Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“Harrow—Harrow, Dulcinea’s a Lyctor, a real one—” “Then we’re all dead, Nav, but let’s bring hell first,” said Harrow. Gideon looked over her shoulder at her, and caught the Reverend Daughter’s smile.

“I need to be inside you,” Harrow bellowed over the din.

That's what she said

“He say anything?” Gideon wavered. “He said to tell you he loved you,” she said. “What? No, he didn’t.” “Okay, no, sorry. He said—he said you knew what to do?” “I do,” said Camilla with grim satisfaction, and laid herself back down among the bones.

“Okay,” said Camilla in carefully neutral tones, “now she’s healing.”

Her kneecap was absolutely not where it should have been. She tottered to the side, letting her sword drop one-handed, pressing her other over the knee and cursing the day she had been born with kneecaps.

Me core

drawing a spurt of appalling black-and-yellow liquid from the wound.

Ew

“You know you can’t do this, Gideon of the Ninth,”

it was her, her sword, and all of the power and strength and speed that Aiglamene had been able to realise in her.

There was the faintest pink mark on the skin—and then nothing. Her two-hander had failed. Something in Gideon rolled over and gave up.

“I wish the Ninth House would do something that was more interesting than skeletons,” said Cytherea pensively.

Harrow couldn’t afford this, she thought dimly; Harrow couldn’t afford this at all.

Then she keeled into Gideon’s arms. Gideon stumbled, sick with terror, kneeling them both down to the ground as Harrow lay like a broken rag doll. She forgot her sword, forgot everything as she cradled her used-up adept. She forgot the wrecked ligaments in her sword arm, her messed-up knee, the cups of blood she’d lost, everything but that tiny, smouldering, victorious smile. “Harrow, come on, I’m here,” she told her, howling to be heard above the thunder of the construct’s assault. “Siphon, damn it.”

sea—” “Nope—” Harrow ignored her. “—but all you have to do is survive the fall. We know that the ships have been called. Get off the planet as soon as you can. I’ll distract her as long as possible: all you have to do is live.” “Harrow,” said Gideon. “This plan is stupid, and you’re stupid. No.”

“Griddle, you made me a promise. You agreed to go back to the Ninth. You agreed to do your duty by the Locked Tomb—” “Don’t do this to me.” “I owe you your life,” said Harrowhark, “I owe you everything.”

“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. She didn’t know what she was trying to say, only that she had to say it now.

RAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The construct wasn’t there: the shelter wasn’t there. Even Camilla, who had turned away to politely investigate something on the opposite wall, wasn’t there. It was just her and Harrow and Harrow’s bitter, high-boned, stupid little face.

“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.” That was enough.

“Yeah, fuck it,” she said. “I’m getting us out of here.” “Griddle—”

“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.”

Im sobbing

“what are you doing?” “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.”

It would have been the worst thing in the world to look back, so she didn’t.

“For the Ninth!” said Gideon. And she fell forward, right on the iron spikes.

stop looking at me, dick. Don’t. Don’t you dare look at me.”

Harrow looked back at Gideon, and Gideon’s eyes, as they always did, startled her: their deep, chromatic amber, the startling hot gold of freshly-brewed tea. She winked.

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?”

“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—”

“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.”

Cytherea the First sighed in no little relief. Then she toppled over, and she died.

“Please undo what I’ve done, Lord,” she said. “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.

“I would very much like to. But that soul’s inside you now. If I tried to pull it out, I’d take yours with it and destroy both in the process. What’s done is done is done. Now you have to live with it.” She was empty. That was the terrible thing: there was nothing inside her but the sick and bubbling detestation of her House.

I can’t fight them by myself.” Harrow said, “But you’re God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.”

“The Sixth House cavalier was only injured when I left her,” said Harrowhark. “Where is she?” “We haven’t recovered any trace of her, or her body,”

I’m sorry, Harrow, we couldn’t recover your cavalier either.” Her brain listed sharply. “Gideon’s gone?” “Everyone else is accounted for,” he said.

If she saw herself in a mirror, she might fight herself: if she saw herself in a mirror, she might find a trace of Gideon Nav, or worse—she might not find anything, she might find nothing at all.