Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“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.”

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN neater, perhaps, if all of Gideon’s disappointments and woes from birth downward had used that moment as a catalyst: if, filled with a new and fiery determination, she had equipped herself down there in the dark with fresh ambition to become free. She didn’t. She got the depression.

“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. “Die in a fire, Nonagesimus.”

Gideon Nav knew in the first half second that Magnus was going to lose: after that she stopped thinking with her brain and started thinking with her arms, which were frankly where the best of her cerebral matter lay.

Given twenty-four hours to break a bone ward, Gideon would have immediately made plans to get into Harrow’s wardrobe and do up all the buttons on her shirts, making sure that each button went into the hole above the one it was meant to go into. It was an inevitability that the Reverend Daughter never would have allowed for.

“Certainly not. Like everything else in this ridiculous conglomeration of cooling gas, it’s perfectly explicable, I just need to explic-it.”

“I need you to trust me.” “I need you to be trustworthy.”

“But I’m healthy.” “Didn’t say your brain was.” “I’m taking that as a very witty joke and want it to be known that I laughed,” said Gideon.

“I can’t be bribed with goods and services,” said Palamedes, “but I can’t be bribed with moral platitudes, either. My conscience doesn’t permit me to help anyone do what we have all embarked upon.” “You don’t understand—” Palamedes said savagely, “Captain, God help you when you understand.

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.”

Gideon, don’t be sorry for the dead. I think death must be an absolute triumph.”

She couldn’t handle any more, having already lived a long night and suffered a number of emotional torments, among them supernatural murder and petty interpersonal drama.

Griddle, at the first sign of trouble—” “Run like hell,” said Gideon. “I was going to say, Hit it with your sword,” said Harrow.

“Why was I born so attractive?” “Because everyone would have throttled you within the first five minutes otherwise,”