Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.

Time had repeated itself. Harrow would be tripping over herself for her whole existence, a frictionless hoop of totally fucking up.

We are reliant on a communal soundlessness. Travel in groups; tread softly; go where I durst not go: because I love my life, and I love noise, also.”

“I do not know the answers to any of these questions,” said Teacher calmly. “Only that, already, you are being too loud.”

Your relationship with it was becoming increasingly complex: you hated its presence, but the world without it would be unimaginable.

was only the fourth funeral you had ever been to where you had been responsible for the corpse.

“Can we get back to this blasted funeral,” said Mercy. “Sitting through six of these is worse than dying myself. I will let you know now that the plan for my funeral is in my top drawer, and I’ve got it down to a minute-by-minute framework, and it’s only twenty-four minutes, and it’s just lovely.”

And just when his Lady might feel the pain of any reflective empathy for him, he saved her by establishing his position as the biggest source of passive aggression her House had ever produced.

once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it.”

“You don’t fear dying. You can tolerate pain. You are afraid that your life has incurred a debt that your death will not pay. You see death as a mistake.”

Cinereous was at least correct: ash also looked solid upon first glance, but was insubstantial filth on contact.

“Do not get me wrong, sis. Eating a new cook’s food after ten thousand years is frankly exciting. Let me give you a list of my favourite meals so that you can get them interestingly wrong.”

BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN,

“Harry,” she said, and she said it tenderly, “have you never read a trashy novel in which the hero gets a life-affirming change of clothes and some makeup, and then goes to the party and everyone says things like, ‘By the Emperor’s bones! But you’re beautiful,’ or, ‘This is the first time I have ever truly seen you,’ and if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?” You said emphatically: “No.” “Then we have no shared point of reference. Thankfully, however, this is not that part,” she said. “Not even one of the Emperor’s fists and gestures could give Harrowhark Nonagesimus a sexy makeover. Sometimes I think you look like a twig’s funeral.

When she finished, you did not look upon your reflection with revolted shock, merely with a dull and uncomfortable distaste. The worst part was your sudden resemblance to your mother. “I am very satisfied,” pronounced Ianthe. You said drearily, “I look like an imbecile.”

You said, “I feel unwell.” “Yes. Yes, me too,” she said heatedly, in unexpected accord. “That was disgusting, to say the least. Old people should be shot.”

“Then try not to mourn when everything goes according to your request,” said Harrow, and then they were both irritated—

It is dreadful to be shown a monster’s pity.”

The fear of death had remade your worship into desperation, or maybe desire.

“Oh, but the problem is that heroes always die,”

“You can’t even really pronounce one a hero until they die heroically.

“This is the Beast,” she said. Augustine said, “That’s a muffin.”

You were always such a little bitch when you were angry.

And you walked to your death like a lover.

“What is better?” he asked. “An ignoble death by someone else’s hands, or a heroic death by one’s own?

I was weak because weakness is easy, and because rebuff is hard.

happens all the time. All I could do was stand there, sword raised, as the Lyctor thrashed mindlessly on the floor next to us, and say: “What the fuck is going on?”

“Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?” “Ultimate power—and posters of my face.” Fair.

She had not said goodbye. Harrow so rarely got to say goodbye.

time.” “Is that the truth, or the truth you tell yourself?” asked Augustine. “What is the difference?” said God.

Oh, we’ll still hate each other, my dear, we have hated each other too long and too passionately to stop … but my bones will rest easy next to your bones.”