Day 5, part 2: some hours before the Tomb opens
This week’s retrospective is long, so you’ll want to pace yourself. Grab a favorite beverage and a comfy chair, and let’s get to it.
Our time with Nona the Ninth is coming to an end — maybe. The question is: is this a tragedy, or a step toward something else? To answer that question, we have to ask why Nona manifested in Harrow’s body, what did she learn while “alive,” and, most of all, what will she remember in her new incarnation? Oh, but we have a lot of adventuring to get through before we get there, don’t we?
Next week we’ll do the epilogue and a wrap-up of the novel and the series. I want to take a quick look at some of the themes that Muir has explored and forecast what might be in play in Alecto the Ninth, when it debuts later this year. When it does, I’m going to need a couple of weeks to put my notes in order before the group read. I hope that works for everyone. There’ll be fair warning ahead of time.
Chapter 25 Header: fractured Gideon skull
Gideon, highly disagreeable and sarcastic, introduces herself as Prince Kiriona Gaia the First, Her Divine Highness, First Lieutenant of the Cohort, Emperor’s Life Guards, heir to the Emperor Divine, first of the Tower Princes, and “mega dead.” She announces that she wants to go to the Ninth House with them.
Kiriona’s survival (return?) is quite a shock. Just so you’re not totally thrown, Kiriona means Gideon in Māori, and John is at least part-Māori. Kiriona is not exactly Gideon: this version is a lot meaner, and has been through even worse trauma than the Gideon we’ve known before.
Some points to consider:
- Pyrrha tells her: “He shouldn’t have been able to separate you. Your girl didn’t manage full fusion, but that she took from you not even John could’ve got back” (p. 369). John couldn’t have pulled back all of Gideon’s soul, because Harrow had absorbed at least some of it (which may or may not have snapped back into her body when Nona kissed her).
- “And … he didn’t bring you back all the way? He brought you back like this?”
- Why do you suppose he didn’t bring her back to life? Hint: it might have had to do with the fact that he thinks the Tomb is still closed and, as Kiriona confirms, her blood can’t be used to open it.
- “What shocked Nona was not that the corpse moved. It was the way in which she moved. Nona was so distracted that she couldn’t stop watching. She had never seen anyone move like that before” (p. 370) . . . “It was in Kiriona’s every movement — the bright, swift flexions of her arms, and the way she swung her legs, big and brash, and the weirdly easy, light grace with which she moved her dead body. Nona had never seen anyone so sad in her whole short life. It made her nearly afraid to die” (p. 374).
- Kiriona is the saddest girl in the world.
- Ianthe is more powerful than Kiriona: “She shut me off in public so I wouldn’t screw up the very important Sixth House mission” (p. 371). And she imprisoned her behind an entropy ward.
- Something has changed in the River, although Kiriona doesn’t say what it is (p. 371).
- There’s something at war inside her. When Camilla tries the syringe, the needle snaps and she staggers back. An action so small as breaking a syringe wouldn’t knock her back — something else did. (Remember the reaction Palamedes had when he tried to determine whether the corpse was real?) “Kiriona Gaia opened her hand — moved it to steady Camilla’s shoulder — then, like she was flinching, roughly shoved her away” (p. 373). Stick a pin in this. We’ll come back to it soon.
- She’s also furious, her eyes “hard and dead and bright, like something that had been dug up. ‘My father has made my body’s bones denser than titanium plex,’ said the Crown Prince coldly. ‘My father has made my skin turn away bullets. I am the perfect sword hand and the final expression of the art of the Nine Houses. Don’t you get it? I am the Emperor’s construct’” (p. 373).
- Not the Emperor’s daughter — the Emperor’s construct: his tool, his weapon. And she knows it.
- As Bostondreams noted last week, the Emperor has given Kiriona everything she ever wanted: important parentage, a place in the Cohort, military honors . . . and it’s horrible for her.
- This is the lesson of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: don’t ask the gods for anything because they’ll grant your wish, and it’ll be exactly the worst thing for you. (There are more current translations than the one I link here available in print if you poke around.) I will guarantee you Ovid is one poet that Muir knows well.
- “Those are my speed holes. They help me go fast.” Homer Simpson lives! Thanks, Kiriona, for the return of this classic meme.
- Really, my heart breaks for Gideon — she’s gotten the bad side of the deal every single time. She is unaware of how much Harrow loves her or how much the others of Canaan House esteemed and respected her. As far as she knows, her life was awful and her afterlife is worse.
Chapter 26 Header: Fourth House skull
Blood of Eden moves them out of the barracks in trucks. We Suffer tells them that Merv Wing has the Sixth House Oversight Committee on a truck in the tunnels under the city. Nona realizes they’re in the Convoy and tells them she can tell them where they were earlier in the week. They take her to Honesty’s building, where she gets the information from him and Hot Sauce.
- Why the Fourth House skull? This chapter is all about soldiers (all different kinds of soldiers) in wartime.
- “It was a dark and blueless night” (p. 375). Blink and you’ll miss it. Thick clouds and heat.
- “Nona had never seen Camilla so meek or malleable. It was like all the times she had ever seen Camilla happy, all at once” (p. 375). Despite everything, she and Palamedes are together again.
- Pyrrha keeps looking at Pash (p. 375).
- “She could hear a high, frightened voice saying fucking nuts man, fucking nutter; she could taste little green fruits” (p. 378). Honesty when he came in from the tunnels.
- “She looked at the commander with her elegant older face and she felt a great, hot pang inside her. Some kind of sorrow related to legs” (p. 378). We know that Nona crushes on all the ladies, but this is different: is it sexual, or is it something else, some kind of deep knowledge about herself?
- “While she was talking, a muffled crack — boom of thunder sounded overhead, then another, softer crack — boom, followed by long whistles, like something breaking a far-off sound barrier” (p. 380).
- Varun has retracted (“a dark and blueless night”) and the first waves are incoming.
- “A hard wind had whipped up” (p. 381). While Nona climbs up to Honesty’s floor and everyone else is preoccupied, we see the signs of the Heralds’ approach.
- “It seemed to her that her entire brain now lived somewhere in her forehead. Her body knew it was tired, but it was as though someone else were feeling it; or maybe that she weren’t feeling it at all” (p. 381).
- “’Honesty, this is a matter of life.’ . . . ‘You’re s’posed to say “and death,”’ he supplied. ‘I have started not to believe in the other one’ . . . Honesty said, ‘How about, “Life and death where you don’t come back”?’ ‘That’s so long,’ said Nona” (p. 382).
- “I’ll go away forever, I think.” She knows. She hasn’t admitted it, but she knows.
- “Hot Sauce, forgive me — forgive me so I can know what it feels like” (p. 384).
Chapter 27 Header: Second House skull
We Suffer announces the resumption of Wake’s original mission: Operation Lock and Key, and activates all her cells. Pyrrha tells Pash that she recognizes her from a photo that Wake used to carry with her, evidence to Pash that Wake loved her. Varun’s Heralds start to land in the city as the truck heads toward the tunnels. Nona takes Crown’s rapier and climbs on top of the truck. Judith follows, channeling Varun. Nona begs the Resurrection Beast to spare the city and to wait for a little while, and she might be different. Judith, herself again, calls her Harrowhark, and Nona says that she never was Harrow.
- “The thundercracks had increased tenfold, with no rain to be seen — the night had grown so hot that everyone in the big truck had started to sweat” (p. 386). It’s like in the Mithraeum, where the Heralds raise the temperature to roast everyone inside.
- “Inter-wing rules no longer apply” (p. 386). This is going to be an all-out effort, and We Suffer’s life will ride on its success or failure.
- The cells are named for:
- Saaftinge: a town in the Netherlands that was drowned by floodwaters in 1584. The town’s church towers, according to legend, can still be heard ringing in the fog.
- Zoar: a town east of Jordan, where Lot and his daughters hid out after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed sometime in the early medieval period.
- Birmingham: the still-there city in Alabama, center of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, and infamous for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four children (among other racially-motivated bombings) and its jailing of Martin Luther King, Jr. on charges of nonviolent protest.
- Troia: we’ve talked about this one. It’s a special case: Troy. Flattened by the Greeks. Also “three,” and a reference to prostitution.
- Maputo: the capital of Mozambique, founded by the Portuguese as an imperial trading port and under a fierce apartheid regime that fell in the 1970s, when the city received an indigenous name.
- Taree: a town in New South Wales, Australia, settled by displacing indigenous population to make a private community.
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Takșa: (aka Taxilia) a city in modern Pakistan, surrendered to Alexander the Great, burned by the Huns in the 600s CE and the Khaljiis, agents of the Mamluk empire. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
- Memphis: once the royal capital of Egypt, destroyed in the Muslim conquest in 640 CE. Also a UNESCO World Heritage site.
- Calakmul: Mayan city in Campeche, Mexico. Also — guess what? — a UNESCO World Heritage site.
- Valencia: Surprise! A currently un-sacked city, raised again after a history of sackings. In Spain.
- Opava: city in the Czech Republic, site of conquest by Nazi Germany and recipient of the Bakhmut treatment by the Soviet Army. Still there.
- Dundee: city in Scotland that endured despite repeated maulings by England in the medieval period.
- So there we have Ctesiphon’s cells: all named for cities that were either destroyed by violence or endured despite it. And I suspect that Muir had many mental giggles thinking about all the randos who would spend hours trying to figure out what all these old cities have in common.
- Pyrrha is feeling sentimental, which makes her talk to Pash about Wake. When she offers incontrovertible evidence in the photograph, it gives Pash evidence she’s been seeking her entire life: that she was important to Wake, that she was loved. “Pash wasn’t mad or upset. She looked as though she were having a religious experience” (p. 387).
- All this time, Pash hasn’t been mean because she’s mean — she’s been trying to out-Wake Wake. Now we’re going to see who Pash really is.
- She’s Wake’s niece. That makes her Gideon’s first cousin (p. 388).
- “Nona found a sigh escaping her chest. All her noises seemed to surprise her now; it was as though her body were capable of shocking her by doing things that did not seem connected to Nona” (p. 388).
- Another crack and thud. “It said quite a lot about lie in the city that nobody really freaked out about this the first time, nor the second time, nor even the third time when they heard yelling coming from the front of the truck” (p. 388). This is an interesting break in narrative voice. It’s not Nona’s voice.
- Pyrrha leans out to look, and then comes back: “When she leant back in, Nona was profoundly upset by her body” (p. 389). Nona reads body language, and knows that Pyrrha has seen something fatal. “The first wave is here.”
- Pyrrha had assumed Varun would go dormant, “That’s how it was after it ripped apart Cassiopeia” (p. 389).
- Some readers theorize that Cassiopeia might have bound her soul to her body the way Palamedes did, and thereby survived somewhere. They cite her centrality to the old movers of the plot: the Break Clause and being Blood of Eden’s first contact (Source Gram) for that.
- Pyrrha says they need a real Lyctor to lead it away, and otherwise they don’t stand a chance: “You want Gideon the First, and Gideon the First is dead. He’s not coming back. Oh, God, Gideon . . . Gideon … G —, you died for nothing” (p. 390).
- Pyrrha, so strong and stoic, finally gives way to grief.
- She remembers Gideon’s pre-apocalypse name. This is important.
- “The Captain made a noise like ah, ah, ah” (p. 390). You’re going to love it (or hate it) when you get it.
- “Nona made her body stand on its two feet. Two feet — the worst number for feet; not so many that they were ever useful, not so few that you didn’t have to think about them” (p. 390). This is not Nona in charge. It’s the soul she hasn’t let herself think about — the one she won’t let herself think about.
- Remember her sadness about legs when she was looking at We Suffer.
- She pushes Pyrrha out of the way, bends Crown aside and cuts the rapier (the Ninth House rapier that once belonged to Gideon Nav) out of the sheath. She sticks it in her hip and climbs onto the roof of the truck, where she and Varun have a discussion.
- This isn’t Nona — Nona doesn’t have this kind of strength, aptitude, or lack of manners.
- “You said you wouldn’t do anything weird!” (p. 391).
- The conversation is opaque (to put it mildly). Here’s my interpretation of what they discuss:
- Varun: “Get him. Get him. Get him. He flees” (p. 392). Remember statements in threes being particularly important? “Him” is John. John is the goal.
- “You asked for help — you asked … and all for nothing. . . I gave you blood for blood.” Varun will take revenge on the planet on Nona’s behalf because it came to help her, but Nona says that she loves this planet. Varun asks if she loves and she says yes, but then isn’t sure, because she isn’t sure what love means. Which is true — Nona, a child, loves everyone. Is that love? What else could it be?
- “’Green thing,’ said the Captain. ‘Green-and-breathing thing, big ghost, the drinker, transformed, what will you eat now? Where will your body go? What did he do to you, to make you this way? You eat yourself. I gorge on unliving marrow.’”
- Alecto is a “green” and “breathing thing,” a “saltwater creature” that has been transformed. “He” made her this way, him being John. John made Alecto.
- Alecto is, of course, earth. (“You were so sick….”)
- Alecto is earth’s ghost in a human body.
- If Alecto is the ghost of the earth, that means she’s a Resurrection Beast.
- Varun knows as well as Nona does that she can’t continue this way.
- “You eat yourself.” It’s true; she’s dying. Something has to power her body. Varun eats by consuming planets, but Alecto is eating herself.
- Varun is also consuming Judith, and Nona asks it to stop. “I can’t stop it, but you can stop it. Stop hurting her … She doesn’t know what you’re doing” (p. 392).
- “I have crossed the face of the universe . . . I poison it to match my grief” (p. 393).
- Nona can’t dissuade Varun from its course, but she can get it to not destroy the planet, and it agrees to show mercy.
- “They concoct their own vengeance . . . Their justice is not my justice. Their water is not my water. I came to help. I am made a mockery. The danger is upon you, and you do not even know … they are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you.”
- Their justice is not my justice: no human or relatively human force can understand the Resurrection Beast — the soul of a murdered planet. “They” might be the Lyctors, maybe Blood of Eden, maybe the Houses?
- Their water is not my water: the Resurrection Beasts travel in the River, periscoping and seeking places to substantiate. But it’s an unnatural place for them.
- I came to help: why is Varun brooding over Ur/New Rho? Because Nona is there. It’s there for her. It recognizes who and what she is.
- “I am made a mockery”: this bit I don’t understand yet. Unless it’s because John convinced the Lyctors that the Resurrection Beasts were after them and not him. It was never about the Lyctors — that was all John’s lies. Maybe someone else has another idea, or maybe we won’t learn until we get to Alecto.
- “They are coming out of their tower”: on a first reading we’re meant to think about the Tower Princes. But I believe it’s something else, another complicating factor or foe stepping on to the board.
- There is a hole at the bottom of their tower: the Tower is something we don’t know much about just yet, but whatever is coming out, there’s either an egress or a vulnerability at the bottom.
- Nona ways, “I’m ready to die … really ready” and Varun answers, “Nothing is really ready to die.” It’s a rejection. Nona then bargains, not with her life but with her transformation: “Just wait. Just help me … help me do this. I might be different … soon” (p. 393).
- She isn’t sure, but she thinks Varun pulls back. (This is confirmed in the next Ur chapter.)
John 1: 20
They work their way through the facility, still damaged by the final battle and a few weeks of being submerged. John tells her how his team figures out that the trillionaires are filling the ships with material goods they’ll need for their own survival, filling the passenger manifests with fake names, and preparing to skip out on all of humanity. Cassiopeia begs John to try to pull off some miracle whereby he shows the world that he’s a force for healing the earth, but John is still preoccupied with isolating the soul and he didn’t know how to harness the energy yet. Instead, he says they need to make sure that no one can reach the ships in orbit. The solution: threaten to use their suitcase nuke. Everything escalates, John’s followers turn on him and attack the facility, where the faithful make a last stand. Meanwhile, John is frozen with indecision, and Cristabel comes in to help him. Thinking she’ll bring him closer to God, she shoots herself and he recognizes her soul. He sees it and can touch it. Touching it, he can touch “her,” and he does. He takes her in and sets off, first the small nuke in Melbourne, and then, through his puppeted leader, more, setting off nuclear strikes all across the world. His power balloons as he murders half the world, and then the other half. He chokes down the earth’s soul and manages only half, so he forms a body from dirt and his own flesh and put the rest of her soul in it. And he becomes God. He kills the planets of the solar system and the sun, just as the trillionaires’ fleet starts to enter FTL. They get away.
- John is genuinely grieved to return to the scene of the crime. It’s easy to condemn John for being, well, evil. And without doubt, he is. But remember that every person has a tremendous capacity for good and for evil, and John is just a man. His power makes him omnipotent, but not wise. Also, even monsters can weep.
- Alfred and Cristabel figure out that the trillionaires are cutting and running. Mercymorn panics (p. 396).
- As much as John is grieving, it’s still worth noting that he can walk through a room where a firefight has taken place and there are rotting bodies everywhere — the bodies of people he knew and loved — and can say simply, “God, this kitchen’s fucked” (p. 396) and go for peaches.
- While Cassiopeia is asking for a miracle and Augustine wants to make threats to save the planet, John isn’t thinking at all about the planet: “I was so close to cracking this third thing, the soul” (p. 397). He’s gone entirely mad scientist.
- Before sending Gideon out with the nuke, John cuts off his arm and regrows it. “I wanted his arm … his material . . . I stuffed it in the morgue so nobody would find it. I’ve got plans for that arm” (p. 399). Plans that will presumably be made clear one day.
- John doesn’t tell anyone that he’s armed the nuke and that Gideon is the dead-man’s switch until Gideon is in the meeting. (There is premeditation all over these passages, don’t you think?) “They went apeshit. Which I don’t think was entirely fair” (p. 400). Yes, it was entirely fair. John has navigated events so that he is holding the world hostage by his proxy world leader.
- Cassiopeia tells him, “John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meting out punishment . . .You can be quite the most appallingly vindictive person I have ever met” (p. 401).
- The one thing John didn’t account for was revolt in his own camp. “They’d seen me fuck up once, killing the cops, and once people see you do something and come to an opinion about it, there’s nothing you can do. People don’t forgive, not really. Once they doubt, you’ve already lost them” (p. 402). This is the heart of Mercymorn and Augustine’s confrontation with John in Harrow, when John says there can never be forgiveness.
- He’s also stopped trusting his closest companions” “Had I already lost my best friends? The only people I needed?” (p. 402). Keep this in mind during the next (and final) John chapter.
- Cristabel counsels John: “Fear doesn’t help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart. John, I truly believe you can save everyone” (p. 404). She shoots herself, and John sees:
- “For the first time I could hold a soul and see its edges, pin it down. It was like a tiny atom bomb. I could tell immediately that this was the missing link” (p. 405).
- “I held her soul in my hands and I knew why it had been so hard, because I was tuned in. I was looking at the code. I knew why I hadn’t been able to see anything. He said, When I touched her soul, I touched you. You were the noise that was everywhere . . . You drowned everything out. You were so huge and so complicated, and you were screaming. You wouldn’t stop screaming. You were so scared. You were so goddamn mad” (p. 405).
- You would be forgiven for thinking that John blames unleashing Armageddon on earth, because the earth’s soul wouldn’t shut up. He’s been complaining the whole chapter about the noise.
- “I was babbling, Show me. Come on. I’m ready. You kept screaming and screaming … like a baby in pain. So I tried to hurt you — I did hurt you. I reached out for you, and it hurt you” (p. 407). On top of everything, John acts like an abusive parent.
- Once all his friends in the compound are killed, he stops Gideon’s heart and sets off the nuke. “God, that hurt you. That stung. I ate every single death” (p. 407).
- The deaths across the world make John stronger. The last thing on earth he eats, is the earth itself: “I realised you were too much for me. This is the problem, the incorporation, this is the hardest part . . . But I needed a house to put you in, if I wasn’t going to put all of you in me . . . I ripped half my ribs from my body and made you from the dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone” (p. 408).
- When it comes to a body, he falls back on his mother’s old toys, “My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie.”
- “I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in” (p. 409)
- He traps her like the Minotaur.
- “I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done.”
- Some way to escape . . . as if was using her. As if he didn’t care about her. As if he didn’t care that she wouldn’t want what he wanted.
- “When we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God.”
- “It wasn’t enough.” Think of it: being God isn’t enough for him.
- There are Māori myths about Maui slowing the sun, but I haven’t found any about trying to possess the sun. But then, I confess I haven’t looked hard — yet.
- John: “You and I went full fucking Hungry Caterpillar. [After killing the rest of the solar system, we] found every satellite and craft, reached in, crunched up all the humans, moved on” (p. 409).
- “I was in there with them. All those frightened people. All those runaway rats” (p. 409).
- Notice how he depersonalizes them. They’re not people to him.
- He murders all of the human race that he can reach, and the spirit of the earth itself, all to get at a ship full of rich people — and they get away. “They were gone … lost to me in time. That’ll teach me not to hesitate.”
- They’re lost in time. Time. Note this. John says in Harrow that instead of mastering Death, he should have mastered Time. Reads a little differently now, huh?
- “She wasn’t cold, but she felt as though she ought to be. Standing out there in the shadows, in the dust and the dirt, with the reeking concrete shell behind them, she wanted to be cold” (p. 409).
- John and Alecto achieved perfect Lyctorhood — actually, John did. But they’re two life-forces sharing two bodies, which is why they get hungry and thirsty at the same time. Alecto, having enough of John in her to feel her body, having a body made of John’s material and her own, now wants to be cold — it’s a human reaction to genocide
- John gets everything out of this process. What does earth get, other than colonized, used, abused?
- Which he finishes “lightly — ‘That’s it. That’s the story. That’s what I did.”
- In case you forgot that he’s a monster.
- “You said, ‘I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me? . . . What have you done to me? I am a hideousness . . . Where did you put the people? . . . I still love you’” (p. 410).
- The earth picked John and gave him the powers to change — for the purpose of preserving and healing the earth. And he turns on it and murders it.
- The rest of this needs unpacking: Alecto hates the form she’s been given — she hates her body. Remember how Nona hates her hands? Can’t eat? Consumes non-organic matter. It’s not an eating disorder — she’s earth, she’s the ghost of the earth.
- Where did he put the people? He killed ten billion people — where did they go? What happened to their souls? That’s an abiding question, first voiced in Gideon.
- Nona’s love for everyone and (almost) everything: all this while we’ve been ascribing it to her being a child with a 6 month consciousness. But what if it’s something else? After all, she’s a 6 billion year old life form. What if the spirit of the earth is love?
- Because you’ve hung with me this far, remember the Ah ah ah sounds that Nona makes? Enjoy:
There’s even a loose arm in the video.
Yes, Alecto is Barbie.
It’s very much on-brand for Muir to throw a layer of pop-culture satire on absolutely shattering tragedy, like Alecto being stuck in a Hollywood Hair Barbie (no wonder ten year old Harrow fell in love), or Gideon referring to the holes in her body as “speed holes” à la Homer Simpson. Sometimes the heavy is just too much, which is why we see buffoons in Shakespeare’s tragedies — to let a little light into the unrelieved gloom and make it bearable.
Chapter 28 Header: Fractured Sixth House
Nona wakes in the back of a truck with Gideon, who asks her where Harrow is. She can’t move her legs. Alecto is emerging, although there are stretches when Nona still knows herself, and Pyrrha comforts her. But Pyrrha thinks they’re all going to die, and that cheers Nona up, that they might all go together.
One of the Convoy’s megatrucks has been opened and the Sixth House Oversight Committee is checking in. Palamedes tells them they’re going to load back up and head to the Ninth House. But first, the principals gather in a ring around him and Camilla and they become a Lyctor, a new person — a true fusion of two. With Palamedes out of Naberius’ body, Ianthe comes back. The new person offers her and Naberius a second chance; she refuses and abandons Naberius.
- It’s just Nona and Gideon, and now Gideon reassures her “quite gently — ‘Chill’” (p. 411). All she wants to know is where Harrow is, and whether she loves Harrow.
- It makes one wonder whether Gideon knows who Nona really is. I suspect she does.
- Pyrrha fell off the truck, presumably chasing Nona, and is now healing up. Meanwhile, Nona’s “legs felt like blocks of marble. They had never felt that way before: sort of fizzy and numb” (p. 412). As if, maybe, she was injured in the jumps between trucks, or maybe her body is breaking down? What’s happened to her turbocharged Lyctoral healing?
- Pyrrha starts to call her, “’A ...’ ‘Don’t,’ Nona found herself saying. ‘Don’t. Don’t call me that or anything like that … don’t make me remember. I don’t want to … You won’t like it. Don’t. Don’t make me do it’” (p. 413).
- “But from some hole in the back of Nona’s cupboard behind a fake plank of wood in Nona’s brain, her voice said roughly: ‘Don’t touch me . . . Did you think this was fun, Pyrrha Dve? Did you think this was lovely? . . . You should have given into your desires and eaten us. Chew and swallow. More natural. Would have respected you for it ...’”
- This is Alecto’s authentic voice: angry, not human, not even remotely human, not understanding of emotion.
- Some readers have praised Nona as an example of the strength of found families. I am not one of them — Pyrrha and Camilla/Palamedes have been Nona’s protectors, but they’ve also been tasked with a job, to bring back Nona’s authentic identity.
- I mean, yes, it is a found family and what they have, despite its privations and limitations, is family, but that’s a side dish, not the main course.
- And it’s not to say they don’t love each other, but this is family unit none of them would have chosen.
- Well, they’ve found Nona’s authentic identity — it’s just not the one anyone expected.
- “Pyrrha, just let me die. It’s nicer. I can’t bear it” (p. 414).
- Here’s a question: can Alecto die? Nona’s body certainly can, but that’s not what Nona is asking.
- Camilla is helping to check in the Sixth House Oversight Committee. She’s in a wheelchair, undoubtedly slowly bleeding to death.
- The sight of the frail Oversight Committee members moves even Pash’s empathy (p. 415).
- None of the necromancers can do necromancy; they’re too weak. “The Master Archivist says any display of aptitude on their part crocks them for days — blinding themselves nearly killed them, and that was when they were much stronger” (p. 416).
- That means no going back to the barracks. The shuttle can’t be retrieved, and neither can the holed-up necromancers.
- If Blood of Eden can get them to stand down and be saved, Palamedes’ original objective — to save everybody — is still within reach.
- Palamedes confirms that he still has Ianthe locked down. “She’s getting lively now. And quite shockingly angry.”
- But he has something in mind that will change the calculus: “It’s not that I know anything, Pyrrha . . . It’s that I’m feeling ready to gamble.” They’re going to load the truck up again.
- Really, they have very little choice — Nona is dying and both Varun and the Emperor (in the person of Ianthe) are bearing down on them.
- We Suffer and the Master Archivist (Juno Zeta, Palamedes’ mother) come up with calculations for travel to an unnamed destination. “Gideon’s ponied up some of their inside layout. Our best bet sounds like their landing platform” (p. 417). They’re going to the Ninth House.
- “The archivist said, ‘That’s a new voice,’ and Palamedes said cheerfully, ‘Archivist, this is Pyrrha Dve, whom Cam and I credit with keeping us alive … please be very nice to her. The Sixth House owes Pyrrha Dve everything barring tenure” (p. 418). Academic jokes.
- “’You’re not a Lyctor,’ said Pyrrha. ‘You can’t keep the ghosts off. They’ll strip you to the bone.’ ‘Not this time,’ said Palamedes — very lightly. Nona felt Pyrrha’s arms suddenly lose their normal untrembling strength” (p. 418). She knows what they’re doing to do.
- And she begs them not to: “Understand that once you do this, you can’t take it back. It’s better to die. There’s a power to dying clean … dying free. It’s not love, what you’re about to do. It’s not beautiful, and it’s not powerful. It’s a mistake. We didn’t even do it right … we were children — paying with the reflections of stars in a pool of water … thinking it was space” (p. 420).
- She knows only one kind of Lyctorhood, the kind that trapped her in Gideon the First’s body for 10,000 years. She knows the cruelty of that, and begs them not to.
- It’s not what they’re going to do, but Pyrrha also knows something else: if this works, Camilla and Palamedes will be gone.
- “Nona could see that she was sweating, in exactly the same way she had sweated after the bottle of bleach.” This is grief.
- The ring of people closes in. “Kiriona Gaia was staring politely at the side of the truck, as though there were something really interesting on the paintwork” (p. 421).
- This is a parallel to the end of Gideon the Ninth: “The crack reopened at this punishment. The sunlight got in, and fragments of bone dissolved in a shower of grey matter. It held, but Gideon didn’t care. The construct wasn’t there: the shelter wasn’t there. Even Camilla, who had turned away to politely investigate something on the opposite wall, wasn’t there. It was just her and Harrow” (p. 430).
- This is the moment when Harrow calls Gideon “first flower of my House.”
- “’Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?’ Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. ‘We had something very nearly perfect … the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept’’ (p. 421).
- This is exactly what Camilla needs to hear. This is the affirmation she’s waited her whole life for.
- “Warden — will she know who we are, in the River?” (p. 422).
- Who is she? Why, Dulcinea, of course.
- Remember the sermon from M. Bias and the bit about sword marriages — a three-way marriage between a necromancer and cavalier as one unit and another partner?
- Remember the letter from “Dr. Sex”: “My dearest pals...” It’s either Palamedes’ nickname or the letter is addressed to him and Camilla both, as her pals. Also, in Harrow she calls Palamedes her first strand and Camilla her second, and three strands were not undone.
- “In the River — beyond the River — I truly believe we will see ourselves and each other as we really are” (p. 422).
- 1 Corinthians: 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
- ”Tell me no, and we’ll go on as we have been … and we’ll go on unafraid … but say yes, and we will make this end, and this beginning, together.”
- He leaves the decision to her.
- ”’Palamedes, yes,’ she said. ‘My whole life, yes. Yes, forever, yes. Life is too short and love is too long.”
- These two really are the best.
- This is the first time she calls him by his name to his face.
- I anticipate “Life is too short and love is too long” being tattooed on many bodies and etched on many gravestones.
- ”Nona watched as Kiriona started to unbutton her jacket, then thought better of it” (p. 423).
- A couple of things to notice: Kiriona is not the same as she was when we first met her. She’s kinder and more empathetic.
- Possibly: The part of her soul that was absorbed by Harrow and resident in Nona’s body snapped back into her with the kiss. Her soul is complete again. She’s no longer Kiriona — she’s Gideon. Possibly.
- She’s been acting like a jerk because Ianthe is still in Naberius’ body and is there as a witness.
- When she questioned Nona at the beginning of this chapter, she was gentle. Why the change? Palamedes/Naberius wasn’t there.
- Nona realizes that Camilla and Palamedes are gone, and there’s a new person in their stead, and she wails. They stop everything and retrieve the handkerchief. “’I want a tissue — that’s too fancy,’ she mumbled. ‘That’s the point,’ the figure said, and looked at her with a grave smile. ‘We know there’s not going to be a big birthday party anymore, but: happy birthday, Nona” (p. 424).
- Ianthe emerges in Naberius’ body, “propped up on its elbows, staring out with pale, distrustful eyes, an expression on its face of commingled hate and despair. ‘So there was another way, Sextus, after all,’ the body murmured” (p. 424).
- Ianthe got Lyctorhood wrong, and didn’t realize it until just now.
- “But there are more worlds than this. Come with us. We are the love that is perfected by death — but even death will be no more; death can also die. There’s still time, Ianthe. Time for you, and for Naberius Tern” (p. 424).
- The new person (Paul) offers Ianthe salvation, and a way back from the sin she’s committed for power. Not unlike the salvation that the Apostle Paul offers the Gentiles:
- In early Christianity, believers thought that first one had to be Jewish to become Christian, and that men had to be circumcised before they could be baptized. Paul disagreed and, in his lifetime, preached among and baptized non-Jews, saying that faith itself was sufficient for salvation. In other words, people didn’t have to be born to a tradition or follow a strict legal path; they didn’t have to conform in order to be saved.
- “There are more worlds than this”: “Had we but world enough and time, “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell.
- “Love that is perfected by death”: from the Song of Solomon 8:6: Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
- “One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die” John Donne, Holy Sonnet: Death, Be Not Proud.
- “There’s still time.” Has Palamedes figured out a way to undo the flawed Lyctorhood that John instituted?
- Ianthe looks at Paul’s outstretched hand, then their face, then their hand again.
- What makes her refuse the offer? Is it too late? Or because she became a Lyctor, as she said before, for the power? Or because the perfect Lyctorhood she wants isn’t with Naberius, but with Coronabeth, and is that option now impossible?
Chapter 29 Header: First House skull
Paul fixes everyone who is ailing as they prepare to return to the truck. Aim, Pash, and Noodle are coming with them (this is the package We Suffer asks them to take off-world). Nona asks her who she is, and she tells her she’s the Messenger, and she’s part of the Message. Pyrrha carries Nona into the truck and all the way to the cockpit. The rest enter and take seats. We Suffer shows Paul how to operate the truck and issues “Protocol One,” which is that they must live. They start the journey.
- Knowing that she won’t return, Nona finds herself homesick (p. 425). It’s a very human response.
- Pash would have left the city, “’But I exist,’ said the Angel. ‘Pardon — we exist. And as long as we exist, we are a terrible liability” (p. 426).
- Their departure will give We Suffer some breathing room. Pash prophesies that We Suffer will be executed as soon as they leave, but the Angel isn’t so sure: “This wing commander is particularly cunning and particularly brave and particularly determined — but get used to it, Passion … We’ve been weighed” (p. 426).
- Double meaning. Their weight has been added to the truck’s tonnage, essential for navigation, but also:
- Daniel 5:27: “TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”
- This is G-d as divine justice evoked, a different deity from John. (Don’t read it too closely — it’s not Pash and the Angel and Noodle who are found wanting, or even any character — it’s the prophecy of coming doom for Darius in the dream that Daniel interprets that we should be aware of.)
- ”We are the Message … the message has two parts left, and you are looking at one of those parts. The name for this part of the message was ‘Aim’ when the message was passed to us through my forebear Emma Sen. The message is too simple for human beings like us to understand. What do you think the message is?” (p. 427)
- Hoo boy, this is gonna be fun.
- Presumably there were more part to the message before, but now there are only two.
- Say “Emma Sen” aloud and think about it. Really.
- “My forebear Emma Sen” . . . Her name is Aim. MSN gave way to AIM as Microsoft’s Instant Messenger lost out to Aim: AOL Instant Messenger.
- Aim was not a message but a delivery protocol. Therefore, Aim, the Messenger, the Angel, carries the message but isn’t the message.
- You can groan now. It’s not as bad as Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.”
- The message is too simple for human beings like us to understand . . . I hope you hear it one day” (p. 427). This is portentous. Human beings can’t understand the message, but maybe Nona will?
- “It’s not long now, is it? Are we going to find me?” Nona asks Pyrrha. “I think it’s time to wake you up,” Pyrrha answers.
- Gideon is already in the cockpit, but she doesn’t speak. “She had not said much of anything since Camilla and Palamedes had become Camilla-and-Palamedes — seemed withdrawn and lost in thought, unwilling to look at anyone or anything” (p. 428).
- Gideon already underwent an Lyctor process and it didn’t go well. Imagine what she thinks and feels now.
- Protocol One “means there are no more formal orders” except that they must live (p. 429).
- Pyrrha asks, “How long were you planning this one?” referring to the Lyctor process. Paul answers, “They had a lot of rainy-day plans” (p. 430).
- Pal + U = Paul. Gideon tries other anagrams, all rejected.
- We Suffer gives them the all clear and Paul says, “See you soon,” to which We Suffer answers, “You have a big ego . . . I enjoy that. It is a good and terrible sign” (p. 430). We Suffer has their number.
- “There was nothing in their face but easy surety, not one trace of pain or fear or worry. Everyone had at least a slight trace of anticipation or pain or fear or worry, but not this new person called Paul” (p. 431).
- Paul is a Lyctor, but you’d never know it.
John 5: 4
Up to this point, Alecto in Harrow’s body has been dreaming Harrow’s dream of the pool. And in Alecto’s body, Harrow has been dreaming Alecto’s dream of John. Now, with the end drawing near, the dreams cross; whether because Alecto is journeying ever-closer to the Tomb or Harrow senses her coming nearer, now in the dream, it’s Harrow — consciously Harrow — talking to John. They’re back on the beach, and John is drawing a lover’s heart: J + E (for Earth?), then J + A, and finally J + H.
Harrow wants to know God, not in the facile way that John wants to be known. She already knows the rest of the story from having read Alecto’s memories. She also exposes his lies and finds him an unsatisfying savior, although she doesn’t explicitly say so; she wants a deeper understanding of divinity, and sets out toward the Tower to start looking, in part for the answers that John won’t give her, in part to discover God for herself.
- Harrow has always been seeking how to worship, what to worship, who to worship. She’s a nun, born to love God. We know that the questioner, the “her” in these sections is explicitly Harrow because she asks, “Teacher, what does it mean for a child of the Ninth to love God?” (p. 432).
- She has listened all through Alecto’s dream and now, having heard God’s confession, she asks for, not the what, but the why. She is asking God to justify himself.
- John’s answer is poetically phrased but, to put it mildly, disturbing: “You live in a darkened house, and in your darkened house are infinite rooms. By the light of a dying candle you cross the room — knowing that when you reach the threshold of the next room you’ll be gone — the candle passed to someone whose face you can’t see clearly” (p. 432).
- Traditionally in the Church, lit candles have symbolized God’s love. It’s an inheritance from Judaism, to be a light in a darkened world.
- The rooms are dark and infinite — there is no end goal, no salvation, no coming to rest for the believer.
- And the candle is dying. Believers carry it forward without hope for themselves.
- Once their room is crossed, they’re gone. There’s nothing more, only oblivion.
- What would be comforting in this bleak world? The love of God, which in this world is only “the trust that you won’t have to illumine that darkness alone” (p. 433).
- There’s no higher wisdom, no kindness, no comfort, in John’s divinity. It’s only worship without hope. This is the heart of the Houses, the center of John’s Empire, and it’s utterly bereft.
- Having gotten the answer she needed about the nature of salvation, Harrow prompts John back to his story to change the subject.
- He’ll resurrect the human race. “Once we’ve rested. No, we’ll do it before you’ve rested. You can rest afterward” (p. 433).
- She’s his battery, his tool. Having trapped her, he can now use her.
- “We’ll get them all back … some of them, anyway … or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn’t do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. And my loved ones … The ones I left, I’ll bring back . . . none of them will have to remember anything. I know where remembrance lives in the brain, and he won’t have any of it. You know that too, don’t you? It’s the easiest thing in the world … to forget” (p. 433).
- It’s rich that John feels that other people need his forgiveness. For the crime of . . . well, maybe environmental crimes, maybe not believing in him. Or it’s all projection because he knows the enormity of his crime and can’t face it.
- He’ll resurrect a select few and erase their memories. She asks why and he says it’s because they’ll never forgive themselves.
- Really it’s because he knows they’ll never forgive him.
- “’How could we have done it differently? Did you need to do it?’ And — I did need to do it, Harrow. There was no other way” (p. 433).
- Remember, the goal was to save the earth, not destroy it.
- She catches the lie: “You said that G—‘s bomb went off first” and he responds, “What does it matter? . . . Only one thing matters now . . . I still have breath in my body . . . They are still out there. There can be no forgiveness” (pp. 433-434).
- Who are they? The trillionaires and the others on the ships. The ones who are lost in time.
- Okay, so where are they? Are they the forebears of Blood of Eden? Are they somewhere else? Are they stuck in non-time, doing quantum wheelies and waiting to come out of FTL? For them, little or no time would have passed even though, for John, it’s been 10,000 years. Is that the secret of FTL?
- There are arguments for Blood of Eden being the descendants of the trillionaires, but there are also arguments against. We’ll hit that next week in the wrap-up.
- At this point, the jig is up. Dispassionately Harrow tells him what he’s done. He resurrects a few, “millions, but never more than millions” out of ten billion. His power is limitless because of Alecto’s power, and he draws on her.
- “She understands at this point that she does not have to die — that she can never die, if you’re alive. And she’s scared to die. You’re afraid of so many things, but she’s only afraid to die” (p. 434).
- Being in John’s thrall is the price of Alecto’s survival.
- When the disciples start the Lyctor trials, “she watches as you watch … watch them misunderstand the process.”
- And she knows that he could correct them, but that he doesn’t.
- “He looked up, squinting his eyes against the white and merciless sun. ‘God must be able to touch all creation’” (p. 434).
- He’s still a man. In the face of unforgiving nature (hearkening back to the man vs nature theme of middle school English classes) he must squint in the light of a merciless sun. He draws from the earth’s power, but the sun and the other planets need not show mercy. They don’t love him. Despite his power, the dreamtime sequences have pulled back the curtain and shown the man behind the image, in his own words — a very flawed and fallible man, who nonetheless believes he must remain in charge of all creation.
- This speech reveals how entirely sociopathic and narcissistic John is. He goes on to explain:
- It’s not that Alecto is immortal — well, she is, but she can be destroyed (while, John, who draws on her, can’t, as Mercymorn proved). “Why would you let something like that run around?”
- “Why would you let someone go — away from you — untouchable — two people?”
- Here we have it — perfect Lyctorhood produces two people he can’t “touch” or use or harm. And they would be able to leave him. He can’t abide that. He says, “I loved them too much.”
- But that’s not it, either. Immediately he says “I was on the clock for the Resurrection Beasts.” He says that he needs the Lyctors, his “loved ones,” to be something I could touch” (as “God must be able to touch all creation”). Which really means he needs to be able to control them, to use them. He “needed them to be my hands … my fingers” (p. 435).
- He needs them to sacrifice themselves for him: “even though I rip the very fingers from my hands … throw them into the jaws of the monsters who hunt me … as I run from them across the universe, end to end.”
- Okay, so . . . to what end? Why is John doing this?
- “There can be no forgiveness for those who walked away” (p. 435).
- He is still chasing the trillionaires or their descendants. To punish them. He’s incurred the debt of destroying life in order to punish people for saving themselves and leaving others to die.
- Then John makes a new promise: to wipe out everything and start again. He’s God; he can do that. Like the G-d of the Torah wiping out the human race in order to make successive creations. “That’s all the end of Earth was … making things clean. It gets dirty again, you clean it again.
- Why hasn’t he done it already? Because the trillionaires are still out there, and if he remakes creation, they’d still be out there: “I can’t bear the idea that I wouldn’t be able to touch them — that they’d still be out there … maybe that’s why I made the Tomb, Harrow. It is the death of God … it is the apocalypse … because it’s my self-preservation in a box” (p. 435).
- This is what he’s living for: he’s waited 10,000 years to punish a couple of shiploads of selfish people.
- He made the Tomb and put Alecto in it to ensure that he wouldn’t be inadvertently destroyed before he has his chance for revenge.
- In Harrow, John says, “I think you are one of the only Lyctors who can really and truly understand apocalypse … It is not a death of fire. It’s not showy. You and I would almost prefer that end, if it came as a supernova. It is the inexorable setting of the sun, without the hope of morning” (p. 42).
- Compare that line to his statement above comparing the love of God to a dying candle in a darkened room. This is an eloquent statement of the sterility and despair of John’s creation.
- What could he possibly do in a new world that would be any different?
- Harrow has heard enough, and she knows there are things John will not or cannot tell her. Among them:
- “I want to understand why she was angry.”
- “I want to understand the mathematics, now that I have seen them for myself.”
- “I want to know how many of the Resurrection are left, and how many you began with, and what the discrepancies are.”
- “I want to know where you put them. They didn’t go into the River.”
- “I want to know why she was angry … and why you were terrified” (p. 435).
- Alecto’s anger and John’s terror are linked, and we can theorize the whats and whys. Personally, I think Alecto’s anger is primarily directed at John, whom earth trusted as a steward and appointed guardian, and who fell in love with his own power and ultimately betrayed and murdered earth to become omnipotent. John is worse than any trillionaire he seeks to punish. And John’s terror: that eventually Alecto will reclaim her power against him.
- The other questions: what happened to all the souls of the murdered, where are the Resurrected stashed, what’s wrong with the River — all will be central in the next book.
- Harrow tells John “I want to journey to find God” not as Harrowhark the First, but as “the child of the Nine Houses.” She wants to quest on behalf of all the Houses, but to go as “the Reverend Daughter … the Reverend Mother … the Reverend Father” to understand God “or some aspect of God … even if she lies, right now, within the Tomb” (pp. 435-436).
- “If she had suspected his fear might manifest itself, yet again, as an act of murder, she could not see that in him now.” If she hadn’t suspected it, it would not have come up.
- But John lets her go, telling her, in a passage reminiscent of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, that God is a dream and “she’s dreaming me too. In a way, her dead dreams of God mean more than all your dreams put together.”
- Even so, he recognizes that Harrow’s dream has validity, too, and asks where she’ll go. She turns, and sees the tower, “a tower that had never been there before . . . ’I’ll start there,’ she said. And she stepped into the River” (p. 436).
- In the dream, Harrow starts her quest.
Chapter 30 Header: Turret (the top of a tower)
When Nona wakes, she’s in the cockpit of the sealed truck, and she isn’t in charge of herself any longer. Alecto is running things, and Nona is along for the ride. She takes over driving and tells Paul to remove the windshield cover. They all see the tower; Varun speaks through Judith and Nona answers, disabling both Paul and Pyrrha. At the sight of the tower, Nona’s heart seizes. She drives directly into the water and Paul asks her to take them to the Ninth House. But Nona is ready to give up, until she’s reminded that Noodle is in the truck with them. That memory reasserts Nona’s personality; Paul floors the accellerator, and “Nona drove the truck home” (p. 442).
- As Nona’s personality, “the middle-of-the-brain thought” (p. 439) falters, she becomes both more and less than human. Her body recedes, “but her eyes could still see and her ears could still hear and her tongue could still taste. When she opened her mouth so that her tongue could taste, it helped her to see a little better” (p. 437).
- This is synesthesia — it’s also reminiscent of other life forms, like snakes, that use sense receptors on the tongue to navigate.
- As an aside, try reading these passages aloud. Muir imposes a certain repetition and formality to the prose, slowing the action and preparing us for the epilogue.
- “Her body shuddered beneath her. For one of the first times she acknowledged it, she felt the body as something with her, on top of her, but not her” (p. 438).
- They see the tower. As Harrow has seen it. “Nona thought it looked like something out of a picture book, and held on to that thought, that middle-of-the-brain thought. There was a thought above and below that knew what it was, but the moment she looked at either thought she’d lose the game” (pp. 439-440).
- Alecto knows what the tower is; Nona knows that, and knows it’s dire.
- Varun says, “He left them too long — you left them too long, my salt thing.”
- From p. 393: “The danger is upon you, and you do not even know … they are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you.”
- “You are here . . . Okay, good — the water really won’t touch us. I was worried about our back end” (p. 440). She was worried about being attacked from the rear. Varun will make sure that doesn’t happen.
- The immensity of the town crowds out the middle-brain perception that Nona holds to, and she has a heart attack: “this tower scared Nona’s top and bottom thoughts so terribly that her heart went ker-CHUNK in her chest” (p. 440).
- “She could probably die right there, right then? How to say that she wanted to go as Nona — with all her thoughts and feelings being Nona’s feelings . . . (p. 441).
- Noodle saves the day, just by existing. Just like every good boi.
Chapter 31 Header: Ninth House skull
The truck lands in the Ninth House (on the same platform where the shuttle came to pick up Gideon at the beginning of Gideon the Ninth). Nona feels the pull of the body in the Tomb. Paul, Pyrrha, Gideon, and Nona emerge — the rest of the passengers will hole up and wait. Gideon immediately realizes something is wrong and heads out. The others follow, and catch up to find Crux wounded and Gideon having killed six or seven creatures that shouldn’t be there. Gideon says they’ve been fighting them on Antioch; they’re revenants and Crux is as good as dead already. Crux abuses Gideon and everyone else except Nona, whom he recognizes as Harrow. They leave the demons and head down the shaft and into the Anastasian, where they meet Aiglamene. Nona is horrified at the worship the penitents pay her, and horrified at the skeleton constructs.
She warns Paul that when Alecto emerges, Nona will be gone and she won’t know how to love. Paul tells her it’s enough to have loved and to have been loved. Pyrrha tells her about the t-shirt she bought her for her birthday, but that it’s back on Ur in their apartment. Nona has her describe it and she vows to remember them — she’ll wear the t-shirt, and they’ll know it’s her.
- “She became aware of something else; an insistent tugging at top thought, bottom thought, and middle thought. She wanted something” (p. 443). The body is calling her soul.
- Once outside, part of her remembers the place: “She knew she should feel cold, as her body was feeling cold, but it was more the memory of a sensation than sensation itself” (p. 444).
- Once holed back up in the truck, the others should be safe enough. Paul says, “There’s enough thanergy to go around. That truck has multiple highly capable necromancers and a dog. Worry about us instead” (p. 445).
- “As they walked farther, Nona felt the twinge getting stronger [the call of the body to the soul], and she felt something else: something at once familiar and unpleasant, squirming far off in the darkness. She strained her thoughts toward it. Many things — small things — things she’d seen before, once, but didn’t feel up to seeing again” (p. 446)
- She remembers what Gideon will call demons.
- She’s seen them before, “once,” and doesn’t want to see them again.
- Therefore, they’ve been around since before the Tomb was instituted.
- Crux is simply an evil delight. He hates everyone, and absolutely hates Gideon.
- The demon has a physical effect on Nona: “For some reason, the sight started a shudder at Nona’s feet that carried on all the way up to the top of her head. The awful pain tightened in her chest, and nearly shuddered her out of her body. The back of her neck itched so badly it felt as though it were bleeding” (p. 448).
- The ward on the back of her neck is meant to keep her in her body.
- Pyrrha says something so foul that it grounds Nona again.
- Gideon says, “They shouldn’t be here. We would have gotten word if they were back in the home system. They’re confined to Antioch — he said they’d only be on Antioch. God damn it, he said!” (p. 448).
- “back in the home system” — they’ve been in the Dominicus system before.
- Remember that Ianthe had said Blood of Eden was a side distraction on Antioch? This is why. What are they doing on Antioch?
- John told her they were confined to Antioch: was John wrong, or was John lying? There’s precedent for either option.
- This is the same creature that possessed Colum back at Canaan House. Teacher wasn’t lying when he told them there were worse things that could possess them.
- “This is what we’re facing on Antioch . . . this is mental. They can’t be here. He said they couldn’t travel — he said . . .” (p. 448).
- At least one manifested at Canaan House, so apparently John was wrong.
- “. . .a flicker in the dark archway, this one from which they’d just emerged. She felt again that strange sense of the familiar made awful” (p. 449).
- They’ve been at the Ninth House for a night and a day, according to Crux.
- “Their touch consumes . . . they hunger for the youngest of us . . . they do not know how to use their bodies” (p. 451).
- “’You can’t cure this,’ said the Prince. ‘It’s spirit shit … possession. You can ward people so they don’t get grabbed — if you’re really good — but otherwise, chop them up and burn the bits. That’s the cure. Civilian or Edenite or House, it makes no difference” (p. 451)
- “If you’re using Sister Canace as a last line of defence, how bad off are w — you?” (p. 452). Gideon almost said “we.” She’s still of the Ninth.
- Pyrrha knows the layout. “I was here before it was the Anastasian . . . Painted a nursery. Mint green” (p. 453).
- Presumably Anastasia had a child and maybe Pyrrha was on hand for the birth. She delivered a baby once. Implications are that the child was Samael’s. At least, it’s a possibility — and if it is, we’re looking at the beginning of Harrow’s lineage.
- It’s easy to forget that Paul is a Lyctor, but they pull Crux to his feet as if he “were Nona, or even smaller, like he was Kevin” (p. 453).
- Pyrrha’s zipper scratches Nona’s arm and she doesn’t heal.
- The defenders have made a barricade of “fresh, slightly pink” bone (p. 454). Aiglamene gives the order and the barricade splits, “exposing the cortex of the bone.” There’s a necromancer in the group, at least one.
- Aiglamene’s reaction to Gideon’s death is anger, and blame for Harrow. Gideon protects her, stepping between them and saying, “It’s not her, Captain — it’s only her body” (p. 456).
- Aiglamene loves Gideon more than she reveres Harrow, and she’s devastated to see that she’s dead.
- Why blame Harrow? As far as Aiglamene knows, Harrow should have protected her cavalier.
- Pyrrha charms Aiglamene and calls her a Brandishment Baby — which we don’t yet recognize (p. 457).
- Crux: “You’ve gone away again, my lady; where have you run? Remember your catechism and your lesson, and remember them well now: this is where you come back to — you have your little escape. You’ll feel better for coming back … you remember that, Harrowhark” (p. 459).
- Is this Crux’s faith or his hope talking, that Harrowhark will return?
- In her mind’s eye, Nona sees the path to the Tomb: “Her middle thoughts crawled into her top and bottom thoughts. For a moment she thought she’d die of it. ‘There’s a box,’ she said, ‘and … there’s someone in the box who isn’t me. I’m me. I don’t know who’s in that box, not really, only — when you open it — I’ll be gone, because I can’t survive … knowing. And I think — inside that box — there’s something that looks like a girl ...” (p. 460).
- She recognizes her upper and lower thoughts, the parts of her that are growing stronger and that are not Nona, and grieves the person Nona is, who will be lost.
- Still, she has essential information to share: “The more I go back — the more I’m made to go back … it’ll hurt her. She wasn’t made for it, she’s not … not the right shape” (p. 460).
- Alecto is wrong in her body, the body that John made for her. It’s not her’s.
- ”I might not help you when … I’m back . . . I’ll be different. I’ll remember everything … I’ll remember the thing I’m trying to forget. And Palamedes — I won’t love him. I won’t love Camilla, or Pyrrha, or Hot Sauce, or even Noodle. I won’t love anything … I won’t know how. I won’t be me at all, or … I’ll be the me who knows the thing, and knowing the thing means I’m not Nona — I’m someone else” (pp. 460-461).
- This is exquisite grief. This is Nona mourning the loss of her identity, her personality. her self.
- Paul has a profound and honest response: “Camilla and Palamedes were loved by Nona . . .you can’t take loved away. We loved you too” (p. 461).
- Pyrrha goes them one better, because she remembers: “I’ll keep loving you — my problem is I don’t know how to stop. And, you know … who you are … were … you’re capable of more than you think, right now. I liked you. He liked you — Gideon liked you. My necromancer and I always liked you … and hey, what’s like except a love that hasn’t been invited indoors?” (p. 461).
- Who ever dreamed that cheap moustache rides could be so important? “I’ll wear it all the time, inside the house and outside the house, and then you’ll know it’s really me. I’m not going to be gone forever … I’m ready. I’m ready. Let’s go” (p. 462).
- Nona will not be gone forever — she’s promised.
Chapter 32 Header: the Tomb, with the chains broken.
Paul, Nona, Pyrrha, Gideon, Crux and Aiglamene head in the darkness to the Tomb. Ianthe meets them in the antechamber. Gideon and she talk about their success, right up until the moment when Gideon says, “Let’s open the Tomb and get out of here” (p. 467). Gideon tells Ianthe that she’s under John’s orders to kill Alecto and become his cavalier, Ianthe points out that John is playing her, and as they argue, Nona’s body starts to fall apart. Pyrrha shoots Ianthe with a Herald bullet and puts her out of action. Pyrrha and Gideon carry Nona’s body while Paul rolls the rock away. As they carry her down the passage, Nona’s perceptions merge with Alecto’s memory of John luring her into the Tomb. They need blood and a death to break the ward, and Gideon offers her life — again — but Paul says it won’t work. Gideon kills Crux and they get her into the Tomb, where the water parts for her, and she climbs on to the bier and sees the body chained to the rock. Telling herself “Happy Birthday,” Nona falls on the Body.
- Crux says their presence is desecration, and no one should be here but Harrow and her cavalier. Gideon answers “The Reverend Daughter has no cavalier living” (p. 463). Which is true. Her cavalier is mega-dead.
- Ianthe fixes them in a mixture of adipose fat and mucous membrane (gross) and is taking no chances with Paul: “I don't know what you are yet, but you know what I am, so … stay put” (p. 464).
- Ianthe continues to underestimate Crown, calling her an “ill-shampooed slut” (p. 466). That’s something to keep an eye on.
- “They’re wearing friendship bracelets.”
- From Gideon the Ninth: “if it was murder, what if the murderer was, like weird, which would make their subsequent marriage to Gideon pretty awkward? Maybe they could just swap friendship bracelets” (p. 128).
- True to form, Ianthe wants to leave Nona’s body to die. “I’m simply doing exactly what I think Harry would want me to do … Harry adores this ghastly old rock and its ghastly old inhabitant. Harry would be the first to say, ‘No. I’m not worth it. Leave it shut’” (p. 467).
- Death appears to not have sharpened Gideon’s intellect — if what she tells Ianthe is what she believes. I’m not at all sure it is. In fact, I’m rather convinced that Gideon is lying to Ianthe, who says, “You’re very stupid when you want to be, Gonad … but you can’t believe that” (p. 468).
- Admiral Sarpedon made his return, last seen at the beginning of Harrow. John must have taken up residence on his ship again.
- Harrow’s estimation of Ianthe hold true: brilliant but lazy and too prone to dismiss anything she deems unimportant.
- Ianthe desperately tells Gideon, “You’re signing our doom . . . He gets her back, you don’t know what he’ll become! You have no idea, and you’ve deluded yourself into believing him, and he’s just tricking you! . . . Is this about Harry, after all?” (p. 469).
- ”You’re so goddamned boring when you talk about Harrowhark.”
- So it’s been a thing between them.
- ”You don’t give a shit about anything except your own plans, you know. Your sister’s upstairs. Take her and go — let me fight this thing and win, or die trying, who cares?”
- Gideon gives Ianthe the chance to walk away.
- “You let that monster out of its box . . . and you start us down a path nobody can save us from . . .”
- “’He loves her!’ Ianthe howled. ‘John loves Alecto — John needs Alecto! Without that piece of goddamned fridge meat, he’s nothing — and we need to keep him that way!” (p. 470).
- It’s fun to listen in on a conversation that you know is important but you don’t exactly know what it means, isn’t it?
- If Gideon is to be believed, John sent her to open the Tomb and kill Alecto.
- But John still believes that the Tomb is shut and has never been opened (?).
- And he’s made sure that Gideon’s blood will never be used, because her body is impermeable and her blood sizzles away on contact with air.
- “The secret was told: the secret was out — the middle brain disappeared. Nona unravelled.”
- The secret? That she’s Alecto, and more — that without her, John is nothing.
- “The baby body was coming apart” (p. 470). She’s no longer Nona; she’s Alecto, observing Nona/Harrow’s body.
- “A slim brown hand was at her cheek: ‘Keep it together. Wherever you are, idiot, I know you can hear me. Keep it together ...”
- Gideon, speaking to Harrow, wherever she is.
- “The rock loomed so big above, so awful in the electric light. There were so many people standing above her, her body, the baby’s body. The baby with the black eyes. The scrap of meat with the purple mouth” (p. 470).
- Nona/Alecto is in and out of the next passages. Her perceptions are selective and impressionistic. I’m going to split the actions that are spliced together to make them clearer:
- Paul rolls back the rock. Crux warns them about the deadly traps. Paul checks and reports that most of them are disabled: “Neat work, whoever did it” (p. 471). Harrow did it in her childhood.
- Kiriona/Gideon tells them to take her blood to break the ward. Paul says it won’t work because she’s already dead. Pyrrha volunteers, and then Crux tells them to kill him. If they don’t, he’ll be claimed by the demons, but if they do, he’ll die for Harrow’s sake.
- “Oh, do you think you are the only one who knows how to die, Nav? I knew you were dead to see you … I will commit this apocalyptic sin. I will die for her. She is my nurseling. I am the only one who knows how to die for the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus” (p. 472).
- Crux really sets Gideon off. “It’s all any of you ever knew how to give her. You could have lived for her … but you didn’t know how.”
- This is a voice of love and grief, and something I want to pick up next week.
- Crux baits Gideon, who rises to the hook, giving voice to a whole lifetime of abuse: “Did you know I’m God’s child? . . . Did you know all the things you did — all the shit you pulled — every single thing you did, every lock you snapped on me, every cuff you put on me, every — every crappy plate of food you put in front of me, every word — every look — did you know I was the real, true-blue daughter of the Emperor? I want you to know that — I want you to know what I am!” (pp. 472-473).
- This is the speech Gideon has rehearsed in her head since she was old enough to think.
- And Crux throws it right back at her: “You remain — what you are . . . A worthless millstone hung about my darling’s neck. You were born to make her suffer. You died as you lived, Gideon Nav — a disappointment to me — and to God” (p. 473).
- He could have said nothing crueler. Accurate, even to making Harrow suffer, because Harrow has suffered out of love for her.
- With his death, Crux triggers the ward, which glows, and the rock rolls back. Killing him isn’t the experience Gideon imagined it would be, though: “Why didn’t it feel good? You fucking old … You hideous, cruel … you bastard … Why didn’t … Why can’t I ...” (p. 473). For this reason, a fair number of readers have theorized that Nona’s kiss gave Gideon her heart back, because this is the Gideon we’ve known from the other books.
- Alecto hadn’t meant to leave the tomb at all: “the scrap of black-eyed meat had asked for it — the chain of a kiss: the ice that burnt the flesh of the mouth that had stuck to the mouth that was frozen. The teardrop on the hand. The hand that John had fashioned” (p. 471).
- Harrow kissed the Body and left a piece of her lip there.
- The kiss was a chain, like the chains that bound her to the rock.
- Whenever Gideon looked at Harrow she always noticed a divot in her lip — the part of her that was frozen to the body.
- Alecto remembers the Tomb, and how she got there: “She had squeezed through this crack in the rock — not a passageway, not at that point. John had told her he had something to show her. He had said, It’s very pretty. You’ll like it (p. 471)
- “John loved her. She was John’s cavalier. She loved John. For she so loved the world that she had given them John. For the world so loved John that she had been given. For John had so loved her that he had made her she. For John loved the world” (p. 471.
- John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
- It’s also circular. John might have loved the world, but he also murdered it.
- “John had said, It’s so beautiful. Come and look” (p. 472).
- He’s cajoling her into the trap.
- ”She had said, There are almost no beautiful things left. Where is Anastasia? Let me talk to Anastasia” (p. 472).
- She trusts Anastasia more than she trusts John at this point.
- For all that, he shows her glowing beetles, an enticement he fashioned: “a carpet of shifting, dead, winking lights at the top of the grave. Greenish, orangeish, yellowish, moving over one another silently with those long filaments hanging down” (p. 473).
- ”John and she had swum to the centre hummock rising out of the pool. Not an island, not really. An outcropping. With the marble pillars, and the marble top, and the long low marble table. He said he thought it was a nice place to be. To lie down. She had liked hard things to lie down on. It was hard to endure having a spine. And there she was — “ (p. 473).
- Caught, and trapped, and chained.
- Memories and perception merge as she sees the water, remembers drinking from it, and steps into it. Harrow’s heart fails, but Alecto doesn’t need it. “The waters parted for her and it became possible to walk, crunching through the bones at the bottom. The bones at the bottom; what did they make her think of?” (p. 473).
- Presumably some day we’ll find out why the pool is filled with bones.
- She sees her body and finds it “unbearably ugly . . . But there she was — and within her the child, asleep, with the strange sword. The sword — her sword — her own edge had been pushed out, her swinging edge, her toy. Her plain bladed sword. And her body was chained up . . .” (p. 474).
- At Ianthe’s howling protests, she looks back and sees Anastasia’s bones, still faithfully guarding her.
- Nona gets the last word. “’Well, happy birthday to me, I guess’ . . . And Nona tumbled forward onto the icy dead breast of the Body” (p. 474).
That’s it: the Tomb has been opened. Next week, the epilogue and discussion. I know you have questions — so do I. But right now I’m going to soak my hands and forearms in hot water until they stop aching from all the keyboarding.
Memes
The memes are fewer in Nona, and there’s no comprehensive list of them. I’ll note the ones I find. You should do the same.
Podcasts
If you haven’t tuned into the Locked Tomb Podcast, you should.
PINS
Here is a list of things I suggested we pay attention to. Since the list is long, I’ve removed items that have been resolved.
NONA THE NINTH
Nona’s Waking World
- There are millions of people from many different planets who have come from being resettled on other planets before this one, and none of them are happy.
- The Sixth House had a “break clause” and the “installation” had a secret.
- Salt water relieves Nona.
- Palamedes promises We Suffer either a Lyctor or the equivalent.
- Judith: “Dust of my dust — such similar star salt — what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill — we see you still — we seek you still — we murdered — we who murder — you inadvertent tool — you misused green thing — come back to us — take vengeance for us — we saw you — we see you — I see you’” (p. 164). . . “Where is my cavalier, Reverend Daughter? Where is yours? . . . Because I saw her in the waves — she was there in the grey water — I saw them all” (p. 168).
- The Angel’s name is Aim, the Messenger. She has “millions” of bosses. She “is” Blood of Eden.
- Palamedes asks Aim if she received an implant from a House necromancer. It’s possible that there’s a 6,000 year old link between the Sixth House and Blood of Eden.
- Noodle is the “king of dogs in secret.”
- On Antioch, the fight between Blood of Eden and the Cohort is not the main event.
- The worst of the Resurrection Beast’s effects on necromancers is transmitted through the light spectrum. “Absorption through the eyes is worst for the brain’” (p. 322). This means something Nona can’t yet remember.
- Camilla reveals that the Sixth House left on 6,000 year old instructions from Cassiopeia (p. 335).
- Nona screams “Help!” She coughs up water (p. 338).
- Palamedes’ “vengeance and grace,” and his “fight through time” (p. 351). I can’t say why, but I suspect it has something to do with the Angel’s mysterious implant.
- Coronabeth and Ianthe have agendas. Ianthe’s agenda involves Harrow.
- Nona kisses Gideon’s corpse, and a shudder runs through her upper body (p. 360).
- Anastasia’s tripod principle”: Body + soul + thalergy (animating life force) = life (p. 361).
John’s Dreamtime Memories
- “The corpses were my batteries.”
- “They said they’d managed to find some poor dipshit geek who’d fixed the FTL problem of getting locked in the chrono well, you know, moving so fast you were stuck doing quantum wheelies” (pp. 220-221).
- The trillionaires are going to board a few ships and abandon everyone and everything: “They left you, they left you. They saw you suffering on dollar-shop life-support, and they didn’t look back. They didn’t give a fuck about trying to save you” (p. 223).
- The soul, Element X, is the one element that eludes John.
- To John, violent death is like crack cocaine (p. 338).
AS YET UNSENT
- “Coronabeth Tridentarius has never been party to anything she did not want to do, and never successfully carried out a plan she didn’t think up first.” Also, from Crown in Nona: “I have a ripple of evil running through my soul — I know I do” (p. 177).
HARROW THE NINTH
- The Mithraeum. The bovine skulls in Canaan House. Also Sprach Zarathustra.
- Harrow: “Beloved dead...let me live long enough to die at your feet.”
- John: “I mastered Death; I wish I’d done the smarter thing and mastered Time.”
- From “The Little Mermaid”: the chance to live as a human, also the bit about sharing souls.
- Harrow was the 311th direct descendent of the Tomb keeper, and the 87th Nona.
- John says there’s a hiccup with FTL travel in that it destroys something to do with time and distance.
- John has been fighting with Blood of Eden for 5,000 years. He’s been searching for another enemy for 10,000, but we don’t know who.
- Ianthe: “I always take the smartest option first . . .” Pair this with Harrow’s opinion that Ianthe dismisses as unimportant everything she isn’t interested it.
- Something has gone wrong with the River.
- John says his work is “not yet finished.”
- Why did John lie to his Lyctors and induce them them to kill their cavaliers?
- Gideon tells Ianthe that Harrow has already opened the Tomb.
- “Space was being cleared for a new character” (p. 464).
- Mercy says that the Resurrection Beasts were coming for Alecto.
- Augustine begs John to stop his 10,000 year old mission. “Nobody has to be punished anymore for what happened to humanity” (p. 483).
- Pyrrha wishes that Augustine had given them the packet.
- Abigail tells Harrow that the “soul longs for its body.” Others have said so, too, over the course of the books. The soul longs for its body.
THE MYSTERIOUS STUDY OF DOCTOR SEX
- Dulcinea writes a letter to “My dearest pals...” Either to Palamedes or to him and Camilla both. Also worthy of note: in Harrow she calls Palamedes her first strand and Camilla her second, and three strands were not undone.
- The Lyctoral letter: Darling girl,
Tomorrow you will become a Lyctor and finally go where I can’t follow. I want you to keep this letter when you are far away and think of me and want me and can’t have me, and know that no matter how far you travel, nor how long the years feel, the one thing that never stays entombed is
APPENDICES OF GIDEON THE NINTH
- Thanergenic planets: are powered by thanergy. Only the Nine Houses are thanergenic.
- Thanergy planets: are planets in the process of being killed by necromancy. Every part of the Empire outside the Nine Houses is made of thanergy planets, whose inhabitants are colonized, but aren’t citizens. On thanergy planets the life is slowly mutating and dying off.
GIDEON THE NINTH
- “Die in a fire, Nonagesimus.” (p. 47)
- Aiglamene: “Things are changing. I used to think we were waiting for something...and now I think we’re just waiting to die.” (p. 55)
- “’Down there resides the sum of all necromantic transgression . . . The unperceivable howl of ten thousand million unfed ghosts who will hear each echoed footstep as defilement….” (p. 151).
- Ianthe: “I’m interested in the place between death and life . . . where the things are that eat us” (p. 382).
- Colum Asht is possessed by something with mouths for eyes, a long blue tongue.
- God: “There are things out there that even death cannot keep down. I have been fighting them since the Resurrection. I can’t fight them by myself’” (p. 441).
- God can’t go down Canaan House. He says, ‘I saved the world once — but not for me” (p. 443).
THE HOUSES
First House
- House of the Emperor, his servants, and his Lyctors.
- Seat: Once Canaan House, now the Mithraeum.
- Skull: no adornment.
- Planet: Earth
- Primary: John Gaius (gold eyes), aka God; his cavalier: Alecto (black eyes).
- Pre-Resurrection John was a scientist.
Second House
- Colors: white and scarlet, martial. Home of the Cohort, God’s armies.
- Characteristics: discipline
- Necro: Judith Deuteros, age 22, (Judith beheaded Holofernes) (brown eyes — h/t Runaway Rose), cavalier: Marta Dyas, age 27, (Marta=martial).
- Lyctor: Gideon, saint of Duty (brown eyes); his cavalier: Pyrrha Dve (green eyes).
- Canaan House trial: Projection and winnowing (the big bone construct). Pyrrha invented it.
- Pyrrha was a “bombshell” (John) and a “stone-cold fox” (Augustine).
- Pre-Resurrection: Gideon was G—, an engineer and childhood friend of John.
- Pre-Resurrection: Pyrrha was P—, a police detective and G—‘s best friend.
- Specialty: Spirit magic, use of thanergy in battle. They siphon their enemies to strengthen their cavaliers.
- Skull: A Spartan-style helmet
- Planet: Mars
Third House
- Colors: Violet?
- Characteristics: wealth and flash
- Necro: Ianthe and Coronabeth Tridentarius, princesses of Ida, both age 21 (purple eyes), cavalier: Naberius Tern, age 23 (blue eyes).
- Lyctor: Cyrus; his cavalier: Valancy Trinit.
- Cyrus drew the sixth Resurrection beast into a black hole.
- Valency thinks that “one flesh, one end” sounds like instructions for a sex toy.
- Specialty: Spirit magic, “animaphilia” — lover of the soul
- Skull: Jewels in the eyeholes.
- Planet: by the process of deduction: Neptune. It’s beautiful. It’s also the RB Number Seven.
Fourth House
- Colors: Blue
- Characteristics: courage
- Necro: Isaac Tettares, Baron of Tisis, age 13 (hazel eyes); cavalier: Jeannemary Chateur, knight of Tisis, age 14 (brown eyes). (eye color here and elsewhere h/t DesiderataDetritus)
- Lyctor: Ulysses; his cavalier: Titania Tetra.
- Augustine calls Ulysses “a madman” who incited “the sexy parties.”
- Specialty: Spirit magic? It’s unclear, but Abigail Pent was training Isaac, so it’s logical.
- Skull: Wears a laurel wreath
- Planet: Saturn? (h/t RunawayRose)
- Notes: The Fourth supplies soldiers and necromancers to the Cohort. The Fourth has large families, since so many die in battle. The Fourth is first on the ground in war.
Fifth House
- Colors: nothing formal, but sensible brown works.
- Characteristics: Intelligence. Temporal power.
- Necro: Abigail Pent, age 37, Koniortos Court cavalier: Magnus Quinn, age 38. Husband and wife.
- Lyctor: Augustine, saint of Patience; his cavalier: Alfred Quinque (eyes gray).
- Pre-Resurrection Augustine was A—, a scientist.
- Alfred, with Christabel, coin the phrase “one flesh, one end.”
- Second disciple in the Resurrection.
- Alfred “led astray” by Cristabel.
- Pre-Resurrection Alfred was A— Junior, a hedge fund manager and Augustine’s younger brother (h/t Deb, for the correction).
- Specialty: Spirit magic, speaking to the dead. Abigail is a famed historian.
- Skull: Wears a decorated headband, possibly a crown of thorns (h/t Ahianne).
- Planet: Jupiter
- Notes: “Koniortos” = “dust” (h/t BMScott).
Sixth House
- Colors: gray
- Characteristics: scholarship, rare book librarian and conservatorship skills, medical expertise
- Necro: Palamedes Sextus, Title of Master Warden, age 20, (Palamedes: genius Greek soldier in the Trojan War) (eyes clear gray), cavalier: Camilla Hect, age 20. Second cousins, (eyes gray/brown).
- Lyctor: Cassiopeia; her cavalier: Nigella Shodash.
- Cassiopeia developed the magma metaphor to explain travel in the River.
- She led a Resurrection Beast into the River and was ripped apart by ghosts in seven minutes.
- Described by John as “brilliant and sensible and careful.” (HtN, p. 97). And a good cook. And an easy drunk. Protective of and/or jealous around Nigella.
- Pre-Resurrection Cassiopeia was C—, a lawyer.
- Pre-Resurrection Nigella was N—, an artist .
- Nigella: “prettier” than Pyrrha Dve.
- Specialty: Flesh magic, emphasis on science and magic.
- Skull: Clutches a scroll in its teeth.
- Planet: Mercury.
- Notes: the Sixth House developed the process of cramming numerous souls into a body. Purpose and application still unclear.
Seventh House
- Colors: seafoam green
- Characteristics: love of beauty, especially the fleeting type. Fans of the beautiful death and heirs with hereditary cancer.
- Necro: Dulcinea Septimus, duchess of Rhodes, age 27 (pallid blue eyes); cavalier: Protesilaus Ebdoma, age 39 (Protesilaus: the first Greek to die in the Trojan war). Rhodes: island in the Aegean, site of the Colossus, visited by both Herod the Great and the Apostle Paul.
- Lyctor: Cytherea, Saint; her cavalier: Loveday Heptane (blue eyes).
- Cytherea was one of the 2nd generation Lyctors.
- Loveday was fiercely protective of Cytherea, and the rest at Canaan House disliked her.
- Second generation of disciples, the last to arrive at Canaan House.
- Specialty: flesh magic, with emphasis on beauty.
- Skull: A rose in one eyehole.
- Planet: Venus.
Eighth House
- Colors: White
- Characteristics: orthodox purity, dogmatism, “White Templars,” the “Forgiving House”
- Necro: Silas Octakiseron, age 16 (eyes brown); cavalier: Colum Asht, age 32, 34, or 37.
- Lyctor: Mercymorn, saint of Joy; her cavalier: Cristabel Oct (grayish hazel eyes).
- With Alfred, Cristabel coined the phrase “one flesh, one end.”
- First of the disciples after the Resurrection.
- Augustine calls Cristabel “a fanatic and an idiot,” and blames her for “leading Alfred astray.”
- Pre-Resurrection Mercymorn was M—, a medical doctor.
- Pre-Resurrection Cristabel was a nun.
- There’s some relationship between the Eighth House and the stoma, a place that God cannot comprehend. Augustine says the House “sucks at it . . . like a teat.” Likely has a relationship with soul siphoning.
- The entropy and siphoning challenge at Canaan House: Mercy designed it.
- Specialty: spirit magic, focus on soul siphoning. Also hypocrisy.
- Skull: Blindfolded, denoting blind loyalty.
- Planet: Uranus (of course). It’s a pale planet.
Ninth House
- Colors: black
- Characteristics: devotion to the Locked Tomb.
- Necro: Harrowhark Nonagesimus, age 17 (eyes black); cavalier: Gideon Nav, age 19, (eyes gold).
- Not-a-Lyctor: Anastasia; her cavalier: Samael Novenary.
- Specialty: bone magic.
- Skull: lacking a mandible.
- Planet: Pluto.
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