It's a statement that fails to answer where here is, good only for enforcing the idea that wherever they are, it's a place Sextus has been for longer--which is true, if this is the River, but if not it places Harrow at a disadvantage. For the first time in a long time, she feels the flicker of competition she'd had at Canaan House, the real one; the thought that if this is a puzzle, it's one for her edification only. And if Sextus has beaten her again to a solution...

The extension of Gideon's hand breaks into her thoughts, interrupting and intensifying the memory. For a moment, it's the Lady Pent holding a mittened hand out to her again, and it's Gideon offering herself as a siphon, and it's this Gideon now in things she'd never owned on the Ninth. All of them, none of them, memory and reality collapsing in on each other in the way it always has ever since she was a child.

She blinks at the question, putting up no resistance as Gideon picks up the rapier with practiced ease. "Yes," she says finally, her hand half-lifted towards her cavalier's. "I was stabbed through the stomach. My spine was not severed." Pulling her hand back, she grips the wall beside her and levers herself to her feet, wobbling as she makes her slow way upright. The Lyctoral robes hang limp on her frame, heavy with spattered gore.