Gideon squints, which causes the sunglasses she’s wearing (which she only recognizes because of the magazines she’s tricked her way into receiving from the all too rare shuttles that come to the Ninth House) to fall down off her nose. They slide slowly, as the sides ooze past her ears. She shoves them up and looks at this unreasonably tall Harrowhark Nonagesimus. It isn’t fair that Harrow has learned something fucking new from her decrepit library that isn’t even about bones. Yes, she had to elongate her bones and create more of them in her body to have the structure to hold up all the muscles and fat and gristle and everything else still decorating skeletons when their people are alive. It’s the rest—the muscle! If Harrowhark knows how to cheat her way to muscles, this is going to go horrendously badly. Her eyes are still small, so Gideon plans to jab her in the eyeballs as soon as she does anything untoward. She isn’t that tall.

Something is wrong with Harrow, more than being an oversized greedy lump of muscle and sinew. Her face paint is wrong, and her face paint is never wrong. No one ever pins Harrow down and rubs gritty paint on her face. Her clothes aren’t proper Ninth either. Gideon doesn’t know what that white is doing on her skirt, but it’s halfway to the Eighth House, and Gideon knows that one isn’t much better than the Ninth.

“Harrow,” Gideon says warily. Everything’s gone ass up since what was supposed to be Gideon’s moment of victory. This cannot be anything good. She thanks her lucky stars Crux isn’t around, but that never lasts. “What happened to you? You look bonkers.”