Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“Everyone else will be dressing exactly how they ought to dress,” said Harrow, “and if the Ninth House contravenes that—the House least likely to do any such thing—then people will examine us a hell of a lot more closely than they ought. If you look just right then perhaps they won’t ask you any tricky questions. They may not discover that the cavalier of the House of the Ninth is an illiterate peon. Hold your mouth closed.”

Gideon held her mouth closed and, once Harrow was done, said: “I object to illiterate.”

“Pinup rags aren’t litera...

“I read them for the ...

😂

These were sophisticated skeletons. Hers returned with a cup of hot tea on a tray and waited until she took it to retreat. Gideon had noticed that their fine motor control would have been the envy of any necromancer, that they moved with perfect concert and awareness. She was in a position of some expertise here. You couldn’t spend any time in the Ninth House without coming away with an unwholesome knowledge of skeletons.

The awful teens were muttering to each other, giving Gideon looks, giving each other looks, then muttering again. The wholesome older man leaned over and gave them some bracing rebuke. They subsided reluctantly, only casting the occasional dark glance her way over their soup and bread, not knowing that she was physically immune. Back in the Ninth she had endured each meal under Crux’s fantastically dismal stare, which had turned gruel into ash in her mouth.

By the end of that week, Gideon had met nearly all of the adepts and their cavaliers. This did not break down barriers and form new friendships.

But most of them still looked at her as though she were something that could only be killed with a stake through the heart at midnight, a half-tame monster on a dubious leash. Naberius Tern often sneered at her so hard that he was due a lip injury.

Before that line of conversation could be pursued, the dark-hooded necromancer of the Ninth said in her most sepulchrous and forbidding tones: “We have business down here, Lady Septimus. Excuse us.”

“But that’s just what I came to talk to you about,” said the other necromancer earnestly. “I think we four should team up.”

maybe less likely targets for Harrow to team up with—Silas Octakiseron, maybe, or Teacher, or the dead body of Magnus Quinn. In fact, Teacher would be a far better candidate.

But Dulcinea’s dreamy blue eyes were turned on Harrow, and she said: “I’ve already completed one of the theorem labs. I think I’m on the path to cracking another. If we both worked together—why, then, there’s the key in half the time with just a few hours’ work.”

“This is not intended to be col...

Dulcinea said, smilingly: “Why does everybo...

The women sized each ...

Harrow said coolly: “What would be in it for the Ninth House?”

“All my knowledge of the theory and the demonstration—and first use of the key,” said Dulcinea, eagerly.

“Generous. What would be in it for ...

“The key once you’re done. You see, I don’t think I can physi...

“Stupidity, then, not generosity. You just told me you can’t complete it. Nothing would stop my House fr...

“It took me a long time to work out the theoretical parameters,” said Dulcinea, “so I wish you the best of luck. Because even though I’m dyin...

Harrow pulled the hood back over her head, returning her to a wraith, a piece of smoke. She swept past the frail necromancer of the Seventh, who followed her with the wistful, somewhat hungry expression that Dulcinea reserved for the shadowy nuns of the Ninth—for the black robes ...

Harrowhark turned around and said, curtly: “Well? Are we doing this o...

“Oh, thank you—thank you,” Du...

Gideon was stupefied. Too many shocks in twenty-four hours shut down her thought processes. As Dulcinea stumped along the corridor, crutches clanging unharmoniously on the grille, and as Protesilaus hovered behind her a half step away as though desperate to just scoo...

Harrow whispered a lot of fuck-words before muttering: “Thank God we got to her first.”

“I never thought you’d actually help out,” said Gideon, grudgingly admiring.

“Are you dim,” hissed Harrow. “If we didn’t agree, that bleeding heart Sextus would...

“Oh, whoops, my bad,” said Gideon. “For a moment I thought you we...

Avulsion’,”

“Let me make my business plain. I have no interest in Septimus’s woes,” Harrow said. “The Seventh House is not our friend. You’re making yourself an utter fool over Dulcinea.

Gideon has the hots for the dying girl.

“Sextus,” she said, as though to a very stupid child, “your necromancer is wounded.

Misprint. "...your CAVALIER is wounded..."