Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

The horrible little Ninth goblin stared at her with tight-pressed lips. She had inched away from Gideon toward the theorem plate, and with no sense of shame began to look it over. “You knew about the beguiling corpse,” Harrow said. “You knew how impossible it was.” “Yee-ee-s. I knew the energy transferral didn’t add up. None of the thanergy signatures in this building added up … until I realised what we were all being led to. What the Lyctors of old were trying to tell us. You see, my field has always been energy transferral … large-scale energy transferral. Resurrection theory. I studied what happened when the Lord our Kindly God took our dead and dying Houses and brought them back to life, all those years ago … what price he would have had to pay. What displacement, the soul of a planet? What happens when a planet dies?” “You’re an occultist,” said Palamedes. “You’re a liminal magician. I thought you were an animaphiliac.” “That’s just for show,” said Ianthe. “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.” Harrow said, “You make it sound a lot more interesting than it really is.”