Harrow the Ninth

Harrow concocts another false memory, trying to grasp at the truth behind “the procedure.” In this memory, Harrow is at a ball with the other Nine House people present at Canaan House. The Houses are hoping to win the favor of a queen (Gideon) and marry her. Once again, Abigail and Magnus appear and more boldly than last time they tell Harrow that “[t]his isn’t how it happens” (357). Harrow is shunted out of the memory.

Harrow dreams up another false memory. Harrow signs up as a Cohort Lieutenant, which is shocking due to her status as the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. While at a Cohort training facility, she meets Jeannemary and Isaac, the Fourth House pair from Canaan House. The two suggest an alliance between the three and that they get coffee. At the coffee bar, Harrow meets Gideon, who is working as a barista. Before Harrow can make eye contact with Gideon and really see her face, Abigail intervenes and shuts down the false memory.

Harrow awakens in the false Canaan House, except this time she is fully aware of everything: She remembers everything pre-procedure and remembers Gideon. Harrow grieves intensely and cries until she can no longer cry; she cannot cope with Gideon’s loss. Harrow says Gideon’s name for the first time in the novel. Abigail and Magnus try to get information from Harrow; they want to know if she managed to fish Gideon out of her myriad of many false memories. They explain their current circumstances: Harrow summoned the dead spirits of the people from Canaan House to put on these plays within a pocket dimension in the River while she slept. Whether old-Harrow or new-Harrow constructed this bubble is unclear. The spirits must abide by the rules laid out by Harrow’s subconscious, though each of them chose to stay once they realized what was happening to Harrow and have tried to get through to her since.

The Sleeper is fighting Harrow for control of the pocket dimension and, ultimately, her body. The snow and cancerous growths in Canaan House are the result of the Sleeper’s influence. Harrow tries to leave to get back to her body but fails; she is trapped in the River and must survive the Sleeper’s assault.

Gideon returns to narrating on the Mithraeum. She wakes up in full control of Harrow’s body, with no idea where she is and little understanding of the current situation on the Mithraeum. A Herald attacks Gideon who, unlike the necromancers, sees it as nothing more than a gross monster. Gideon fights the Herald with Harrow’s body, which, given Harrow’s small and unathletic frame, is extremely unequipped for engaging in swordplay with a six-foot-long sword. After killing the first, more Heralds pour in and swarm Gideon.

In the River, the cancerous growth of tentacles consumes Canaan House and spits up hodgepodges of science equipment. Harrow retraces steps through important rooms from Gideon the Ninth, such as the pool room and the first Lyctoral saferoom. Harrow realizes that the initials on a note from Gideon the Ninth, which read “One Flesh, One End” (414), stand for Gideon the First and Pyrrha Dve, the Saint of Duty and his cavalier.

Harrow has a heart-to-heart conversation with the real Ortus, who was originally intended to be her cavalier before he died and Gideon took on the role. Ortus forgives her for her cruelty and wishes he had been braver for her as the adult between the pair. Ortus believes her and Gideon are neglected children. He decides that he must stand and fight to make up for the lack of care he showed Harrow in life. Harrow and the spirits decide that they must exorcise the Sleeper.

Gideon dies several times while fighting the Heralds. However, every time Gideon is fatally injured, Harrow’s body regenerates at astonishing speeds. Eventually, Gideon-as-Harrow defeats the Heralds and begins exploring the Mithraeum. She encounters Mercy, who is terrified at the sight of her and her golden eyes, which are vastly different from Harrow’s black. Mercy engages in a cryptic monologue about Dios Apate, Major and Commander Wake that Gideon cannot follow. Mercy knows who Gideon is: She saw her corpse after the events of Gideon, though she did not see Gideon’s golden eyes, which would have revealed the truth of Gideon’s parentage to her. The two fight briefly and Mercy gets the upper hand. Before she can kill Gideon, Cytherea’s corpse (puppeted by Wake) shoots Mercy.

Harrow and the spirits begin their preparations around the Sleeper’s glass coffin to exorcise her from Harrow’s soul. They cannot destroy the Sleeper entirely, since she is anchored to an external object (the two-hander), but they hope to at least remove her from Harrow.

“The curtain lifts” and the group begins a very long fight with the Sleeper (401). The Sleeper quickly gains the upper hand, showing an ability to defy the rules of reality and summon firearms at will, as well as proving to be a preternaturally skilled fighter. The Sleeper exerts her dominating willpower over the River, shaping the course of reality to her whims. One by one, she defeats the people who challenge her. She gives the group an ultimatum: By the count of 10, they must give her Harrow, or she will destroy each of their souls permanently.

Back on the Mithraeum, Gideon finds Ianthe, who has killed several Heralds. Ianthe realizes that it is Gideon and not Harrow, while Gideon becomes immediately jealous as she remembers how close to Harrow Ianthe has become. Gideon’s jealousy turns into rage as she becomes angry that Harrow never fully consumed her soul. Ianthe gives Gideon an envelope from the old Harrow. The envelope contains Gideon’s trademark sunglasses and a note that reads “One Flesh, One End,” the Eightfold Word of the Lyctors (414). The two discuss the nature of love; Ianthe describes it as a need for possession and keepsakes, like old letters or stubs of tickets from dates. The two women awkwardly navigate their mutual feelings for Harrow before Ianthe decides to take Gideon to see John.

In false Canaan, the group refuses to give up Harrow and mounts a counterattack. The Sleeper swiftly defeats them and continues counting down. Ortus recites poetry from the Noniad all the while about Matthias Nonius’s epic confrontation with his enemies. Just as the Sleeper reaches zero and attacks Harrow, Abigail manages to summon the spirit of Matthias Nonius with the aid of Ortus’s poetry.

Nonius acts as their champion and battles the Sleeper on their behalf. With the help of Protesilaus and Dyas, he defeats the Sleeper. Harrow removes the Sleeper’s gas mask and realizes that the Sleeper is the mystery woman on the poster in Camilla’s shuttle that frightened her. She wears dog tags that read “Awake.”

With the Sleeper expelled and Harrow’s memories returned to her, the pocket dimension begins collapsing. The spirits learn that only a single Lyctor remains in the River fighting the Resurrection Beast: Duty. Harrow is deeply concerned, since all the Lyctors should be fighting the Resurrection Beast. The spirit cavaliers go off to help Duty while Abigail returns to resting in the River. Dulcinea stays behind to tell Harrow a secret (revealed in Chapter 53).

Gideon is terrified of meeting God. She and Ianthe find the inner sanctum breached. They sneak in to find that John has captured Cytherea’s corpse and is attempting to interrogate Wake. Wake condemns John for genocide and the destruction of human history and culture. Gideon learns that Wake’s full title is “Awake, Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity” (445). Augustine and Mercy show up before John gets any valuable information. John learns that Augustine, Mercy, and Wake have been conspiring against him.

Wake went to the Ninth House 19 years ago in order to break into the Locked Tomb. Mercy and Augustine had seduced John into a threesome once before, 500 years ago, which they used as an excuse to discreetly collect his genetic material. This genetic material was used to make infants in vitro; these infants were meant to allow Wake to bypass the final ward on the Locked Tomb that requires John’s blood, since a close blood relative could “spoof” the lock. When all the in-vitro babies died shortly after birth, Wake grew frustrated and impregnated herself with the genetic material. The baby she carried to term in her body was meant to be sacrificed in front of the Locked Tomb to open the final lock. Wake’s plan was foiled by Duty, who shot her down over the Ninth House. “Gideon” was the last thing Wake shouted before dying. The nuns of the Ninth House assumed it was the baby’s name, which is how Gideon Nav got her name.

In the present, Duty joins the fray. Before entering the room with Wake and John, Duty finds Ianthe and Gideon hiding. Duty takes Gideon’s trademark sunglasses from her and dons them but does not give away their hiding space. Duty takes the sunglasses because the real Gideon the First has been slain by the Resurrection Beast; the person piloting the body is Pyrrha Dve, his cavalier, who has a notably different eye color than Gideon the First (Revealed in Chapter 52). Thus disguised, Pyrrha walks in and shoots Cytherea’s body, ejecting Wake’s spirit. Pyrrha admits to the affair she was having with Wake; she thought the baby was hers when she shot down Wake. John struggles to come to terms with the 500-year plot against him. Mercy and Augustine reveal this plot as Dios Apate, Major, echoing the previous plan (Dios Apate, Minor) to distract John for Harrow.

Learning that Wake was her mother makes Gideon irrational. Gideon rushes into the room, revealing her presence. She loudly announces that the baby never died, to which John responds with a typical dad joke: “Hi, Not Fucking Dead, I’m Dad” (455).

Gideon flashes back to her time in the Ninth House as a six-year-old child. She spent much of her time trying to decide which of the skeletal constructs in the Ninth House was her mother’s. She would latch onto random skeletons each day and decide that was her mother. Young Gideon often sat near her mother’s burial niche. One day, after expressing love at her mother’s grave, a young Harrow mocked her, and Gideon attacked Harrow in a rage.

In the present, those on the Mithraeum realize that Gideon has John’s eye color from before the Resurrection, which gave him his all-black oily eyes. The golden eyes he possessed prior to the Resurrection were “A.L.’s” eyes; “A.L.” and John swapped them through the Lyctoral process. Mercy reveals that John found a perfected Lyctoral process which did not result in the death of the cavalier. That is why “A.L.” is entombed in the Ninth House and kept under chains instead of being completely devoured by John. The perfected Lyctoral bond gives John a godlike amount of power, which lets him keep Dominicus burning through sheer force of will. John lied to the other Lyctors and made them believe that the only way to become immortal and help him Resurrect humanity was to kill their beloved cavaliers and eat their souls. Augustine and Mercy’s have had pent up grief for Alfred and Cristabel for over 10,000 years.

Augustine demands that John “give up” his military expansions, his quest; Augustine wants the Nine Houses to end, as does Mercy. John begs for forgiveness from them. Mercy offers forgiveness on one parameter as she hugs John; she asks him to declare that he loved Cristabel. As John declares that he loved Cristabel, Mercy rips him apart and atomizes his body. Gideon watches as her second parent is murdered in front of her.

With John dead, the Houses are doomed to fall apart. Dominicus will explode in a supernova and consume the whole system. The dregs of the Nine Houses outside of the Dominicus system will slowly wither away. Augustine and Mercy had a suicide pact to exit the world once they dealt with John; Augustine refuses to fulfill this pact and wants to hunt down the Resurrection Beasts and wrap up the mess that he, the Lyctors, and John made. As the elder Lyctors take in what has happened, a flash of light temporarily impacts their vision, and John’s body rebuilds itself.

Aggravated, John murders Mercy. He then demands fealty from all present; he will forgive Augustine so long as he swears loyalty again. Both Ianthe and Pyrrha, who is still disguised, swear loyalty; John does not give Gideon a choice and assumes she will behave.

Augustine refuses to swear loyalty. Instead, he drags the entirety of the Mithraeum into the River in a final bid to kill John. Augustine teleports the Mithraeum to the very bottom of the River, where the force of the water begins crushing the space station. John, Augustine, and Ianthe begin fighting in the River as the spirit waters flood the station. Gideon and Pyrrha, who are both magic-less cavaliers, flee. Pyrrha explains what happened to Duty (Gideon the First) as she removes her sunglasses. She explains that it was her, not Duty, who began the love affair with Wake. The two cavaliers watch helplessly as the three Lyctors battle outside in the River water above the stoma. The stoma open at John’s presence and Augustine attempts to shove him down into the waiting mouth. Pyrrha offers Gideon choices: They can stay and die, they can go out on their own terms with a gun, or they can try to flee the River and risk being crushed or eaten. Gideon watches Ianthe save John at the last moment; Gideon considers this a terrible choice on Ianthe’s part. Gideon decides to try to live and tries to escape the Mithraeum.

The pressure of the River is overwhelming and Gideon is crushed. The last thing Gideon sees is the Body performing chest compressions on her to revive Harrow’s body.

Back in the false Canaan, Dulcinea tells Harrowhark that Gideon is in possession of her body. Now that Harrow has remembered everything, she faces a dilemma: If she returns to her body, she will devour Gideon’s soul and become a true Lyctor. If she stays in the River, she will become a mindless revenant who will always hunger for her body and may hurt Gideon anyways. Harrow agonizes over her decision until the last moment: She decides to escape the River.

Harrow surfaces in the Locked Tomb’s familiar salt water. She is extremely tired and drags herself to shore, where she finds the Locked Tomb open and without its usual occupant. Harrow climbs inside and finds Gideon’s two-hander and pornographic magazines. She places the sword over her chest and falls asleep.

Nona, the titular character of the third novel of the series, Nona the Ninth, finds herself in a city on an unnamed planet in the middle of a sweltering summer. She lives with three people: Camilla, Palamedes (who shares Camilla’s body), and Pyrrha. They live in a building with blacked-out windows to deter sniper fire and must hide Nona’s supernatural healing abilities from a jumpy city militia and Blood of Eden forces that are engaged in a war of attrition with the last remnants of the Cohort on the planet. Camilla tries to coax Nona into remembering who she is, or giving her clues as to who Nona is. Camilla has no luck determining Nona’s identity.