Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“Ha-ha,” said Gideon, “first time you didn’t call me Griddle,” and died.

Gideon mumbled, “Harrow, you can’t just ask someone why they want to be a Lyctor,” but was roundly ignored.

Willingly go to Palamedes? Harrow must have had a hell of a fright. Gideon reflexively checked her pulse in case she was still dead.

“Your vow of silence is conveniently variable, Ninth, I’m very grateful.” “Turns out I’m variably penitent.

Naberius had finished his length of the pool, too, and had struck through the water to come and see them. His swimming shirt was a lot tighter than Coronabeth’s, and his fifty-seven abdominal muscles rippled under it importantly. He gave a long and rather obvious stretch, but stopped when he realised nobody was looking.

The Sixth, the Emperor’s Reason, blinked. “With all respect,” he said, “piss off.”

Harrowhark said, in the exact sepulchral tones of Marshal Crux: “Death first to vultures and scavengers.”

All eight theorems presumably add up to some kind of, ah…” “Megatheorem,” supplied Isaac, who, after all, was like thirteen.

“You—do you talk?” said Isaac. “You’ll wish she didn’t,” said Camilla.

“It’s unattractive to set yourself up as the repository of all knowledge, Sextus.” “‘Set up’ nothing.”

“What would you do if you discovered Camilla was a murderer?” “Help her bury the body,” said Palamedes promptly. “Sextus.” “I mean it. If Camilla wants someone dead,” he said, “then far be it from me to stand in her way.

“So … what the fuck, basically.” “The ultimate question,” he agreed, returning his attention to the flimsy.

There was an immediate hubbub, uncalmed by his impatient be quiet gestures and the shoving of his spectacles up his nose.

“Understood,” said the Reverend Daughter, in the tones of someone who neither understood nor intended to.

My mother and father weren’t angry, Nav. They were very kind to me. They tied their own nooses, and then they helped me tie mine.

Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.”

“Reverend Daughter, you know as well as I do that the Eighth House wouldn’t let a little thing like fair play get in the way of its sacred duty to do whatever it wants.”

“Wait, wait,” put in Gideon, intrigued. “You’re going to read his mind?” “No,” said both necromancers immediately. Then Palamedes said, “Well, technically, sort of.”

“He doesn’t get distracted,” said Camilla, as if this had caused difficulties in the past.

He headed for the black stone door, followed by Harrow, both cavaliers, and the five skeletons that Harrow had refused point-blank not to conjure on their way up here.

Gideon did not know how to handle this new, overprotective Harrowhark, this girl with the hunted expression. She kept looking at Gideon with the screwed-up eyes of someone who had been handed an egg for safekeeping and was surrounded by egg-hunting snakes.

“Oh, Lord—Lord—Lord, one of them has come back—”

Gideon remained in a state of flinch.

Gideon’s skin had already been crawling, but now it was trying to sprint.

Gideon, facedown on the dusty ground, moaned: “I want to die.” She was nudged with a foot, not unkindly. “Get up, Griddle.” “Why was I born so attractive?” “Because everyone would have throttled you within the first five minutes otherwise,” said her necromancer.

I assumed you would try something silly when you realized she was dead.” “I wouldn’t ever try to do something silly,” Palamedes said lightly.

“I’m not running, Harrow!” “Of course we’re not running,” said Harrowhark disdainfully. “I said a necromancer alone. I have you. We bring hell.” “Harrow—Harrow, Dulcinea’s a Lyctor, a real one—” “Then we’re all dead, Nav, but let’s bring hell first,” said Harrow.

Nav, show them what the Ninth House does.” Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly. “We do bones, motherfucker,” she said.

They had never fought together before, but they had always fought, and they could work in and around each other without a second’s thought.

“I’m not getting haunted by Palamedes Sextus’s crappy-ass revenant all telling me doctor facts for the rest of my life, just because I let you get disintegrated.”

“Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House,” she said hoarsely, “you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.”

She was the calmest she had ever been in her entire life. It was just her body that was frightened.

“Nav,” she said, “what are you doing?” “The cruellest thing anyone has ever done to you in your whole entire life, believe me,” said Gideon.

“I can’t bear it.” “Suck it down,” said Gideon. “You’re already two hundred dead daughters and sons of our House. What’s one more?”

He also has an extremely good opinion of himself and his swordplay, an opinion that Lt. Dyas notes occasionally aligns with reality.

All of his publishing has so far been internal to the Sixth House, but secondhand accounts put him as being regarded as a genius by his Sixth peers (!).