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I.
Camilla organized Palamedes’ mail for him like always, tidying it into neat piles stacked by order of urgency. She placed the Duchess of Rhodes’ letter at the very top; it wasn’t the most urgent in a traditional sense, but rather held great emotional value.
Matters of the heart, she thought, were much more trouble than they were worth. She mused on this as she folded Palamedes’ socks neatly into pairs, and then realized she might be somewhat of a hypocrite.
“I caught the Archivist on my way up,” said Palamedes Sextus by way of hello, bursting into the room, “or rather, she caught me. She wants to know when we’re both available for a debrief on something that sounded dreadfully complicated, and quite frankly, a waste of my time. Not to mention yours.”
Camilla sighed, mentally flicking through their schedule for the next few days. “Thursday afternoon, between one and five,” she said. “Mail’s come. There’s a letter from Lady Septimus.”
“Is there,” Palamedes murmured. He seemed to still from the inside out.
“It’ll have an answer, won’t it?”
Palamedes was already at the desk, one hand hunting absentmindedly for a letter opener while his other reached for the envelope. Camilla dutifully handed him said letter opener, if only because it would’ve taken him ten minutes to find it otherwise. Camilla hated suspense.
For a few moments, there was absolute quiet as Palamedes’ eyes darted over the contents of the letter. From the twitch of his jaw, and the way his eyebrows drew together like bushy caterpillars, Camilla knew it wasn’t good.
“Warden?” she prompted. Her necromancer seemed to have turned to stone.
“No,” he said. “She said no.”
Camilla drew closer, but he held up his hand to stop her.
“I’ll take a few minutes alone to process, if that’s quite alright.”
“Of course, Master Warden,” she said. It was not quite alright. It was not alright in the slightest sense of the word. Camilla was being shut out, dismissed, for the first time probably ever. The Warden might be irascible under duress, pig-headedly stubborn, and lacking several years of sleep, but he never sent Cam away. She was his right hand.
The Warden’s right hand went to stand outside the door, feeling rather untethered. Matters of the heart , she thought to herself again. It had been a long shot, asking for Lady Septimus’ hand in marriage, but they had done the math together. Palamedes wanted the best for her, always had, and although Dulcinea Septimus’ reasoning for rejection was probably sound, Camilla felt anger start to pool in her stomach, coiling tightly. She wasn’t sure what was throwing her so off-balance about the situation; it could’ve been the way the light in Palamedes’ gray eyes had just gone out, or the total lack of emotion in his voice when he dismissed her.
Or maybe it was the way that for the first time in both of their lives, Camilla didn’t have a single clue what her necromancer was thinking.
This is bullshit, thought Camilla to herself. And then she heard her necromancer crying.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Why would he shut her out? He clearly needed her.
Her fingers twitched, reaching for rapiers that weren’t at her sides. She could picture them perfectly, lying on the bed that was undoubtedly now occupied by Palamedes. Who was crying. She needed to tear something to shreds. She needed to kick something, hard. She needed to be with him, goddamnit, and scold him and hold him and figure out why she couldn’t tell what was running through his stupid bird brain.
She didn’t even register that she was raising her fist.
I made a wreck out of my hand
I put it through the wall
The texture was all wrong, something was dripping, vaguely wet, and the end of her arm was a screaming ball of nerves.
I made a fist and not a plan
A crash caught her attention, and she turned her head sideways, arm still through the wall, to see Palamedes, red eyed and tousle haired, skid into the hall.
“Oh, Cam,” he said softly. “No, Cam, oh.”
Wonderingly, she pulled her hand back through the wall, cradling it against her chest. She looked at Palamedes. And she found she had nothing to say.
Call me a reckless wrecking ball
II.
Things had gone disastrously wrong. Four of the sixteen living occupants of Canaan House were dead, one was dying, one was missing, and the remaining eight (excluding herself and Palamedes) were guilty of everything from attempted murder to just plain pettiness. Camilla bore the reminder of that on her right forearm, which still twinged whenever she reached for the hilt of her rapier. She’d caught Palamedes glancing at her askance more than once, as if humbled by the reminder of the fact that his cavalier was hardly invulnerable.
Right now, he was fidgeting with his glasses in both hands, and Camilla resisted the urge to take them from him and clean the lenses. His gray eyes were somehow sharper in the absence of a pane of glass obscuring them, leaving them free to transfix whatever object was in his focus.
“Conjecture,” he said to Camilla, eyes still focused on the opposite side of the room.
She hummed.
“Canaan House has reached the level of danger where our safety is not assured.”
“That was a risk we knew coming in, Warden,” Camilla interjected.
“Objection- we assumed that the level of danger would be surmountable given our combined knowledge and skill sets.”
“And you believe it isn’t?”
“Like I said earlier, conjecture. I can’t be certain. But we’re at the point when I think particular… safeguards might be wise.”
You’ve gotta wanna be the drummer in the band
Camilla looked for the glint of trouble in his eyes, and she didn’t like what she saw.
“In the event that a threat emerges that cannot be neutralized with your swordsmanship and my necromancy-”
“Bull shit, Warden. My swords haven’t failed you yet.”
“I have developed a theorem that would allow for a high-energy, concentrated blast that could nullify anything within a radius of-”
You’ve gotta wanna be a battering ram
“Master Warden-”
“Of course,” he rambled, slightly panicky, “there would be certain caveats concerning the release of such a high quantity of concentrated energy-”
“Palamedes-”
“-including, but not limited to, my physical form being blown to bits.”
“ Palamedes Sextus!”
He came to her, and took her hands in his.
You’ve got to see the artistry
“I can hide out in the River. I’ve worked it all out, how to anchor myself to the physical, how to create a sort of… bubble. I can stay tethered.”
But what about me , Camilla wanted to ask. How will I stay tethered, with you gone?
“Ideally you’ll be able to piece most of me back together. But if not, samples of bone will suffice. As much as you can get- I trust Nonagesimus will help, in time.”
in tearing the place apart
“I don’t trust Nonagesimus farther than I can throw her.”
“Which is, I expect, quite far. But you trust me, Cam.”
“Who said you get to play the hero? That’s the cavalier’s job, and I swore myself to you, Master Warden.”
“You did,” he said. “But I also swore myself to you. You can’t make this sacrifice, Cam, only a necromancer can. I swear to you, if it comes to this-”
They both knew it would, if they were discussing it.
“-you’ll find a way to get me back. Remember? One flesh, one end.”
with me,
baby
“Indubitably, Warden,” said Camilla, but her heart wasn’t in it.
III.
I aim to break the heart
Their math had been, as usual, perfect. A blast radius of exactly twelve meters, and Gideon pinned just outside the door. But the Lyctor who was not Dulcinea hadn’t even had the decency to die properly. Rudely enough, she’d barely gotten halfway there.
of all those pretty porcelain dolls
She wasn’t nearly as pretty now, as Cam bore down on her with the fury of a thousand storms. Chunks of her hair had been burnt away, and the gaping wounds marring her pale skin were very gaping, inflicted with none of Palamedes’ usual precision but all of his dramatic flair.
You gotta wanna be the drummer in the band
Camilla understood now, in the small corner of her mind that wasn’t a whirling tornado of blades. She understood the lengths she would have to go to get him back, and she understood that he couldn’t have done it for her. She understood that a cavalier should never have to watch their necromancer die, just as a necromancer should never be asked to kill their cavalier.
You gotta wanna be a battering ram
She bit down on the edge of her grief, and polished it into a blade, and she made herself into a sword. Nothing else mattered. She would not die here. She would not let Palamedes die here, not even when all was lost.
And all was lost. Cytherea, despite being several thousand years old and suffering from an advanced case of turbo cancer (thank you, Palamedes), had quite frankly kicked their asses. Camilla was short at least a pint of blood, and that was nothing compared to what was pouring out of Nonagesimus in waves. Gideon wasn’t looking too great herself, and Ianthe? Somewhere far away across the battlefield of the terrace, minus one arm.
You’ve got to see the artistry in
She had always been one to see the beauty in chaos, given that she herself embodied a good deal of it. She had never seen the artistry in destruction, though, the way all necromancers did. Necromancy hinged on destruction, as much as the sixth’s medical practices tried to pretend otherwise.
tearing the place apart with me, baby
Oh, but this destruction was beautiful. This flaming wasteland of a battlefield smoldered and smoked and wheezed all manner of bodily fluids and necromantic sin.
It was horrible.
And it matched her heart just fine.
I make a fist and not a plan
And I break it
Just because I can