Yes, I'd tell Yuri if I were you. It's good to know - if he had any need, it would be rather inconvenient if he picked yours.
Sheila or Primrose are both acceptable.
[But anyway, I promised you another memshare, so here goes.
This memory begins on the Ninth House - a dark planet of rock and tunnel, mostly underground. In this area - a shuttle landing bay - a sliver of sky is visible, navy and white, with only the tiny bead of a faraway sun visible in it. Ringing through the desolation is the sound of a faraway clanging bell - the Muster Bell, calling every Ninth House member to attention.
You, however, are out here at the shuttle bay, where Gideon Nav has been intercepted by your marshal and your captain of guards attempting to steal away from the Ninth House on a shuttle. You learned of her plan by chance about a week ago, when the shuttle happened to contact you for landing details - if not for that chance encounter, she would have gotten away this time. But now, minutes before the shuttle lands, you appear to stop her.
She is sitting on a pile of rocks, waiting in a foul mood, holding her two-handed sword, and she scowls to see you.
"I see that your genius strategy, Griddle, was to order a shuttle and walk out the door. It’s embarrassing that it had to come to this. I don’t care that you run away. I care that you do it badly. Take your hand from your sword, you’re humiliating yourself."
"In under ten minutes a shuttle’s going to come, and I'm going to the Cohort," Gideon said, and does not take her hand from her sword. "I’m going to get on it. I’m going to close the door. I’m going to wave goodbye. I faked your signature on the release forms, so they'll take me. There is literally nothing you can do anymore to stop me."
“A single word from me and you’re brought back in cuffs.”
"You’ll say nothing."
"Why the sudden mercy on my part?"
"The moment you deny me leave to go,” says Gideon, hand unmoving on her scabbard, "the moment you call me back — the moment you give the Cohort cause, or, I don’t know, some list of trumped-up criminal charges. . . That’s the moment I squeal. I squeal so long and so loud they hear me from the Eighth. I tell them everything. You know what I know. And I’ll tell them the numbers. They’d bring me home in cuffs, but I’d come back laughing my ass off."
This actually does throw you. You know what she knows - one secret that is guarded from even the population of the Ninth, save you, your marshal, and unfortunately Gideon Nav - and one secret that even she doesn't understand the meaning of. She cannot get on the shuttle without your permission, but she is the best swordsman in your House and none of your retinue could prevent her. And clearly she's planned ahead - she's dug through all the layers of dirt and ensured there is no bone matter anywhere for you to call upon. Besides, it would be dishonourable to employ violence against a member of your own House without sufficient cause, and you do not have it.
You send your retinue away with a wave of your hand.
"How coarse and ordinary," you say. "How effective, how crass. My parents should have smothered you. You’d do it even if there was no ultimate gain. Even though you know what you’d suffer. Even though you know what it means. And all because. . .?"
"All because," says Gideon, checking her clock again, "I completely fucking hate you, because you are a hideous witch from hell. No offence."
Her words strike you silent for a moment - you know them to be true, and to have always been true - but their bluntness still strikes you in a way that they shouldn't be able to. You refuse to grant her the satisfaction of thinking she's gotten the upper hand on you.
"Oh, Griddle!" you say pityingly, instead. "But I don’t even remember about you most of the time." You pause, and consider your next move. "I admit you have me at an impasse. The muster call is real, you know. There’s important Ninth business afoot. Won’t you give a handful of minutes to take part in your House’s last muster?"
"Oh, hell no," she says.
"What about a bribe?" you ask.
"This is going to be good," says Gideon to nobody in particular. "'Gideon, here’s some money. You can spend it right here, on bones.' 'Gideon, I’ll always be nice and not a dick to you if you come back. You can have Crux’s room.' 'Gideon, here’s a bed of writhing babes. It’s the cloisterites, though, so they’re ninety percent osteoporosis.'"
Instead, you produce parchment, on official Ninth House letterhead, signed in blood with your mother's name. It purchases her a position in the Cohort as a second lieutenant with full officer training without debt - a far more advantageous way to start her military service than what she'd get appearing on her own.
"You can't say you don't care. If you don't want it, return it."
She looks at it, obviously conflicted, aware of the value of what you are offering, but not yet certain what the trap is. "You are a psychopath. Okay, fine, name your price."
"I want you downstairs at the muster meeting."
She considers this. "Nah. I'll go my own way. I’m not going down into Drearburh for you. Hell, I’m not going down into Drearburh if you get my mother’s skeleton to come do a jig for me."
At this, you appear to lose your temper - you ball up your fists, glare at her - but the display is entirely for her benefit. "For God’s sake, Griddle! This is the perfect offer! I am giving you everything you’ve ever asked for — everything you’ve whined for so incessantly, without you even needing to have the grace or understanding to know why you couldn’t have it! You threaten my House, you disrespect my retainers, you lie and cheat and sneak and steal — you know full well what you’ve done, and you know that you are a disgusting little cuckoo!"
Perhaps not all of your anger is entirely for her benefit. You shrug off your robes and then begin removing every piece of bone you wear - your ribcage corset, your jewelry, the studs in your ears - and you hand them to your marshal, leaving you only in your black gloves and boots and shirt and trousers.
"Look, Nonagesimus," says Gideon, now startled. "Don’t do — whatever you’re about to do. Let me go."
"A fair fight," you say. She begins to protest, but you raise your hand. "A fair fight and you can go with the commission. Win, you leave on the shuttle with the commission papers. Lose, you attend the muster, and then you may leave on the shuttle with the commission papers. Agree to duel me, Nav, in front of my marshal and guards."
She doesn't trust you, expects a trap, but does see you have no bone on your person. She looks over the commission to ensure that it's real again, notes with confusion it's signed with your mother's name.
"I’m not going to sign as me, you utter moron, that would give the whole game away." She realizes what you mean, accepts the validity of your offer, and instead begins to pat you down, looking for any hidden bone.
"You heard her," she says to your marshal and guard. "A fair fight. You swear by your mother it's fair - you have nothing on you?"
The reference to your mother angers you once again, but you do swear. So she picks up her sword. Your captain of the guard protests - "Gideon Nav, take back your honour and give your lady a weapon."
But she refuses. "I gave her my whole life," she says bitterly.
And then the fight begins. Even without the sword, Nav would beat you easily, she strong and athletic, trained to fight from birth, and you frail and reliant on your necromancy. But you peel off your gloves, revealing that beneath your hands are raw and cracked and caked with dirt. She looks at them with confusion for a split second before she realizes, before you raise the skeletons buried underneath your feet. Hands and arms rip their way out of the ground, claw their way to the surface, grasp at Gideon's legs and arms. She beats them away, kicks them to pieces, slices them, but there are too many for her to hold off. She runs at you and tries to kick you, but your skeleton constructs carry you away effortlessly, form a shield in front of you.
The fight was over the moment she agreed to it. She falls to the ground, bruised and bloodied, and coughs up a tooth, just as the shuttle begins to land.
"It's pathetic, Griddle," you gloat. The bones you've summoned drop to the floor, and you wipe away the blood dripping from your nose, the result of overexertion. "I turn up the volume. I put on a show. You feel bad. You make it so easy. I got more hot and bothered digging all night."
"You dug," wheezes Gideon, rather muffled with grit and dust, "all night. You insane creep."
“Call it, Crux,” you order your marshal.
It was with poorly hidden glee that he calls out, "A fair fight. The foe is floored. A win for the Lady Nonagesimus."
"Buck up, Griddle," you tell her, and spit a clot of blood onto the ground. "Captain, go tell the pilot to wait; he'll get paid for his time."
Your marshal drags Gideon behind her down to the sanctuary where the muster has already gathered - a chapel filled with skeletons, priests, nuns a handful of elderly members of your house, all in their prayers. Your mother and father sit at the long bench reserved for your family, alongside your great-aunts, and you join to their side. Your mother and father leave their heads bowed in prayer, only occasionally looking up to look upon the gathered penitents, to cast a glance your direction, to nods in agreement to something you say.
This is because your mother and father have been dead for seven years. The two secrets of the Ninth House are on display here - the very few inhabitants left alive to join muster, absolutely none save you and Nav under the age of thirty-six - and that fact that the Ninth has been ruled by a child since your parents passed away when you were ten. If the other Houses had known, they would have interfered, made the Ninth a puppet to one of the richer Houses as the Fifth once did to the Fourth. So you learned how to preserve your mother and father so without close inspection their passing was difficult to notice, made up a convenient tale about a vow of silence, and managed the affairs of the House on your own.
Gideon only ever knew of this fact because she was there the day they died, but it has been a blessing that she knows, that someone other than old Crux, whose life you have had to extend many times already, is privy to your secret. It means that you are able to hate her, and your hatred of her and your fights and her little rebellions are the only thing you have other than your duty to protect your House and its secrets.
At muster, you read, with your mother's nodded permission, from a letter by the Emperor, summoning the heirs of the eight houses and their cavaliers primary to the House of the First, in order to pass a test to become the Emperor's Lyctors. An enormous, unparalleled honour and opportunity. With this, you can restore your dying House without supplication to the other Houses, and prove your own worth as well.
The only problem is that the invitation mentions your cavalier primary - Ortus Nigenad, lumpy, sad, sensitive man in his thirties, coddled excessively and fully unsuited for the role, carrying it only because his father had been cavalier primary to your father and because, after you and Gideon, he was the youngest person in your House.
Hearing the news, Ortus' mother holds him and weeps, begs you not to take him, reminds you that she has already given you her husband. You feel a twinge of pity, remembering the purpling face of Ortus' father, how he had died alongside your parents, but you push it aside and affect a look of disdain. You already know how this will go.
"Sister Glaurica,” you say to her, "be calm."
Ortus looks at you with those sorry, sad eyes of his. "I do fear death, my Lady Harrowhark," he admits miserably.
The muster erupts into chaos as your guard and retinue, your marshal and supplicants, begin to shout and argue, offended that your own cavalier would refuse his duty this way. Eventually, you break up the argument, call the muster to prayer, and dismiss them.
After the muster, you find Gideon, where your captain of guard is keeping watch over her. "By the way, I worked out your nasty little trick, jackass," she says by way of greeting.
"Did you?" you ask, a little surprised.
"Your mother’s signature on the commission. The sting in the tail. If I come clean," she says, "that renders the signature null and void, doesn’t it? It buys my silence. Well played. I’ll have to keep my mouth shut when I hand that one over, and you know it."
You cock your head, enjoying the opportunity for a slow reveal. "I hadn’t even thought of that," you say. "I thought you meant the shuttle."
Gideon sits bolt upright. "What — about — the shuttle?"
With feigned nonchalance, you say, "Oh, Ortus and his mother stole it. They must be gone already. She still has family back on the Eighth, and she thinks they’ll take them in." You laugh. "You make it so easy, Griddle. You always do."
You feel a little sorry when she sinks back into her bed, obviously heartbroken and furious. It was a good escape attempt this time. But you don't have any intention of letting her leave. The two of you grew up together, fought tooth and nail every day of your life, and she is a part of what makes your life bearable - these games and punishments and fights between the two of you. You aren't going to let her run off to become cannon fodder for the Cohort.
Besides - if you are going to the House of the First, you will need a cavalier who knows the sword. Gideon may not be cavalier material, but there is no finer sword you can call upon.
"I learned your plan about a week ago, but I wanted to wait until now to do anything," you admit. "I wanted to wait for the very moment when you thought you’d gotten away, to take it from you."
"Why?" she asks, exhausted.
"Because I completely fucking hate you," you say. "No offence."]
no subject
Sheila or Primrose are both acceptable.
[But anyway, I promised you another memshare, so here goes.
This memory begins on the Ninth House - a dark planet of rock and tunnel, mostly underground. In this area - a shuttle landing bay - a sliver of sky is visible, navy and white, with only the tiny bead of a faraway sun visible in it. Ringing through the desolation is the sound of a faraway clanging bell - the Muster Bell, calling every Ninth House member to attention.
You, however, are out here at the shuttle bay, where Gideon Nav has been intercepted by your marshal and your captain of guards attempting to steal away from the Ninth House on a shuttle. You learned of her plan by chance about a week ago, when the shuttle happened to contact you for landing details - if not for that chance encounter, she would have gotten away this time. But now, minutes before the shuttle lands, you appear to stop her.
She is sitting on a pile of rocks, waiting in a foul mood, holding her two-handed sword, and she scowls to see you.
"I see that your genius strategy, Griddle, was to order a shuttle and walk out the door. It’s embarrassing that it had to come to this. I don’t care that you run away. I care that you do it badly. Take your hand from your sword, you’re humiliating yourself."
"In under ten minutes a shuttle’s going to come, and I'm going to the Cohort," Gideon said, and does not take her hand from her sword. "I’m going to get on it. I’m going to close the door. I’m going to wave goodbye. I faked your signature on the release forms, so they'll take me. There is literally nothing you can do anymore to stop me."
“A single word from me and you’re brought back in cuffs.”
"You’ll say nothing."
"Why the sudden mercy on my part?"
"The moment you deny me leave to go,” says Gideon, hand unmoving on her scabbard, "the moment you call me back — the moment you give the Cohort cause, or, I don’t know, some list of trumped-up criminal charges. . . That’s the moment I squeal. I squeal so long and so loud they hear me from the Eighth. I tell them everything. You know what I know. And I’ll tell them the numbers. They’d bring me home in cuffs, but I’d come back laughing my ass off."
This actually does throw you. You know what she knows - one secret that is guarded from even the population of the Ninth, save you, your marshal, and unfortunately Gideon Nav - and one secret that even she doesn't understand the meaning of. She cannot get on the shuttle without your permission, but she is the best swordsman in your House and none of your retinue could prevent her. And clearly she's planned ahead - she's dug through all the layers of dirt and ensured there is no bone matter anywhere for you to call upon. Besides, it would be dishonourable to employ violence against a member of your own House without sufficient cause, and you do not have it.
You send your retinue away with a wave of your hand.
"How coarse and ordinary," you say. "How effective, how crass. My parents should have smothered you. You’d do it even if there was no ultimate gain. Even though you know what you’d suffer. Even though you know what it means. And all because. . .?"
"All because," says Gideon, checking her clock again, "I completely fucking hate you, because you are a hideous witch from hell. No offence."
Her words strike you silent for a moment - you know them to be true, and to have always been true - but their bluntness still strikes you in a way that they shouldn't be able to. You refuse to grant her the satisfaction of thinking she's gotten the upper hand on you.
"Oh, Griddle!" you say pityingly, instead. "But I don’t even remember about you most of the time." You pause, and consider your next move. "I admit you have me at an impasse. The muster call is real, you know. There’s important Ninth business afoot. Won’t you give a handful of minutes to take part in your House’s last muster?"
"Oh, hell no," she says.
"What about a bribe?" you ask.
"This is going to be good," says Gideon to nobody in particular. "'Gideon, here’s some money. You can spend it right here, on bones.' 'Gideon, I’ll always be nice and not a dick to you if you come back. You can have Crux’s room.' 'Gideon, here’s a bed of writhing babes. It’s the cloisterites, though, so they’re ninety percent osteoporosis.'"
Instead, you produce parchment, on official Ninth House letterhead, signed in blood with your mother's name. It purchases her a position in the Cohort as a second lieutenant with full officer training without debt - a far more advantageous way to start her military service than what she'd get appearing on her own.
"You can't say you don't care. If you don't want it, return it."
She looks at it, obviously conflicted, aware of the value of what you are offering, but not yet certain what the trap is. "You are a psychopath. Okay, fine, name your price."
"I want you downstairs at the muster meeting."
She considers this. "Nah. I'll go my own way. I’m not going down into Drearburh for you. Hell, I’m not going down into Drearburh if you get my mother’s skeleton to come do a jig for me."
At this, you appear to lose your temper - you ball up your fists, glare at her - but the display is entirely for her benefit. "For God’s sake, Griddle! This is the perfect offer! I am giving you everything you’ve ever asked for — everything you’ve whined for so incessantly, without you even needing to have the grace or understanding to know why you couldn’t have it! You threaten my House, you disrespect my retainers, you lie and cheat and sneak and steal — you know full well what you’ve done, and you know that you are a disgusting little cuckoo!"
Perhaps not all of your anger is entirely for her benefit. You shrug off your robes and then begin removing every piece of bone you wear - your ribcage corset, your jewelry, the studs in your ears - and you hand them to your marshal, leaving you only in your black gloves and boots and shirt and trousers.
"Look, Nonagesimus," says Gideon, now startled. "Don’t do — whatever you’re about to do. Let me go."
"A fair fight," you say. She begins to protest, but you raise your hand. "A fair fight and you can go with the commission. Win, you leave on the shuttle with the commission papers. Lose, you attend the muster, and then you may leave on the shuttle with the commission papers. Agree to duel me, Nav, in front of my marshal and guards."
She doesn't trust you, expects a trap, but does see you have no bone on your person. She looks over the commission to ensure that it's real again, notes with confusion it's signed with your mother's name.
"I’m not going to sign as me, you utter moron, that would give the whole game away." She realizes what you mean, accepts the validity of your offer, and instead begins to pat you down, looking for any hidden bone.
"You heard her," she says to your marshal and guard. "A fair fight. You swear by your mother it's fair - you have nothing on you?"
The reference to your mother angers you once again, but you do swear. So she picks up her sword. Your captain of the guard protests - "Gideon Nav, take back your honour and give your lady a weapon."
But she refuses. "I gave her my whole life," she says bitterly.
And then the fight begins. Even without the sword, Nav would beat you easily, she strong and athletic, trained to fight from birth, and you frail and reliant on your necromancy. But you peel off your gloves, revealing that beneath your hands are raw and cracked and caked with dirt. She looks at them with confusion for a split second before she realizes, before you raise the skeletons buried underneath your feet. Hands and arms rip their way out of the ground, claw their way to the surface, grasp at Gideon's legs and arms. She beats them away, kicks them to pieces, slices them, but there are too many for her to hold off. She runs at you and tries to kick you, but your skeleton constructs carry you away effortlessly, form a shield in front of you.
The fight was over the moment she agreed to it. She falls to the ground, bruised and bloodied, and coughs up a tooth, just as the shuttle begins to land.
"It's pathetic, Griddle," you gloat. The bones you've summoned drop to the floor, and you wipe away the blood dripping from your nose, the result of overexertion. "I turn up the volume. I put on a show. You feel bad. You make it so easy. I got more hot and bothered digging all night."
"You dug," wheezes Gideon, rather muffled with grit and dust, "all night. You insane creep."
“Call it, Crux,” you order your marshal.
It was with poorly hidden glee that he calls out, "A fair fight. The foe is floored. A win for the Lady Nonagesimus."
"Buck up, Griddle," you tell her, and spit a clot of blood onto the ground. "Captain, go tell the pilot to wait; he'll get paid for his time."
Your marshal drags Gideon behind her down to the sanctuary where the muster has already gathered - a chapel filled with skeletons, priests, nuns a handful of elderly members of your house, all in their prayers. Your mother and father sit at the long bench reserved for your family, alongside your great-aunts, and you join to their side. Your mother and father leave their heads bowed in prayer, only occasionally looking up to look upon the gathered penitents, to cast a glance your direction, to nods in agreement to something you say.
This is because your mother and father have been dead for seven years. The two secrets of the Ninth House are on display here - the very few inhabitants left alive to join muster, absolutely none save you and Nav under the age of thirty-six - and that fact that the Ninth has been ruled by a child since your parents passed away when you were ten. If the other Houses had known, they would have interfered, made the Ninth a puppet to one of the richer Houses as the Fifth once did to the Fourth. So you learned how to preserve your mother and father so without close inspection their passing was difficult to notice, made up a convenient tale about a vow of silence, and managed the affairs of the House on your own.
Gideon only ever knew of this fact because she was there the day they died, but it has been a blessing that she knows, that someone other than old Crux, whose life you have had to extend many times already, is privy to your secret. It means that you are able to hate her, and your hatred of her and your fights and her little rebellions are the only thing you have other than your duty to protect your House and its secrets.
At muster, you read, with your mother's nodded permission, from a letter by the Emperor, summoning the heirs of the eight houses and their cavaliers primary to the House of the First, in order to pass a test to become the Emperor's Lyctors. An enormous, unparalleled honour and opportunity. With this, you can restore your dying House without supplication to the other Houses, and prove your own worth as well.
The only problem is that the invitation mentions your cavalier primary - Ortus Nigenad, lumpy, sad, sensitive man in his thirties, coddled excessively and fully unsuited for the role, carrying it only because his father had been cavalier primary to your father and because, after you and Gideon, he was the youngest person in your House.
Hearing the news, Ortus' mother holds him and weeps, begs you not to take him, reminds you that she has already given you her husband. You feel a twinge of pity, remembering the purpling face of Ortus' father, how he had died alongside your parents, but you push it aside and affect a look of disdain. You already know how this will go.
"Sister Glaurica,” you say to her, "be calm."
Ortus looks at you with those sorry, sad eyes of his. "I do fear death, my Lady Harrowhark," he admits miserably.
The muster erupts into chaos as your guard and retinue, your marshal and supplicants, begin to shout and argue, offended that your own cavalier would refuse his duty this way. Eventually, you break up the argument, call the muster to prayer, and dismiss them.
After the muster, you find Gideon, where your captain of guard is keeping watch over her. "By the way, I worked out your nasty little trick, jackass," she says by way of greeting.
"Did you?" you ask, a little surprised.
"Your mother’s signature on the commission. The sting in the tail. If I come clean," she says, "that renders the signature null and void, doesn’t it? It buys my silence. Well played. I’ll have to keep my mouth shut when I hand that one over, and you know it."
You cock your head, enjoying the opportunity for a slow reveal. "I hadn’t even thought of that," you say. "I thought you meant the shuttle."
Gideon sits bolt upright. "What — about — the shuttle?"
With feigned nonchalance, you say, "Oh, Ortus and his mother stole it. They must be gone already. She still has family back on the Eighth, and she thinks they’ll take them in." You laugh. "You make it so easy, Griddle. You always do."
You feel a little sorry when she sinks back into her bed, obviously heartbroken and furious. It was a good escape attempt this time. But you don't have any intention of letting her leave. The two of you grew up together, fought tooth and nail every day of your life, and she is a part of what makes your life bearable - these games and punishments and fights between the two of you. You aren't going to let her run off to become cannon fodder for the Cohort.
Besides - if you are going to the House of the First, you will need a cavalier who knows the sword. Gideon may not be cavalier material, but there is no finer sword you can call upon.
"I learned your plan about a week ago, but I wanted to wait until now to do anything," you admit. "I wanted to wait for the very moment when you thought you’d gotten away, to take it from you."
"Why?" she asks, exhausted.
"Because I completely fucking hate you," you say. "No offence."]