Locked Tomb Quotes

One flesh, one end, bitch.

I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it

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

Life is too short and love is too long.

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—

While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade.

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.

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

Maybe it's that I find the idea comforting...that thousands of years after you're gone...is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice is.

If you do not find yourself a galaxy, it is not so bad to find yourself a star.

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.

Camilla and Palamedes were loved by Nona, said Paul. Pyrrha was loved by Nona. It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.

Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.

Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.” “That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark.

He had the eyes of a very beautiful person, trapped in resting bitch face.

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

She had left Harrowhark a note on her vastly underused pillow— WHATS WITH THE SKULLS? and received only a terse— Ambiance.

You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.

But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.

Harrow,” said Gideon, “if my heart had a dick you would kick it.

I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.

Too many words,” said Gideon confidentially. “How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch.

You couldn’t spell obligation if I shoved the letters up your ass.” “I gotta say, I don’t think that would help,” said Gideon. “God, I’m glad you didn’t teach me my spelling.

Anyone can learn to fight. Hardly anyone learns to think.

Unexpectedly, this did not kill her; and what did not kill her made her curious.

I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE

I must no longer accept,” she said slowly, “being a stranger to you.

She said, “What is this internet?” And he said, “See, I did make a utopia.

So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.

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

Harrow said, “But you're God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.

Well, I tried, and therefore no one should criticize me.

He was a mystery too boring to solve.

My necromancer and I always liked you...and hey, what’s like except a love that hasn’t been invited indoors?

She wants the D," I said. And: "The D stands for dead.

Again, let me say: sorry. It was not my thumb to let them bite off. I admit completely that this was my bad, but these motherfuckers had a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy.

I have lots of fealty in me. I fealt the Emperor with every bone in my body. I fealt hard.

O corse of the Locked Tomb, she prayed silently to herself, the cold death to anyone who looks at me in pity; the heat death to anyone who looks to me in amusement; the quick death to anyone who looks at me in fear.

But when she was scared, she was a child again, and she was more afraid of being a child again than anything else in her life.

Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance.

I love a little gall on gall.

It had bewildered her, back at Canaan House, how the whole of her always seemed to come back to Gideon. For one brief and beautiful space of time, she had welcomed it: that microcosm of eternity between forgiveness and the slow, uncomprehending agony of the fall. Gideon rolling up her shirt sleeves. Gideon dappled in shadow, breaking promises. One idiot with a sword and an asymmetrical smile had proved to be Harrow’s end: her apocalypse swifter than the death of the Emperor and the sun with him.

Gideon rolled her eyes so hard that she felt in danger of twisting the optic nerve.

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’?

You remember how the fuck-off great aunts always used to say, Suffer and learn? If they were right Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?

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.

My whole life, yes. Yes, forever, yes. Life is too short and love is too long.

You’ve got two scientists and an engineer and a nun and a lawyer and a banker and a cop and an artist. That’s not a defence force, that’s a cop and six different kinds of nerd.

Don't die in a bone. I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady." Harrow's eyes flickered open. "Stop." "I am your sworn sword, night boss." "Fine," said Harrow heavily. Gideon's mouth was about to round out the words "bone empress" before she realised what had been said.

Once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it.

As I dithered, Pyrrha sandblasted me with the calm, "Your mother would've picked the bullet. " "Yes, well, jail for Mother, " I said.

You told me, Sleep, I’ll wake you in the morning. I asked, What is morning? and you said, When everyone who fucked with me is dead.

I died knowing you'd hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I'd had your full attention.

O corse of the Locked Tomb," you extemporized wildly. "Beloved dead, hear your handmaiden. I loved you with my whole rotten, contemptible heart―I loved you to the exclusion of aught else―let me live long enough to die at your feet." Then you went under to make war on Hell.

She kept looking at Gideon with the screwed-up eyes of someone who had been handed an egg for safekeeping and was surrounded by egg-hunting snakes.

So she said, “The arms kind of looked like swords. I want to fight it.” “You want to fight it.” “Yep.” “Because it looked … a little like swords.” “Yop.

We were children - playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water... Thinking it was space.

Now we kick her ass until candy comes out,” said Gideon. “Oh, damn, Nonagesimus, don’t cry, we can’t fight her if you’re crying.

He say anything?” Gideon wavered. “He said to tell you he loved you,” she said. “What? No, he didn’t.” “Okay, no, sorry. He said—he said you knew what to do?

Being unexpectedly loved is so wonderful or terrible, isn’t it?

You were an unfilled hole, but even a hole might be content in its emptiness.

I think ‘bone frenzy’ might be a term open to coarse misinterpretation, personally.

Ah … children, they are very forgiving,” said the commander, proving to Nona she had never been around children.

And the first child asked: Dost thou oppose me, and thou half-dead? And the second child said, I am as one half-dead, but you would be two-halves dead, bitch. To which the first child said, My sweet, I only die of longing for thee. And the other child said, Then perish.

I hate it when you act like a butt-touched nun,

They kept saying cows watched sunsets. At that point I wished I’d used the fucking conspiracy theorists instead of the cows. Nobody would’ve cared if I’d turned people inside-out who think vaccines have nanites in them that mine cryptocurrency. But cows watch sunsets, man!

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

I might lie down and see if this fixes itself,” I suggested.

I find the idea comforting.. that thousands of years after you're gone.. is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice.

This is all there is to love? Simply by being in your life, I have added indelibly to its weight?

Two is for discipline, heedless of trial; Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile; Four for fidelity, facing ahead; Five for tradition and debts to the dead; Six for the truth over solace in lies; Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies; Eight for salvation no matter the cost; Nine for the Tomb, and for all that was lost.

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.

Ask me how I am and I’ll scream,” she said. “How are you,” said Camilla, who was a pill. “I see you calling my bluff and I resent it,” said Gideon.

You’re only boobs, hair, and talk, Crown,” said the guard. “No,” said Crown. “I’m boobs and hair and talk and a hell of a sword hand.

THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILISATION CAN LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN WE RARELY BECOME HEROES.

You’re not very good at I’m Asking the Questions Now, Bitch, are you,” said Gideon.

Sounds like the start of a joke, right? Two scientists, an engineer, a detective, a lawyer, and an artist walk into a bar to help me become God.

There was so much I should have told you. I just didn't have time. I didn't know. I didn't know I'd have to say: A sword doesn't hold an edge on its own, you sack of Ninth House garbage. I didn't know I'd have to say, if you dip a sword into melty bone, the metal gets more pitted than an iron mine, you cross-patched necromantic shit. I think the main thing I should have said was, You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn't even want it. Actually, scratch that, the main thing I should have said was, SQUATS ARE A START, OR A COUPLE OF STAR JUMPS, THEY'RE NOT DIFFICULT.

He gave the impression of being the guy fun sought out for death.

I'm not fucking dead," I said, which wasn't even true, and I was choking up; everything I'd ever done, everything I'd ever been through, and I was choking up. As the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the Necrolord Prime, stood from his chair to look at you-- at me; looked at your face, looked at my eyes in your face. It took, maybe, a million myriads. The static in your ears resolved into wordless screaming his expression was just--gently quizzical; mildly awed. "Hi, Not Fucking Dead," he said. "I'm Dad.

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.

Gideon winked at her increasingly agitated companion. She said, sotto voce: “But then you couldn’t have admired … these,” and whipped on the glasses she’d unearthed back home. They were ancient smoked-glass sunglasses, with thin black frames and big mirrored lenses, and they greyed out Harrow’s expression of incredulous horror as she adjusted them on her nose.

So Alecto, wearied of talking, kneeled upon the rock and offered up the sword to her, and placed the child’s hand upon the blade, so that it received also the red blood of the child. This made the child exceeding faint, but it did not swoon of weariness. Which strength pleased Alecto, who said: Notwithstanding, I offer you my service. To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and Alecto heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.

If you come to my room, I will make you the potato dish you liked,” he read aloud, with gravity. And: “How must we understand potato?” “As your closest vegetable relative,” said Harrowhark, who’d never seen one in real life.

And instead you rolled a rock over me and turned your back. I spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do. I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.

I could protect you, if you’d only ask me to,” said Ianthe the First. A tepid trickle of sweat ran down your ribs. “I would rather have my tendons peeled from my body, one by one, and flossed to shreds over my broken bones,” you said. “I would rather be flayed alive and wrapped in salt. I would rather have my own digestive acid dripped into my eyes.” “So what I’m hearing is … maybe,” said Ianthe. “Help me out here. Don’t be coy.

What do Marta the Second, Naberius the Third, Jeannemary the Fourth, Magnus the Fifth, Camilla the Sixth, Protesilaus the Seventh, Colum the Eighth, and Gideon the Ninth all have in common?” You could have heard a hair flutter to the floor. Everyone stared, poker-faced, in the thick ensuing silence. Magnus looked pleased with himself. “The same middle name,” he said.

It is a drawing of the letter S" said the deep, solemn voice from over her shoulder, and she realized she had stopped midstride. "The letter in question is constructed from six short marks stacked vertically three by three. There are two triangles on the top and bottom. which, along with some diagonal strokes, form a calligraphic S.

Harrowhark’s talent had always been in scale, in making a fully realised construct from as little as an arm bone or a pelvis, able to make an army of them from what anyone else would need for one, and in some far-off way Gideon had always known that this would be how she went: gangbanged to death by skeletons.

All I can say is that it was complicated back in Canaan House, and sometimes a cute older girl shows you a lot of attention, because she’s bored or whatever, and you sort of have this maybe-flirting maybe-not thing going on, right, and then it turns out she’s an ancient warrior who’s killed all your friends and she’s coming for you, and then you both die and she turns up ages later in the broiling heat on a sacred space station and like, it’s complicated. Just saying that it happens all the time.

I merely want to put you in a jail," said his Lyctor, now meditative, "and fill up the jail with acid once for every time you made a frivolous remark, or ate peanuts in a Cohort Admiralty meeting, or said, 'What would I know, I'm only God.' Then at the end of a thousand years, you would say, 'Mercy, I have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.' And I would say, 'That is why I did it, Lord. I did it for you, and for your empire.' I often think about this," she finished.

But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone's shit. She unsheathed her sword. She slid her gauntlet over her hand, and tightened the wrist straps with her teeth. And she looked over her shoulder at Harrowhark, who was apparently breaking out of a blue funk to experience her own dominant emotion of "oh no, not again." Gideon silently willed her necromancer to put her knucklebones where her mouth was and, for the first time in her life - for the first real time - do what Gideon needed her to do. And Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star.

Ghosts and monsters," the lady of the Seventh continues enthusiastically, "remnants and the dead . . . the disturbed dead. The idea that someone is still here and furious . . . or that something has been lurking here forever. Maybe it's that I find the idea comforting . . . that thousands of years after you're gone . . . is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice.

I pray the tomb is shut forever," recited Harrowhawk, with the curious fervidity she always showed in prayer. " I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives, I pray it sleeps ... I pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying King, His Virtues and his men. I pray for the Second House, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth; the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth. I pray for the Ninth House, and I pray for it to be fruitful. I pray for the soldiers and adepts far from home, and all those parts of the Empire that live in unrest and disquiet. Let it be so.

Look,” said Harrowhark. No murder, sorrow, or fear could ever touch Harrow Nonagesimus. Her tired eyes were alight. A lot of her paint had peeled away or been sweated off down in the facility, and the whole left side of her jaw was just grey-tinted skin. A hint of her humanity peeked through. She had such a peculiarly pointed little face, high browed and tippy everywhere, and a slanted and viscious mouth. She said irascibly, “At the key, moron, not at me.” The moron looked at the key, but did give her the middle finger.

This whole thing happened because you wouldn't face up to Gideon dying.' he said, which was a stab as precise as any Nonius had managed. 'I don't blame you. But where would you be, right now, if you'd said: She is dead? You're keeping her things like a lover keeping old notes, but with her death, the stuff that made her Gideon was destroyed. That's how Lyctorhood works, isn't it? She died. She can't come back, even if you keep her stuffed away in a drawer you can't look at. You're not waiting for her resurrection; you've made yourself her mausoleum.

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.

You told me, Sleep, I’ll wake you in the morning. I asked, What is morning? and you said, When everyone who fucked with me I’d dead. When everyone we loved has gone or fled, That’s morning. Empty’s just another word for clean. Let’s put this first draft dream of mine to bed. I the appointed hour I’ll pull up your sheets. I’ll kill the light, Lie down beside you; die; and sleep the night. This time will be the time we get it right; Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long; Our graves will be less deep, our lies less true You held aloft the sword. I still love y

Just then a word floated out through the buzz saw of Zapata-speak: Nefertari. Dan tuned back in. "...the most beautiful tomb in Egypt," Ms. Zapata was saying. "You probably know the queen because there's a famous bust of her." A photo flashed on the screen. Dan raised his hand. "That's Nefertiti," he said. "Different queen." Ms. Zapata frowned. She looked at her notes. "You could be right, Dan. Uh...let's move on." Another slide flashed on-screen. "Now, this is the inner chamber of the tomb, where she was laid to rest." Dan's hand rose again. Ms. Zapata closed her eyes. "Actually? That's the side chamber." "Really." Ms. Zapata's lips pressed together. "And how do you know this, Dan?" "Because..." Dan hesitated. Because I was there. Because I was locked inside the tomb with an ex-KGB spy, so I got to know it pretty well. "Especially since the tomb is closed for conservation," Ms. Zapata said. Yeah. But we had this connection to an Egyptologist? Except he turned out to be a thief and a liar, so we captured him. I came this close to smashing him with a lamp...

Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one’s perceptions, half-way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh? Or did she lock up within her some secret which certainly Lily Briscoe believed people must have for the world to go on at all? Every one could not be as helter skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But if they knew, could they tell one what they knew? Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay’s knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee.