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Spatters of blood led her to a big ridged lump in one of the cubicles. This cocoon-looking thing was about the size of a person, if that person wasn’t particularly tall. Before Palamedes and Camilla could stop her, Gideon strode up to it and gave it an enormous kick. Osseous matter showered one side of the cubicle, tinkling away as the spell broke into the oily grey ash of cremains. Curled up inside—hands bloodied, paint smeared, the skin beneath it the same oily grey as the cremains—was Harrowhark Nonagesimus.
Gideon, who had spent the morning planning the wild, abandoned dance of joy with which she would greet Harrow’s dead body, turned back to Camilla and Palamedes.
“I can take it from here,” she said.
Ignoring her, Palamedes pushed past to the broken-bone chrysalis and fished around in its awful contents. He pulled a bit of Harrow’s black robe aside, then the collar of her shirt, past three necklaces of bone chips strung on thread, revealing a startling patch of bare skin—yikes—and pressed two fingers to her neck; he held a hand over her mouth; he said sharply, “Cam,” and she dropped to her knees beside him. She pulled a wallet from somewhere inside her shirt and removed, of all things, a wire. The outer insulation had been stripped from each end, revealing sharp metal tips, and one of these he jabbed into the fleshy part between his thumb and forefinger. It drew blood. The other end he pressed to Harrow’s neck where his fingers had been.
There followed a rapid conversation, high-speed, totally obtuse:
“High dilation rate. Blood loss not from outside injury. Hypovolemia. Breathing’s okay. Honestly—dehydration more than anything.”
“Saline?”
“Nah. She can refill herself when she’s awake.”
Gideon couldn’t help herself. She could understand finding Harrow with her legs on backward and an exploded skull, but she was only following about half of this. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.
Palamedes rocked back on his haunches. He was pinching the edge of the bone cocoon, testing it, flexing it this way and that. “She hasn’t eaten or taken water for a while,” he said. “That’s all. She would have pushed too hard and experienced a rapid drop in blood pressure and heart rate. Likely fainted, woke up, made this—this is incredible, I can’t even … then she fell asleep. It’s all one piece, no wonder she’s out. Is this normal for her?”

Gideon the Ninth - Act Two, Chapter Twelve