Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

“Falling” was not the right term, precisely. It was a long process. She more correctly climbed down into love, picked its locks, opened its gates, and breached its inner chamber.

Ianthe only slurped angrily at her soup, making a sound like custard going down a flute.

Harrowhark deliberately did not watch for the hot flash of murder in her own cavalier’s eyes, though it at least leavened his thick, porridgy sadness.

The Ninth didn’t think anyone was in anything together, or if they were, they all had to disperse as soon as humanly possible to avoid splash damage.

But the Seventh did love questions that were as beautiful as they were unanswerable.

“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,’

to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.”

“forget the ferns. In the real world, I have been fatally stabbed. The place that holds my body is about to be overrun by thanergetic monsters created by a galactic revenant. I am, put bluntly, on the verge of death. My soul is under siege, and I overwrote my real memories with a ghost-filled pocket dimension, which has now apparently been co-opted by some kind of poltergeist. From what I can tell I am stuck in here. I cannot get out. And I am about to die—I may even be dead already—which will render this all somewhat moot.”

“Oooooh, Palamedes. I am measurably less intelligent than you. Put your tongue in my mouth, and I’ll flop my tongue against it.”

“I think bones are mediocre.”

“Ohhhhhrr, Gideon, I was so dumb to think a tub of ancient freezer meat was my girlfriend. Please show me how to do a press-up. Also, I’m very obviously attracted to y—no, damn it, this is just sad. This is garbage.” My temper was going. Maybe your temper was going. “Come back. I hate this. Eat me, and let’s go full Lyctor. I didn’t fall on a fence for this, Nonagesimus.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll keep the home fires burning.”

You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.

All I can say is that it was complicated back in Canaan House, and sometimes a cute older girl shows you a lot of attention, because she’s bored or whatever, and you sort of have this maybe-flirting maybe-not thing going on, right, and then it turns out she’s an ancient warrior who’s killed all your friends and she’s coming for you, and then you both die and she turns up ages later in the broiling heat on a sacred space station and like, it’s complicated. Just saying that it happens all the time.

I’ve seen a lot of things in my time—swords, pictures of ladies who lost their clothes in an accident, a bunch of corpses—

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.

Your plan backfired, Tridentarius. You’ve got the sickness. I know the signs of Nonagesimitis. You were all lined up for a big hot injection of Vitamin H.”

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.

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.”

“What can I say,” she said. “I love a little gall on gall.”

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.

“Hi, Not Fucking Dead,” he said. “I’m Dad.”

“Yes, well, jail for Mother,” I said.

Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were.