Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

She pressed her mouth to the place where Harrow’s nose met the bone of her frontal sinus, and the sound that Harrow made embarrassed them both. “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.

“One last question for you, Reverend Daughter,” said Gideon. Harrow said, a little unsteadily: “Nav?” Gideon leaned in. “Do you really have the hots for some chilly weirdo in a coffin?” One of the skeletons punted her back into the water.

“Yes,” said Ianthe. “My cavalier is dead, and I killed him. Please don’t misunderstand, this isn’t a confession.”

WTF

“This is not how I had envisioned this,” she said afterward, teeth chattering. “I am merely telling you. I won.” Gideon said, slowly: “Princess. None of us here speaks crazy lady.”

“I’m interested in the place between death and life … the place between release and disappearance. The place over the river. The displacement … where the soul goes when we knock it about … where the things are that eat us.”

“Step one,” she said, singsong, “preserve the soul, with intellect and memory intact. Step two, analyse it—understand its structure, its shape. Step three, remove and absorb it: take it into yourself without consuming it in the process.”

“Step four, fix it in place so it can’t deteriorate. That’s the part I wasn’t sure of, but I found the method here, in this very room. Step five, incorporate it: find a way to make the soul part of yourself without being overwhelmed. Step six: consume the flesh. Not the whole thing, a drop of blood will do to ground you. Step seven is reconstruction—making spirit and flesh work together the way they used to, in the new body. And then for the last step you hook up the cables and get the power flowing. You’ll find that one a walk in the park, Eighth, I suspect it was your House’s contribution.”

“Then you weren’t listening. I haven’t killed Naberius Tern. I ate Naberius Tern,” she said, indifferently. “I put a sword through his heart to pin his soul in place. Then I took it into my body. I’ve robbed Death itself … I have drunk up the substance of his immortal soul. And now I will burn him and burn him and burn him, and he will never really die. I have absorbed Naberius Tern … I am more than the sum of his half, and mine.”

“So that is Lyctorhood,” said Silas. He sounded quiet, almost fretful, lost in thought. Gideon thought—just for a moment—that she could see Colum Asht’s throat working, that his pupils had dilated just a very, very little. “To walk with the dead forever … enormous power, recycled within you, from the ultimate sacrifice … to make yourself a tomb.”

The bizarre sight of a necromancer holding a sword—a ghost fighting inside the meat suit of his adept—made it real that Naberius was dead, but that he was dead inside Ianthe. It was not that he had taught her how to fight: it was him fighting.

The tragedy saturated the stiffening bones and static hearts lying in state at Canaan House, but there was also deep tragedy in the flawed beams holding up their lives.

An eight-year-old writing love letters to a terminally ill teenager. A girl falling in love with the beautiful stiff she’d been conceived solely to look after. A foundling chasing the approval of a House disappointed with her immunity to foundling-killing gas.

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.

“My name is Cytherea the First,” she said. “Lyctor of the Great Resurrection, the seventh saint to serve the King Undying. I am a necromancer and I am a cavalier. I am the vengeance of the ten billion. I have come back home to kill the Emperor and burn his Houses. And Gideon the Ninth…” She walked toward Gideon, and she raised her sword. She smiled. “This begins with you.”

It was a relief to know she would never have to tell Camilla that her necromancer had died. She was already fighting as though her heart had exploded.

Harrow’s mouth briefly ruckled. “A necromancer alone can’t bring that down, Griddle. That’s regenerating bone.” “I’m not running, Harrow!” “Of course we’re not running,” said Harrowhark disdainfully. “I said a necromancer alone. I have you. We bring hell.” “Harrow—Harrow, Dulcinea’s a Lyctor, a real one—” “Then we’re all dead, Nav, but let’s bring hell first,” said Harrow.

“I meant it,” she said earnestly. “You were wonderful. You would have made that little nun such a cavalier—I almost wish you’d been mine.” “You couldn’t fucking afford me,” said Gideon.

“Jeannemary Chatur didn’t ask for mercy. Magnus didn’t ask for mercy. Or Isaac. Or Abigail.

“Harrow,” said Gideon. “This plan is stupid, and you’re stupid. No.”

Camilla said steadily: “Let me out. I can provide the distraction.” “Cram it already, Hect,” said Gideon, not looking away from her necromancer, who was painfully serene as even her eyebrows bled. “I’m not getting haunted by Palamedes Sextus’s crappy-ass revenant all telling me doctor facts for the rest of my life, just because I let you get disintegrated.”

“Nav,” she said, “have you really forgiven me?” Confirmed. They were all going to eat it. “Of course I have, you bozo.” “I don’t deserve it.” “Maybe not,” said Gideon, “but that doesn’t stop me forgiving you.

Harrow—” “Yes?” “You know I don’t give a damn about the Locked Tomb, right? You know I only care about you,” she said in a brokenhearted rush.

“I’m no good at this duty thing. I’m just me. I can’t do this without you. And I’m not your real cavalier primary, I never could’ve been.”

“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.”

Why is it raining all of a sudden

“The cruellest thing anyone has ever done to you in your whole entire life, believe me,” said Gideon. “You’ll know what to do, and if you don’t do it, what I’m about to do will be no use to anyone.”

“Your arms are like fucking noodles,” said Gideon disapprovingly. “I’m a necromancer, Nav!” “Yeah, well, hope you like lifting weights for the next myriad.”

Pfft

Harrow said— “I cannot do this.” “You already did it,” said Gideon. “It’s done. You ate me and rebuilt me. We can’t go home again.” “I can’t bear it.” “Suck it down,” said Gideon. “You’re already two hundred dead daughters and sons of our House. What’s one more?”

“Now we kick her ass until candy comes out,” said Gideon. “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—” “Harrowhark,” said Gideon the Ninth. “Someday you’ll die and get buried in the ground, and we can work this out then.

“I know the sword,” she said. “And now, so do you.”

“Sextus was a marvel,” admitted Harrow. “Too bad you didn’t marry him. You’re both into old dead chicks.” “Gideon—”

Gideon you're one to talk

“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.”

Wait what!