Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.

“Such a quick study, and you still don’t understand. That’s on my head, I suppose. The more you struggle against the Ninth, Nav, the deeper it takes you; the louder you curse it, the louder they’ll have you scream.”

The Lady of the Ninth House stood before the drillshaft, wearing black and sneering. Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus had pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering.

From as little as a buried femur, a hidden tibia, skeletons formed for Harrow in perfect wholeness, and as Gideon neared their mistress a tidal wave of reanimated bones crested down on her.

“You have always suffered from a want of duty, Nav. You can’t argue that. You couldn’t spell obligation if I shoved the letters up your ass.” “I gotta say, I don’t think that would help,” said Gideon. “God, I’m glad you didn’t teach me my spelling.”

“Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.” “That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark.

“Oh, if she pulls this off she can have whatever she likes,” said Harrowhark easily—way too easily. “She’ll have glory squirting out each orifice. She can do or be anything she pleases, preferably over on the other side of the galaxy from where I am.”

“Do you want,” Gideon whispered huskily, “my hanky.” “I want to watch you die.” “Maybe, Nonagesimus,” she said with deep satisfaction, “maybe. But you sure as hell won’t do it here.”

“Hood up,” breathed Harrowhark, “hide that ridiculous hair.” “Your dead mummified mother’s got ridiculous hair.” “Griddle, we’re within the planet’s halo now, and I will delight in violence.”

“Hail to the Lady of the Ninth House,” warbled a voice delightedly, bringing the count of people who had ever been happy to see Harrow up to three. “Hail to her cavalier. Oh, hail, hail! Hail to the child of the far-off and shadowed jewel of our Empire! What a very—happy—day.”

She wanted to fight bloody. She wanted to fight until bone adepts had to be called to put people’s feet back on.

If I have to wander around faking a vow of silence and scowling for one more day I will just open all my veins on top of Teacher. Don’t go down there solo. Don’t die in a bone. I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady.”

“Teacher said that the facility was chocka with ghosts and you might die?” “Correct.” “Surprise, my tenebrous overlord!” said Gideon. “Ghosts and you might die is my middle name.”

“The arms kind of looked like swords. I want to fight it.” “You want to fight it.” “Yep.” “Because it looked … a little like swords.” “Yop.”

“You are banned from squatting in my lobes and my hippocampus. I don’t want you pushing all the furniture around in there.”

“Bet you Palamedes will be there. We can do the trial afterward. And I’ll be so good. I’ll be silent and Ninth and melancholy. The sight will astound and stimulate you.” “Nav, you are a hog.”

In any case, both she and Harrowhark turned up, gorgeously gowned in their Locked Tomb vestments, painted like living skulls, looking like douchebags.

“Harrow,” said Gideon, finding her tongue, “don’t say these things to me. I still have a million reasons to be mad at you. It’s hard to do that and worry that you got brain injured.”

“Are you dim,” hissed Harrow. “If we didn’t agree, that bleeding heart Sextus would, and he’d have the key.” “Oh, whoops, my bad,” said Gideon. “For a moment I thought you weren’t a huge bitch.”

“The field and the flooring are a few micrometres apart—maybe the Ninth could make a very very weeny construct to go through that gap,” said the Seventh helpfully. Harrow said, in bottom-of-the-ocean tones: “The Ninth House has not practised its art on—weeny—constructs.”

Gideon found herself staring straight down the barrel of a loaded Harrowhark Nonagesimus, hood shaken back to reveal blazing black eyes in a painted white face.

“A ham-fisted summary, but yes. How did you come to that conclusion?” “Because it’s something Palamedes wouldn’t do,” she said, “and he’s a perfect moron over Camilla the Sixth. Okay.” “What do you mean, ‘okay’—” “I mean okay, I’ll do it,” said Gideon, although most of her brain was trying to give the part of her brain saying that a nipple-gripple.

“Why?” “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.”

“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 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.

But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone’s shit.

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

“Sorry. Ninth cavalier, I should ask you your thoughts on all of this.” She cracked the joints in the back of her neck as she considered the question, stretching out the ligaments, popping her knuckles. He urged again, “Thoughts?” Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”

“Thanks for backing me up, my midnight hagette,” said Gideon, placing her back down. Harrow had not struggled, but gone limp, like a prey animal feigning death. She had the same glassy thousand-yard stare and stilled breathing. Gideon belatedly wished to be exploded, but reminded herself to act cool. “I appreciate it, my crepuscular queen. It was good. You were good.” Harrow, at a total loss for words, eventually managed the rather pathetic: “Don’t make this weird, Nav!” and stalked off after Palamedes.

She still didn’t understand what she was meant to do or think or say: what duty really meant, between a cavalier and a necromancer, between a necromancer and a cavalier.

“Let me go back. He needs me. He could still be alive.” “He’s seriously not,” said Gideon.

At least in the Ninth House, the way you usually went was pneumonia exacerbated by senility.

The only thing that saved Gideon from howling like an animal was the relief that, finally, she would get the chance to shove one of Octakiseron’s feet so deep into his ass he’d be gargling with his calcaneus.

She scrubbed both her dirty fists into her eyes and narrowly avoided gumming one up with the terrible orangey salve, which was so noxious that it apparently caused splinters to leap from her body rather than hang around near it.

She was dumb before the body of her failures, unmanned by the barrage of her brain. Gideon only had to close her eyes to see her own personal, randomly selected shitshow.

“Pardon?” “I said saddle up, sunshine. Come on. You know what to do.” “I manifestly don’t, and never tell me to saddle up, sunshine ever again.”

“An oath to the Ninth is as medicine to sand,” the necromancer said. “It sinks from sight and yields no benefit. She knows this as well as any, and better than some. The Ninth heart is barren, and the Ninth heart is black.”

“Harrow,” said Gideon, “if my heart had a dick you would kick it.”

“I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! 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.”

In the end her job was surprisingly easy: she wrapped her arms around Harrow Nonagesimus and held her long and hard, like a scream.

“Too many words,” said Gideon confidentially. “How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch.” The Ninth House necromancer flushed nearly black. Gideon tilted her head up and caught her gaze: “Say it, loser.” “One flesh—one end,” Harrow repeated fumblingly, and then could say no more.

“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.”

“This won’t work,” she said. “I’ve never had to work with something so small before.” “That’s what she said,” murmured Gideon, sotto voce.

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.

“That leaves us critically shorthanded,” said the Eighth House necromancer, who could not be accused of having the milk of human kindness running through his veins. He did not even have the thin and tasteless juice of feigned empathy.

“We can’t do anything for them yet,” said Palamedes. “The living have to take precedence here, if we want to keep living.” As it turned out, he was wrong.

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.

Camilla Hect off the leash was like light moving across water.

“Then we’re all dead, Nav, but let’s bring hell first,” said Harrow.

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.