“You do though?) Look—I wanted to introduce myself. You obviously know who I am. But we’ll be going through training together—we’re the only House heirs entering on the same footing—I don’t think it would be stupid to keep together. And you’re here without a cavalier. Nobody knows why the Reverend Daughter’s signed up for action. But I can’t judge—I’m the Baron of Tisis, and they’re probably going to haze us all until we’re half dead. Now we’re all together, I’d like to be friends. Pax?”

Harrowhark stared down at the gloved hand proffered, then at the hand’s owner. He had recently taken out quite a lot of earrings, and his ears were riddled with little empty punch holes, as though he were the recent victim of some guerrilla sewing. Both faces were, in fact, turned to her with none of the disgust she had initially fancied; their enthusiasm, she had to admit, was sincere. She did not shake the hand, but she reached out to briefly touch the fingertips with her own, and she said, “I would advise you against this. The Cohort were … opposed to my inclusion.”

“Oh, you have to get over that,” said the cavalier dismissively. “We could’ve papered the walls in strongly worded Cohort letters. It’s not like you’re the only one. The Cohort hates it when the actual heir joins up. They legitimately tried to give us mumps—”

(“They did not legitimately try to give us mumps. My little brother gave us mumps.”)

“—there’s a whole bushel of rules about asking permission to engage, and if there’s a war on we’ll get packed off to the back, so if you’re smart the first thing you have to say to your commanding officer is, ‘Excuse me, I don’t want my rank to get between myself and the troops,’ and then she can ‘forget’ to follow the safety missive, and you can get put on the post-thanergy front, where it’s interesting— Do you want to go to the cafeteria?”