Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

Just tell me, what’s Cam got of my bones?” “Three inches of right-hand parietal, full right-hand frontal, leading down to—” “That’s enough. Just so I know what to focus on— Can you change that into something more useful?” You said arctically, “I am a Lyctor, Palamedes Sextus.” “And I’m so sorry about it,” he said. “Point taken though. Anything that articulates, okay?”

Palamedes looked at you and opened his mouth to say something as a third rattle flung you both back a little; your heads knocked together, and then you heard the deliberate steel rasp of a trigger being cocked. Sextus was rubbing his temple and looking at you, awestruck, as though he had seen some stupefying glimpse of the beyond; you did not remotely understand the sharp smile that suddenly crossed his face. “Kill us twice, shame on God,” he said, and he leaned forward, and much to your intense distress he swiftly kissed your brow.

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

“Ngghyaaar—warn him, Lyctor! He has been infiltrated, damn it, and I can do nothing! I am a prisoner of war! If you love him, tell the Emperor that the traitor has already—Nghhhyughh—”

“Let me ask one thing,” you said. “One single question—just the one—for the sake of what I have just done for you, and for the Master Warden of the Sixth House.” Camilla looked at you distantly, and eventually said: “Ask. I’m not going to promise that I can answer.” You said, “Who took you away from Canaan House? Who are you with, Hect?” “You call them Blood of Eden,” she said.

“I believe we are now being punished for what they did. Even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck … and the disciples were scared! I cannot blame them! I was terrified! But when the work was done—when I was finished, and so were they, and the new Lyctors found out the price—they bade him kill the saltwater creature before she could do them harm … Oh, but it is a tragedy, to be put in a box and laid to wait for the rest of time. It happened to me, but I was only a man, or perhaps fifty men … Reverend Daughter, your whole House treads upon a knife’s edge, as keepers of such a zoo.”

IN THOSE LAST LONG, terrible days before the end—those strangled, claustrophobic, white-faced days that stalked the borders of your nights like predators waiting for your collapse—you began to pray again.

“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.” Augustine: “You’re I. N., of course. Harrow’s H … Yes, Harrow’s H.” “H. O., calling in,” you said instantly, and you ignored Ianthe’s audible sniggers. “All clear. What’s going on?”

Anyone who has entered a stoma has never returned. It is a portal to the place I cannot touch—somewhere I don’t fully comprehend, where my power and my authority are utterly meaningless. You’ll find very few ghosts sink as far as the barathron. If I believed in sin, I would say they died weighted down with sin, placing them nearer the trash space. That’s what we’ve been using it for, in any case. That’s where we put the Resurrection Beasts.

When you came around, you found that you were the only one sitting in a circle of standing Lyctors, their faces like blank flimsy, their rapiers in their hands, their offhands at the ready. The Saint of Duty with his spear. The Saint of Patience with his smallsword. The Saint of Joy with her net. Ianthe, with her trifold knife. You stared numbly at these faces, wondering which one would betray God at the last.

“A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus. As a reminder. Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea, quem timebo? God is my light. Harrowhark, if I went under—I’d enter that senseless state, and I am God. What if, forty billion light-years away, my people looked up to see Dominicus falter and go out? What if the very House beneath their feet died all over again, as I turned my back upon it?”

So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.”

God said, “She was the first Resurrection. She was my Adam. As the dust settled and I beheld what was left and what was gone, I was entirely alone. The world had been ended, Harrowhark. One moment I was a man, and then the next moment I was the Necrolord Prime, the first necromancer, and more importantly, a landlord with no tenants.”

Then he said: “She lived to see what happened at Canaan House. Not that she took much interest. My first Resurrection was not a normal human being, Harrow, and she struggled to pretend. Anger was her besetting sin. We had that in common. And when the cost of Lyctorhood was paid, when the emotions were at their peak … we found out the price for our sin. The monstrous retribution. To be chased for our crime to the ends of the universe, to have our deed stain our very faces and follow after us like a foul smell. She died after that first terrible assault.”

“I understand why cavaliers primary carry their House titles,” said God. “It makes sense. But it is a corruption of the original. D’you know why you’re really the First? Because in a very real way, you and the others are A.L.’s children … There would be none of you, if not for her.”

“I like to think that she would like you. You’d make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. I sometimes indulge in the wish that you’d been mine.”

What dismantled you—you bereft idiot—was not even the God who made the Ninth House, the Emperor All-Giving, the Kindly Prince; your end appeared in the form of a grown adult telling you that they might have liked you for their own.

“I’m not saying that you didn’t do it because you weren’t good enough. Harrowhark, I’m saying that nobody is good enough. There isn’t a bypass. I built that tomb with Anastasia, designed every inch of it, and I did not include a way in. I never wanted that tomb opened, from either end. I made that ward, me alone, and it wouldn’t answer to the greatest of my Lyctors any better than the meanest infant necromancer in all the Nine Houses. Their might would be one and the same.”

“It can’t be broken,” he continued. “It can’t be contravened. It can’t even fade; its magic was my magic. The line of Reverend Tomb-keepers has laboured under a misapprehension if they think the rock could be rolled away, except by me. It’s a pure blood ward, Harrowhark. Whatever you thought you did—whatever false chamber has been built around that tomb that you mistakenly stumbled into—there is no possibility that you breached the real thing. I am so sorry. You were party to a tragedy based on a misunderstanding.”

Then God’s eyes widened fractionally, and his voice became altogether different when he said: “Harrow, who the hell’s been tampering with your temporal lobe?”

And you walked to your death like a lover.

It was always a certain kind of ass who approached love like that—a certain kind of very good, talented ass, who had been overly used to their hands on the reins and never could cope when they were taken off—nor had the personality to put them back on again. Ianthe had that type of personality. And she had a few years on Harrow. “Someday I’ll marry that girl,” she said aloud. “It might be good for her.” And: “Probably not, though.” And then Ianthe the First went to see a man about a queen.

When Harrowhark looked at that face, she found a curious heat travelling all the way up from the pit of her pylorus to the high collar of her Cohort shirt. It then traversed her cheeks, her nose, her brow, her temples. The other officer smiled a firm-jawed, long, crooked smile at her; Harrow was electrified by the fact that beneath the hastily brushed crop of red hair those eyes were— “Absolutely not,” said Abigail, from beside her.

Memory hit Harrowhark Nonagesimus with the inexorable gravity of a satellite sucked from orbit, flinging itself to die on the surface of its bounden planet; the world hit her like a fall.

“All right. When did you become aware of what was happening to you? When did you realise what was going on with the other soul?” It was easier to answer questions mechanically. “In the first days. I knew she would be absorbed. I understood that I would inadvertently destroy her soul—the process was already underway. But it hadn’t finished. I had time. I decided to remove my ability to so incorporate her … by removing my ability to comprehend her.”

“I took the part of my brain that remembered her … that understood her soul … and I disconnected it. Then I made rather crude systems—so as not to be accidentally reminded … knowing that the pathways might reopen if they were knocked about. I had an accomplice … someone who knew how to manipulate the fatty tissue of the brain better than I possibly could. I made my skull a construct, programmed to apply pressure to specific lobes. And it worked, Pent. It worked,” she said. “It was stupid. A brute-force solution. But it worked.”

“I think we are talking over each other,” said the Fifth adept, rubbing her mittened hands together. “I’m not asking about the preserved soul that made you a Lyctor, Reverend Daughter … though that’s also filled in some of the pieces. Harrowhark, I am referring to the invasive soul.” “The invasive—?” “You are being haunted,” said Abigail calmly. “I had assumed you had picked this battlefield deliberately, and raised an army to fight alongside you. I didn’t quite know why you’d chosen us. Now I know, but it seems you did not. You are possessed by an angry spirit, Harrow, and you are losing the war.”

“Lady Pent,” said Harrowhark forcefully, “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.”

“Leave your body to your body, Reverend Daughter,” said Abigail, rising shakily to stand, her teeth chattering. “If you were dead on the other side, we’d all be gone by now. If you die in here, your soul is gone forever. Right now, in this moment, you are alive—let us ensure that if your body survives, you will remain at the helm.” Harrow fought to be heard over the screams of the wind. “But I was stabbed through the stomach! What’s happening out there?”

I lined up your front foot with your back ankle, thumb wrapped low around the hilt of your sword, which proves that you can put the swordfighter into the necromancer but you can’t, wait, hang on. And I said, “Goddamn it, I told you to lift weights.” The creature skittered toward us at an incredible speed. What followed was an absolute shitshow.

Oh Gideon lol

Which was, by the way, in fucking abominable condition. There is so much I should have told you. I just didn’t have time. I didn’t know. I didn’t know I’d have to say: A sword doesn’t hold an edge on its own, you sack of Ninth House garbage. I didn’t know I’d have to say, If you dip a sword into melty bone, the metal gets more pitted than an iron mine, you cross-patched necromantic shit. I think the main thing I should have said was, You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.

It was only when I saw us in the mirror by the dresser—saw me, in you—still not saying anything—that it hit home what you had done. Your face was a mess. It was such a weird goddamn melange of us: your pointy-ass chin, your stubborn-featured, dark-browed face, less battered than the last time I’d seen it, but—wearier than I’d ever known it to be. Your eyes had little smudgy lines next to them, and they were there at the corners of your mouth, marks of this huge, exhausted sadness. You could always leave everything else behind, but you never got rid of being so absolutely fucking goddamn sad.

All of that was the same Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Angular. Ferocious. Terrible. But at the same time, it wasn’t.

Main reason: my eyes stared out of your face. The shape was yours, but the yellow-amber irises were as out of place in your face as my sword was clutched in your thin, straining arms. The expression wasn’t right either—my what the fuck? face was very different from your what the fuck? face. It was like watching a shell of you walk around; like the empty puppets you’d made of Pelleamena and Priamhark. Except that would’ve been easier. This was your shell, but it was all filled up with me. God, the double entendres were hard to resist.

“Come back. I hate this. Eat me, and let’s go full Lyctor. I didn’t fall on a fence for this, Nonagesimus.”

No dice. I shouldered my sword. Your arms blazed in response. “Whenever you’re ready,” I said. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll keep the home fires burning.” And the Heralds piled in.

“A spirit can be trapped,” said Abigail, “trapped as every spirit in the River is trapped … I know it must sound puzzling, Harrow, so I’ll elaborate. The River is full of the insane, who attempt to cross—”

She closed her eyes and lost herself in that dizzy unreality of blackness: of swaying minutely, of lost balance. So many months had passed: and yet, at the same time, she had only lost Gideon Nav three days ago. It was the morning of the third day in a universe without her cavalier: it was the morning of the third day—and all the back of her brain could say, in exquisite agonies of amazement, was: She is dead. I will never see her again. Harrow said, “Murder.”

ONE FLESH, ONE END. G. & P. She and Gideon had looked over the contents of the drawers. Cigarette ash. Buttons. Time-abandoned toothbrushes. An ancient emblem of the House of the Second. Whetstones and guns. She now knew what the P stood for: Pyrrha Dve.

“What is the plan, Pent?” “Why, to let ghosts bury ghosts,” she said. “With everyone’s help, I am going to exorcise the Sleeper.”

I was yelling, and trying to grab the damn sword away anyway, and I saw it eat your thumb—these details are important, so keep up with me—and your thumb was back in the next half minute. I watched it grow. The gushing stump grew a full bone, and then the meat grew up around it in the next breath, and then it all closed over in fresh skin and thumbnail. I set it back around the hilt and it worked like it had not just been chewed up by a wasp ghoul.

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

You didn’t have any gloves. You didn’t have any armour. When I took off your robe, which was just puke rags by then, I found you were wearing a whole bunch of bones on your skin for no apparent reason. I was sorry to take them off in case they were any use at all, but whatever necromantic noise you’d used to fix them to yourself wasn’t working, and they were making it even harder to extend your arms. So I closed my eyes and I reached under your shirt and I peeled them all off, and I tied your hair back and took your sword and left. I didn’t look, and I barely touched you. Don’t get mad.

Gideon you truly are adorably hilarious

“So now you come to me, First,” she said raggedly. “Now you come … at the end of everything.” She seemed to be waiting. I didn’t know what to say. No way I could pretend to be you; I knew you too well.

“Lady,” I said, “are you telling me you stabbed my necromancer?” “Yes, and she should have thanked me for it!!” said the Lyctor, thoroughly distracted. “It wasn’t horrible—I dulled her nerves, out of a misplaced sense of affection—I put her out in the corridor specially so she would be eaten quicker, and once she started getting eaten alive, she would have been mad and not feeling a thing! But you’re the soul—the soul of the cavalier that she stuffed in the back of her brain! What happened to your eyes?”

I said, “What the fuck are you talking about?” “I am talking about the failure of the Ninth House operation,” she said.

When she spoke at last, she sounded frozen and numb. “I see. I understand. Lipochrome. Recessive. You are the evidence. He lied to us … and you are all the proof I needed. I don’t have to breach anything. I don’t have to go back.” She exhaled. “Good God … Cytherea would have known as soon as she looked at you.” And I said: “What the fuck are you talking about? What the hell are you talking about? What other Gideon?” “The Lyctor sent to kill your mother,” said Mercymorn. “But Harrow’s mother—” “I’m not talking to Harrowhark, you facile dead child,” she said disdainfully. “I am talking to you … Nav … Gideon Nav … Gideon! What a laugh … you abomination, you heresy, you failed ambition nineteen years too late.”

Sorry. Maybe I should’ve gone for her. Like, I can imagine what you’d say. 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. 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?”

On gid

“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, Reverend Daughter, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.”

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.