by Tamsyn Muir
Something rustled at her side. She had not seen it when she climbed in; it had been tucked to one side of the coffin. When she reached out to hold it in front of her face, she found a shiny mass of magazine flimsy. The crumpled front page showed a woman in a Cohort uniform that was so far from official it did not merely strain credulity, but snapped it in two pieces: a white jacket at least three sizes too small, boots, and nothing else.
The ice felt kind and warm; the stone gave as though it were cotton. Harrow lay where the Body had lain, perfectly at her ease, perfectly comfortable, and she peered blearily at the header.
“Frontline Titties of the Fifth,” she read, and found she was smiling helplessly to herself. She murmured: “Nav, you ass, that’s not even a real publication.”
Then there was a huge, side-to-side rocking, in the manner of an explosion, or a cradle. Her eyes closed. Lying in the tomb that had claimed her heart, faraway in a land she had never travelled, Harrowhark Nonagesimus fell asleep, or dropped dead, or both.
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
THE THICK FUG OF a summer evening. The curfews stalling the traffic outside to a funeral crawl, with the hot sun blistering the road into sodden clags of concrete and tar. What she liked best was the way the haze of combustion from the vehicles colonized the dying rays of the sun into deep pinks and oranges, oranges into scarlets, scarlets into purples, purples into the sweet deathly navy of the night. The antisniper striping frosted over the windowpane turned everything into feeble shapes, but the colours were just as intense even if the shapes were a mush. And the murmurous honks from the traffic below—the occasional low, lamenting blart of a cargo carrier—were transformed by the tall buildings into an orchestral echo. The crack of the open window let the outside air, redolent of sun-warmed plastic and fumes, ruffle the drying sweat in her hair.
This time of day was a crossbar. It blocked off the afternoon, when black cloths would be tacked up over windows and she would sit in that tight, squeezing, claustrophobic heat, and she would be given the bones by the people who lived with her. She lived with three people: the person who went to work for her, the person who taught her, and the person who looked after her. The person who taught her often gave her these bones to arrange (“just whatever feels normal”), sometimes to just hold, in the hand or in the hollow of her cheek. Then the bones could be packed away in secret—the blackout curtains could come down, and the window cracked—and once the temperature dropped a few degrees, she would be at the chin-up bar, or doing press-ups, or the sword would be put in her hand by the person who looked after her—“whatever feels normal,” again.
And then when it was very late, they’d climb down thirty flights of stairs to street level, picking their way through abandoned sacks of clothes, or laminate takeaway boxes, the press of other people, smelling like the day-to-day sweat of working in a sultry office, or the day-to-day sweat of being outside in the heat, or the day-to-day sweat of fear. She would be taken to the little corner store with its great barricades of snacks and pills and pamphlets and thin cheap shirts, and sit on the should-be-white chairs and smell the deep fryer going, and then pick over crispy chunks of potato, or pan-blasted sweet fruit, or sausage meat in batter, with time enough after to lick her burnt and salty fingers. She and the person who looked after her had used to go to a different haunt, where the food was cheaper and the sausages more juicy—but there the man who fried the food had once said warningly, “It’s hot,” only to find that she had already stuffed her mouth full of lacy fried things anyway. The man had said, laughing, “Her lips should be burnt off, eh?” But her lips had not been burnt off. It had barely hurt. For some reason, because of that, they no longer patronized that sausage man.
Out there in the outskirts, soldiers walked the city, with their guns out and their riot shields slung over their shoulders, looking grimy and cross in the heat under their helmets and great reflective visors. Some nights they heard the pop—pop—pop—rattle of a gunfight, and on these nights they would shut the windows and lie with most of their clothes off on the floor of the bathroom.
On nights like this, in the dark, turning her face to press hot cheeks into the cool ceramic bump of the tiles below, she would look into the face of the person who looked after her. It was a comforting face to look into; it was a resolute, keen, utterly unmoved face, which did not flinch at the angry carillon of vehicle honks, nor at the sound of someone shouting from the rooms close by through the thin walls. It felt as though she had always been fond of the face, and of the dark, sharply bobbed hair; and she loved without reserve the eyes—those great lambent eyes, the iris so skilfully and gently blent that it seemed there was no tint or shade in that clear and beautiful grey.
And she would say, idly, more as prayer than demand: “Have you worked out who I am?”
“Not yet,” said Camilla.
The tomb will open in
ALECTO THE NINTH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to again express my very great appreciation for my agent, Jennifer Jackson, who is as indefatigable as she is kind and as funny as she is indefatigable. Jennifer is a truly remarkable being and I have not managed to stump her yet. A year on I still haven’t found the right words to thank Carl Engle-Laird, editor and hero, and if I did he would just remove all the parataxis. Carl, I know this universe has meant so much to both of us. Thank you for being with me on this wild ride.
The team at Tor.com are angelic beings—Ruoxi Chen, Christine Foltzer, Irene Gallo, Giselle Gonzalez, Mordicai Knode, Caroline Perny, Renata Sweeney, Natalie Zutter, as well as Matt Johnson over at Macmillan Sales, to name but a few of the host—all of them rad goth angels with leather jackets. I know there has been even more work done on my behalf than I quite understand, and their support, enthusiasm, and kindness throughout has been incredible. I am also grateful to Tommy Arnold, for incredible cover work, and Jamie Stafford-Hill for equally incredible layouts and design.
Very special thanks to Clemency Pleming and Megan Smith, first readers always, who have married each other since my last acknowledgments. Maz, you are her cavalier; that is illegal.
To everyone who got to read Gideon the Ninth prepub and were so enormously kind, vocal, and supportive: thank you so much. I wish I could list all their names here, but there were so many, and they did so many things, that I am afraid of leaving someone out. The tireless work of booksellers, reviewers, bloggers, and fellow authors humbled me as much as it astonished me.
I am very thankful for the people who have broken bread with me and listened to me grumble—Lissa, Bo and Ben, the Wests, Ben Raynor, Chris Douglas. My Clarion class remains treasures, one and all. Isabel Yap is a light to many, but a bonfire to me; as dedicated, Gideon the Ninth would in a very real way not exist without her, and Harrow the Ninth owes her a huge and different debt. Thanks again to my family for their unending love and support, especially Andrew, who nonetheless cannot go five minutes without telling people about the time I ate too much chocolate mousse.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus did not have anyone to put soluble banana-flavoured antipsychotics under her tongue for her condition. I do, and therefore I would like to thank every key worker in my past who had to administer me medication, because they were always nice about it and often I was not.
Ultimately, I thank Matt Hosty, who mopped more blood, brewed more tea, and without whom this book would have been an excuse note. Matt, the best of this book is you. I can’t wait for you to see the next one. I don’t want to shock you, but it’s got … bones.
The Locked Tomb Trilogy
Gideon the Ninth
Harrow the Ninth
Alecto the Ninth(forthcoming)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb trilogy, which begins with Gideon the Ninth, continues with Harrow the Ninth, and concludes with Alecto the Ninth (forthcoming). Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Shirley
Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Visit her Online at tamsynmuir.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
Parodos
Act One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Act Two
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Act Three
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Act Four
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epiparodos
Act Five
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
The Locked Tomb Trilogy
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HARROW THE NINTH
Copyright © 2020 by Tamsyn Muir
All rights reserved.
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
Cover art by Tommy Arnold
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-31322-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-31320-1 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250313201
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First Edition: 2020