Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

Gideon never ran unless she had to.

The Lady of the Ninth House stood before the drillshaft, wearing black and sneering. Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus had pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering. It comprised 100 percent of her personality. Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance.

“I completely fucking hate you, because you are a hideous witch from hell. No offence.”

“Behold the last paragraph,” Harrow said from the sofa, “turning your benighted eyes to lines five and six.” Unwillingly, Gideon turned her benighted eyes to lines five and six.

The only dubious advantage to this was that she would sometimes hear snatches of conversation, standing motionless and rigid-backed with her hand on the pommel of her sword and her sightline somewhere beyond Harrow’s shoulder. Gideon was hungry for intel, but these exchanges were never very illuminating. The most she got was the day Harrow, too fretful to modulate her voice, said outright: “Naturally it’s a competition, Captain, even if the wording…”

Harrow was a desiccated mummy of hate.

Cohort adepts always sat on plackets of grave dirt to ameliorate the effects of deep space and the loss of their power source;

Gideon said aloud, “Your parents must have been so relieved to die.”

starved of both protein and attention,

Momentarily discombobulated, Gideon backed into the stairs and reset her stance; by then the cavalier in grey was already backing off, sword held high, offhand held low.