Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“He never came back,” she said hopelessly, and fainted.

PROTESILAUS THE SEVENTH WAS MISSING. Dulcinea Septimus was critically ill.

Everyone else—the Second House with their brass buttons; the twins of the Third and their now-bouffant cavalier; the Fourth teenagers, gimlet eyed; and the Fifth asleep forever in the mortuary; the Sixth in grey and the mismatched Eighth; and the Ninth, with Harrow roused and tight lipped in her spare habit—was accounted for.

Gideon recognised this sudden diamond focus: Harrowhark was reestimating a threat.

This—key hoarding—cannot continue.

The Sixth stared at her for a moment as though she had no idea of the protocol—and then she drew both of her weapons at once in a way that nagged at the back of Gideon’s brain.

“Warden—that means she can hit your cavalier anywhere below the neck, and it ends only when you give in. She’s being an absolute cad, and I’m not even slightly sorry for pantsing her when we were eight.”

You picked on us because the Sixth aren’t fighters. You could have fought Gideon the Ninth, or Colum the Eighth. You fought Camilla because you wanted a quick win, and you didn’t even watch her first, you just assumed you could take her. And I can’t stand people who assume.”

“Isn’t it funny how it took the Second, of all houses, to blow this whole thing open? You’ve stuck a target on the back of everyone toting a key. It’s a free-for-all now, and it’s your fault, and you’ll pay for it.”

“Give me your key, Captain!” roared the scion of the Sixth. “Or is the Second faithless, as well as dense?”

“I challenge the Sixth for their keys. I name the time, and the time is now.”

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.

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

She still has family back on the Eighth …

she had been looking at Gideon with a coal-eyed expression of absolute pity. There had been something very weary and soft about the way that Harrow Nonagesimus had looked at her then, something that would have been understanding had it not been so tired and cynical. “It’s just me,” she’d said impatiently. “Go back to sleep.”

But from then on she slept wearing her rapier, her gauntlet on her chest like a heavy obsidian heart.

“Ask me how I am and I’ll scream,” she said. “How are you,” said Camilla, who was a pill. “I see you calling my bluff and I resent it,” said Gideon.

“I applied to be the Warden’s cavalier primary when I was twelve,”

Before she knew what she was doing, Gideon found that she had moved in to flank her:

“Battery up,” she muttered.

“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.” “I’m saying to you: siphon me.” “Nav—” “Sixth are watching,” said Gideon, brutally.

Harrowhark fell silent. Her expression was resentful in a way that her cavalier could not understand, except to parse it as grim hatefulness that—once again—the only path open to her was that of using her cavalier, a girl who had screwed up so badly as to provide the universe at large with a new understanding of screwup. All she said was, “You don’t have to roll up your sleeve, you nincompoop,”

The lock was as clear and as clean as though the obstruction had never existed. The pair from the Sixth stared at them. Eventually, Palamedes leaned down to squint through the newly cleared keyhole. “Don’t get used to using her that way, Nonagesimus,” he said, and disapproval had crept into his voice. “It’s not good theory and it’s not good morals.”

I’m sorry, I don’t hate you, I just kind of hate me right now. Instead, she coolly looked away, which was the opposite of an apology.

“That reminds me! I now officially ban you from seeing Lady Septimus.” “Are we having this conversation? Are we really having this conversation?” Harrow’s face was pinched into an expression of deliberate patience. “Nav,” she said. “Take it from me. Dulcinea Septimus is dangerous.”

I’m sick of how weird you’re getting over this.”

how am I being weird?”

Maybe it’s because whenever she’s mentioned, you effortlessly tick both boxes for jealous and creep?” “If you looked in a dictionary you’d find it’s envious, and I’m hardly envious of—” “No, it’s one hundred percent jealous,” said Gideon recklessly, “on account of how you’re always doing this when it looks like she’s taking up my time.”

oh my god KISS ALREADY

“Harrow, I hate you,” said Gideon. “I never stopped hating you. I will always hate you, and you will always hate me. Don’t forget that. It’s not like I ever can.”

Right....you hate each other

“Griddle, you’re incorrect.” “How—” “Nothing stands between myself and Lyctorhood,” said Harrowhark, “and you are not a part of the equation.

You may hate me all you wish; I still don’t even remember about you half the time.”

Liar

“You’re banned from seeing Septimus. The quicker she shuffles off, the better. If I were in her position … I would have already thrown myself out the window.” “Stand in front of a window now and I’ll do the hard part,” said Gideon. “Oh, take a nap,” snapped Harrowhark.

“When I release you from my service, Nav,” her necromancer said, “you will know about it.” And she walked away. Gideon decided, then and there, her betrayal.

In the misty red recesses of her mind this traitorous act was the correct thing to do, though she couldn’t yet quite decide why.

“Why? Why kill two hundred kids? More importantly, why two hundred kids and not me or Harrow?” Silas looked at her over steepled fingers. “You tell me, Gideon the Ninth,” he said. “You are the one who tried to leave in a shuttle they planted a bomb in.”

“I do not think any scion of the Reverend Mother and the Reverend Father should become a Lyctor,” said Silas softly. “The open grave of the Ninth House should not produce its own revenant. In fact, I am unsure that any of us should become Lyctor. Since when was power goodness, or cleverness truth?

“Then I will challenge you for them.” “My sword—” “You may find the challenge hard without it,”

“Master,” he said, and stopped. Then: “I told her there’d be no violence here.” Silas’s eyes never left Gideon’s, so they did not see his cavalier’s face. “There’s no sin in that, Brother Asht.”

Colum, who was—looking right at her. Their stares met for a single hot second. This single second felt like so long and stretched a pause that her overwound nerves very nearly went ping like elastic and fired her clean across the room. Then Colum seemed to make a decision.

Colum picked up the knuckle-knife and handed that to her as well. “Get away from here,” he said, and it sounded more warning than command.

As she walked away, she braced for a sudden burst of angry voices, yelling, recriminations, maybe even a cry of pain. But there was only silence.

With numb fingers, Gideon removed the severed head of Protesilaus the Seventh.

“What would you do if you discovered Camilla was a murderer?” “Help her bury the body,” said Palamedes promptly. “Sextus.” “I mean it. If Camilla wants someone dead,” he said, “then far be it from me to stand in her way. All I can do at that point is watch the bloodshed and look for a mop. One flesh, one end, and all that.”

“I trust Camilla. I trust that her reasons for ending someone’s life would be logical, moral, and probably to my benefit,” he said, sliding one fragile eyelid up an eyeball. “Your problem here is that you suspect that Harrow has killed people for much less.”

You are now getting the impression that my relationship with her is more—fraught—than you might’ve guessed.” (“You shock me,” muttered Palamedes.) “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve known her as long as she’s lived.

“Because I killed her parents,” said Gideon.

Harrowhark had hated Gideon the moment she clapped eyes on her, but everyone did.

tiny Harrow had found her an object of tormentable fascination—prey, rival, and audience all wrapped up in one. And though Gideon hated the cloisterites, and hated the Locked Tomb, and hated the ghastly great-aunts, and hated Crux most of all, she was hungry for the Reverend Daughter’s preoccupation.

This was probably the best time of their relationship. Back then they clashed so consistently that they were with each other most of the time. They fought each other bloody, for which Harrow was not punished and Gideon was.

At last she set her gaze on the one thing truly forbidden to her: Harrow became obsessed with the Locked Door.