Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“He was nice to me,” she found herself saying. She was very tired. She tried to wake herself up by stretching, dropping down to touch her toes and feeling the blood rush into her head. “Because he was a stranger, I think … He didn’t have to bother with me, to make time for me or remember my name, but he did. Hell, you treat me more like a stranger than Magnus Quinn did and I’ve known you all my life. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.”

oh gideon. someone needs to hug you

“I must no longer accept,” she said slowly, “being a stranger to you.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Gideon, sudden sweat prickling the back of her neck, “yes you can, you once told me to dig myself an ice grave. Stop before this gets weird.”

Several hours later, Gideon turned over in her bed, chilled by the realisation that Harrow had not promised to never talk like that again. Too much of this shit, and they’d end up friends.

ut we all know the sad + trying realit is that this will remain incomplete t the last. He can’t fix my deficiencies her ease give Gideon my congratulations, howev

At that, Harrow had stopped—almost at the head of the staircase—and finally looked around. “Nav,” she’d said. “I could already make bone hunks. But now I can make them regenerate.” The outcome literally nobody wanted.

Next to Gideon, Harrowhark stiffened, very slightly. “Ghosts and monsters,” the lady of the Seventh continued enthusiastically, “remnants and the dead … the disturbed dead. The idea that someone is still here and furious … or that something has been lurking here forever. Maybe it’s that I find the idea comforting … that thousands of years after you’re gone … is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice.” Harrow said, “A spirit comes at invitation. It cannot sustain itself.” “But what if one could?” cried Dulcinea. “That’s so much more interesting than plain murder.”

The women sized each other up. Dulcinea, leaning into her metal braces, looked like a brittle doll: Harrow, hooded and swathed in miles of black fabric, like a wraith. When she pulled away the hood the older necromancer did not flinch, even though it was a deliberately chilling sight; the dark-cropped head, the stark paint on the face, the bone studs punched halfway up each ear. Harrow said coolly: “What would be in it for the Ninth House?”

Harrowhark turned around and said, curtly: “Well? Are we doing this or not, Lady Septimus?” “Oh, thank you—thank you,” Dulcinea said. 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 scoop her up and carry her, Gideon strode to catch up with her necromancer.

With a flourish of inky skirts, Harrowhark turned back to the stairs, staring through Dulcinea rather than at her. “Let’s say I agree with your theory,” she said. “To maintain enough thanergy for my wards inside the field, I’d need to fix a siphon point outside it. The most reasonable source of thanergy would be—you.” “You can’t move thanergy from place to place like that,” said the Seventh, with very careful gentleness. “It has to be life to death.… or death to a sort of life, like the Second do. You’d have to take my thalergy.” She raised a wasted hand, and then let it flutter back to her face like a drifting paper plane. “Me? I could get you maybe—ten metres.”

“It’s said they all die screaming,” said Harrow. “Nice to know that the other Houses are also creeps,” said Gideon. “Nav.” She said, “I’ll still do it.”

“Probably because you asked.” The heavy eyelids shuttered open, revealing baleful black irises. “That’s all it takes, Griddle? That’s all you demand? This is the complex mystery that lies in the pit of your psyche?” Gideon slid her glasses back onto her face, obscuring feelings with tint. She found herself saying, “That’s all I ever demanded,” and to maintain face suffixed it with, “you asswipe.”

“It’s all right,” someone was saying, over the noise. “You’re all right. Gideon, Gideon … you’re so young. Don’t give yourself away. Do you know, it’s not worth it … none of this is worth it, at all. It’s cruel. It’s so cruel. You are so young—and vital—and alive. Gideon, you’re all right … remember this, and don’t let anyone do it to you ever again. I’m sorry. We take so much. I’m so sorry.” She would remember each word later, loud and clear.

Clutched in the thin lap, Gideon could make no response that was not retching, gurgling or clamouring, silenced only by one rather skinny hand. “Good girl,” the voice was saying. “Oh, good girl. She’s got it, Gideon! And I’ve got you … Gideon of the golden eyes. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault … I’m so sorry. Stay with me,” the voice said more urgently, “stay with me.” Gideon was suddenly aware that she was very cold. Something had changed. It was getting harder to suck in each breath. “She’s stumbled,” said the voice, detached, and Gideon heaved: not against the connection, but into it. The consequent pain was so intense that she was afraid she might wet herself, but the spike of cold faded. “She’s up … Gideon, Gideon, she’s up. Just a little bit more. Darling, you’re fine. Poor baby…”

When she opened her eyes again there was a dazzling moment of clarity and sharpness. Harrow Nonagesimus was kneeling by her side, naked as the day she was spawned. Her hair was shorn a full inch shorter, the tips of her eyelashes were gone, and—most horrifyingly—she was absolutely nude of face paint. It was as though someone had taken a hot washcloth to her. Without paint she was a point-chinned, narrow-jawed, ferrety person, with high hard cheekbones and a tall forehead. There was a little divot in her top lip at the philtrum, which gave a bowlike aspect to her otherwise hard and fearless mouth. The world rocked, but it was mainly because Harrow was shaking her shoulders. “Ha-ha,” said Gideon, “first time you didn’t call me Griddle,” and died.

She said abruptly, “Why did you want to be a Lyctor?” Gideon mumbled, “Harrow, you can’t just ask someone why they want to be a Lyctor,” but was roundly ignored. The older woman was leaning against Protesilaus’s arm. She looked extraordinarily sad, even regretful; when she caught Gideon’s eye, a tiny smile tugged on the corners of her mouth, then drooped again. Eventually, she said: “I didn’t want to die.”

There was a knock on the door. Nonplussed, unpainted, and hungry, she opened it. Nonplussed, much-tried, and impatient, Camilla the Sixth stared back. She sighed, obviously tired of Gideon’s bullshit already, and raised a hand with three digits bent. “How many fingers?” she demanded.

“Look, this conversation is all I’ve ever dreamed about,” said Gideon, “but I’m fine. H— My necromancer overreacted.” (This, at least, seemed to strike a chord with Camilla, whose glance softened with the understanding of someone whose necromancer was also prone to gross overreaction.) “I’m just hungry. Do I or do I not seem totally fine to you?”

The tools were wiped and put back in the bag. For a moment, the other cavalier didn’t answer. Then she pushed a strand of hair away from her grim, oval painting of a face, and said: “Warden did the calculations. He and I could have—completed it, but. With caveats.” “Caveats like?” “My permanent brain damage,” said Camilla shortly, “if he didn’t get it right immediately.” “But I’m healthy.”

“The Eighth doesn’t train cavaliers,” said Camilla, even more shortly than before. “The Eighth breeds batteries. Genetic match for the necromancer. He’s been accessing his cavalier since he was a child. The Eighth probably does have brain damage. It’s not his brain they need. And Lady Septimus … is too willing to believe in fairy stories. Same as always.”

Scalded by the bright orange light of the setting sun coming down through the great ceiling windows, Corona looked like a grief-stricken king: her lovely chin and shoulders were thrust out defiantly, and her mouth was hard and remorseless as glass. Her violet eyes looked as though she had been crying, though perhaps from anger.

The golden hand had not dropped from his shoulder, but instead fisted in his shirt. “But that means—that means the challenge must be communal,” said Corona, with an exquisite furrow of her brow. “If we’re all only given pieces of this puzzle, refusing to share the knowledge means that nobody can solve it. We need to pool everything, or none of us will be ever be Lyctor. That has to be it, hasn’t it, Teacher?”

“But natural law—the laws against murder and theft. What prevents us from stealing one another’s keys through intimidation, blackmail, or deception? What would stop someone from waiting for another necromancer and their cavalier to gather a sufficient number of keys, then taking them by force?” Teacher said, “Nothing.”

It didn’t take long for Gideon to finish, as in any case she hadn’t much bothered to chew. She stared with glassy eyes at Camilla the Sixth’s plate—Camilla, who had finished most of hers, rolled her eyes and pushed her leftovers to Gideon. This was an act for which she was fond of Camilla forever after.

“Long enough,” said Palamedes, hooking his fingers underneath the lid of a morgue shelf. “Your Nonagesimus confirmed it with me after the Fifth were killed. Yes, I know you’ve known the whole time.” Oh, exquisite! Harrowhark had kept Palamedes Sextus in a loop that didn’t include Gideon. She felt angry; then she felt bereft; then she felt angry again. This felt like being hot and cold at once. Totally heedless of her, the Sixth necromancer continued: “I meant what I said though. There are precious few keys left. The faeces hits the fan starting now. Cam, did you bring the box?”

Palamedes glanced up at her. His eyes really were extraordinary: like cut grey rock, or deep weather atmosphere. He cleared his throat, and he said: “How much would you do for the Lady Septimus?” Gideon was glad of the paint; she was thrown off balance, unsure of her footing. She said, “Uh—she’s been kind to me. What’s your interest in Lady Septimus?” “She’s—been kind to me,” said Palamedes. They stared at each other with a kind of commingled weariness and embarrassed suspicion, skirting around something juvenile and terrible. “The Eighth is both determined and dangerous.”

“Violent head and body trauma,” he said. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, and then he turned his laser-sharp gaze on her. “What I do know is—it wasn’t just a fall.” His cavalier said lowly, warningly: “Warden.”

“Poor dumb kids,” Gideon said, all of four years their elder. “Do you think so?” said Palamedes, surprising her. “I don’t. I often find myself wondering how dangerous they really are.”

The bath was soporific. For the first time since she’d come to Canaan House, Gideon was truly content to lie down in her nest, get out a magazine and do absolutely nothing for half an hour. Nine dreamless hours later she woke up with the pages stuck to her face via a thin sealant of drool. “Ffppppp,” she said, peeling it off her face, and: “Harrow?”

As it turned out, in the next room Harrow was curled up in bed with the pillows over her head and her arms sticking out. Haphazardly flung laundry was piled next to the wardrobe door. The sight filled Gideon with a sensation that she had to admit was relief.

Gideon cocked her head. “Jeanne wants you,” he repeated. “Someone’s dead. You’ve got to come with me.” For a moment Gideon hoped that this was a terrifically misplaced cry for attention, but Isaac had already turned away from her, dark eyes like stones. She had no choice but to follow in his wake.

“Magnus and Abigail are still where they ought to be,” said Jeannemary fiercely, “in the mortuary. Someone’s been killed and burnt up in the incinerator.”

well shit

The cavalier of the Fourth House looked up at Gideon and Corona. “I wanted you two because Magnus liked you both,” she said. “So you get the warning. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”

She was sprawled across the wet flagstones. Her crutches lay on either side of her, as though they had slipped from her grasp. Gideon’s insides interlaced, lungs into kidneys into bowels, then rubber-banded back with a twang. It was Camilla who first dropped to her knees beside her and rolled her over on her back. A bruise popped on her temple, and her clothes had soaked right through, as though she had been lying there for hours. There was a terrible bluish tinge to her face. Dulcinea gave an enormous, tearing, terrible cough, pink spittle foaming from her mouth. Her chest jerked, staccato. It was not a pretty sight, but Gideon welcomed it with open arms.

“He never came back,” she said hopelessly, and fainted.

what the fuck

Everyone else—the Second House with their brass buttons; the twins of the Third and their now-bouffant cavalier; the Fourth teenagers, gimlet eyed; and the Fifth asleep forever in the mortuary; the Sixth in grey and the mismatched Eighth; and the Ninth, with Harrow roused and tight lipped in her spare habit—was accounted for.

“Would the Fourth drop this insane monster theory—” “Not insane,” said Teacher to Naberius, “oh, no, not insane.” Captain Deuteros, who had been scribbling in her notepad, leant back in her chair and tossed down her pencil. “I’d like to supply a more human mens rea. Yes, the Duchess Septimus and her cavalier had accessed the facility. Did they have any keys?” “Yes,” said a voice at the door.

“Ianthe! Not helping!—Sixth, you mustn’t accept—the Third will represent the Sixth in this, if they’ll consent. At arms, Babs.” Her twin sister’s voice was thin and soft as silk: “Don’t unsheathe that sword, Naberius.” “Ianthe, what—are—you—doing.”

“I want to see how this plays out,” she said with a pallid shrug, heedless of the growing ire in her twin’s voice. “Alas. I have a bad personality and a stupefying deficit of attention.”

“Hyoid down, disarm legal, necromancer’s mercy,” said the Second’s necromancer calmly. Coronabeth sucked a breath through her teeth. “Sextus. Do you agree to the terms?” “I have no idea what any of that means,” said Palamedes. Gideon drew forward to them, leaning in to hear Corona saying in an urgent whisper: “Warden—that means she can hit your cavalier anywhere below the neck, and it ends only when you give in. She’s being an absolute cad, and I’m not even slightly sorry for pantsing her when we were eight.” “Nor should you be.”

Camilla hit her like a hurricane. She exploded forward with her rapier wide and her butcher’s knife held close, knocking the lieutenant’s hurried parry out the way and sliding away from a belated lunge with the dagger. She sliced a red gouge down Dyas’s immaculate white jacket and shirt, bashed her across the knuckles with the hilt of her rapier, and kicked her in the knee for good measure.

Palamedes rounded on her with a sudden fury that made everyone jump, even Gideon. “Then maybe I’ll throw it out the fucking window,” he snarled. “Two good cavs hurt, yours and mine, all because the Second tried to beat up the weak kid first.” He jabbed a finger at Judith’s immaculate waistcoat with intent to impale; she didn’t flinch. “You have no idea how many keys we’re holding! You have no idea how many keys anybody’s holding, because you haven’t paid any damn attention since the shuttles landed! You picked on us because the Sixth aren’t fighters. You could have fought Gideon the Ninth, or Colum the Eighth. You fought Camilla because you wanted a quick win, and you didn’t even watch her first, you just assumed you could take her. And I can’t stand people who assume.”

“I’m not making excuses, but she was quick as hell—” A voice interrupted: “I challenge the Sixth for their keys. I name the time, and the time is now.”

oh for fucks sake

EVERYONE’S HEADS FOLLOWED THE SOUND—except for Ianthe Tridentarius, who was lounging in her chair with one eyebrow raised, and Naberius Tern, who had issued the challenge. He vaulted to the table in one lustrous movement, swinging himself up to stand on it, even as Judith Deuteros very carefully eased her cavalier down into an empty seat. He looked down at them all with a hard sneer and the one stupid curl that he always managed to get right in the middle of his forehead.

“Neither did you, if we’re all being honest with ourselves. Sextus was perfectly right.” “If you want to cast me as the villain, do it,” said the captain. “I’m trying to save our lives. You’re giving in to chaos. There are rules, Third.” “On the contrary,” Ianthe said, “you’ve amply demonstrated that there are no rules whatsoever. There’s only the challenge … and how it’s answered.”

“The Ninth House will represent the Sixth House,” she said, sounding cold and bored, as though this had been her plan all along. Gideon wanted to sing. Gideon wanted to dance her up and down the corridor. She broke out in a broad, unnervingly un-Ninth smile, and Naberius Tern—who had gone from greasy villainy to aggrieved caution—was having to force his smirk.

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

He nodded. “Yes, and we also have to work out who the hell’s in the incinerator. Ianthe Tridentarius was right—a sentence I don’t like saying—in that there’s more than one person in there.” Isaac said: “I have a duty to find out who killed Magnus and Abigail, first and foremost.”

“Because I am placing my trust in you,” said Palamedes. “Yes, even though you’re a black anchorite and loyal only to the numinous forces of the Locked Tomb. If you’d wanted my keys through chicanery you would have challenged me for them a long time ago. I don’t trust Silas Octakiseron, and I don’t trust Ianthe Tridentarius, but I trust the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus.”

Beneath the paint, Gideon could see that Harrow had changed colours a number of times through this little speech. She went from being a rather ashen skeleton to a skeleton who was improbably green around the gills. To an outsider, it would have just been a blank Ninth House mask twinging from darque mystery to cryptique mystery, giving nothing away, but to Gideon it was like watching fireworks go off. Her necromancer said gruffly: “Fine. But we’ll watch over the Seventh House. I’m not going down the ladder with your invalid cavalier.”

She’s all right? Gideon’s heart billowed, despite the fact that she had her own suspicions as to why her necromancer didn’t want her sitting with Dulcinea Septimus, and they were all extremely petty.