Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

The Reverend Daughter sighed heavily, then had a fit of coughing, which served her right. “Whoever left the facility also left the majority of their work behind and intact. No theorems or tomes, unless they’ve been removed—and I doubt Teacher removed them—but, as I’ve discovered, it’s possible to trigger … tests. Theorem models that they would have used. Most of the chambers down there were used to prepare for something, and they were left in a state where anyone who comes across it can re-enact the setup. Someone left—challenges—down there for any necromancer talented enough to understand what they were doing.” “Stop being opaque, Nonagesimus. What do you mean by challenges?” “I mean,” said Harrowhark, “that I have lost one hundred and sixty-three skeletons to a single laboratory construct.” “What.” “I’m prevented from seeing whatever destroys the skeletons I raise,” came the terse answer. “I haven’t worked out how to properly outfit them yet. If the priests have managed to engineer a scaffolded skeleton of the type they use as servants—my God, Nav, have you seen the bonework on them?—then I surely can, but I haven’t worked out how to disassemble one of the First House corpus yet and I can’t do enough just by looking. Don’t get me wrong; I will. I get closer every day. You found me when I’d exhausted myself, that’s all.” “But what the hell’s it all for?” “As I have repeated to excess, Griddle, I’m still working on the theory. Nonetheless—look back at the maps.”