury had lent her before. L'Ange déchu wished he were Gideon. Heaven or the rebellion thereof could not have created the woman that stood before her now. "You told Crux, didn't you?"
"I didn't." It was surprising how easily the truth came. But the ease would not bear out.
"It's not fair when you lie, Harrowhark."
"I'm not. Not this time" She shrugged. "Honestly, I wasn't even sure you even went to look at where the gully led. I never saw you leave—and believe me, I kept my eyes open for it."
"Yeah, I bet. You just love to watch, don’t you? No. I made a different approach from the—"
"North?"
Gideon said nothing.
"Crux would have seen you if you went around that way." Oh, she was just spilling everything now. Was it the aftermath of her beating? It had been a long time since she misbehaved badly enough to warrant that, and she had never taken fifty before, but then again, she had taken punishments for the both of them. "You couldn't have known since his main room faces the other way, but there's a little nook that he reads scripture in where the sun hits year-round."
She had never known Gideon to be so still, not even the one and only time they exchanged words about their mothers. She didn't even seem to be breathing.
Then, all at once, Gideon's calloused hands we're around Harrow's throat—oh, oh how familiar, and there Gideon was, half walking wound and half unassailable monument, all a glorious misfit for this place—and she came crashing down on the bare floor with a howl. She felt the scattering rice pierce deep into the ruins of her back, felt them and the mean grain of the wood scrape unforgivingly against them and the old scars, felt Gideon straddle her, felt the hundred or more pounds of difference between them. Most of all she felt the crush of her hands, the strain of them as Gideon kept her face out of reach of Harrow's hands. But Harrow wasn't clawing this time; they weren't preteens anymore and she knew she lacked the reach now. She jammed the heels of her palms into Gideon's wrists, praying with all her heretical heart for a lucky snap, a sprain, something.
Oh, beloved, anything at all.
"Why now?" cried Gideon. All the concern for not drawing attention fled her, replaced with rage and anguish and something astonishingly young. The muscles of her forearms seemed to thrum with her voice. "Why are you telling me all this shit now? After all of these godforsaken years? You've fucking dogged me, torn me down, stepped all over me, lorded everything over me, and after twenty years of that, you just decide for no reason out of nowhere to start giving me your little hints? Are you bored watching me struggle? Are you so bored you're taking my punishments for me too?"
Black welled up at the edges of her vision and the fight went out of her with every word that punctured the very base of her being. She let her arms fall limp as she could will them. She had chosen to live once before, but that was before the future started disgorging all it had in store for her. If anyone deserved to end her, it was Gideon. It would be the most correct thing that had happened in either of their lives.
But as suddenly as they had been there, the hands around her neck were gone. Harrow's traitorous lungs inhaled so deep and so hard that she nearly hacked them up and her heart along with it. Gideon heaved on top of her, not the jerks that came before vomiting, but sobs that hurt so much that all that came out were dying animal sounds. She gripped at Harrow's shoulders as if she couldn't decide whether the girl or the floor could bear her better, and those blunt nails burrowed into her flesh as if they were keen as talons. Tears sluiced down her face and fell, fat and hot, across Harrow’s face and neck. The salt of them was bitter on her tongue. Oh, that shattered face, that crumpled brow. What a mistake it was to ever consider her unbreakable. Harrow tried not to listen or watch, but the force of the sobs and the weight of Gideon on top of her made it impossible not to bear witness.
Eventually, Gideon only occasionally hiccuped and Harrow only occasionally coughed. When Harrow spoke, her voice carried a deep barbed wire rasp, but at least she didn’t throw up this time.
"Not out of nowhere. Not for no reason," Harrow said.
Gideon wiped her own face with the back of her hand, and her eyes were so red and swollen that the yellow of her irises were drowned out. She didn't look like herself like that. Not really thinking, Harrow ringed her fingers around Gideon's wrist in the closest approximation of comfort she knew. Gideon let her.
"Things are about to change for me, Gideon." Gideon's eyes closed at her own name from Harrow's lips. "Ortus and I are in the midst of... have you heard?" It was so hard to say. She had never had to be the one to speak it aloud, there were so many people who were already doing it for her. "He and I will be married by the end of the year."
She searched Harrow’s face with such a plaintive, open disbelief that it opened something in Harrow that she struggled to swallow back down. What did Gideon expect? What did any of them expect? Gideon’s eyes slammed shut for a moment, bedraggled eyelashes sticking together, before they opened again as if from a dream.
"But he's, like, almost forty," said Gideon as if that meant anything to anyone. Harrow would be marrying Ortus if he was twelve or Crux's age, the only difference was how long they had to hold still until the knot tightened.
"He fills a need. As do I." Harrow shifted her focus past Gideon, to the featureless mass of the ceiling above. "Months ago, when I could no longer excuse it as mere talk, I took to praying before the mausoleum. The one on the ridge. I brought offerings; flowers, salt, a kilo of meat and a skein of yarn from one of the sheep I butchered myself. I didn't care if anyone caught me at that point. I just wanted some sort of sign. A sign of anything. Some wisdom from something for whom this was all very small and meaningless."
She became aware of Gideon touching the precise ladder of lines on her arm. Slowly, she rolled it over, as if Gideon might determine just how vulnerable it was and lunge for it. But Gideon's hand curled away from the motion, then retreated to perch uneasily on her own thigh.
"I saw a bellbird," Harrow continued.
Gideon watched her, waiting.
"A kind I have never seen or heard before." She swallowed, found it difficult. "I thought maybe it was the sign, but I wasn't sure until it kept showing up. Always at the mausoleum when I visited, always flying off into open sky. I know you're not one for faith or signs or anything of the sort, but it was a moment of clarity for me, like a veil stripped away. I thought…” She recognized the urge to look away before the action could take root and forced herself to look up into Gideon’s face. She owed her that at least, and had done so well so far. Why ruin a good streak? “Ortus and I might be trapped here, but I could still try and help you fly away."
Gideon said nothing. Whatever had clawed itself open within her zipped itself up in a hurry. She shook her wrist free of Harrow's fingers and stood up, sending more of the rice every which way.
"That's a very pretty story," she said. "I loved the bit about how seeing a fucking bird a few times made you decide to treat me like a human, because of god or that dead girl you kissed on the teeth or whatever. Choice."
Harrow just closed her eyes. She had no energy to argue or explain or dispute.
Gideon cupped Harrow’s shoulder. "Turn over."
"What?"
"I'm not a dick like the rest of you," Gideon said, "I'm gonna get all the rice bits out of your back." She paused, then looked away. "Least I could do for you taking my licks for me. You didn't have to confess like that, loser."
Harrow didn't move. She couldn't move. She instead nodded her assent, and Gideon lifted her by her shoulder and pivoted her to lay on her front/ Harrow's back screamed as it unpeeled from the floor, though she didn't utter a sound. Gideon scoured for the grains with the tips of her fingers, plucking them out, and flicking them so they fell pinkly around Harrow. Harrow let it happen. It was perhaps the kindest thing someone had done for her, possibly the kindest thing she could hope to expect for the rest of her life. So, when she felt Gideon's fingers shift from the new wounds to the old scars, she let her. She could not imagine Ortus touching her with anything more than panicked necessity, let alone like this. Harrow was at the mercy of those calloused fingertips that caught and funneled along the crisscrossed scar tissue. It was perhaps the most complete understanding of her own back she ever possessed; she had never thought to look, never thought that it would heal in any other way than neatly and slightly raised. But if Gideon’s fingers spoke the truth, there were knots and bulges between the new grooves where it hadn’t healed quite right and spots without sensation. Her flesh twitched every time Gideon coursed between scar and freshly broken skin and she tried desperately to cast out the thought of wedding nights from her very marrow.
It cannot be hers. Never ever. Too little, too late.
"I think I got them all. You can get the ones in your knees, yeah?" said Gideon. Her fingertips fell away, but the ghost of them shivered up along her spine.
“Yes." Harrow let out a breath she had very consciously been holding. "Gideon, th—"
"Shut up.” Gideon sounded so worn down. “Don't even. Things are already too weird."
Scared of where this would all go next, Harrow groped around for something to say. "Then let me give you another two pieces of information,” she said, that slice of clarity alighting upon her. “You can do with them as you wish."
Harrow watched Gideon's boot come close to her face, felt the bulk of it through the floorboard under her cheek. "I'm listening," Gideon said.
Harrow swallowed again. "The first piece is vital. You know which car Ortus drives?"
"Yes, that old navy blue sedan."
"He leaves it unlocked and keeps the keys in the glovebox."
"Why the hell would he do something so stupid?"
Harrow rolled her eyes. "Consider we live on a compound in the fucking wops with people we've known our whole lives. Who would possibly steal his car? Sister Canice? He lacks our paranoia.”
Gideon let herself be grouped together with Harrow with an unwarranted level of grace. She sneered as she said, "Well, me now, if your information is good."
"You could make it to Dunedin with no issue.” Peering up into that her face revealed nothing more but features scrunched in thought. “Timaru isn’t impossible, if you want to have the option for more distance between you and—and here."
Gideon glanced out of Harrow’s window before nudging Harrow in the side with her boot. “What's the second bit?" she asked, without urgency.
"The second bit is... consider it a token of my honesty and an apology for ten years ago." Harrow considered sitting up for this, but she couldn't. The thought of looking Gideon in the face from any higher level than this spurred on her exhaustion to new heights. "If you approach the woods from the northeast, no one should be able to see you go. Once you can't see the compound through the trees, head straight east until you find a tree with a cairn. It's not an old tree, so the roots might have overtaken it since I—but that's where they put her. Your mother."
There was a long, long stretch of silence. The toe of the boot inched back closer to her face as if Gideon was considering caving it in.
"How do you know it's her?" asked Gideon. "What did you do?"
"She hadn't been buried deep enough; some animals had gotten to some parts of her," Harrow said with preternatural calm, knowing she was coming to the end of everything she could give Gideon. "Before I even knew who she was, I re-dug the hole as deep as I could around her and buried her for good. I fixed the cairn, because it was knocked over. Later, I went to see if any of the logs pointed to who it could be, and the remaining clothing and—and the hair matched the description."
For a moment, Gideon looked utterly disarmed, her mouth hanging open with something akin to shock. A distressingly childlike expression. But like everything else that got away from her today, Gideon plucked it away and crammed it out of sight again.
"You need to stop doing this shit to me," said Gideon.
Then she kicked Harrow’s lights out.
Harrow awoke with her cheek throbbing in a puddle of blood. When she dragged herself up to sit on the edge of her bed, she swayed with lightheadedness, her nose broken and her right eye swollen completely shut, not that the left was in much better shape. She probably looked awful. Probably even unrecognizable. The thought filled her with such a delirious delight that only the threat of passing out kept her from getting up to look in the wardrobe mirror.
Instead, she laid down and prayed. It had been a long time since she prayed only to the god her parents served, found him too silent, too remote, and when he did deign to reach into her it was as if he gripped her bodily to him to fill her senses with confusion, as if claiming her, as if imbruing her until she buckled under and distended with him. It made it difficult to act in his will, but it had its place, its uses. But oh, the girl in the mausoleum. She was a different story altogether.
With her penance paid to the god of her parents, she prayed to the girl. She prayed that Gideon would be every inch the opportunist she’d always been. She prayed the congregation were still involved in the chapel for a long while yet. She prayed that she might find mercy in an accident of someone’s rage, that in the ensuing chaos, Ortus might get the hint and run too. She prayed nonstop until all of her matched the serene and empty quiet of the house and the sunlight inched its way toward the chilled, hesitant twilight of early spring.
Then the back door opened. It was strange to hear it so clearly despite her room being above it, but she heard the slight complaint of the knob, the groaning click of the latch as it closed, the unavoidable scrape of wood on wood in a warped frame. It was the only sound Harrow caught save for a floorboard here or there, though she strained to hear more; footsteps down to the basement or a cabinet opening, but that strained reason in this huge, sturdy house. She listened for a half an hour more before she was rewarded once again, this time with the almost supernaturally magnified sound of the front door opening, then closing.
She got up, left her room, stumbled to the windows at the landing that afforded a decent view of the driveway, where Ortus’s car sat; its owner not respected enough to have earned a place for it in the garages.
It was Gideon, but her heart had known it already. She threw two duffel bags into the back seat and slid into the driver’s seat, the determined set of her face evident even through those ridiculous mirrored glasses that had been among the roots of the cairn tree. She reached over to the glove box and fished out the keys, mouthing something that was likely disparaging to Ortus. But then, as she went to start the car, their eyes met through three layers of glass and Gideon stilled.
Harrow raised her finger to her lips.
After a moment, Gideon did the same. She started the car, looked away to back out, and never laid eyes on her ever again. Harrow watched long after the sedan disappeared from sight and then longer still until she could no longer pretend to see the dust being kicked up on the private road.
She would have to make an offering at the mausoleum in gratitude. The unmarred flesh of her thighs offered a compelling suggestion.