Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

(“Nooooo, Magnus, don’t say we’re overcome,” moaned the nasty girl, sotto voce. “Don’t mention us, Magnus,” moaned the other.)

Good going, dickhead! thought Gideon, straightening up. It’s a mirror.

The golden Third twin was probably the best-looking person she’d ever seen in her life. She was tall and regal, with some radiant, butterfly quality—her shirt was haphazardly tucked into her trousers, which were haphazardly tucked into her boots, but she was all topaz and shine and lustre. Necromancers affected robes in the same way cavaliers affected swords, but she hadn’t tucked her arms into hers, and it was a gauzy, gold-shot, transparent thing floating out around her like wings. There were about five rings on each hand and her earrings would’ve put chandeliers to shame, but she had an air of wild and innocent overdecoration, of having put on the prettiest things in her jewellery box and then forgotten to take them off. Her buttery hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat, and she kept tangling a curl of it in one finger and artlessly letting it go.

The second twin was as though the first had been taken to pieces and put back together without any genius. She wore a robe of the same cloth and colour, but on her it was a beautiful shroud on a mummy.

“Yes, it would have been unfortunate,” agreed her sister placidly, “considering it would have demonstrated within the first five minutes that you’re completely thick.” A curl was wound about one finger. “Oh, shut it, Ianthe.”

“We should be celebrating, if we’re being honest with ourselves,” the pallid girl continued, warming to her subject, “since the already poorly hidden fact of you being a great big bimbo would have come to light so quickly that it would have broken the sound barrier.”

The curl was let go with a visual sproing. “Ianthe, don...

“Please don’t be cross,” said her sister. “You know your brain can only deal with...

“If you talk like that to her again, Babs,” said the golden twin, “I’ll destroy you. Beg her forgiveness.”

“She can insult me as she likes. You’re insubordinate. Say you’re sorry.”

“Grovel, Babs. As soon as possible, please.” “Leave it, Corona,” said the other girl, suddenly. “This isn’t the time to horse around. Drop him and let’s keep going.”

She realised partway through that it was probably a salad. Raw vegetables in the Ninth came in the form of pitiable cairns of grated snow leek, stained through with as much salty black sauce as it would absorb.

Harrow wouldn’t like that.

here were a whole bunch of them probably made by a little man who clapped his hands together unironically.

He gave the impression of being the guy fun sought out for death.

He looked at her as though he had finally come face-to-face with the murderer of a beloved family pet.

Gideon had spent too long in the depths of Drearburh not to know when to, put scientifically, get outie.

Sister Lachrimorta had looked at her that way almost exclusively, and Sister...

She wanted to fight until bone adepts had to be called to put people’s feet back on.

“My uncle can’t eat with your kind around,” he said. “Please leave.”

Gideon had a million questions. Like: Your kind? And: Why do you have such a baby uncle, one the colour of mayonnaise? And: Is “your kind” people who aren’t nephews and who have middle fingers?

The sun blazed down through a canopy of glass or some thick, transparent plex. It was admittedly a garden only in a very sad sense of the word. Wherever the First House grew its food leaves, they didn’t grow them here. The salt was thick on each metal strut. The planters were full of shrubby, stunted green things, with long stems and drooping blossoms, bleached from the thick white light overhead. Weird fragrances rose like heat above them, heavy smells, strange smells. Nothing that grew on the Ninth had a real scent: not the moss and spores in its caves, and not the dried-out vegetables cultivated in its fields. The plex ended in a genuinely open area where the wind ruffled the wrinkled leaves of some wrinkled old trees, and there—under an awning in the undulating sun, looking like a long-stemmed, drooping blossom herself—was Dulcinea.

Gideon went to the chair and fiddled with the fastening, immediately emasculated by the difficulty of working out a simple chair-latch.

Did you see the pair from the Fourth House? Babies. They have contributed to me feeling ancient. Tomorrow I might feel youthful, but today’s a bad day

Take off your glasses, please, Gideon the Ninth. I’d like to see your eyes.”

There was something swift and cool in the blueness of those eyes, some deep intelligence, some sheer shameless depth and breadth of looking. It made Gideon’s cheeks flare, despite her mental reproach to Slow down, Nav, slow down.

“Lipochrome … recessive. I like looking at people’s eyes,” she explained suddenly, smiling now. “They tell you such a lot. I couldn’t tell you much about your Reverend Daughter … but you have eyes like gold coins.

“Gideon the Ninth,” said Dulcinea, slowly, “are you used to a heavier sword?”

The expression on Dulcinea’s face was simply bright-eyed, mischievous interest, but to Gideon it was the Secundarius Bell chiding a child already ten minutes late for prayer.

Gideon couldn’t even rely on the familiarity of the dead. The skeletons of the First were too good, too capable, too watchful—and Gideon didn’t feel truly at her ease anywhere except shut up in the dim rooms that the Ninth had been given, doing drills.

Both nights she went to bed sore and furious with loneliness.

bedroom. Then there was no more noise; and Harrow was gone again, in the morning, when Gideon awoke. She didn’t even leave rude notes.

It was in this abandoned state that the cavalier of the Ninth House ate two breakfasts, starved of both protein and attention, dark glasses slipping on her nose as she drank another bowl of soup.

place, and was therefore 100 percent vulnerable when she looked up to see a Third House twin stride into the room like a lion.

It was the lovely one; she had the sleeves of her gauzy robe haphazardly rolled up to each golden shoulder and her hair tied back in a tawny cloud, and she looked at Gideon with...

Gideon did not know what to do with the hand, which was offered to her fingers out, palm upward. She touched her fingers to it in the hope that she could grip it briefly and get out that way, but Coronabeth Tridentarius, Princess of Ida, took her hand and roguishly kissed the backs of Gideon’s knuckles. Her smile was sparklingly pleased with her own gall; her eyes were a deep, liquid violet, and she spoke with the casual effrontery of someone who expected her every command of jump! to be followed by a rave.

If Gideon had not been so lonely; if Gideon had not been so used to having a fighting partner, even one more used these days to battling rheumatism; if Coronabeth Tridentarius had not been so astonishingly hot. All these ifs she contemplated wearily, led by the Third House necromancer down the poky, confined little staircase immediately familiar to her as the one she’d explored before; down to the dark, tiled vestibule with the flickering lights, and through to the room with the foul-smelling chemical pit.

Everyone looked up as the Princess of Ida glowed into sight, because you couldn’t do anything else.

“See, now you can have a duel with someone else, and not bore everyone by how soundly Jeannemary the Fourth can thrash me.”

Nooooo, Magnus, don’t mention me,”

Magnus, do not talk about me being five.”)

Magnus, do not tell anyone this story.”)

“but I didn’t get to be cavalier primary due to being the best with a rapier. I’m cavalier primary only because my adept is also my wife. I suppose you could say that I—ha, ha—cavalier primarried!”

Gideon made a mental note to write down the joke so that she could use it herself later.

Corona inclined her bright head in toward Gideon. She smelled nice, like how Gideon imagined soap was meant to smell.

Stronger women than Gideon could not have said no to an up-close-and-personal Corona Tridentarius.

(Gideon admitted to herself that the way Corona said it was kind of hot.)

First touch? In Drearburh it was to the floor,

Magnus! Maaaaagnus. Three moves, Magnus.”)

“—Am I getting old? Should Abigail and I divorce?—”