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“Someday I’ll marry that girl,” she said aloud. “It might be good for her.” And: “Probably not, though.”
Lieutenant—” “Excuse her, please, she sucks,” said her necromancer briefly. (“Thanks?” “You do though?)
They legitimately tried to give us mumps—” (“They did not legitimately try to give us mumps. My little brother gave us mumps.”)
Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.
crying
“I think bones are mediocre.” Maybe you were dead.
“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.”
“She’s not even into you, okay? It’s just the bones. She’s into bones.”
“Ultimate power—and posters of my face.”
icon
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
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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 spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do.
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.
“She wants the D,” I said. And: “The D stands for dead.” And: “Sorry.”
“What can I say,” she said. “I love a little gall on gall.” “Reverse everything I just told you,” I said. “Let’s get married.”
he once said I would go to hell and get fucked, which I took as a roundabout way of expressing the same thing.
“D’you know, Abigail broke up with me when we were seventeen? I kept a ripped-up corner of her dance card for three years. It didn’t even have any writing on it, or her initials, or mine. Just a ripped-up corner of card.”
“Someday I’ll die and get buried in the ground and you can take it up with me then,” said Harrow, and found, after all, that she was not really speaking to them. “Until then—I am afraid that I have to live.”
Gideon the Ninth Pages 437
“Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity,”
“Genuinely sad, bordering on very funny,” said God. “Can we talk?”
“Mercymorn the First, Augustine the First, meet Commander Wake Me Up Inside, sincerest apologies if I got that wrong,” said the Emperor. “Wake—Mercy—Augustine.”
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 loved Cristabel,” he said. “I never wanted any harm to come to Cristabel. I’m so sorry. Mercy—I’m so sorry.” She was in an absolute storm of tears now; she pressed her face into his chest and gave way, as though struck with a rock from behind. He held her close and said, “I’m so sorry. I loved you all—I adored you all—I thought I was doing the right thing.” She was a crumple of misery. “Tell me that you’re sorry you lied, you bastard!”
Which was Tridentarius all over. She got one choice, and not only did she blow it, but she blew it in such a huge fucking spectacular way that you would’ve been impressed had you not hated her for it. Ianthe, throwing in her lot with the guy who had lied to everyone about everything. Ianthe, backstabbing her own cavalier all over again. Ianthe, with the world in the balance, reaching her hand out and pressing down on the weight marked BAD. She
animal tissue, etc.), and a “draining” or “leeching” ability that causes nearby human targets to suffer extreme physical weakness and eventual death. Most of these abilities strike inexperienced soldiers and civilians as horrifying and grotesque, and their power lies as much in their psychological effects as in their actual potential for damage: a severed human head is in fact rather less destructive
dies in proximity to a necromancer, the necromancer appears to receive a burst of precise information about the circumstances of that death. This makes many stealth-based approaches to combat dangerously nonviable. For example: imagine
was so handsome, so attractive, so alive. In my childhood I had already
crying
administrator; she was a princess. A king. She said there was no king but the Emperor. I said her problem was a lack of job opportunities.
to die rather than be used as a weapon against my Houses. I am not depressive, and I have not begun thinking I have no more to offer. I have a long life ahead of me and I want to use it in service of the Emperor, as I am not fitted for anything else. But at this point, I would rather die. UNTITLED ENTRY In and out of a new delirium. High fever. I don’t feel anything. I’m almost peaceful. I wish Marta had been allowed this death. UNTITLED
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