Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“You have one black eye already, courtesy of the Seventh House,” said Harrow, “and you seem to yearn for symmetry.”

“Why?” “Probably because you asked.” The heavy eyelids shuttered open, revealing baleful black irises. “That’s all it takes, Griddle? That’s all you demand? This is the complex mystery that lies in the pit of your psyche?” Gideon slid her glasses back onto her face, obscuring feelings with tint. She found herself saying, “That’s all I ever demanded,” and to maintain face suffixed it with, “you asswipe.”

“Sorry. Ninth cavalier, I should ask you your thoughts on all of this.” She cracked the joints in the back of her neck as she considered the question, stretching out the ligaments, popping her knuckles. He urged again, “Thoughts?” Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?” The dreadful teens both stared with eyes so wide you could have marched skeletons straight through them. “You—do you talk?” said Isaac. “You’ll wish she didn’t,” said Camilla.

“Reverend Daughter, you know as well as I do that the Eighth House wouldn’t let a little thing like fair play get in the way of its sacred duty to do whatever it wants.”

“We can’t do anything for them yet,” said Palamedes. “The living have to take precedence here, if we want to keep living.” As it turned out, he was wrong.

You’re going to die spewing your own lungs out of your nostrils, having failed at the finish line because you couldn’t help but prattle about why you killed innocent people, as though your reasons were interesting

“A necromancer alone can’t bring that down, Griddle. That’s regenerating bone.” “I’m not running, Harrow!” “Of course we’re not running,” said Harrowhark disdainfully. “I said a necromancer alone. I have you. We bring hell.” “Harrow—Harrow, Dulcinea’s a Lyctor, a real one—” “Then we’re all dead, Nav, but let’s bring hell first,”

Camilla said steadily: “Let me out. I can provide the distraction.” “Cram it already, Hect,” said Gideon, not looking away from her necromancer, who was painfully serene as even her eyebrows bled. “I’m not getting haunted by Palamedes Sextus’s crappy-ass revenant all telling me doctor facts for the rest of my life, just because I let you get disintegrated.”

“Now we kick her ass until candy comes out,”

“I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.” “Yes you can, it’s just less great and less hot,”