Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“Your vow of silence is conveniently variable, Ninth, I’m very grateful.”

“Turns out I’m variably penitent.

“If I wanted to talk to Nonagesimus, I’d talk to Nonagesimus,” he said, “or I’d talk to a brick wall, because honestly, your necromancer is a walking Ninth House cliché. You’re at least only half as a bad.”

Gideon suddenly ached to hear one of the Fifth’s terrible jokes, if only because it would be a refreshing trip back to the status quo.

“Poor dumb kids,” Gideon said, all of four years their elder.

Aiglamene had told her not to do, but it felt so good that by the end she was happy as a child.

Harrow never came back. Gideon was used to this by now.

Gideon sat there in it with water all the way up to her chin. It was incredible—the strangest thing she’d ever felt in her life; like being buoyed on a warm current, like being slowly boiled—and she worried, irrationally, whether water could get inside you and make you sick.

Nine dreamless hours later she woke up with the pages stuck to her face via a thin sealant of drool.

“Wake up, assmunch, I want to yell at you about keys,”

This freed Gideon to dress in relative peace and quiet, paint without critique, and leave their quarters feeling unusual amounts of peace with the world.

For a moment Gideon hoped that this was a terrifically misplaced cry for attention, but Isaac had already turned away from her, dark eyes like stones. She had no choice but to follow in his wake.

she focused on the long golden arms of Corona Tridentarius as she sliced through water, propelling her as she hit the wall and pushed off hard with her feet.

His swimming shirt was a lot tighter than Coronabeth’s, and his fifty-seven abdominal muscles rippled under it importantly.

“If you’re not coming, I’m out of here in the next ten seconds. I’m not leaving Jeanne by herself.”

Jeannemary looked like a malfunctioning electric wire.

When she saw the gang of idiots that her necromancer had brought her, she was intensely displeased. “I wanted the Ninth and Princess Coronabeth,” she said. Her voice cracked.

“Everyone tagged along,” said Isaac. “I didn’t want to leave you—I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

There were long scratches down her face. She was even smudgier than her counterpart teen, if that was possible, and in that moment she looked feral. Her curls had frizzed up into a dark brown halo—one liberally streaked with blood and something else disreputable—and her eyes were welling up from the acrid smoke. She did not look like a stable witness to anyone.

“I’m not your doll, dickhead—”

“Babs, shut your mouth and fix your hair,”

“I hope you end up in the incinerator,” said Jeannemary. “I hope whatever killed Magnus and Abigail—and whoever we just found—comes after you. I’d love to see your face then.

Coronabeth was staring into the steaming ashes, brief singlet and shorts whipping in the wind, fine dry curls of gold escaping from the wet mass of her hair. She looked troubled, which made Gideon sad, but she was also soaked right through to the skin, which made Gideon need a lie-down.

“I wanted you two because Magnus liked you both,”

They both beheld it silently:

The exquisite eyes of the necromancer of the Third were upon her, and the doleful expression turned into a radiant smile, violet eyes crinkling up at the corners with the hugeness of the grin. “Why, Gideon the Ninth!” she exclaimed, mourning banished. “You’re a ginger!”

maybe the Reverend Daughter had made Gideon’s youthful dreams come true by spending all night in an incinerator—but

Corona turned her chair around and straddled the seat, crossing her slim ankles at the front.

“Chatur, if you say one more bloody word I’ll make sure you never get through puberty—”

“Warden—that means she can hit your cavalier anywhere below the neck, and it ends only when you give in. She’s being an absolute cad, and I’m not even slightly sorry for pantsing her when we were eight.”

just to scare Octakiseron and Nonagesimus—no offense, Ninth.”

For a moment she thought the Fourth were holding hands, but she realised Isaac was holding Jeannemary back: his hand around her wrist was a clamp, and her face the picture of outrage.

Harrowhark looked as taut and distant as a hangman’s rope, but something in Gideon’s face must have caught her attention: she went from distant to bemused, and from bemused to something even a little bit offended.

“Cam,” Palamedes said. “Go loud.”

Someone like Naberius would have been prone on the table from shock, probably bleating and shitting.

She dropped her cobweb-light rapier, grabbed Marta’s wrist, and yanked. The arm dislocated with a bright pop.

you didn’t even watch her first, you just assumed you could take her. And I can’t stand people who assume.”

He vaulted to the table in one lustrous movement, swinging himself up to stand on it, even as Judith Deuteros very carefully eased her cavalier down into an empty seat.

“On the contrary,” Ianthe said, “you’ve amply demonstrated that there are no rules whatsoever. There’s only the challenge … and how it’s answered.”

Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone’s shit.

Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star.

“The plot congeals.

Harrowhark said, in the exact sepulchral tones of Marshal Crux: “Death first to vultures and scavengers.”

“I should’ve stayed home and gotten married,” he said resentfully.

“As though anyone was even offering,” snapped Ianthe.

“I have no interest in talking to you anymore,”

“If we hadn’t been trailing everybody it would have been that creep Ianthe Tridentarius. And she’s stalking everyone. Believe me.”

(“And trailing differs from stalking how?” “Because the Fourth doesn’t stalk?”)

“Yes, even though you’re a black anchorite and loyal only to the numinous forces of the Locked Tomb. If you’d wanted my keys through chicanery you would have challenged me for them a long time ago. I don’t trust Silas Octakiseron, and I don’t trust Ianthe Tridentarius, but I trust the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus.”

I’m not going down the ladder with your invalid cavalier.”