Reddit Post by u/wetpepper on May 30th 2022

Featuring:

• Harrow having a grand old time in a bone egg and losing a lot of blood

• The girls going to a dinner party and having no idea how to act

• The twins attempting to answer the question of "just how swole is Gideon?"

• Some communication (just a little) for a change

• death :(

Chapter 12

Gideon is given a wide berth by the other denizens of Canaan House and Harrow is only seen in the presence of more skulls on their room doors for “ambiance”. She makes use of this time when no one wants to talk with her to workout, daydream about the Cohort, and wander around Canaan.

After a few days Gideon notices Harrow has not returned to their rooms and goes (reluctantly) to find her. She startles the Six House examining a hatch and the Six House cavalier (Camilla!!!) attacks her. After Palamedes calms everyone down, he tells Gideon that Harrow’s blood is everywhere and she seems to be down in the Facility below the hatch.

They all proceed down the hatch to find Harrow in one of the rooms encased in a big bone egg thing. Palamedes and Camilla give medical treatment to Harrow (despite Gideon’s reluctance and confusion) and say she should be fine given some rest/fluids. Gideon carries the mostly unconscious Harrow back to their rooms.

Chapter 13

Harrow is profoundly ungrateful that Gideon came after her and is very much of the opinion that she does not need Gideon’s help “dicking around in the basement”. Gideon makes the excellent point that she had no idea what Harrow wants her to do since Harrow has kept her completely in the dark. Due to this (and Gideon having taken back the keyring) Harrow reluctantly fills in Gideon a bit of what is going on.

Doors and puzzles! That's what's going on. Harrow has been investigating Canaan House and cataloging all the doors in the place. She has also found challenges left behind by whoever left the facility last. One of the challenges has been destroying all of Harrow’s skeleton constructs. Gideon shows Harrow the locked door she found her first night at Canaan House.

Gideon tells Harrow she could have died and says Harrow better take her with her next time she goes down into the facility, the phrase “penumbral lady” might have been uttered. Harrow agrees (again she really almost died like 30 minutes ago) and tells Gideon she can join her in the facility where “the sum of all necromantic transgression” resides (according to Teacher).

Chapter 14

They go down to the facility and Gideon goes to look at whatever had been destroying all of Harrow’s skeletons (since Harrow isn’t able to see it from where she must open the door). Turns out it's a big ass bone monster with a big bone head, a lot of big bone legs, and (most interestingly to Gideon) big bone arms that look like blades. Gideon wants to fight it.

After a couple more attempts of sending in skeletons from Harrow, Gideon goes in herself (without telling Harrow). She is able to fend the bone construct off and Harrow realizes the challenge is to see the construct through Gideon’s eyes and use Gideon to deconstruct the theorems animating it.. Harrow passes out (again).

Chapter 15

The girls get an invitation to a dinner party for Magnus and Abigail's 11th anniversary. Gideon really wants to eat a dessert and talks Harrow into going. Harrow gets pre-party jitters and they both show up looking like douchebags in their robes and paint.

Magnus makes some great jokes, and proves to be a fantastic cook. Gideon tunes out of the conversation to eat but hears various snippets of conversation. Abigale is telling Dulcinea that Canaan house is an incredible resource for historians like her and Jeannemary wants to know how big Gideons biceps are.

Gideon chats with Dulcinea and notices Palamedes giving an extremely close lookover of the Seventh Necromancer when he brings them tea and gets a bit jealous. Harrow makes them leave the party as she has found out the 5th and the 8th also know about the facility and wants to make sure they stay ahead of them.

Chapter 16

Gideon tries but is having some difficulty letting Harrow into her head. Finally Harrow is able to integrate with Gideon and is able to guide her in deconstructing the construct. While doing it Gideon sees some glowing on the construct. The construct disintegrates and leaves behind a box with a red key. Harrow compliments Gideon on her swordwork and Gideon gets very uncomfortable “Mmf”.

They walk back through the facility flush with triumph then Harrow stops abruptly at the base of the ladder up to the hatch. At the bottom of the ladder are the corpses of Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent.

Thoughts/Takeaways/Discussion Starters

These chapters are where we start to see a bit more balance in the Harrow/Gideon relationship. Prior to Gideon rescuing Harrow from the bone egg we’ve really just seen Harrow ordering Gideon about and being mysterious/one step ahead of her. Here we see Harrow really fucking up and Gideon forcing her to admit it. The stubbornness of both of them really shows as Harrow desperately doesn’t want to involve anyone else in her work and Gideon is completely unwilling to let Harrow continue on alone.

We meet Camilla/Palamedes who are just great

The dinner party is full of delightful tidbits like Magnus making a joke that hits with like 4 people in the room and Harrow being completely ill at ease in a party setting (she definitely practiced saying “Blessings on the cavalier of the Fifth. Congratulations on the eleventh year of your espousal.” for like half an hour in her head before the party).

Ianthe mentioning that she was removed by surgical means sticks out to me as a Chekhov's gun sidebar (as do most of the other asides Gideon hears). I might have just seen Macbeth to recently but I found it interesting, thoughts?

The food is described as for dinner: “good-smelling grain, white and fluffy, boiled in onion broth. Little drifts of chopped nuts or tiny tart red fruits were scattered throughout” and for dessert: “confections of cream and fruit”. This seems like a risotto type dish and then a berries and cream thing. I’m interested in what foodstyles are prominent on houses like the 5th and 3ed that have the resources to cook (instead of just grul). Do we think Magnus is a chef in the vein of Italian cooking or is he just more of a general “knows how to follow a recipe” guy?

We get our first on page death here and it really hits just as things are starting to go well for our duo. It's such a gut punch that Magnus and Abigail both jumped off the page as lovely people and properly got the ax.

SPOILERS BElLOW

***

***

***

Re-read Discussion thoughts

• Knowing that the conversation with Abigale is what set off Cytherea to start her murder spree its really tough hearing Abigale so excited to be sharing her work with her in the moment. If Abigale hadn’t been as open about her research would Cytherea have delayed starting killing people off?

• Harrow being reluctant to bring Gideon down with her comes off as more reluctant to push Gideon in danger on re-read than just stubborn “I will do it alone” that it came off on in first read.

• We don’t see any bone constructs in Harrow the Ninth like the ones we see in Gideon. Do we think that this is because they are really simple for a Lyctor to take out and so wouldn’t make any sense in the type of fighting we see in Harrow? How prevalent are these type of constructs, is this something pretty unknown, or are less sophisticated versions regularly used by the cohort?

  ---

***

***

***

END OF SPOILERS

Link to full discussion on Reddit with Comments