Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

“You should have killed your sister,” you said. “Your eyes don’t match your face.”

Crux told her that her parents had been different, once. This must have been before they committed a little light child massacre.

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.

AHHH SHE HAD COST TO MUCH TO DIE :(

Her parents knew what they had been about, making a genius out of two hundred dead children:

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

A rubber-bodied toddler with a painted face and very red hair lay dead beside your knee and for some reason it was this that destroyed you, it was this that kindled within you something you had no hope of defending against. You howled in a purity of fright.

“What does BOE stand for?” “Blood of Eden,” he’d said, slowly. “Who is Eden?” “Someone they left to die,” said God wearily. “How sharper than the serpent’s tooth, et cetera …

“I don’t know. I died, once … no, twice,”

“Do I have Ortus’s eyes? Are these ones mine? I never really looked at them— Beloved, what were my eyes like?”

they were both that deep and fathomless black, the colour Ianthe called black roses, because Ianthe was overfamiliar and frankly a pervert.

“So we’re talking about ghosts, and liminal spaces, and hell,” Ianthe said. Ianthe always wanted everything brought back to liminal spaces and hell,

“But why does Ortus the First want me dead?” “Who?” said Mercymorn, indifferently.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?????

Just believe me when I say that when I want Ortus to go, he’ll be giddy-gone.” (This did not make much sense to you, as a joke.)

WAIIIITTTTTTTTYY WAIIITTTTTTT WHAR THR FUVKKKK WAIIITTTTT

When she raised her head again her gaze was cool and mocking, as though your inability to receive a kiss was yet more proof of limitation. Your mouth was very dry when you said: “My affections lie buried in the Locked Tomb.”

Ortus dropped his hand and said, with intent: “Just tell me—back then—why you brought along the ba—”

The … baby..?

The total absence of appropriate shame made you suspect that this had happened between them before, a thought that made you want to give yourself a lobotomy.

Well well well

“It’s a historical,” said a voice behind you. “Abella Trine, inevitably of Ida, is considered a poor prospect on the marriage market because she’s too skinny, her tract-specialist flesh magic is too good, and she wears her thick chestnut hair in an unflattering bun, which is mentioned at least twice a chapter.”

Wait clocked

But you were always too quick to mourn your own ignorance. You never could have guessed that he had seen me.

WHSR THE FUCK??????? WHOS “ME” ????? WEVE BEEN IN SECOND PERSON THIS WHOLE TIME WHOS ME?????

I’ve been wandering these halls at three o’clock in the morning, saying at the top of my voice, ‘It would be terrible to be shot,’ and the Sleeper still does not come …

“J. G. calling in. All clear. Lyctors, do you copy?” “A. A. calling in. All clear.” “G. P. calling in. All clear.” A pause. Then you heard Ianthe’s cool, detached tones, as if she hadn’t even been asleep: “No one has yet seen fit to grace me with a callsign, but nonetheless, all clear.”

I have seen the Tomb and I have looked upon your death. My parents killed themselves over my heresy. I saw what lies within, and I will love it beyond my own entombing. I— Did I sin, Lord? Did I kill two of my fathers that day?”

“Harry,” she said. Harrow, she was genuinely delighted to see you. The smile on that thin white face was real. “Harry, you’re—” I moved closer and totally fucking ruined her day. “Alive, bitch,” I said.

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!

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.

“She wants the D,” I said. And: “The D stands for dead.” And: “Sorry.”

I am a Lyctor … Harrow is a Lyctor … and the centuries will entangle us whether she wants them to or— Nav, if you persist in making jack-off motions when I am talking, I will show you what Harrow’s kidneys look like.”

“This whole thing happened because you wouldn’t face up to Gideon dying,” he said, which was a stab as precise as any Nonius had managed. “I don’t blame you. But where would you be, right now, if you’d said: She is dead? You’re keeping her things like a lover keeping old notes, but with her death, the stuff that made her Gideon was destroyed. That’s how Lyctorhood works, isn’t it? She died. She can’t come back, even if you keep her stuffed away in a drawer you can’t look at. You’re not waiting for her resurrection; you’ve made yourself her mausoleum.”

The woman I was pretty sure was actually my mother—wearing the body of a woman I’d had a crush on, who in turn had been wearing the identity of a woman she’d murdered, until I fell on a spike so that my boss could kill her—craned her head around in her bonds.

I only met that calm once, and it wasn’t on a living human being: it was the calm on a dead girl’s face, speared and mangled in a bed I’d told her to lie down in.

I’m going to throw up