Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

Gideon lunged out of a sheer desire to do something, but Harrow held her back with her healthy hand, staring fixedly at the hurt one as it slowly mended.

raaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

“I asked him first,” said Dulcinea, “and when I told him the method, he said he’d never do it. I thought that was fascinating. I’d love to get to know him better.” That got every particle of Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s attention.

Gideon was undergoing complicated feelings about not being the centre of the Seventh’s attention.

Girl just wants to be looked at by all hot women

“I’d rather be your battery than feel you rummaging around in my head. You want my juice? I’ll give you juice.” “Under no circumstances will I ever desire your juice,” said her necromancer, mouth getting more desperate.

If at any point you throw me off—if you fail to submit—I die. I have never done this before. The process will be imperfect. You will be in … pain.”

The Second necromancer’s gift is to drain her dying foes to strengthen and augment her cavalier—” “Rad—” “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.”

“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.”

RAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Dulcinea dimpled. “I oughtn’t to, ought I?” she said. “Well, I can at least look after Gideon the Ninth while you’re over there.” Gideon still saw no reason why she would need looking after.

Besides Harrow touching her neck, which was a one-way trip to No Town. But it was just Harrow, touching her neck.

Gideon couldn’t say anything but blearrghhh, mainly because blood was coming enthusiastically out of every hole in her face.

EW

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.

Anything less than Harrow crossing the threshold would make the struggle meaningless.

When her eyes opened Gideon was distantly worried to discover that she was blind.

Mildly startled, Gideon realised that she was starting to die.

Without paint she was a point-chinned, narrow-jawed, ferrety person, with high hard cheekbones and a tall forehead.

AWESOME

“Ha-ha,” said Gideon, “first time you didn’t call me Griddle,” and died.

Well, passed out. But it felt a hell of a lot like dying.

“But Gideon—” “Is not your business.”

“You didn’t have to be a dick,” she found herself saying, thickly. “I like her.” “I don’t like her,” said Harrowhark. “I don’t like her cavalier.”

“Sorry your clothes melted.”

The field was vicious, much more so than Septimus communicated. It had started to strip the moisture from my eyeballs before I refined on the fly.” “By which point it had eaten your underwear,” said Gideon. “Nav.” “I just had a near-death experience,” she said, “let me have my little moment.”

“Quit looking at me like that,” she eventually commanded Harrow, wiping bloody muck onto her hanky. “I’m alive.” “You nearly weren’t,” said Harrow soberly, “and you’re not even aggrieved about it. Don’t price your life so cheaply, Griddle.

I need to become Lyctor now, before—” She bit off her words like meat from a bone. Gideon waited to know before what, but no more was forthcoming. She closed her eyes and waited, but opened them when she panicked and realised that she had forgotten how long it had been since she had shut them. Harrowhark was sitting there with that same curious expression on her paintless face, looking thoroughly unlike herself. “Get some rest,” she said imperiously. For the first time, Gideon obeyed her without compunction.

“Why are you here?”

“My necromancer said you should be a corpse. You breathing?” “Yes?” “Passing blood? In your piss?” “Look, this conversation is all I’ve ever dreamed about,” said Gideon, “but I’m fine. H— My necromancer overreacted.”

Camilla, whose glance softened with the understanding of someone whose necromancer was also prone to gross overreaction.)

Gideon submitted to this treatment because she had gone a round with Camilla the Sixth before and had a healthy fear of her.

“You’re fine,” she said. “Shouldn’t be. But you’re fine.” Gideon said bluntly, “Why didn’t Sextus want to do the spell?” The tools were wiped and put back in the bag. For a moment, the other cavalier didn’t answer.

“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.” “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.

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?” Teacher had sat with his hands around his cup of tea as though enjoying the heat, breathing in its curls of fragrant steam. “There is no law,” he said. “Against teaming up?” “No,” said Teacher. “What I mean is, there is no law. You could join forces. You could tell each other anything. You could tell each other nothing.

“The community needs this over and done with,” she said. “It needs someone who can take command, end this, and send everyone back in one piece. Will you consider working with me?” “No,” said Palamedes.

It was Magnus, and he had not improved since Gideon had last seen him. She regretted again eating one and a quarter dinners.

Why do you think the Eighth picked a fight with the Seventh?” “Because he’s a prig and a nasty weirdo,” said Gideon.

Magnus had only just picked up his facility key the night—you know. He hadn’t reached any challenge labs. The facility key was all he had. Who’d take that?” “That’s precisely what I want to know,”

“Your vow of silence is conveniently variable, Ninth, I’m very grateful.” “Turns out I’m variably penitent. Hey, you should be talking to Nonagesimus.” “If I wanted to talk to Nonagesimus, I’d talk to Nonagesimus,” he said, “or I’d talk to a brick wall, because honestly, your necromancer is a walking Ninth House cliché. You’re at least only half as a bad.”

“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.

She had to leave—her hand was on the door—but something in her made her look back and say: “What happened to them, Sextus?” “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.”

THAT EVENING, HARROWHARK HAD still not returned.

Raahh again??

Harrow never came back. Gideon was used to this by now.

The sight filled Gideon with a sensation that she had to admit was relief.

“Jeanne wants you,” he repeated. “Someone’s dead. You’ve got to come with me.”

Corona had vaulted herself out of the water in a flash of warm golden skin and her exceedingly long legs, and Gideon made her first and only devout prayer to the Locked Tomb of thankfulness and joy.

“I wanted the Ninth and Princess Coronabeth,” she said. Her voice cracked.

Are the Fifth still—” “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.”

“I hope you end up in the incinerator,” said Jeannemary. “I hope whatever killed Magnus and Abigail—and whoever we just found—comes after you. I’d love to see your face then. How will you look when we find you, Prince Naberius?”

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.”

Her hood fell back, sliding down in heavy folds of black to her shoulders.

“Why, Gideon the Ninth!” she exclaimed, mourning banished. “You’re a ginger!”

To the noise of the storm she had gone back to check on Harrowhark, suddenly paranoid—convinced

Gideon’s insides interlaced, lungs into kidneys into bowels, then rubber-banded back with a twang.