Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

It was just her and Harrow and Harrow’s bitter, high-boned, stupid little face. Harrow laughed. It was the first time she had ever heard Harrow really laugh. It was a rather weak and tired sound.

“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.”

“Harrow, I can’t keep my promise, because the entire point of me is you. You get that, right? That’s what cavaliers sign up for. There is no me without you. One flesh, one end.”

“Oh, damn, Nonagesimus, don’t cry, we can’t fight her if you’re crying.” Harrow said, with some difficulty: “I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.”

“Yes you can, it’s just less great and less hot,” said Gideon. “Fuck you, Nav—”

“Someday you’ll die and get buried in the ground, and we can work this out then. For now—I can’t say you’ll be fine. I can’t say we did the right thing. I can’t tell you shit. I’m basically a hallucination produced by your brain chemistry while coping with the massive trauma of splicing in my brain chemistry. Even if I wasn’t, I don’t know jack, Harrow, I never did—except for one thing.”

“One flesh, one end,” said Gideon, and it was a murmur now, on the very edge of hearing. Harrow said, “Don’t leave me.”

“The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee,” said Gideon. “See you on the flip side, sugarlips.”

Beside her, Gideon lay smiling a small, tight, ready smile, stretched out beneath a blue and foreign sky.

“I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Gideon Nav.” “I can’t,” he said.