Gideon Nav Quotes

I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.

Her adept said: "I'll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does." Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly. "We do bones, motherfucker," she said.

Harrow said, with some difficulty: "I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it." "Yes you can, it's just less great and less hot," said Gideon." "Fuck you, Nav—

Harrow laughed. It was the first time she had ever heard Harrow really laugh. It was a rather weak and tired sound. "Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House," she said hoarsely, "you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph, The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.

Harrow was too amazed by her body's expanding capacity for despair. It was as though her feeling had doubled even as she looked at it, unfolding, like falling down an endless flight of stairs. She dug her hands into the mattress and she cried for Gideon Nav.

In the myriadic year of Our Lord--the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!--Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.

You apologise to me?” she bellowed. “You apologise to me now? You say that you’re sorry when I have spent my life destroying you? You are my whipping girl! I hurt you because it was a relief! I exist because my parents killed everyone and relegated you to a life of abject misery, and they would have killed you too and not given it a second’s goddamned thought! I have spent your life trying to make you regret that you weren’t dead, all because—I regretted I wasn’t! I ate you alive, and you have the temerity to tell me that you’re sorry?” There were flecks of spittle on Harrowhark’s lips. She was retching for air. “I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.

Harrow laughed. It was the first time she had ever heard Harrow really laugh. It was a rather weak and tired sound. "Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House," she said hoarsely, "you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph, The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.

Stay here,' I said. 'Get fucked,' she said thickly. 'I absolutely did not become the eighth saint to serve the King Undying so Gideon Nav could play hero for me.' 'Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?' 'Ultimate power - and posters of my face.' Fair.

This calls for rigor, Nav.’ ‘Maybe rigor…mortis,’ said Gideon, who assumed that puns were funny automatically.

He urged again, “Thoughts?” Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?

Her adept said: “I’ll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does.” Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly. “We do bones, motherfucker,” she said.

This won’t work,” she said. “I’ve never had to work with something so small before.” “That’s what she said,” murmured Gideon, sotto voce.

This calls for rigor, Nav." "Maybe rigor…mortis," said Gideon, who assumed that puns were funny automatically.

Then we're all dead, Nav, but let's bring hell first,' said Harrow. Gideon looked over her shoulder at her, and caught the Reverend Daughter's smile. There was blood sweat coming out of her left ear, but her smile was long and sweet and beautiful. Gideon found herself smiling back so hard her mouth hurt.

Why was I born so attractive?” “Because everyone would have throttled you within the first five minutes otherwise,” said her necromancer.

Gideon looked down at her necromancer. She had the heavy-lidded expression of someone who was concentrating in the knowledge that once they stopped concentrating, they would fall abruptly asleep. Harrow had gone unconscious once before: Gideon knew that the second time she let Harrow go under, there would probably not be any awakening. Harrow reached up - her hand was trembling - and tapped Gideon on the cheek. 'Nav,' she said, 'have you really forgiven me?' Confirmed. They were all going to eat it. 'Of course I have, you bozo.' 'I don't deserve it.' 'Maybe not,' said Gideon, 'but that doesn't stop me forgiving you. Harrow - ' 'Yes?' 'You know I don't give a damn about the Locked Tomb, right? You know I only care about you,' she said in a brokenhearted rush. She didn't know what she was trying to say, only that she had to say it now. With a bad, juddering noise, a tentacle had started to pound their splintering shelter again: WHAM. 'I'm no good at this duty thing. I'm just me. I can't do this without you.

Hurry up. I have a letter for you,' said Ianthe. Harrow, it was in your handwriting. She handed me a fat, bulging envelope with your handwriting, and it said 'To be given to Gideon Nav,' and I felt - strange. Time softened as I held it, and I didn't even care about the barely repressed mirthful scorn on the other girl's face. It was your curt, aggravated handwriting, curter and more aggravated than ever, like you'd written it in a hurry. I'd gotten so many letters in that handwriting, calling me names or bossing me around. You'd touched that letter, and I - you know it was killing me twice that you weren't there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn't even hear your damn voice?

I need you to trust me. I need you to be trustworthy.

She said, 'Harrow, I can't keep my promise, because the entire point of me is you. You get that, right? That's what cavaliers sign up for. There is no me without you. One flesh, one end.' A shade of exhausted suspicion flickered over her necromancer's face. 'Nav,' she said, 'what are you doing?' 'The cruellest thing anyone has ever done to you in your whole life, believe me,' said Gideon. 'You'll know what to do, and if you don't do it, what I'm about to do will be no use to anyone.' Gideon turned and squinted, gauged the angle. She judged the distance. It would have been the worst thing in the world to look back, so she didn't.

This calls for rigor, Nav.” “Maybe rigor … mortis,” said Gideon, who assumed that puns were funny automatically.

Her adept said: “I’ll keep them off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth house does.” “We do bones, motherfucker,” Gideon said.

If I forget you, let my right hand be forgotten,” her mouth was saying. “Add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.” And, unsteadily: “Griddle.” The hands must have withdrawn; she found herself facedown on the mattress, sobbing as she had not sobbed since she was a child. Someone said, “Everybody out. Go—” But this was more than she could take stock of. Harrow was too amazed by her body’s expanding capacity for despair. It was as though her feeling doubled even as she looked at it, unfolding, like falling down an endless flight of stairs. She dug her hands into the mattress and she cried for Gideon Nav.

I have spent your life trying to make you regret that you weren't dead, all because - I regretted that I wasn't! I ate you alive, and you have the temerity to tell me that you're sorry?" There were flecks of spittle on Harrowhark's lips. She was retching for air. 'I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav. The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot - I took you to this killing field as my slave - you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You won. I've lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.

IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.

So many months had passed: and yet, at the same time, she had only lost Gideon Nav three days ago. It was the morning of the third day in a universe without her cavalier: it was the morning of the third day–and all the back of her brain could say, in exquisite agonies of amazement, was: She is dead. I will never see her again.

They stepped away from each other, Aiglamene finally raised her voice over the growing noise of the shuttle: “Gideon Nav, take back your honour and give your lady a weapon.” Gideon couldn’t help herself: “Are you asking me to … throw her a bone?” “Nav!

You are saying this as if it makes things worse, when from my chair things are looking only better,” said We Suffer. She was starting to perk up, by We Suffer standards, which meant that her eyes had narrowed a bit. “The same building contains both Gideon Nav—whom I want in a bag—and a Lyctor, now apparently neutered—whom I want in a box. And here I am, with a bag and a large number of boxes.

She pressed her forehead down onto the cold, clean tiles. “Please undo what I’ve done, Lord,” she said. “I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Gideon Nav.” “I can’t,” he said. He had a bittersweet, scratchy voice, and it was infinitely gentle. “I would very much like to. But that soul’s inside you now. If I tried to pull it out, I’d take yours with it and destroy both in the process. What’s done is done. Now you have to live with it.” She was empty. That was the terrible thing: there was nothing inside her but the sick and bubbling detestation of her House. Even the silence of her soul could not dilute the hatred that had fermented in her from the genesis of the Ninth House downward. Harrowhark picked herself up off the floor and looked her Emperor dead in his dark and shining eyes. “How dare you ask me to live with it?” The Emperor did not render her down to a pile of ash, as she partly wished he would. Instead, he rubbed at one temple, and he held her gaze, sombre and even. “Because,” he said, “the Empire is dying.” She said nothing. “If there had been any less need you would be sitting back home in Drearburh, living a long and quiet life with nothing to worry or hurt you, and your cavalier would still be alive. But 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.” Harrow said, “But you’re God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.

The more you struggle against the Ninth, Nav, the deeper it takes you; the louder you curse it, the louder they'll have you scream.

Her adept said: “I’ll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does.

Nav. What would have happened if I’d gotten that sample?” “What—used a sharper needle? No dice. My blood burns up outside my body, turns to ash,” said Kiriona. “You need to preserve it to get it out—you know, like, impregnate it with thalergy to stop the short term thanergy reaction. When it reacts with air, the preservation, like, rolls backward—it’s not static.” When she looked at Palamedes’s face, she laughed again. “Come on, boy. I’m Gideon version two. I know up to five necromancy facts now.

Love is a revenant, Gideon Nav, and it accumulates love-stuff to itself, because it is homeless otherwise.

The more you struggle against the Ninth, Nav, the deeper it takes you; the louder you curse it, the louder they’ll have you scream.

She dug her hands into the mattress and she cried for Gideon Nav.

Stay here," I said. "Get fucked," she said thickly. "I absolutely did not become the eighth saint to serve the King Undying so Gideon Nav could play hero for me." "Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?" "Ultimate power - and posters of my face." Fair.

This calls for rigor, Nav.” “Maybe rigor … mortis,” said Gideon, who assumed that puns were funny automatically.