Work Text:
Four Angels, of the new People’s Government, has suggested that maybe they shouldn’t call the Houses zombies anymore, as a show of peace. Wake laughed in his face. She’s going to call the wizards what they are, even now, with Gaius gone and their sun snuffed out, as much refugees as the rest of them. And Wake, for her sins, is getting fucking married to one of them.
So: Harrowhark. The girl is tiny, unwieldy, fucking insufferable. She makes demands. She refuses to understand that her people are doomed. They might not be beaten yet, their necromancy still strong, but no new children will be born with it; the Houses are gone, and there are so many more of Wake’s people than there are ever been zombies. Even resettled, their way of life will change. Their traditions will not last. They should count themselves lucky that the People are even entertaining their silly proposals.
Wake has said as much to Four Angels, to We Suffer, to Numb. She’s said it to anyone who’d listen. All of them assured her that she doesn’t have to go through with it. We Suffer could do it. Numb could do it. Even little Pash volunteered, and the zombie girl would eat Pash for breakfast. Wake told them all to fuck off, and kept complaining about every single one of Harrowhark’s proposals, which are nevertheless accepted.
The Nine Houses are to have their own planet. The Nine Houses are to have their own airspace. The Nine Houses will provide the People with free transfer of goods and passengers, as reparations, but this way, they get to keep all those ex-military ships they have lying around. Wake successfully argued that the ships should be inspected for weaponry; Harrowhark argued back that the inspections should be on a schedule.
The girl won’t give an inch. She wears her stupid skull-face paint and her thick veil; Wake still doesnʼt know what colour her eyes are.
The day of the wedding comes. Wake brings her gun. After today, she is to remain on the zombiesʼ new planet for half a year — it took them two weeks just to agree on the details of the new calendar — and then, after that, sheʼll still be one of three ambassadors to the Houses. Fuckʼs sake. She canʼt believe she volunteered for this.
The ceremony is another of those things that have been argued to death: half House, half BoE. Wake has to let the girl slice a cut on her arm and smear the blood around, and it’s a fucking miracle half the zombies donʼt die from infections every year. Then they exchange blades. When that’s done, they are marched to a drab little room that's to be Wake’s bedroom in the facility, and locked in.
Locked in. With a fucking zombie fucking wizard shit. If Wake had known all of this would happen, when she killed that Lyctor… she still would have done it, but she’d have thought twice about it.
The room is large enough to feel luxurious after a lifetime of improvised sleeping, but there’s only one chair, and naturally, the bed. Wake’s eyes narrow.
“You have to take that off.”
Harrowhark ignores her. She walks around the room instead, inspecting the blank walls for long enough that the last echoes of noises outside have completely faded. Wake waits her out.
Eventually, the girl brings her scrawny hands to her head and removes the heavy black lacework that looks like it was made before the Fourth Rising. Underneath, her hair is dark and shorn close to the scalp. Her face is painted into an ugly fucking skull that makes Wake shudder to the bone.
She forces herself to look. Wake has stared down John Gaius and lived to tell the story, she’s hacked a Lyctorʼs head off with her own blade. Harrowhark looks more like a wizard from the stories than any other zombie Wake has met, but she’s just a girl.
Her face is tiny and angular. Her eyes are black, the eyelashes short and thick.
“Now we sleep. I won’t kill you in your sleep. You won’t kill me in mine.” Usually, that part is symbolic, like revealing your face: a show of trust. Here, it feels like a farce. “Then we’ll be fucking married. And you get your zombie planet.”
Harrowharkʼs thin mouth twists. “As we agreed.”
“Yes.”
There is no need for reminders; it’s all been argued to the smallest detail. But it makes Wake feel better to say it, like she’s still the one in command, the one who made all the plans. Peacetime has been strange. Wake has been trying not to think about it too much.
The first hour passes in silence. Wake sits against the bedpost with her back to the wall, ignoring the tingling at the back of her neck that saved her life so many times. Zombies, near. Now there is a zombie in her bed. Even with Gideon, Wake has never let herself fall asleep around him.
The light takes a long time to fade from the room. The planet is on a thirty-hour rotation; the climate is temperate, which is more than the zombies deserve. It’s one of the last planets the Cohort cleared of native flora and fauna before Gaius died, but it’s not like the zombies will mind: they brought their own. Parasites, wherever they go.
In the shadows, it’s better. It helps that she can’t see Harrowhark’s face, the unsettling white skull painted over her features. She wonders why the girl and her people dress like fucking monsters from nightmares when the rest of the Houses don’t. The words are halfway up her throat, but the idea of making fucking conversation with a zombie is unsettling. Then she thinks: she’s going to have to be around them, anyway. For six months. She is expected to live among them, to talk to them, to argue for her people. She chose this, back when it felt like just another heroic sacrifice.
“What’s with the fucking skulls?” Wake asks.
In the dark, Harrrowhark stirs.
“What.” Her voice is thin, grating.
“Your people and your skulls. The other zombies don’t paint their faces.” Some of the Edenites wore masks to frighten the enemy as much as to protect their families from repercussions. Not Wake. Her bare face was enough. “You all look fucking stupid.”
“Your names are fucking stupid,” Harrowhark says, peeved. She doesn’t know a thing about the memory chain, a legacy older than history itself. Wake doesn’t see a reason to tell her.
“I picked my name after I killed my first zombie.”
“You talk a lot about killing zombies for someone who was spearheading the peace talks.”
If this is a challenge, she isn’t going to back down. “I do. I killed thousands of you. I almost nuked your whole House from orbit. I killed a Lyctor, and it would’ve been two if—”
“Have you thought about killing me, too?”
“Of course. You’re a wizard. You guarded that creepy Tomb. I’ve wanted to kill you for years.”
“And now you won’t.”
The little shit is goading her. For the first time, Wake feels a faint twinge of respect. “I won’t,” she agrees. “Doesn’t mean I can’t think about it.”
“I am the greatest necromancer my House ever produced,” Harrowhark says, infuriatingly even. “I am afraid you would die trying.”
Wake has to laugh. “Girl, didn’t you hear me. I fought Lyctors. I would rip your heart out and eat it.”
The shadow that makes up Harrowhark raises one hand in an airy gesture.
“I would rip out your spine,” she says, still in that thin, high-pitched voice. “I would make a spear from your vertebrae and use it to impale you through the thorax. Your ribcage would crush and fall open.”
Wake has never seen a Ninth House zombie kill a man. Thinking about it, it seems like it would be gruesome. “You can try.”
“Of course I won’t,” says Harrowhark. “I married you to save my people. You should know all about that.” And then she asks, “Why you? Others could have done it. There are so many of you,” she says. “I’ve always known I would marry for my House. You, Commander, don’t seem the type.”
Wake had never thought she would get married. “I never ordered anyone on a mission I wouldn’t have been ready to take on myself.” It is the same thing she told We Suffer, and Unjust Hope. “Maybe it’s different for you in the Houses, but Blood of Eden—”
“It’s not.” Harrowhark’s voice is loud and clear. Frustratingly smug. “On the Ninth, it’s the same. I am the Tombkeeper…” She seems unconcerned with the fact that there is no Tomb to be kept, anymore. “It’s my duty, and my people. I think you understand.”
Wake is starting to. It stings, the implication that they are in any way alike, but there’s no use in rejecting it. She doesn’t give the girl the satisfaction. Instead, she shifts to rests on her side, bringing her knees to her chest. Sleep will be hard, with a wizard watching her back, but she is confident that Harrowhark will not try to kill her. Too much is at stake.
On this, they agree.