Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

“I would rather have my tendons peeled from my body, one by one, and flossed to shreds over my broken bones,” you said. “I would rather be flayed alive and wrapped in salt. I would rather have my own digestive acid dripped into my eyes.” “So what I’m hearing is … maybe,” said Ianthe.

Looking deep into the eyes of the cavalier she murdered, you realised, not for the first time, and not willingly, that Ianthe Tridentarius was beautiful.

Then you went under to make war on Hell. Hell spat you back out. Fair enough.

But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.

Harrow was furious that she was doing something so—so pedestrian as to pubesce.

So the years passed, unshriven, crusting up and drying as they went.

There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born.

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You will think at this point that I have given you a terrible hand to play the game with. I am not unsympathetic. Nonetheless, understand that I envy you more than I have ever envied anyone, and that I look upon your birth as a blessing. Look upon me as a Harrowhark who was handed the first genuine choice of our lives; the only choice ever given where we had free will to say, No, and free will to say, Yes. Accept that in this instance I have chosen to say, No.

You found your mouth and eyes screwing up, as though against the light, or a sour taste; you could not help it. But the vile course of action was obvious. You leant down and—holy shit—kissed her squarely on the mouth. This, at least, she hadn’t expected—how could she, what the fuck—and her mouth froze against yours, which gave you time to work.

what would be the tragedy in living for a myriad? Ten thousand years to learn everything there is to know—to read everything that has ever been written … to study without fear of premature end or reckoning. What is the tragedy of time?”

There was a ghastly moment now when you realised that he had looked at the Resurrecting Prince when he said John; that God had responded to so banal and cursory a word as John;

You weren’t around to be furious, but if you had been, I would’ve told you not to bother; I planned on making them sorrier than they had ever been in all their fucking life.

There were dead Heralds everywhere. It was a fuckshow of curled-in toes and creepy human hands. The floor was seething with slime and bones. Completely gross and bad. You would’ve loved it.

Nonagesimus, I’m sorry. I was averagely good all my life. At least not criminally bad. I did a bunch of shit I’m not proud of—some of it I regret, some of it I don’t. I absolutely regret not kicking Crux down a flight of stairs and watching him go Oof, ow, my bones down each step, which now that I think about it does not help the case I am making here—I wasn’t absolute garbage. Maybe you’d agree.

“Stay here,” I said. “Get fucked,” she said thickly. “I absolutely did not become the eighth saint to serve the King Undying so Gideon Nav could play hero for me.” “Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?” “Ultimate power—and posters of my face.” Fair.

Harrow, it was in your handwriting. She handed me a fat, bulging envelope with your handwriting, and it said To be given to Gideon Nav, and I felt—strange. Time softened as I held it, and I didn’t even care about the barely repressed mirthful scorn on the other girl’s face. It was your curt, aggravated handwriting, curter and more aggravated than ever, like you’d written it in a hurry. I’d gotten so many letters in that handwriting, calling me names or bossing me around. You’d touched that letter, and I—you know it was killing me twice that you weren’t there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn’t even hear your damn voice?

I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me. Which is, coincidentally, what your mother said to me last night.

Love—don’t make that face, child, I have loved plenty—true love is acquisitive. You keep anything … strands of hair … an envelope they might’ve licked … a note saying, Good morning, simply because they wrote it to you. Love is a revenant, Gideon Nav, and it accumulates love-stuff to itself, because it is homeless otherwise.

I died knowing you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.

“In the storm, the tree is glad of the root, Not of the branch.”

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

His mouth was hard now, but his eyes were as kind as they had ever been. And kindness was a knife.

I remember the time you caught me telling her, I love you, and I can’t even remember what you said, but I remember that I had you on your back—I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you till your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn’t even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven? Was that the day you decided you wanted to die? You remember how the fuck-off great-aunts always used to say, Suffer and learn? If they were right, Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?

I’d had this choice before. The different deaths. The death of waiting; the death of optimism. Harrow, the last time I chose to die, I died with your face the last thing I ever looked at. Let me tell you a secret: it was easy to die thinking I wouldn’t have to see you go. It was so easy to check out before you did.

I wish I could say I was thinking about you. Harrowhark, there was so much I wanted to tell you. I wish that on the edge of an ending bigger than I understood, that I was thinking about you, that the last word on your lips would be me saying your name, taken down to the dark heart of some world beyond.

Harrowhark, did you know that if you die by drowning, apparently your whole life flashes in front of your eyes? I didn’t know, as I died and took you along with me—having kept you alive for what, a whole two hours?—whether it was going to show me both. Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were. A final blurring of the edges between us, like water spilt over ink outlines. Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last.