Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“By the way, I worked out your nasty little trick, jackass.”

“Oh, Ortus and his mother stole it,” said Harrowhark. “They must be gone already. She still has family back on the Eighth, and she thinks they’ll take them in.” At her expression, Harrow laughed: “You make it so easy, Griddle. You always do.”

Gideon had never confronted a broken heart before. She had never gotten far enough to have her heart broken. She knelt on the landing field, knees in the grit, arms clutched around herself.

When her heart beat in her chest it was with a huge, steady grief. Every pulse seemed to be the space between insensibility and knives. For some moments she was awake, and she was filled with a slow-burning mine fire, the kind that never went out and crumbled everything from the inside; for all the other moments, it was as though she had gone somewhere else.

“Because I completely fucking hate you,” said Harrowhark, “no offence.”

She got the depression.

The Reverend Daughter turned up, as she always goddamn did,

Gideon knew she was there because the shadows in front of the little peephole changed, and because it would be nobody else.

By way of hello she said, “Fuck you,” and switc...

“Stop sulking, G...

“Go choke on ...

“Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.” “That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark. “Die in a fire, Nonagesimus.”

you want to wallow in your shockingly vast reserves of self-pity, cut your throat and save me the food bill.”

“Oh damn! Then can I join your old man and lady in the puppet show?”

“How the world would suffer without your wit,” said Harrowhark blandly. “Get your robe. We’re ...

“Ortus preferred his mother and a book of sad poems.

was a damned poor swordsman at his peak. He was not his father’s son. I would have trained him sword-and-powder, but he said he had the catarrh.”

Lighter than Nav’s head.” (“Harsh!” said Gideon.)

It was at least mildly hilarious to see Harrow have to heave with all the might of her, like, three muscles.

“And that is why you, Griddle,” said the Lady, “are to act as cavalier primary of the House of the Ninth. You will accompany me to the First House as I study to become a Lyctor. You’ll be my personal guard and companion, dutiful and loyal, and uphold the sacred name of this House and its people.”

Once Gideon had stopped laughing, leaning against the icy pillar and beating on it with her fist, she had to breathe long and hard in order to not crack up again.

“Whoo,” she managed, scrubbing away tears of mirth. “Oh damn. Give me a moment. Okay—like hell I will, Nonagesimus.”

“Oh, Griddle, but I do,” said Harrowhark. “You’re bound to the Locked Tomb … and at the end of the night, the Locked Tomb is me. The nominated Hands are to enter the First House, Nav; their names will be written in history as the new Imperial saints. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and it may never happen again. Nav, I am going to be a Lyctor.”

Hello, I’m the woman who helped Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s fascist rise to power,’” said Gideon to nobody in particular. “‘Yes, the universe sucks now. I knew this going in. Also, she betrayed me afterward and now my body has been shot into the sun.’”

Harrow came to...

The necromancer adept did not flinch, just made her black-smeared mouth a mocking moue of shock.

“Oh, I have hurt your heart,”

“I boohooed for hours.”

“It won’t be the last time I make you weep.”

“I’m not helping Nonagesimus become a Lyctor. She’ll make me into boots.”

“She’ll have glory squirting out each orifice. She can do or be anything she pleases, preferably over on the other side of the galaxy from where I am.”

her mental inadequacies can be compensated for.

While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade. Am I right, Griddle?”

“I live for those days when everyone stands around talking about how bad I am at what I do, but it also gives me hurt feelings,”

“I would have thought you would be happy that I needed you,” she admitted. “That I showed you my girlish and vulnerable heart.”

“Your heart is a party for five thousand nails,” said Gideon.

“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

Harrow was sprawled on a sofa spread with tattered brocade, robes abandoned, scrawny black-clad legs crossed at the ankles. In Gideon’s mind she looked like an evil stick.

“For crying out loud! Then let me dress how I want and give me back my longsword.” “Ten thousand years of tradition, Griddle.” “I don’t have ten thousand years of tradition, bitch,” said Gideon, “I have ten years of two-hander training and a minor allergy to face paint. I’m worth so much less to you with pizza face and a toothpick.”

“Ten thousand years of tradition,” she said slowly, “dictates that the Ninth House should have been at its leisure to produce, at the very least, a cavalier with the correct sword, the correct training, and the correct attitude. Any implication that the Ninth House did not have the leisure to meet even that expectation is as good as giving up. I’d be better off by myself than taking you qua you. But I know how to fake this; I can provide the sword. I can provide a smattering of training. I cannot even slightly provide your attitude. Two out of three is still not three. The con depends on your shut mouth and your adoption of the minimal requirements, Griddle.”

“So nobody realises that we’re broke and nearly extinct, and that your parents topped themselves.”

Griddle? If you do anything that suggests we’re out of order—if I even think you’re about to…” Here Harrow shrugged, quite calmly. “I’ll kill you.”

“Nothing, idiot!” said Harrow. “This is the House of the Ninth, Griddle. We act accordingly.”

Act accordingly meant that any attempt to talk to an outsider as a kid had led to her getting dragged away bodily; act accordingly meant the House had been closed to pilgrims for five years. Act accordingly had been her secret dread that ten years from now everyone else would be skeletons and explorers would find Ortus reading poetry next to her and Harrow’s bodies, their fingers still clasped around each other’s throats. Act accordingly, to Gideon, meant being secret and abstruse and super obsessed with tomes.

She tried to turn Gideon’s face up to hers by force, fingers grasping beneath the chin, but Gideon promptly bit her. There was a simple joy in watching Harrow swear furiously and shake her hand and peel off the bitten glove, like in seeing sunlight or eating a good meal.

“I don’t want to dress up like a goddamn nun again. I got enough of that when I was ten,”

“Everyone else will be dressing exactly how they ought to dress,” said Harrow, “and if the Ninth House contravenes that—the House least likely to do any such thing—then people will examine us a hell of a lot more closely than they ought. If you look just right then perhaps they won’t ask you any tricky questions. They may not discover that the cavalier of the House of the Ninth is an illiterate peon. Hold your mouth closed.”

“I object to illiterate.” “Pinup rags aren’t literature, Nav.” “I read them for the articles.”

“I look like a douche.”

even though your hair is ridiculous—because