“Look, this conversation is all I’ve ever dreamed about,” said Gideon, “but I’m fine. H— My necromancer overreacted.” (This, at least, seemed to strike a chord with Camilla, whose glance softened with the understanding of someone whose necromancer was also prone to gross overreaction.) “I’m just hungry. Do I or do I not seem totally fine to you?”
“You do,” said Camilla, who had pulled a frankly upsetting bulbous glass object out of her bag. “That’s what I’m worried about. Warden said you’d be in a coma. Put this in.”
The bulb, thankfully, went in the mouth. Another one tucked up into her armpit. Gideon submitted to this treatment because she had gone a round with Camilla the Sixth before and had a healthy fear of her. The other cavalier looked at her toes and fingertips, and inside her ears. Whatever she found—plus her pulse, which the other cavalier took carefully—was noted down in a fat notebook with a stub of lead pencil. These numbers were scanned with due diligence, and then Camilla shook her head.
“You’re fine,” she said. “Shouldn’t be. But you’re fine.”
