Best queen.

The only one for her lovely girl.

Enough recovery, time for kissies.

Fair enough.

But also Ellyn wants to test the constructs they worked so hard for.

Science time! 

The two new ones animate much more smoothly than the previous three. They also, if sat in the end chairs, cause the key box to appear again.

Nice. 

And - that's all Labs conquered. 

One step closer to starting their own work.

But first, the final study.

The study of Anastasia the First, Saint of Mysteries (as She's known only to the Ninth House) and her cavalier Samael Novenary is appropriately small and unassuming, the theorems for the Lab on a sturdy desk with a chair, rather than anything as unnecessarily dramatic as a plinth. The only possible hint at luxury is through a side arch - which goes into a vaulted room taken up entirely by a saltwater pool. The entire space is dark, as still and dark as the Ninth at the winter solstice, and every bit of writing is in raised script, easily readable with skimmed fingers. It's quiet, too, swaddled in heavy dark fabrics that steal away all sound. 

"Just like home, huh."

"Guess she passed on a lot down the years." It's weirdly nice, though. 

"Oddly comforting, that continuity."

Possibly! 

"I'll look around while you study the theorem?"

"Mm," she agrees. "Don't fall in the pool by accident."

"Promise if I'm in the pool, it'll only be on purpose."

Kiss!

And to their separate work.

The study is interesting - and Gideon finds a few instances of crypt-script hidden among the few, almost perfunctory decorations, places they'd be hard to find without feeling up everything (Gideon loves little hidden nooks). This particular variant probably only looks like scratches or hatching to ordinary eyes - but it's especially well suited to reading with fingers. 

She traces the terse instructions - a message across time to some future Ninth House scion - 

And finds on the back wall of the pool - at the very base of the rather deep slope - a tiny, hidden razorblade of a catch - 

Gideon pulls back before it can draw blood - she has her suspicions about what kind of hidden catch this is - and swims back to the arch, calling into the main study, "Think I found something."

Ellyn finishes the last of the note she's on. The theorem is efficient, despite its age, like some of the really old paper journals Gideon used to ferret out of hidden parts of the library on the Ninth.

"What's that?"

She describes the crypt-script hints and the little catch at the base of the pool. "Think it's a blood ward of some kind - might react better to you than me. It'd be hard to restrict relatedness at this large a remove - everybody born on the Ninth is by this point probably technically descended from Anastasia through some distaff line or another - but that'd still do a pretty good job of limiting to native Ninth. And it might like the feel of Ninth necromancy." 

"It's definitely worth the look. Good find."

Ugh, she'll have to get wet now. Well, hopefully great-great-etc grandmother doesn't mind Ellyn unlocking her inner sanctum mostly naked.