TRANSCRIPT — 20. The Seventh Saint to Serve the King Undying

Hosts: Baily and Kabriya

Transcript by Katie

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

00:00:11 BAILY: Hello, fellow boneheads! Welcome to One Flesh, One End, a Locked Tomb re-read podcast. We’ll be combing through the series by Tamsyn Muir for all the context and clues we missed on our first read. I’m Baily,

00:00:25 KABRIYA: And I’m Kabriya, and we’re so excited to take a look through all the theories we can’t stop obsessing over.

00:00:30 B: Thanks for joining us on this journey through ten thousand years of history! We can't wait to spend more time with the characters putting the romance in necromancy.

(Upbeat, driving electronic music fades out)

00:00:40 B: In this episode, we’ll be discussing Chapter Thirty-Five of Gideon the Ninth, which is where Cytherea is revealed as an imposter, and Pal tries to—

00:00:51 K: We love a reveal.

00:00:53 B: Pal tries to kill her.

00:00:54 K: Big episode. Lots happening. After that, we are also going to have a fun game in which Baily embarasses me by making me try to guess the definition of words that appear in these books, and then we are going to have a big-time, all-timer discussion we have absolutely been waiting for: we are talking about Cam and Pal!

00:01:15 B: Cam and Pal! But we’re only gonna cover, honestly, mostly Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth stuff, not even touching the Nona stuff. We’ll probably discuss them again once we start getting into the Nona recaps.

00:01:29 K: They’re a big enough topic, they will merit another episode, but we’re very excited to have a discussion about them in books one and two. Mostly one.

00:01:39 B: Chapter Thirty-Five starts immediately after our newly-ascended Lyctor Ianthe wins her fight with Silas and Colum, and the Sixth and Ninth Houses leave the room. The text goes, “They left the lonely twin to her bitter, alien grief.” And then Camilla realizes Pal isn’t there.

00:01:58 K: No, I was just gonna say, I love immediately how it’s such a different description of Corona than anything that we’ve read in the book so far. She’s always described as this sort of, you know, glowing, radiant, larger-than-life, beautiful, popular twin that everybody flocks to, and Gideon has the hots for, and all of these things, and then immediately, seeing her described as lonely is very jarring, as well as the idea of her having this “bitter, alien grief,” is not really an emotion we’ve seen from her. That really sets the tone so immediately for the magnitude of this change for both Ianthe and Corona.

00:02:28 B: Yeah. Camilla realizes that Pal isn’t there. She says, “‘The Warden. Where’s the Warden?’ ‘I lost track of him during the fight,’ said Gideon. ‘I thought he was behind you.’ Harrow said, ‘He was—and I was by the door. I saw him only a few minutes ago.’ ‘I lost sight of him,” Camilla said. ‘I never lose sight of him.’” Uh oh! Uh oh uh oh!

00:02:51 K: Not good.

00:02:52 B: That’s not good.

00:02:52 K: So Gideon says Pal’s probably gone to make sure Dulcinea’s okay, and says— describes that he is “‘six hundred per cent weenier than I am’” over Dulcinea, “‘which I still don’t get,’” which is just a great line. Great way of putting it.

00:03:05 B: “Camilla looked at her and brushed her dark, slanted fringe out of her eyes. There was something in her gaze starker than impatience. ‘The Warden,’ she said, ‘has been exchanging letters with Dulcinea Septimus for twelve years. He’s been—a weenie—over her.’” Which is very funny. “‘One of the reasons he became the heir to the House was to meet her on even footing. His pursuit of medical science was entirely for her benefit.’

00:03:29 K: “This turned all the fluids in Gideon’s body to ice-cold piss. ‘She—she never mentioned him at all,’ she said, stupidly.

00:03:36 B: ‘No,’ said Camilla.

00:03:38 K: ‘But she—I mean, I was spending so much time with her—’

00:03:41 B: ‘Yes,’ said Camilla.

00:03:43 K: ‘Oh, God,’ said Gideon. ‘And he was so nice about it. Oh my God. Why the fuck did he not say anything? I didn’t—I mean, I never really—I mean, she and I weren’t—’

00:03:50 B: ‘He asked her to marry him a year ago,’ said Camilla ruthlessly, some floodgate down now, ‘so that she could spend the rest of her time with someone who cared about her comfort. She refused, but not on the grounds that she didn’t like him. And they weren’t going to relax Imperial rules about necromancers marrying out of House. The letters grew sparser after that. And when he arrived here—she’d moved on. He told me he was glad that she was spending time with someone who made her laugh.’” I.e., Gideon. Oh, it’s just such a brutal reveal. God.

00:04:19 K: It really is! Especially as they’d just started spending more time with Cam and Pal. Cam and Pal are kind of the fellow good guys in the House and that too, and then to realize that this guy you’ve been hanging out with actually has this secret tragic backstory with the girl that you’ve been flirting with and you didn’t even know! [Baily laughs] You’ve been torturing him this whole time! Poor Gideon. She had no idea.

00:04:40 B: Yeah! God, well it’s awful to think about Pal and Cam in the first days of Canaan House. It’s just so painful. Like, when did they start to suspect that maybe something was off with Dulcinea? When did they know? Or did it take them so long just because Pal doesn’t have the highest opinion of himself or whatever and thinks, “Okay, I guess it’s totally reasonable that she would react that way and just ignore me forever.” And Pal has figured out—

00:05:05 K: Just a really brutal rejection.

00:05:06 B: Yeah. Pal at this point has figured out that Dulcinea’s an imposter, but Cam doesn’t know exactly what’s up, so yeah. God, to imagine their conversations, it’s just wild.

00:05:16 K: Absolutely. Yeah. I think you can see Cam kind of holding onto some of that frustration here and finally getting the chance to ruthlessly dump this backstory on Gideon. So Gideon just continues to have a bit of a meltdown following that information on top of everything else that’s been going on. It says, “Five people had died that day; it was weird how the small things ballooned out in importance, comparatively.”

00:05:40 B: Which is so wild! In one day! So, Colum, Silas, Babs, Marta, and Teacher are all dead. [laughs]

00:05:47 K: Yeah, it’s a nice little reminder of the passage of time and how quickly this really has all been happening. It continues, “The tragedy saturated the stiffening bones and static hearts lying in state at Canaan House, but there was also deep tragedy in the flawed beams holding up their lives. An eight-year-old writing love letters to a terminally ill teenager. A girl falling in love with the beautiful stiff she’d been conceived solely to look after. A foundling chasing the approval of a House disappointed with her immunity to foundling-killing gas. Gideon lay on the floor, facedown, and became hysterical.” Oof! [both laugh]

00:06:17 B: God. Jeez. [laughs]

00:06:19 K: That whole passage. Such an oof.

00:06:22 B: Wild.

00:06:23 K: And I think there’s something really interesting and true about what it gets at there too, how even in the middle of all of these bigger tragedies and all of these bigger things going on in their lives, how the interpersonal sadness and spites and hurts and that can still feel like so much too. Like, those things coexisting together I think is really starkly pointed out here.

00:06:46 B: Well, and it’s such a good illustration of why this novel is so great to read, because yes, the plot, and all the deaths are interesting, you want to keep reading, but also you want to keep reading because of the characters, and how they feel about each other, and how they all have interiority.

00:07:04 K: Yeah. We’re here for the big planet-spanning, galaxy-, ten-thousand-spanning plot of God, and Lyctors, and Alecto, and all of these things, and we are also here for, “Are Gideon and Harrow ever gonna be in their own bodies and kiss again?” All of these things can be true at once.

00:07:20 B: Yeah. Harrow says to Camilla that that information about Dulcinea makes no sense because Dulcinea spoke of Pal to her as a stranger and said she didn’t know him. “Gideon, facedown on the dusty ground, moaned: ‘I want to die.’ She was nudged with a foot, not unkindly. ‘Get up, Griddle.’ ‘Why was I born so attractive?’ ‘Because everyone would have throttled you within the first five minutes otherwise,’ said her necromancer.” [laughs] Wow!

00:07:49 K: Top tier. Top tier attraction. Harrow just so casually going with that. Getting a little dig in at her, but also just accepting this premise of, “Yes, you’re exceptionally attractive, Gideon Nav. We’re all going with this.” [Baily laughs] We know it. God. Love that so much for them.

00:08:04 B: Brutal. Cam also says that she doesn’t understand why Dulcinea had this apparent about-face. She says, “‘If I did, […] my quality of life, my sleep, and my sense of well-being would improve. Ninth, get up. He doesn’t hate you. You didn’t ruin anything. He and she were always more complicated than that. He never even met her in person until he came here.’”

00:08:24 K: Yeah, it’s sort of this magnifying and minimizing at the same time in the sense of, “They were always more complicated. Whatever flirty thing you had going on is really nothing and not a big deal in comparison, but also they hadn’t even actually met in person, it wasn’t even a real thing.” Like, it was and it wasn’t in this big way, I think is a really interesting way of summing up the Pal and Dulcinea relationship pre-Gideon.

00:08:50 B: Yeah. Well, and especially, I guess this passage makes it clear to the reader that the degree to which their society is so different to ours in terms of communicating with each other cross-distance. They don’t have video calls, they have lithographs, they don’t have real photographs, they don’t have digital cameras.

00:09:04 K: Yeah.

00:09:06 B: It’s not like they were Skyping every weekend, or Zooming, or whatever.

00:09:10 K: Yeah. Again, like we’ve said before, we enter this world through the eyes of Gideon and Harrow and the Ninth House. We only know what they know and only see what they see about communication with the other planets. And even things like this that give us a little bit of an idea of the fact of how other planets were communicating with each other, and okay, maybe it was only through letters, but there were relationships that existed between people that lived in other Houses and that sort of thing, and that was something that we didn’t see at all of Gideon and Harrow getting to have on the Ninth is very interesting.

00:09:39 B: Gideon gets up off the floor after Cam says this, and she is filled with resolve to sort things out with Pal and make sure he’s okay with her before their, quote, “divine intervention,” you know, God showing up in response to Judith’s call. She says she needs to go catch up with him and asks Harrow to get her two-handed sword from the false bottom of her trunk, which is a total shock to Harrow. [laughs] She’s just like, “Your what?” And then Gideon says—

00:10:07 K: Lots of reveals happening here.

00:10:08 B: Gideon says, “‘Cam, please, do me a massive solid here and keep an eye on her. I’m sorry I’m a homewrecker.’” [laughs] And then she sprints away.

00:10:17 K: [laughs] Once again, Gideon having the best vocabulary. All of the words that have been picked up, accumulated, things that have come— it’s just, mwah, chef’s kiss. Harrow yells “Nav!” after her, but she keeps running. It says, “All she could do was run as hard and as fast as she could to the place where she knew she’d find her last two living allies: the sickroom where Dulcinea Septimus lay dying.”

00:10:37 B: “Her last two living allies,” oh my God. And that is such good set-up for the next couple pages. [laughs] So, she gets down there. She sees Pal about to go into the sickroom, and he sees her in the hall, and it goes, “She took a step forward, and opened her mouth to say, Sextus, I’m sorry— He folded his fingers together […]. Her body stopped where it stood, as though steel needles had pierced her hands and her legs. Gideon felt cold all over. She tried to speak, but her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth and she tasted blood. She struggled—an insect pinned to its backing—and he looked at her, cold and dispassionate, unlike himself. Palamedes surveyed his work, and he saw that it was good.” This passage is so good! It makes him seem so remote and evil. This is a quote from Genesis 1:31, God creating the universe. That passage goes, “Then God looked over all that He had made, and He saw that it was very good.” And we know that he’s freezing Gideon so that she won’t interfere with his plan to kill Dulcinea – or Cytherea– by committing suicide, but it’s such a good red herring.

00:11:48 K: Especially because it’s not really a kind of magic, I believe, that we’ve seen Pal or Cam use much of. It’s not something that we associate with the Sixth House, this freezing the body and having this very physical effect on her. It comes out of nowhere both that Pal is the one doing it to Gideon, and even what’s happening to her. It shocks the reader.

00:12:04 B: Yeah! Because in just the last ten chapters or so we’ve had, we’ve had Tamsyn try to convince us that Harrow’s the murderer because she had Protesilaus’s head, and then, now we have Ianthe potentially having done all the murders because she’s become this Lyctor, and then, “Oh! Wait, what if it’s Pal?”.

00:12:26 K: Reveal upon reveal upon reveal. Yeah. So then it says, “he opened Dulcinea’s door. Gideon tried to flail against her invisible bonds, but her bones felt rigid in her body, like she was just the meat sock around them. Her heart struggled against her inflexible rib cage, her terror rising in her mouth. He smiled, and with that strange alchemy he was made lovely, his grey eyes bright and clear. Palamedes entered the sickroom.”

00:12:47 B: Ugh, it’s so ominous! It’s so good because there’s two chapters left in this book, and now the reader— the first-time reader is convinced that Pal’s the murderer and he’s about to go in and kill Dulcinea. [laughs] Which he is, but like, for a good reason! [laughs]

00:13:02 K: [laughs] Which, fair! But it seems a lot worse right now!

00:13:07 B: So yeah, if you’re reading this for the first time— I don’t know, I vividly remember this. I’m now expecting there to be a horrible murder scene which, again, Gideon will be helpless to prevent, just like when Jeannemary was murdered.

00:13:18 K: Yeah. So then we overhear the conversation that begins between Pal and Dulcinea as Gideon is trapped, unmoving, unable to intervene in any way, shape, or form. And so, we hear— she hears Pal say to Dulcinea that he wishes he’d talked to her right at the start. And Dulcinea says, “‘Why didn’t you?’ ‘I was afraid,’ he said frankly. ‘I was stupid. My heart was broken, you see. So it was easier to believe—that things had simply changed between us. That Dulcinea Septimus had been trying to spare my feelings—coddling an ignorant child who had tried to save her from something she understood far better than I ever could. I cared about her, and Camilla cared about us. I thought Dulcinea was saving us both the heartache of watching her fail, and die, during our task.’”

00:13:57 B: Oh!

00:13:58 K: And I do– obviously, this is very tragic, but I also really love how immediately what snags on the reread is how he’s referring to Dulcinea as a separate person. He’s not saying “you” immediately in there, too. He’s talking to Cytherea knowing that he’s not talking to Dulcinea, and that is so clear to me right here.

00:14:17 B: It’s really good. He goes on to say that Dulcinea showed him tact and sympathy throughout their letter-writing and took him and his feelings seriously even though he was just a child. And Cytherea says that that runs in the Seventh House because, quote, “‘They’ve been letting young necromancers die for a very, very long time,’” as she would know.

00:14:37 K: RIP.

00:14:38 B: “‘When you grow up awfully ill, you’re used to everyone making those decisions for you … and hating it … so you do tend to want to take everyone’s feelings as seriously as yours aren’t.’” And then we get the reveal! Ahhh!

00:14:53 K: So Palamedes says, “‘There are two things I want to know.’ ‘You can have more than two, if you want. I’ve got all day.’ ‘I don’t need more than two,’ he said calmly. ‘The first is: Why the Fifth?’” Sorry, also, just a moment there, this harkens so back to “The Unwanted Guest” a little bit, where they’re talking about how many questions he’s going to need in that. I love that he’s immediately like, “I know exactly what I need to know, and what information is missing. I’ve whittled it down to these two things.” [Baily laughs] So he says, “‘The first is: Why the Fifth?’ There was a puzzled pause. ‘The Fifth?’”

00:15:24 B: And this is where the reader– the first-time reader starts to figure out. It begins. Oh my god. I remember reading that sentence and being stopped short. Like, “Wha– oh– ah–”.

00:15:40 K: Yeah. Yeah. Wanting to know why the Fifth are suddenly— it’s suddenly flipped on her as in actually something that she has done to the Fifth, and you’re like, wait, the spotlight was not really on her before to be any sort of threat, like we thought Pal was going in to maybe harm her, and we just got this tragic backstory, blah, blah, blah. There’s this interpersonal thing that’s been very separated from what’s been going on with the murders, and then this yanks us right back to it, and puts it on Dulcinea all of the sudden, and it’s so good.

00:16:06 B: Like, she was the judge. She’d already died, slash, been sitting in the sickroom, ill. Or was she?

00:16:12 K: Exactly! Exactly. Very And Then There Were None all of a sudden.

00:16:16 B: So, Pal goes on to say, “‘The Ninth and Eighth houses posed the most clear and present danger, the Ninth due to Harrow’s sheer ability, the Eighth due to how easily they could have outed you—any slip would have shown an Eighth necromancer that you weren’t what you claimed. […] I even wonder why I’m still walking around, if you don’t find that arrogant. But it was the Fifth House that scared you.’ ‘I don’t—” ‘Don’t lie to me, please.’ Dulcinea said, ‘I have never lied to any of you.’” [laughs] Okay, liar!

00:16:45 K: We love a liar who insists they’ve never lied.

00:16:48 B: And Pal says, “‘Then—why?’” And she starts her villain monologue. It goes, “A tiny—”. Oh, yeah?

00:16:55 K: It’s so good that we get multiple villain monologues.

00:16:57 B: Back-to-back chapters of villain monologues! “A tiny, fluttering sigh, like a butterfly coming to rest. … ‘Well, think about it. Abigail Pent was a mature speaker to the dead. That’s no good. But while that was a factor, it wasn’t the reason … that was her hobby.’” She then explains that Abigail’s hobby was that she was interested in Lyctoral history, and Pal accuses her of not doing her research beforehand, which is very fair. [Kabriya laughs] I feel like that is a fairly well-known thing about Abigail. Pal then asks why she put the key in Abigail’s body, and Cytherea says to save time and avoid being caught with it, so she could go gum up the lock to the Sixth lab, and she says, “‘Who got rid of that? I’d thought I’d made it absolutely unusable.’ ‘That was the Ninth.’ ‘That’s more than impressive. The Emperor would love to get hold of her … thank goodness he never will. Well, that’s another blow to my ego. If I’d thought the lock could have been broken and the key found, I would have cleaned out the place, I wouldn’t have left it to be found … but that’s why we’re having this conversation now, aren’t we?’” So it seems that she was intentionally trying to hide something in that room, whether it was the Lyctoral theory of the Sixth House, that part of unlocking Lyctorhood, or just images of her that were in there. Not a hundred percent sure what exactly she’s talking about, but she definitely went to lock that room up on purpose.

00:18:21 K: I do think the images are definitely still part of it, because especially with her giving the nod to Abigail knowing Lyctoral history and that being a threat, I think it makes sense that part of what she was worried about was people exposing her identity. Then she suggests that Pal used his psychometric tricks on the message to know that she had been in there.

00:18:40 B: Yeah, I found that a bit confusing. A message in the Sixth lab? Because the only message we saw in the Sixth lab was from Anastasia to Cassiopeia about Teacher, but maybe Cytherea touched it? Or maybe she just meant the paint message in the room where they found Ianthe. So, I’m unclear on that.

00:18:57 K: Yeah. Well, didn’t she leave a message as well when Jeannemary was killed? Do you think that could be the message?

00:19:01 B: Oh, it could also be.

00:19:03 K: I think there is that, that she left while she was flaunting her kills. [both laugh]

00:19:10 B: Yeah. Well, yeah, anything that she had touched or written, Pal would’ve been able to tell, yeah.

00:19:14 K: Yeah. And we do know that in the room when Ianthe’s giving her villain monologue, Pal is sort of touching the message and testing it there, but it depends on what point exactly we think he was still testing or putting that together. Then she asks what his second question is. So we’ve had the first, which was “Why the Fifth?”. We cut back to Gideon’s POV here. It says, “Gideon struggled again, but she was caught as fast as if the very air around her were glue. Her eyes were streaming from her total inability to blink. She could breathe, and she could listen, and that was it. Her brain was full of sweet fuck-all.”

00:19:47 B: So relatable.

00:19:48 K: “Palamedes said, very quietly—” Such a mood. “Palamedes said, very quietly: ‘Where is she?’ There was no answer. He said, ‘I repeat. Where is she?’ ‘I thought she and I had come to an understanding,’ Dulcinea admitted easily. ‘If she had only told me about you … I could have taken some additional precautions.’ ‘Tell me what you have done,’ said Palamedes, ‘with Dulcinea Septimus.’”

00:20:13 B: Oh, fully spelled out! It’s so—

00:20:17: K: Reveal part two!

00:20:18 B: It’s so rare that Tamsyn spells out the reveal to a mystery so explicitly but she does it so well here.

00:20:27 K: And the way that it’s breadcrumbs of first getting the surprise of, “Holy shit, Dulcinea’s been murdering people, and how, and what’s going on?”, and then the sense of, “Oh wait…”. It’s clicking into place. She never was—

00:20:39 B: This is not Dulcinea.

00:20:41 K: Yeah. It’s not that Dulcinea was something more or different than we thought she was, it’s just that this has been an imposter this entire time.

00:20:48 B: “‘Oh, she’s still here,’ said the person who wasn’t Dulcinea Septimus, dismissively. ‘She came at the Emperor’s call, cavalier in tow. What happened to him was an accident—when I boarded her ship he refused to hear a word of reason, and I had to kill him. Which didn’t have to happen … not like that, anyway. Then she and I talked … We are very much alike. I don’t mean just in appearance, though […] the Seventh House is awfully predictable for looks—but our illness … she was very ill, as ill as I was, when I first came here. She might have lived out the first few weeks she was here, Sextus, or she mightn’t have.’” He said, ‘Then that story about Protesilaus and the Seventh House was a lie.’” That’s the story she made up about him being a beguiling corpse because he’d already been dead before they even left the Seventh. “‘You’re not listening. I never lied,’ said the voice.” I like that she’s called “the voice” here because it’s a very fascinating parallel with the real Dulcie being “the voice” in “The Unwanted Guest.” “‘I said that it was a hypothetical, and you all agreed.’” [laughs] Which is so wild. I mean, it’s so ridiculous.

00:21:52 K: Yeah, she’s very hung up on this idea that she never, ever lied. She then continues and says, “‘Anyway, she and I talked. She was a sweet little thing. I really had wanted to do something for her’”—

00:22:03 B: What does that mean???

00:22:07 K: Yeah, is that this sort of faux empathy, like “Oh, she was sick like I was, we have so much in common.” Is there something that she thought she could in some way— I don’t know, help her with her illness before throwing her aside, or like—

00:22:20 B: No, I think she just means she wanted to do a nice burial instead of putting her in the furnace. That’s my interpretation, which is such a wild thing to say. Like, “Yeah, I did murder her, but I wanted to do something nice.” [laughs]

00:22:34 K: “I wanted to do something nice for her!” She says, “‘I really had wanted to do something for her—and afterward, I kept her for the longest time … until someone took out my cavalier. Then I had to get rid of her, quickly … the furnace was the only option. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a monster.’”

00:22:47 B: “‘I’m not a monster!’”

00:22:48 K: “‘Septimus was dead before the shuttle landed at Canaan … she hardly suffered.’”

00:22:51 B: “‘She hardly suffered!’”

00:22:52 K: “She was already dead when I threw her in the furnace, it’s not like I burned her alive! Give me some credit here, Pal.”

00:22:58 B: Christ.

00:23:00 K: But obviously this is still very tragic, devastating information, et cetera. ‘There was a very long pause. Palamedes’s voice betrayed nothing when he said: ‘Well, that’s something, at least. I suppose we’re all to follow now?’”

00:23:12 B: Oh, my god! Jeez.

00:23:15 K: Just calmly listening about how the girl he loved was killed and thrown in a furnace, and assuming that you’re about to be killed with everyone else, or at least giving that impression very calmly, and not betraying anything that you might actually be thinking or doing while talking.

00:23:27 B: Great conversation. “‘Yes, but this wasn’t really about any of you,’ said the woman in the room with him. ‘Not personally. I knew that if I ruined his Lyctor plans—killed the heirs and cavaliers to all the other eight Houses—I’d draw him back to the system, but I had to do it in a subtle enough way that he wouldn’t bring the remaining Hands with him. If I had arrived in full force, he’d have turned up on a war footing, and sent the Lyctors to do all the dirty work like always. This way he’s lulled into a false sense of … semisecurity, I suppose. And he won’t even bother coming within Dominicus’s demesne. He’ll sit out there beyond the system—trying to find out what’s happening—right where I need him to be. I’ll give the King Undying, the Necrolord Prime, the Resurrector, my lord and master front-row seats as I shatter his Houses, one by one, and find out how many of them it takes before he breaks and crosses over, before he sees what will come when I call … and then I won’t have to do anything. It will be too late.’” Oh my god!!! What a wild plan!

00:24:39 K: Oh, my god. Such a wild plan.

00:24:43 B: Like, what is she even talking about? Is she going to summon Resurrection Beasts? Like, somehow destroy the Houses? How did she plan to shatter the Houses beyond killing the heirs? How is she planning to call the Beasts? I don’t know if any of these questions have been answered. This plan is so ridiculous to me. I don’t get it.

00:25:02 K: Yeah, I don’t know if “shatter the Houses” is just referring to killing the heirs and the brightest talents and that sort of thing, because when she says “one by one,” that very much kind of calls to what she's been doing in the House with the murders, so that, I think, makes sense to me. But I do also really love how so much of this is building to this arrival of God and how we have, first, the call that Judith put out, and now we have Dulcinea talking about how that was the plan all along. All of the different pieces of the action happening in different parts of the story at this point are really ramping up to that arrival and that being where the story is going potentially quicker than ever seemed possible at the beginning of the book when it was this far off, abstract thing. Now it’s like, God is coming, people are trying to get him to show up, you know?

00:25:43 B: Yeah. Oh, it’s so good. Pal asks, “‘Hate him?’ The voice of the girl whom Gideon had known as Dulcinea rose, high and intent. ‘Hate him? I have loved that man for ten thousand years. We all loved him, every one of us. We worshipped him like a king. Like a god! Like a brother.’” And she doesn’t really mention in any way why she decided to kill him. She’s just like, “Yeah, no, we loved him!” Presumably it’s all this complicated stuff that we find out in Harrow: she found out that Gideon is God’s child, she knew about Dios Apate, Gideon had God’s yellow eyes, so Alecto was his eye-swapped cavalier, there’s a way to keep your cavalier alive. So we have to untangle all that in the next— what, it’s like eight hundred pages away, or whatever. [laughs] It’s so far away.

00:26:40 K: Yeah. But yeah, it’s interesting, two things being true at once, where Pal goes, “You’re trying to kill him, obviously you must hate him,” and she jumps to, “Well, that’s not true at all. I can love him, and have loved him for ten thousand years, and still be trying to kill him.” Those things can coexist, and I find that really interesting here too, how that’s such a knee-jerk reaction from her. And she then goes on to talk a bit more about those nuanced complications to all ten thousand years alive. It says, “Her voice dropped, and she sounded very normal and very old: ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this … you who have been alive for less than a heartbeat, when I have lived past the time when life loses meaning. Thank your lucky stars that none of you became Lyctor, Palamedes Sextus. It is neither life nor death—it’s something in between, and nobody should ever ask you to embrace it. Not even him. Especially not him.’”

00:27:24 B: Yeah, especially not him, because—

00:27:26 K: Classic thousand-year vampire mourning being alive and what use is there, even, to this kind of existence. We love it.

00:27:34 B: And I guess she says “especially not him” because he didn’t do it in the way that they all had to. He didn’t actually have to kill his cavalier.

00:27:42 K: Yeah, absolutely. There’s that betrayal.

00:27:44 B: Pal says that he wouldn’t have done that to Camilla, and Cytherea praises him for working it out, and explains that she didn’t want to do it either, but her cavalier, Loveday, thought it could keep her from dying. And she says, “‘Instead I’ve just kept dying, all this time,’” which does sound pretty rough. [laughs] I mean, you have to give her that.

00:28:01 K: Yeah.

00:28:02 B: “‘No, you wouldn’t have done it, and you’re smart not to. You can’t do that to somebody’s soul. Teacher was nearly demented. Did you know what we did to him? I say we, but he wasn’t my project … he was a holy terror. Blame your own House for that!” Which is kind of interesting, just more confirmation that Teacher was Cassiopeia and Anastasia’s project. I think we might’ve talked about this a bit before, but I do still wonder what the purpose of that project was. Like, trying to figure out the nature of soul mélanges, trying to understand who Alecto was?

00:28:31 K: Yeah, I think all of that’s possible. She continues and then says she’s grateful that the Second House killed Teacher: “‘He was the only one here who scared me. He couldn’t have stopped me, but he might have made things stupid.’” And when Pal asks why Teacher didn’t recognize her if she’s known him all this time, she says maybe he did, and there’s no way to know what he was ever thinking. Then she pauses, and says she wonders why Pal isn’t doing anything rash: “‘You’ve taken this much more sensibly than I thought you would. When you’re young, you do everything the moment you think about it. For example, I’ve been thinking about doing this for the last three hundred years … but I assumed you would try something silly when you realized she was dead.’”

00:29:06 B: “‘I wouldn’t ever try to do something silly. I made the decision to kill you the moment I knew there was no more chance to save her. That’s all.’” And Cytherea kind of laughs and then coughs. “‘I just had to buy enough time to do it slowly enough that you wouldn’t notice—to keep you talking.’” She laughs and she coughs again: “‘Young Warden of the Sixth House, what have you done?’ ‘Tied the noose. You gave me the rope. You have severe blood cancer … just as Dulcinea did. Advanced, as hers was when she died. … All this time we’ve been talking, I’ve been taking stock of everything that’s wrong with you—your bacterial lung infection, the neoplasms in your skeletal structure—and I’ve pushed them along. You’ve been in a terrific amount of pain for the last myriad. I hope that pain is nothing to what your own body’s about to do to you, Lyctor. 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 … This is for the Fifth and the Fourth—for everyone who’s died, directly or indirectly, due to you—and most personally, this is for Dulcinea Septimus.’” Oh, Pal!

00:30:16 K: Oh, it’s so good. Such a noble counterpart to the villain monologue that is also making fun of her for doing a villain monologue, wasting all this time while he’s been using it to take stock and rally against her. It says, “The coughing didn’t stop. Not-Dulcinea—” Also, side note, I love how Tamsyn manages to refer to her a different way every time. She’s “Not-Dulcinea,” “the woman who was not Dulcinea Septimus,” she’s “the voice,” she’s “the woman in the room with Pal.” She’s all of these different things, and it’s—

00:30:45 B: Yeah, because we don’t know her name until the end of this chapter.

00:30:48 K: It’s just very fun and witty. No, no, Tamsyn really keeps that going well. So it says, “Not-Dulcinea sounded impressed, but not particularly worried. ‘Oh, it’s going to take a great deal more than that. You know what I am … and you know what I can do.’ ‘Yes,’ said Palamedes. ‘I also know you must have studied radical thanergetic fission, so you know what happens when a necromancer disperses their entire reserve of thanergy very, very quickly.’ ‘What?’ said the woman. He raised his voice: ‘Gideon!’ he called out. ‘Tell Camilla—’ He stopped. ‘Oh, never mind. She knows what to do.’”

00:31:18 B: Oh my god!! So many iconic lines.

00:31:22 K: Ugh, “Tell Camilla– she knows what to do. Never mind, she knows what to do.” Oh! It’s so good. What a way to go out. [Baily laughs] Iconic.

00:31:34 B: And it’s a bit of necromancy mumbo-jumbo about “dispersing his entire reserve of thanergy very, very quickly,” but as the reader, I think you know what that means right away.

00:31:44 K: Yeah. The word “fission” in there is pretty key. It just sounds like something big is about to happen. And just the incredible Pal and Cam— both the being very in sync, and also the immediate swerve from any sort of cliché, emotional send-off. We’ll get to it later, but when Gideon goes to give it as “He said he always loved you,” or whatever, and Camilla’s just like, “No he didn’t.”

00:32:07 B: “No he didn’t.”

00:32:08 K: That’s not necessary. She knows— they know each other so well that nothing like that is needed. It’s more just, she knows what to do, she’s already on the same page as me. They’re always so in sync. It’s just such a good allusion to that.

00:32:23 B: But then the sickroom explodes into white fire. Gideon is suddenly freed, and sprints away from the “cold white death” as everything cracks apart and the ceiling shakes. It goes, “She ran for her life down the long corridors, past ancient portraits and crumbling statues, the grave goods of the tomb of Canaan House, the mechanisms of this feeble shitty machine crumbling as Palamedes Sextus became a god-killing star.” I really like the imagery in that sentence. Highlighting again how Canaan House is a tomb.

00:32:58 K: Yeah, the tomb of Canaan House, everything in it being dead and so old, and it just has been revealed that Dulcinea’s actually this ten-thousand-year-old Lyctor, and how much that heightens the sense of how long everything has been dead and decaying there.

00:33:12 B: Yeah, well in many ways, the mechanisms of Canaan House, the “feeble shitty machine crumbling,” that’s a parallel to what’s happening to Cytherea. Gideon ends in the atrium, and she just rests her forehead down on the marble fountain. It goes, “She pressed as though sheer surface contact alone would allow her to get off the ride.” Which is kind of funny. Surely they don’t have roller coasters, but you know. [laughs] We understand the wording.

00:33:34 K: Again, the words she’s picked up! The words she knows. We love it.

00:33:38 B: “How long she did that for—how hard she pressed, and how long she huddled—she did not know. Her mouth was tight with wanting to cry, but her eyes were dry as salt.” Poor Gideon.

00:33:48 K: Aw, Gideon. Very, very sad.

00:33:49 B: Especially because just a couple pages ago, it was like, “Yeah, her last two living allies are in the room,” and now they’re both dead, and one of them was never an ally.

00:33:57 K: One of them was never an ally after all. The hot, sad, dying girl was never your friend, Gideon. She was actually evil all along. That’s a hard blow to take, especially when you’ve only known so few people ever in your life.

And so then it says, “Years later—lifetimes later—there was movement at the entrance of the atrium she had flung herself through. Gideon turned her head. White steam poured from the hole. Within the steam stood a woman: her fawn-coloured curls sadly sizzled to nothing, her deep blue eyes like electromagnetic radiation. Huge wounds exposed her bones and the bright pink meat inside her arms and her neck and her legs, and those wounds were sewing themselves up even as Gideon watched. She had wrapped herself in the bloodied white sheet that had covered her sickbed, and she was standing upright as though it was the easiest thing in the world. Her face was old— lineless and old, older than the rot of the whole of Canaan.”

00:34:46 B: Literally true. [laughs]

00:34:49 K: Yeah, I love that too, as we were just talking about the comparisons between the old, rotting Canaan, and Dulcinea herself, and of course she’s the oldest thing there.

00:34:57 B: I also like the mention of her standing upright easily, I guess to highlight that the Dulcinea disguise is fully off. She had previously pretended to need crutches, but now she’s like, “Yeah, I’m a Lyctor.”

00:35:09 K: I also really like the description of the bright pink “meat” inside her arms and legs, and how animalistic and monstrous that is in a way that you normally wouldn’t describe a human being as “meat,” you know? I mean, perhaps Tamsyn would in these particular books, but it does strike something very visceral and different about what she really is.

00:35:26 B: Yeah. Well, and her blue eyes. I guess we don’t— as a first-time reader, you don’t necessarily know that that’s a sign of the presence of Loveday within her, but as a second-time reader, it’s like, “Damn, she’s really hitting that home.”

00:35:40 K: And then it continues, “The woman Gideon had kind of had the hots for—” [Baily laughs] Again, RIP. Sorry to your crush. “—held a gleaming rapier. She was barefoot. She […] began to cough: she spasmed, retched, clung to the frame for support. With a great asphyxiating bellow, she vomited what looked like most of a lung—studded all over with malformed bronchi, with wobbling purple barbs and whole fingernails—onto the ground in front of them. It went splat.”

00:36:04 B: Ew! [laughs] Fingernails? Why!

00:36:08 K: So disgusting, so unnecessary. Again, I feel a sign of everything to come in the next chapter of this book too where Tamsyn really ramps up the body horror element. She’s really getting into it here and it’s so gross.

00:36:22 B: Such a nasty image. “She groaned, closed those terrible blue eyes and pushed herself to stand. Blood dripped down her chin. She opened her eyes again. ‘My name is Cytherea the First,’ she said. ‘Lyctor of the Great Resurrection, the seventh saint to serve the King Undying. I am a necromancer and I am a cavalier. I am the vengeance of the ten billion. I have come back home to kill the Emperor and burn his Houses. And Gideon the Ninth…’ She walked toward Gideon, and she raised her sword. She smiled. ‘This begins with you.’” [laughs] That’s the end of the chapter!

00:37:03 K: Let’s go! Oh, my god! So much happening so quickly in the span of just this chapter. You get the Pal backstory reveal, you get the red herring that Pal’s actually the evil murderer, and that actually it’s Dulcinea, you get Pal imploding, and then you get Dulcie coming right after Gideon, or Cytherea, as it is, coming right after Gideon, and it just all snaps into action, and it’s so good.

00:37:31 B: It’s like, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow! Reveal, reveal, reveal, reveal!

00:37:33 K: Yeah, exactly, all these hints of things, her plan, calling on God, “vengeance for the ten billion” just kind of slipped in there, there’s so much all of the sudden, and it just really kicks into gear, so we are really getting into the last bit of action here, and it’s— God, it’s so fun.

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

00:37:56 B: Well! It’s time to play a game.

00:38:00 K: Yay! Love a game.

00:38:01 B: For this week’s game—

00:38:02 K: Love to guess words live and try not to feel dumb.

00:38:05 B: [laughs] Sorry! I have prepared five words.

00:38:07 K: Can’t wait. Okay, we can do this.

00:38:10 B: Our first word is “senescent.” Does this mean— Oh wait, let me spell it. S-E-N-E-S-C-E-N-T. Does this mean, A. Aging, B. Shiny, or C. Nested inside something?

00:38:26 K: Oh, man. See, I do think this has come up before, or recently, or something else. And yet I’m looking at all these meanings, and I’m like, “Yeah, it could be that, it could be that.” [Baily laughs] I want to say “aging,” I think?

00:38:41 B: Are you locking that in?

00:38:43 K: I guess, yeah?

00:38:44 B: That is correct!

00:38:46 K: Oh, yay, okay! Now I’m wondering where that came up recently, because I do think I saw or heard that.

00:38:53 B: I don’t know. It’s a word that I see fairly often. There are a lot of evolutionary trade-offs regarding senescence where, maybe, if something happens to you after you’ve already reproduced, it’s not really something that’s gonna be evolutionarily disadvantageous, so I encounter the word a lot, but I don’t know.

00:39:12 K: Not me. Not in publishing.

00:39:15 B: [laughs] One of my favorite things about this game is making up the fake definitions.

00:39:19 K: Yeah. No, those ones both had me pause for a second, and be like, “That does feel like it could be a real thing.”

00:39:28 B: [laughs] Word number two out of five: “Inapposite.” I-N-A-P-P-O-S-I-T-E. Does this mean, A. Across from, B. Out of place, or C. Not tied down?

00:39:42 K: I’m trying to think of the root here. I kind of like “across from.” I’m doing a little bit of the mental game in my head of like, “Would she make the first answer the correct answer two questions in a row?” That seems unlikely, but maybe that’s not the point here. I don’t think it’s “not tied down,” I think it’s either “across from” or “out of place.” I feel like it’s making me think of “opposite,” but that is just a different word. “Inapposite.” So, it’s got a negative prefix at the beginning. So, if it was “out of place,” then maybe something being “apposite” could mean that it *is* in the correct place, whereas “across from” doesn’t lend itself quite as well to that. I’m gonna go “out of place,” B.

00:40:26 B: That is correct! Great reasoning, I love it!

00:40:29 K: Oh, look at me go! I’m so smart with my words.

00:40:31 B: What a great game.

00:40:33 K: Okay, I love this game. [Baily laughs] Forget I ever said anything bad about word games. They’re actually great, because I feel so smart and clever and get to show off, and we’re all learning vocabulary together thanks to Tamsyn Muir.

00:40:43 B: Since you love this game now we’re gonna play it every week. The third word out of five is “avaricious.” A-V-A-R-I-C-I-O-U-S. Does this mean, A. Greedy, B. Sadistic, or C. Malnourished?

00:41:01 K: Okay, I didn’t want to get too cocky, but I am ninety-eight percent sure I know this one, and I can see the next one, and I’m also pretty sure I know it too, so I’m feeling great about this game. Avaricious is greedy, right?

00:41:11 B: Locking it in?

00:41:13 K: Yeah.

00:41:14 B: That’s correct! [laughs]

00:41:16 K: Yay! Okay, I know that, because with the seven deadly sins, I feel like someone has referred to it as avarice, which is definitely where I would’ve learned it.

00:41:23 B: Oh, completely true.

00:41:25 K: We love our deadly sins!

00:41:29 B: My most recent exposure to that word was in Destiny 2, it’s in the name of one of the dungeons where you collect riches and they kill you.

00:41:37 K: Wow, that sounds pretty avaricious.

00:41:38 B: It does, it does! Word four out of five is “vermillion.” V-E-R-M-I-L-L-I-O-N. Does this mean, A. Blue, B. Green, or C. Red?

00:41:53 K: I feel like this is one of those colors that I have gotten mixed up in the past.

00:41:56 B: [laughs] Me too!

00:41:57 K: I’m pretty sure this is red? No, I’m pretty sure this is red, and I think the thing is, I’ve seen people have moments of being like, “Wait, what? What is this? I always thought it was green,” because it’s got that prefix of V-E-R that’s very similar in a lot of other languages, like “vert” [in French] is green. But vermillion is red, right?

00:42:14 B: Locking that in?

00:42:16 K: Yes? Tentatively? No, confidently.

00:42:17 B: You are correct! It is red!

00:42:21 K: Of course I am.

00:42:22 B: What a great run.

00:42:23 K: This is great. Wow, I’m teaching everyone— yeah, it’s gonna fall apart at the end, because that just would be classic, but I’m feeling good about myself right now.

00:42:32 B: For a peek behind the curtain, I’ve just had these three options in plain text so we can both see them, so I had no way of selecting which one was the correct one, and this one was the only one, for vermillion, that I was worried that I would get it wrong, so I had a picture of vermillion up in a separate tab, so I could just triple-check for myself, yes, it is red. Do not get fooled by the “V-E-R.” [laughs]

00:42:54 K: Do you feel like it’s one of those colors that is referred to a lot in fantasy books, like a dress, or like a tunic, this very lustrous vermillion shade that you read and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s fancy. What the fuck does that look like?” You know? [Baily laughs]

00:43:10 B: Yeah. Oh my gosh, okay. Word five out of five is “febrile.” F-E-B-R-I-L-E. Does this mean, A. Feverish, B. Breakable, or C. Fruitful?

00:43:24 K: Okay, this one I don’t know, and I don’t feel confident.

00:43:26 B: Oh, no!

00:43:27 K: So it’s a nice come back down to earth moment. “Febrile.” I feel like this is one of those things that’s making me think of other words, because I’m like, “breakable” feels like something to associate with it, but then I’m like, am I just thinking, “feeble”?

00:43:40 B: “Feeble.”

00:43:41 K: Is that the word that it’s reminding me of? It’s “febrile,” it’s “feeble,” it’s “breakable.” “Fruitful…” I don’t feel particularly strongly. But “feverish,” “febrile…”. Man, I don’t feel like I have a lot to go off of here. I think this is gonna be pure instinct.

00:43:57 B: Vibes.

00:43:59 K: And my instinct is telling— yeah, the vibes. The vibes are telling me… is it “febrile,” is that how you pronounce it?

00:44:05 B: I gotta be honest, I’m not completely sure. I think I pronounced it right, but I could be wrong. [laughs]

00:44:09 K: Okay. “Febrile, febrile.” Let’s go “feverish.” Very tentatively. Very unconfidently.

00:44:19 B: Alright. That is… correct! Yay! Five for five!

00:44:24 K: Oh my god! I was so ready! I was like, “It’s all gonna fall apart at the end. I have to just go for it. I can’t agonize.” Oh my god! Is that a winning streak?

00:44:34 B: Complete win. Five for five, a hundred percent, A plus.

00:44:38 K: I feel the need to promise the listeners, this is not rigged. This is not being set up to make me look good. I just really am that good at words. You’re welcome.

00:44:48 B: No, and I mean, I deliberately set traps, you know? Like, you were thinking “breakable,” am I thinking “feeble”? That’s exactly why I put “breakable” in there. [both laugh] Oh, incredible.

00:45:00 K: I think we’ve done this a few times now that I’m getting really used to reading Baily’s mind, too. I’m like, “I bet I know why that word’s there.”

00:45:07 B: Oh my god.

00:45:09 K: Love that for me.

00:45:10 B: Good game. Great game.

00:45:12 K: Well, there we go. Some new words from everyone. Or, some words I already knew.

00:45:16 B: I’m always so curious if the listeners are able to guess them, or if they’re having trouble too, so let us know how many you got correct. [laughs]

00:45:25 K: Yeah. I think the other challenge should be, then, that we need to start using these words in the pod more, now that we’re learning them. We have to show off our vocabulary.

00:45:30 B: Oh, so true.

00:45:33 K: Just slip in a nice little “avaricious,” you know.

00:45:35 B: You don’t think that that might come across sometimes as inapposite, just trying to shoehorn in words where they don’t belong?

00:45:40 K: [laughs] I don’t know, I think we should really describe Gideon’s vermillion hair a little bit more, whenever we get the opportunity. Just a thought.

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

00:45:57 B: It’s time for this episode’s discussion of Pal and Cam! Our beloved Pal and Cam.

00:46:05 K: So beloved. So hard to talk about, and yet, we will. And so fun to talk about. We love them so much.

00:46:11 B: So, we’ll start with just some basics.

00:46:13 K: If I loved you less, I could talk about you more, et cetera, et cetera.

00:46:15 B: Yes. We’ll start with just some basics. Pal and Cam are the heir and the cavalier from the Sixth House. We get a basic description from Judith’s Cohort Intelligence files, which is the extra material that came with the paperback version of Gideon the Ninth. First, she describes Palamedes Sextus, age twenty, Master Warden of the Library. Great title.

00:46:38 K: He’s a baby!

00:46:39 B: I know. Twenty. They should be at the club. [laughs]

00:46:42 K: They should be at the club. That is the whole Pal and Cam discussion right here. Actually, in Gideon the Ninth, they should’ve all been at the club. All of this is a travesty. Should’ve been listening to those club, club classics.

00:46:55 B: “Club classics. Club, club classics.” Okay.

00:46:59 K: Everyone in Gideon the Ninth deserved a Brat summer and instead they were forced to endure tragedy. [Baily laughs] It’s beyond comprehension.

00:47:04 B: So sad! Judith says, “He is the youngest Master Warden by far ever to achieve the title, taking part in the examinations at thirteen and winning out over at least fifteen other and significantly older candidates.” I find this interesting. We know that not everyone who went to Canaan House was technically an “heir.” The fact that the Sixth House has examinations to become the leader, it’s not a hereditary thing, there isn’t an “heir,” right, it’s just him, so he has to go. It’s kind of interesting.

00:47:33 K: Yeah, definitely.

00:47:34: B: She says, “All of his publishing so far has been internal to the Sixth House, but secondhand accounts put him as being regarded as a genius by his Sixth peers,” and then she wrote an exclamation mark. [laughs] “The Sixth House has maintained—”

00:47:47 K: Love that for Judith.

00:47:48 B: “The Sixth House has maintained its position and strength rather than weakened during the first years with Sextus at the helm.” And I just want to point out, he won the title of Master Warden at thirteen. We don’t talk enough about how fucked up childhood is in the Nine Houses. Like, every House, even the “good ones,” which we might consider the Sixth House to be, use child labor, whether forced or coerced. It’s so bad.

00:48:11 K: Yeah. He became Master Warden when he was too young to be in the club. That’s what we’re doing.

00:48:18 B: Yeah. God. Judith has a note at the end which I find quite funny: “I myself met the Master Warden once. Despite the reputation of ferocious intellect, his demeanor inclines to the lighthearted rather than the dignified or ponderous. More years in the position will perhaps lend him gravity, but on meeting, I would not have known he was the Master Warden without having been told before.” [laughs] So judgemental!

00:48:40 K: He’s just a funny little kid! Let him be. Love that for him. But yeah. Then we get her notes on Camilla Hect. Also twenty, also should be at the club, the Warden’s Hand. Judith’s notes read, “Almost nothing is known of Camilla Hect except that she passed the examinations to become Palamedes Sextus’ cavalier when she was twelve. She has not entered in any duelling tournaments or done informal bouts. No Cohort placement ever sought. Notes: She is registered as his second cousin; The genetic data is still readily available and reliable as the Sixth’s leading concern. Offhand style is most likely the dagger, as the Sixth House do not have the confidence to move away from the classics.” Another little dig in there. And then it says, “A pair who will most likely be flexible minds but will not even bother to compete on the cavalier stage.”

00:49:27 B: It’s so interesting to see this outside perspective, because when you’re reading through Gideon the Ninth for the first time, you don’t necessarily realize the perception that the Sixth House have from the other Houses, because we see Cam fight in her very first introduction. And then it kind of becomes clear when Judith challenges them that, “Oh, these people are perceived as being unathletic nerds.” [both laugh]

00:49:54 K: Yeah, no one is expecting that from them other than Gideon, who has witnessed it at this point. But yeah, again, just how siloed Gideon and Harrow are from the rest of the Houses, and how much the rest of the Houses all have these either relationships or observations of each other and perceptions of each other that Gideon and Harrow are absolutely lacking in this book.

00:50:13 B: So, we kind of started with Judith’s outside, biased perspective, so it’s kind of representative of how everyone else in the Empire sees the Sixth House, but then we the reader actually encounter them. Pal’s first described to us in Gideon the Ninth as a “rangy, underfed young man … wrapped in a grey cloak” with “spectacles slipping down his nose.” There’s a great description of him that goes, “Up close, he was gaunt and ordinary looking, except for the eyes. His spectacles were set with lenses of spaceflight-grade thickness, and through these his eyes were a perfectly lambent grey: unflecked, unmurked, even and clear. He had the eyes of a very beautiful person, trapped in resting bitch face.” Which is such a good line. Also, I think I gave you “lambent” in one of the word quizzes. [laughs] Do you remember?

00:51:02 K: [laughs] Something about the word struck me, but it also just sounds a little bit like a neighborhood in London that I wasn’t sure about, but I don’t remember what it means if we did do it in a previous quiz, to be honest.

00:51:13 B: I think it just means, like, glowing. Having the quality of light.

00:51:18 K: Oh, luminous, kind of. Okay, I like that. Also love the description of Pal having beautiful eyes, trapped in resting bitch face. We love that for our nerdy boy.

00:51:28 B: In Chapter Twenty-Seven, we get another good physical description, which goes, “Palamedes suddenly grinned. It was a curious act of alchemy that turned his raw-boned, plain face into something magnetic: very nearly good-looking, instead of being the act of three jawbones meeting a chin.” [laughs]

00:51:44 K: Oh, this is really interesting, because this is now striking me: Tamsyn used a really similar phrase in the bit that we just read in this chapter of Pal’s face, “a curious bit of alchemy” changing his expression when he smiles right after freezing Gideon before going into the room?

00:51:59 B: Yes, yes yes.

00:52:00 K: I’m just finding the quote again right here. Yeah, it’s after he’s frozen Gideon, and it says, “He smiled, and with that strange alchemy he was made lovely, his grey eyes bright and clear.” So I love that, again, the idea of this “alchemy” of how faces change. I find it really fascinating when writers have words that they clearly go back to or stick with, and that idea of the “alchemy” of our faces being something that Tamsyn enjoys describing.

00:52:27 B: Well, especially how faces are changed when people smile. I can’t think offhand of any other characters who are described that way, necessarily.

00:52:35 K: I think it makes sense for Pal though, in kind of the dual thing we have going on here, where at a glance, the way that the Sixth is seen from the surface of being these dusty, nerdy, boring kids, and then we see everything kind of coming to life in them, and the description of him having these eyes that are actually very beautiful, and the quality to him that comes out.

00:52:55 B: Exactly. We also get some physical description for Cam. She’s introduced as “a tall, equally grey-wrapped figure” with dark hair “cut blunt at her chin,” which always makes me think of the TV bisexual bob. [both laugh]

00:53:11 K: Classic.

00:53:12 B: Then later, after the avulsion trial, we get a little bit more physical description. It goes, “The compact, grey-clad cav of the Sixth did not even look up at this question. It was interesting to see her in the light: her fine sheets of slate-brown hair were cut sharply below her chin, giving a general air of scissor blades.” I just love that. And then we get a really important piece of information about Camilla’s eyes, which goes, “Camilla’s eyes were much darker than her necromancer’s: his were like clear stone or water, and hers were the unreflective, fathomless colour of overturned Ninth House sod, neither grey nor brown.” Every mention of eyes is obviously important in this series, and this is what tipped off a lot of people about the soul-switch situation in the Harrow the Ninth epilogue, which led to a lot of wild theories before we actually found out what was going on in Nona.

00:54:06 K: Yeah, exactly. There’s a lot of very good and very important eye descriptions throughout these books that you don’t necessarily pick up on until later, and that’s a really good comparison directly of the two of them.

00:54:18 B: So, we’ve kind of gone over what they look like, but in terms of their notable abilities and qualities, I think the thing that most people associate with them is that we often see them doing medicine, and healing people, and doing what they call “curative science.” They help Harrow when she’s in her bone cocoon. Pal sets Marta’s shoulder even though she just stabbed Cam when they dueled. Generally, they come across as very caring and kind. And then, obviously, Pal’s main characteristic is that he’s very smart. He’s right after Harrow figuring out what Teacher meant about all the locked doors at Canaan House. He goes out to enumerate all the doors on the first night, he succeeds with Cam at more trials and obtains more keys than any other pairs, except for Silas, who takes the keys from Dulcie. And we also get a great glimpse of them in their early life with “The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex” short story, which can be found online, so we’ll link that in the show notes. But he solves this really complicated mystery when he’s just a pre-teen, and Cam is only a little bit behind him. And it’s also interesting, according to Cam he has an eidetic memory. Cam says in this short story, “Palamedes remembered everything he ever saw.” So that’s obviously a big asset as a necromancer.

00:55:37 K: Definitely, yeah. He’s also a big nerd. [Baily laughs] Or at least, that is the big quality of the Sixth House that I think we’ve fondly come back to again and again. If all of the Houses have their own little thing going on, the Sixth House is basically a huge, overly-administered school. And so Pal is overjoyed to receive a full extra grade point for solving the two-hundred year old mystery in “Doctor Sex,” and they’re all very invested in getting information at all costs.

00:56:09 B: There was such a funny line in “Doctor Sex” where Cam goes, “The Warden and I had allergic reactions to the window panel cleaner. He didn’t ask for a duty swap because he wanted to ‘study his contact dermatitis.’” [laughs] He’s getting some horrible skin infection, rash, and he’s like, “Yeah, but I’ll study it.”

00:56:23 K: “Oh, this is so interesting. What’s happening to me?” Yeah. Simply could not be me.

00:56:33 B: He’s also obviously willing to work with Harrow before they even fully trust each other in order to get her notes on the trials that she and Gideon did. And he’s also a pretty impressive necromancer. In the first scene where he’s introduced, we see him raise this huge thanergetic barrier and he barely breaks a sweat. In the chapter we just read, he plays a major part in killing Cytherea, and then in Harrow the Ninth, he creates this, quote, “impossible,” according to Harrow, bubble in the River as this plan he had made for his own death.

00:57:08 K: Yeah. We see all these examples of how impressive a necromancer he is, how intelligent he is, and I think it really speaks to that connection with him and Harrow before and after they trust each other in that he is able to recognize very quickly how smart she is as well and how impressive she is as well, and they see that in each other.

00:57:24 B: It’s also interesting to note that he has necromantic physical stamina, i.e. none. There’s a really funny line in “Doctor Sex” which goes, “There were a lot of stairs down. Doctor Donald Sex’s sealed up study proved to be only one floor above the Library base. I was fine. The Warden was a little out of breath.” [laughs] So he can’t even climb down stairs without getting out of breath. But yeah, the last major note that I think is important about his character is that he’s super respectful towards the other Houses. He treats the Fourth House teens as equals, he always gives Isaac his title of “Baron,” he uses the titles for all the scions of the other Houses. Very respectful person.

00:58:07 K: Very polite boy. Yeah. And we wanted to refer to this Tumblr post that really hits the nail on the head here from dicaeopolis? Sorry if I’m pronouncing it incorrectly.

00:58:17 B: Dice-opolis? I don’t know.

00:58:20 K: Dice-opolis?

00:58:22 B: I don’t know!

00:58:22 K: I don’t know exactly. Dicaeopolis. Hopefully we’re saying that correctly. D-I-C-A-E-O-P-O-L-I-S. Their post reads, “Palamedes Sextus is a good character because he's written exactly like someone who would be the hot boy of the series if the rest of the main cast weren't exclusively made up of lesbians. Palamedes: tall, has the most striking and beautiful grey eyes, kind but forceful, very intelligent, one of very few who can meet Harrow on her level as a necromancer. Gideon: He's nice :). Ianthe: (hasn't even noticed his existence)”

00:58:47 B: Smiley face! [laughs]

00:58:50 K: [laughs] “He’s nice, smiley face. Ianthe: (hasn't even noticed his existence). Harrow: read 7:13 p.m.” [both laugh] It’s so true.

00:58:58 B: Oh, my god.

00:58:59 K: In a very different way to Babs, where Babs is the character who thinks he should be the hot boy main character of this series and is just surrounded by people who don’t care or recognize that—

00:59:09 B: Don’t appreciate him.

00:59:11 K: —Pal is not necessarily expecting that energy, but definitely would be in another circumstance.

00:59:15 B: I also wanted to quote this really funny post by adspexi on Tumblr, who says, “Man, you can really tell the Locked Tomb fandom’s composition by the utter lack of horny Palamedes content. I respect this deeply and wouldn’t change it for the world but my guy is out there looking like a Milo Atlantis expy being pedantic yet kind and having arrestingly beautiful eyes and you can just tell the fan-artists only want him inasmuch as they want to put him in a jar with some leaves and a twig. Jod bless.” [laughs] Which I love. [Kabriya laughs] Also, though, want to make a personal shout-out to the two gay men I know of in this fandom who are legit into Palamedes. Good for you, I love to see it. [both laugh]

00:59:52 K: We love to see it. Please keep fighting the good fight.

00:59:54 B: But the Milo from Atlantis comparison is so funny. [laughs]

00:59:58 K: Oh, it’s so true! And I do know people who refer to Milo from Atlantis as being a key cartoon character sexual awakening moment, so that’s very funny.

01:00:08 B: Oh, my god.

01:00:09 K: Cam, on the other hand, is very appreciated by the fandom. [both laugh] We really liked this Tumblr post from inheroes--wetrust that just says, “The one single thing every narrator in the Locked Tomb series can all agree on is that Camilla Hect is a literally flawless human being. Can’t wait for Alecto, the ten-thousand year old death of God, to contemplate destroying the entire universe but then meet Cam and be like, ‘Hmm. Maybe some people should be allowed to live actually.’”

01:00:32 B: And this is so funny to me because this post was made before Nona was released but after the first Nona excerpt was released. [laughs] They did not know that, yeah, she actually did.

01:00:44 K: Actually, yeah. That’s, in a nutshell, Nona the Ninth. You got it right, inheroes--wetrust. I hope you feel very proud of this post.

01:00:53 B: [laughs] Yeah. Cam is also a very able cavalier. She says in the “Doctor Sex” short story, “Back at twelve years old I was one of the best in the Sixth, though nobody knew it but me. They’d only know I was the best at fifteen. Even then, they’d have no idea.” Which is so good. [laughs]

01:01:15 K: And also such a good parallel to how no one really knows how good she is in Canaan House at first, because everyone assumes they’re this really nerdy House and just the idea that she has all this skill that continuously is not being known or appreciated because it’s not shown off in that way is very fun to me about Cam.

01:01:33 B: Yeah, although, for the reader, our very first introduction to Cam is, she literally leaps into a fight instantaneously. She sees Gideon skulk around in the dark, and we get, “The cavalier narrowed her hooded eyes, fidgets gone and absolutely still; then she exploded into action. Holy shit. Here was a warrior, not just a cavalier. Gideon was suddenly fighting for her life and exhilarated by it.” Amazing scene. I love it.

01:01:57 K: Yeah, we get a very different introduction to her than everyone else.

01:02:01 B: I’ve also seen some theories that Cam is really pissed off at Gideon because she’s been flirting with Dulcinea, which is why Cam is so eager to jump into this fight, which is very funny to think about. [laughs]

01:02:09 K: Interesting. Yeah, definitely in retrospect, knowing more about the dynamics going on there and what Cam had observed of Gideon and the Dulcinea situation is very funny. And like we said, this is somewhat hidden to the other Houses, of course, these skills. Cam also hides her true preferences of fighting with equally-sized knives instead of a rapier and a dagger offhand. We see the reference to this in Judith’s notes. And they really exploit this in Cam’s duel with Judith where everyone assumes that it’s gonna be an unfair fight and Cam will lose immediately, but Pal says, “Go loud,” and she sure does!

01:02:47 B: I just want to quickly mention that I’ve seen so many people wondering where this phrase came from, and I didn’t really understand myself at all. I didn’t really— I had not encountered it as a common phrase or anything, but then I started watching this guy on YouTube do play-throughs. First I watched him play through Resident Evil 4 Remake, but then I started watching his XCOM play-throughs, and I’m now ninety-five percent sure it’s from XCOM, which is this alien invasion turn-based tactics video game, so “go loud” basically means give up stealth and attack the enemy. And it might not be XCOM specifically, but another game in that genre. Anyway. I’m curious if Tamsyn’s played, because that seems to be a common phrase in that game.

01:03:27 K: I also love so much you stumbling on this watching YouTube walk-throughs, being like, “Wait a second…”. [both laugh] “Go loud” as in, “go loud” of Palamedes and Camilla in Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir? [Baily laughs] Is that what we’re talking about here?

01:03:43 B: Another important thing to note about Camilla is that she’s super organized, super prepared all the time. In “Doctor Sex,” she notes that she had started keeping a pocket torch a few years back, so when she was ten or eleven. And then, at one point when they’re trying to solve the mystery, she’s stymied when she doesn’t have a measuring tape, and she says, “I always carried measuring tape after that.” [both laugh] She’s also pretty neat and tidy. She reacts with a “hmm” to the messy Second laboratory, and then from Gideon, we get, “Gideon knew immediately that she organised Palamedes’s and her socks by colour and genre.” Although, to be fair—

01:04:19 K: I love “genre” of sock. Just a great phrase.

01:04:22 B: Like, ankle sock, calf sock, thigh-high sock.

01:04:29 K: All the genres.

01:04:30 B: But she keeps her swords in a messy pile on the cavalier cot, so I don’t know how much of that is Gideon just joking and how much of that’s actually true, but it is funny anyway. And Pal, we also know, is quite organized. From “Doctor Sex,” he has a tub of sensory gel to offer, and Cam says, “He always was organised, even then.” And then of course, as we saw in this chapter, he, like, died, and we find out in Harrow the Ninth that he had a contingency plan for his own death.

01:04:58 K: Yeah, she’s also relatively subdued. There’s a great quote from Tamsyn from somewhere where she says if Cam finds something impressive, she might erupt in a wild, “Okay,” which makes me very fond. She’s also a bit contrarian. She pokes fun in a very low-key, kind of dry way. In their intro with her and Pal finding rare negatives to respond to, she’s sort of like, “Of course, Warden,” “Indubitably, Warden,” et cetera.

01:05:23 B: She just keeps coming up with different ways of phrasing the same response. It’s very funny.

01:05:29 K: We also have a great interaction with her and Gideon later on. It says, “Camilla the Sixth … half-turned her face to Gideon, briefly, expressionlessly, but that was all Gideon needed. ‘Ask me how I am and I’ll scream,’ she said. ‘How are you,’ said Camilla, who was a pill.” [both laugh] So it’s just that very deadpan humor that comes from her in this very straight way, that I really enjoy and I think just the Sixth House in general having this very dry sense about them but being quite entertaining. It’s, again, that way of being more than people expect them to be, maybe.

01:06:04 B: Loffkar on Reddit had a great comment that was like, “It's legit very hard to write a character like Camilla, who is moral, extremely serious, and non-silly in a humorous series, without them coming across as the standard ‘uptight lawful good’ trope. Camilla being lovable when she should be in opposition to a lot of what makes the series fun to read is a real coup.” It’s true. She’s kind of the straight man a lot of the time, but she’s got a lot of good lines.

01:06:28 K: Yeah, exactly, and I think even in her dynamic with Pal, he has a bit more of the— I don’t want to say dramatic, but maybe, his humor is a little more obvious or out there and he really has that exasperation.

01:06:41 B: He’s more reactive.

01:06:44 K: Yeah, exactly. The way he’s able to react to things in a way where Camilla is so much more contained and doesn’t, but then lets out these very dry, humorous things that sort of balance him out in a way that also is very off-put with the rest of the series, but because they balance each other so well, that makes people love them so much too. It really works. It’s very impressive, Tamsyn.

01:07:08 B: Cam is also described with this physical characteristic of being constantly in motion, except when she’s readying for a fight. In “Doctor Sex,” there’s this descriptive paragraph, where she says, “I started putting my weight on one foot, rolling my centre of gravity forward, then on the other. Helps me think.” And then in her intro in Gideon the Ninth, we get, “She was restless as a bird, stepping from one foot to the other, quirking her elbows, rocking from the balls of her feet to the heel.” Which I like. And then in the duels that she participates in, it’s mentioned that as soon as she knows that she’s gonna be fighting, she becomes absolutely still and fully focused. And I wanted to note that this is potentially autistic coding. I don’t know if this is intentional from Tamsyn, but I’ve seen a lot of discussion from autistic Locked Tomb readers who see themselves in Cam. You could see this kind of behavior as potentially stimming, she has these subdued emotions, the dry humor, the seriousness, she’s not the most outgoing or social person, and she doesn’t seem to have a lot of interest in people who aren’t her close friends. I’d love to hear thoughts on this from listeners.

01:08:20 K: And then, also really love this quote from recentlylocal on Tumblr that I think really gets into everything, saying, “One thing (of one million things) I love about Camilla Hect is she holds a motherfucking grudge. Dulcie slights the Warden for a handsome ginger butch? Ten year long childhood friendship OVER, Cam literally acts like she doesn’t know her. Will she keep Jody alive? Sure, but she’s going to make sure she does not enjoy one moment of it. Camilla has had enough education, THANK YOU. Coronabeth saved her life once but does that matter? Absolutely not, Corona was part of the lie, nickname privileges REVOKED, found family status TERMINATED.” I think that is very much part of the intense loyalty that, like you were saying, she does feel towards the people in her innermost circle, which is, a lot of the times, Palamedes. It’s this sense that other people outside of that, she has certain relationships with, or she has certain respect for, or can work with, but that intense loyalty is going to come around no matter what at the end of the day, and also in a very direct, very straightforward, very clear-cut way. I think there is no ifs, ands, or buts, that they are the two people who matter most to each other in their partnership, and we see over and over again the lengths that they go to for each other.

01:09:35 B: Nonasbirthday responded to this Tumblr post with this quote: “‘I don’t let go,’ said Camilla. ‘It’s my one thing.’” So she says that in Nona, but that’s a very good encapsulation of many of her characteristics.

01:09:52 K: It lends itself so much to all of her, as well. We see that she’s very tenacious, we see that she’s very prepared. She doesn’t make mistakes twice, she doesn’t get past mistakes that other people make when it comes to the people she cares about. So much of her and Pal’s relationship and their whole story and the lengths they go to over the series to try to keep each other alive and present and hold onto each other is this very intense loyalty that also is this very tenacious effort, and everything that they put in and how hard-working they are, and how much that comes across in what they put into each other as well. I think that’s so key to both of them and their relationship.

01:10:37 B: I next wanted to go over where their names come from and what they mean, because we know that that has a lot of thought put into it on Tamsyn’s part and really informs their characters. From the Gideon the Ninth extras glossary we get, “Camilla’s name was picked to go with Palamedes’—their names resonate with the “am” fragment in a way that other necromancer-cavalier pairs who love each other very much do in the book.” So, we’ll start with Palamedes’ name. Palamedes was a figure in Greek mythology featured in the Iliad, who joined the rest of the Greeks in the expedition against Troy. And the_bird_is_flat has—

01:11:14 K: Shoutout to the Iliad.

01:11:16 B: —has a great infographic-style post on Tumblr [ed. note: sorry, this was on Reddit! Our mistake] where they say, Palamedes is “said to have invented dice, added to the alphabet, invented ‘watchwords, signals, and the use of sentinels’ and ‘measures and weights,’” according to Pliny the Elder, which is all very fitting for the Master Warden of the Library. I’ve also seen elsewhere, maybe on the Wikipedia page, that he invented numbers, so again, another very fitting characteristic.

01:11:43 K: Yeah. We love that for him. Such a smart boy. And the_bird_is_flat also expands on that and says that Palamedes outsmarted Odysseus: “Instead of responding to the draft for the war, Odysseus decided to feign insanity. Palamedes saw through it and held Odysseus’ infant son Telemachus at swordpoint—”

01:11:59 B: Although, I would note that—

01:12:00 K: Or put him in front of the plow, in other tellings.

01:12:01 B: Yeah, a lot of other tellings of this myth have Palamedes putting Telemachus in front of a plow that Odysseus was pulling, so maybe there are different versions.

01:12:09 K: Sword, plow, different versions. I do like the idea of the plow resonating more with the Palamedes that we have in this book as an inspiration, he’s not the weapons guy with the sword. But yeah, “forcing Odysseus to drop the act and join up,” which then obviously leads to eventual Greek victory, Odysseus’s own journey, hero, et cetera. And then, “Odysseus later framed Palamedes as a traitor and Palamedes was stoned to death by his own side during the Trojan war.” So that’s a tragic end for him, but we don’t have to dwell on that point. [Baily laughs] I think the important point is that he was the smartest boy in all of Troy. Not in Troy. In Greece. Smartest man in Greece.

01:12:51 B: So, they go on to note in the post some parallels with Palamedes in The Locked Tomb. Both these characters are incredibly smart. The mythological Palamedes outsmarted arguably the cleverest figure in Greek mythology, Odysseus. He invented a bunch of new stuff; his actions won the war in a roundabout way, which we also see with our Palamedes, because his explosion let Harrow kill Cytherea. Also, Palamedes was killed by someone who he perceived, initially, to be on his side, just like the mythological Palamedes, because our Palamedes thought that Cytherea was an ally. I’d also like to dive into the fact that Pal was initially named Diomedes according to Tamsyn in the Gideon the Ninth glossary. And she describes Diomedes as, quote, “Athena’s favorite good boy in the Iliad. [both laugh] And gideonnavsenormousbiceps on Tumblr— sometimes I read these names of the people we’re quoting and I’m like, “Incredible.” [laughs]

01:13:51 K: Yes. Good on you.

01:13:53 B: They say, “Tamsyn … then had him and Camilla wear grey cloaks and gave Palamedes ‘even and clear’ grey eyes. Just a really nice detail since one of Athena's epithets from the Iliad and Odyssey is ‘grey-eyed goddess.’” I wonder to what extent Tamsyn chose grey just because it’s kind of a drab library color, but I do like that resonance anyway.

01:14:11 K: A bit more on Diomedes as well just from Wikipedia: it says, “Diomedes, meaning ‘god-like cunning,’ is a hero in Greek mythology, known for his participation in the Trojan War. … He ruled Argos and brought much wealth and stability to the city during his time. He was a skilled politician and was greatly respected by other rulers. … Although he was the youngest of the Achaean kings, Diomedes is considered the most experienced leader by many scholars. … Diomedes became the only human to wound two Olympians in a single day, Ares and Aphrodite. … Only Diomedes and Menelaus were offered immortality and became gods in post-Homeric mythology.”

01:14:41 B: Fascinating! Yeah, I find this very interesting, because Pal is one of only three people yet, that we know of, to become immortal Lyctors in the series, although to be fair, he does it by dying and becoming a part of someone else, but that is still a parallel. He’s also one of the only humans to wound a Lyctor in the series. Muppetebbtide on Tumblr says, “I am in zero doubt that the original name Diomedes is because Pal is successful in wounding Cytherea at the end of Gideon the Ninth,” the same way that Diomedes is the only hero to wound Aphrodite on the battlefield in the Iliad, forcing her to retreat.” Although, they then go on to say, and I find this quite interesting, “With Gideon the Ninth theming, Palamedes as a name is more likely to be linked to the Arthurian knight Sir Palamedes,” who I had never heard of in my life. [laughs] I knew about Diomedes. I’ve never actually read the Iliad, but I knew the name Diomedes. I thought this would be really interesting to explore, because that’s another shared name.

01:15:34 K: Yeah, and both feel like very big texts that could easily be pulled from, so I wouldn’t necessarily know which I think Tamsyn is more likely to be inspired from, other than maybe even a confluence of them. So, looking into the other Palamedes, not the smartest boy in Greece, in Arthurian legend, Wikipedia says, “Palamedes is a Knight of the Round Table. He is a Middle Eastern pagan who converts to Christianity later in his life, and his unrequited love for Iseult brings him into frequent conflict with Tristan. He first appears in an early 13th-century version of the Tristan and Iseult legend as a knight fighting for Princess Iseult's hand at a tournament; he ultimately loses to the protagonist Tristan.”

01:16:17 B: Well, well, well. Well, well, well, well, well! [laughs] There are definitely some parallels here, right? There might be nothing, but the fact that Tamsyn envisioned Pal as Middle Eastern in her post on Tumblr where she gives her descriptions of the characters makes it potentially more likely that this was an intentional parallel. There’s a clear parallel with Gideon and Pal both vying for Cytherea’s hand, so to speak, especially with the very medieval, courtly love framework of hand-kissing, doing small acts of service, expressing their feelings only in a very restrained way, through which those romances are shown in Gideon the Ninth.

01:16:54 K: Yeah, I think all of the Gideon and Dulcinea interactions very much play into that courtly framework, and that being the ground for their flirtations, so that is a very interesting parallel to draw as well. The Wikipedia description continues, “Many tales also have Palamedes as the hunter of the Questing Beast, an abomination only the chosen can kill. The hunt is as frustrating and fruitless as the pursuit of Iseult, and in most versions remains uncompleted. However, in the Post-Vulgate Palamedes' conversion to Christianity during the Grail Quest allows him to finally slay it after he, Percival, and Galahad have chased it into a lake. The Questing Beast is a chimera-like monster appearing in many medieval texts of Arthurian legend. The Questing Beast story can be interpreted as a symbol of the incest, violence and chaos that eventual destroys Arthur’s kingdom.”

01:17:40 B: I had also never heard of this, which seems like a very basic Arthurian legend I probably should've heard of, because I feel like we spent four consecutive years in elementary school learning about medieval myths. [laughs]

01:17:54 K: Yeah. Well also, when they’re naming him, Percival, and Galahad, I’m like, “Yeah, I know those guys. Why didn’t I ever hear as much about Palamedes?” That would’ve been an interesting thing to know about before picking up Gideon the Ninth many years later in my life. I also definitely don’t think you ever featured in BBC Merlin, which is a frequent text I cite back to when trying to remember Arthurian legend. [Baily laughs] They did not cast a hot young British man as him.

01:18:20 B: No! Wow. If Tamsyn intended a parallel with this Palamedes as Pal’s namesake, I think this Questing Beast, which seems to be the main feature of the knight Palamedes’ storylines in Arthurian legend, this Questing Beast could be very easily interpreted as the Resurrection Beast. They’re both described as this horrible mish-mash of many different animals and organic things, and chasing the Beast into a lake is very reminiscent of wrestling a Resurrection Beast into a black hole, which is how the only known dead Resurrection Beast was killed, or the only one to have been killed directly by a Lyctor. So, maybe this has some relevance to the end of the Nine Houses in the future or the fate of some of the Resurrection Beats, although we know they’re actually not the way John and the Lyctors described them. Just a lot of interesting stuff there.

01:19:08 K: Yeah. I feel like we’re paralleling Arthur’s kingdom with God’s horrible empire.

01:19:12 B: Yeah.

01:19:14 K: Could be interesting. I also think, in a similar way, when we were discussing— not the other Palamedes, but Diomedes’s namesake. Just the idea of how Pal is one of the only humans to have harmed a Lyctor so far also kind of speaks to that if we want to view them as these Beasts as well, he has managed to do that. So, that’s interesting.

01:19:36 B: Although, I will say, it’s interesting doing this research, but I also feel like we could throw a dart at a dartboard and pick a mythological figure and find one element of their story that matches up with a Locked Tomb character, so obviously not all these things were intentional, I don’t think.

01:19:52 K: Absolutely. No, and I think that’s the thing. We’re picking this section of Palamedes for a mythology story that parallels it here, but I’m sure there are countless other stories that we never read when we were younger about him and Percival and Galahad and Gawain and the others going off and having other adventures that don’t parallel as neatly to what happens in the Nine Houses, and I think the fact that we’re able to point to these two potential namesakes and say, “This is how these tropes could apply here to this” speaks more to the timelessness of those certain tropes.

01:20:22 B: Yeah, very true.

01:20:24 K: I do think that the one in the Iliad being the smartest boy in Greece does feel very Pal to me, though. I am gonna hold on to that. [laughs]

01:20:31 B: On to Camilla’s name! So, there’s a great Tumblr post from dedicated-duck about Camilla’s name. They say, “Camilla, at face value, comes from Latin and means ‘waiting girl’ which fits with the way she’s initially portrayed in Gideon the Ninth as the perfect cavalier, always walking half a step behind Palamedes, and acting as much like his catch-all assistant as his cavalier. But Tamsyn Muir said that she viewed Camilla as Middle Eastern, and the Arabic name Kamilah means ‘perfect, complete’, which almost seems like a spoiler for what we get in Harrow the Ninth. Also ‘Hect’, at face value, almost passes as a Sixth House name, due to how similar it sounds to ‘Hex’, but ‘Hect’ actually means one hundred, not six. Seeing as the first name was a spoilery easter egg for future events in Harrow the Ninth, I wonder if the last name is also a spoiler easter egg for something that’s going to happen in Alecto the Ninth?” Both parts very cool. I have no idea how “Hect” meaning a hundred could possibly be a spoiler. I guess it could be symbolic of how the Sixth House broke away from the Empire at the end of Nona, but I guess I’ll keep my eyes open. [laughs]

01:21:35 K: Then, on the other hand, Palamedes has a very Sixth House numeric name, so I’m not quite sure what the divide there would be.

01:21:43 B: Maybe she didn’t want to have “Hex” because it sounds like a curse? I don’t know. Astraque on Tumblr has more to say about Camilla’s name. They say, “Camilla’s the name of a minor character in the Aeneid, the foundational Roman epic: Camilla of the Volsci. She’s a female warrior who was bound to a spear at birth by her father. Vergil says she can run so quickly, that she can run across water without wetting her feet and can run over a field of grain without crushing a single stalk.” And I really like that description, because it immediately put in mind the quote from Gideon from the duel with Judith, where she says “Camilla Hect off the leash was like light moving across water.” Or, wait, no, I think that’s actually from the fight with Cytherea. Anyway, some fight.

01:22:30 K: Some fight. She’s moving across water. She’s light on her feet. We love this for her.

01:22:35 B: Muppetebbtide also notes that there was a Camilla of the Volsci in the Aeneid who’s a “warrior maiden vastly underestimated until it’s too late and she starts killing,” which is a great description.

01:22:45 K: Woah, yeah. And another from astraque on that says that Camilla “fights against the Trojan force on behalf of the Rutuli, the original inhabitants of Italy. She is killed in battle and Diana avenges her death. And what I find interesting here is that originally, in the Aeneid, we are wholly sympathetic with the Trojans as they flee their destroyed city in search of a new homeland, but when they get to Italy we suddenly realize that they – although destined to do this – are colonizers and have to displace the people already living here. To me, this echoes the realization in Harrow the Ninth that the Nine Houses are… in fact not good.”

01:23:16 B: Yeah. I love that. Again, I feel like that’s something that potentially a whole, vast number of mythological characters could have associated with their names. But it is a really important idea to think about with respect to this book series, and we’ll return to this idea in a second in a later part of this discussion.

01:23:36 K: It also brings to mind for me, too, how even just the ways we’re able to point to a Camilla in these Roman myths and Trojan myths and Palamedes in this story and those parallels too, and how much of that is those being very familiar, taught classics, lexicons of mythology in Western studies and that sort of thing. We’re able to point to those names because a lot of people know their Greek and Roman mythology, and those popular phases to have, so is that where we’re all getting from? But the same could be said of Tamsyn.

01:24:09 B: Yeah, exactly. There’s another important aspect of Camilla’s character that I wanted to touch on before we move on to Pal and Cam’s relationship to each other. Camilla is likely intentionally written as a parallel with Mary Magdalene in the same way that Gideon is a Jesus figure. So, in case you’re not familiar with Mary Magdalene, she was a woman considered to be a saint in the Catholic Church, according to Wikipedia, who traveled with Jesus as one of his followers, and in all four canonical gospels, Mary Magdalene is a witness to the crucifixion of Jesus. “All four gospels identify her, either alone or as a member of a larger group of women, as the first to witness the empty tomb and the first to witness Jesus’s resurrection.” And in Harrow the Ninth, I noticed immediately when reading that Camilla quotes the Bible when speaking about Pal’s remains. I didn’t know the exact chapter and verse at the time, but it was a reference that definitely made my brain go, “Hmmm, I’ve read that before.” [both laugh] So, she quotes the gospel of John, John 20:13: “They have taken away my Lord’s body, and I don’t know where they have put Him.” And that quote is from the New Living translation, because I think the Douay-Rheims version that Tamsyn often uses does not use that phrasing. But to compare what Camilla says is, “The Cohort took the rest of him away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Which is literally the exact same phrasing.

01:25:34 K: Yeah, and camilllahect on Tumblr expands on this and says, “Gideon is a Jesus figure, obvs.” We’ve discussed that already on the podcast. They continue, “The people at Jesus’s death were Mary his mother, John the beloved disciple, and Mary Magdalene. The people at Gideon’s death were her mother (trapped inside a sword), Harrowhark her beloved, and Camilla Hect. She quotes the gospel of John, which, minus the Cohort bit, is what Mary Magdalene says when she can’t find Jesus’s body the morning of the resurrection. A few minutes after this is when Harrow fixes the broken bits of Palamedes’ bones and discovers his revenant thriving in the River. Not a resurrection, precisely, but close enough.”

01:26:09 B: Yeah, I thought that post was interesting. I’m not completely convinced that that’s the resurrection that Cam witnessed if she’s a Mary Magdalene parallel. I’m curious about Kiriona. I really hope we get more detail on the battle where God took her body in Alecto, because possibly Cam was a witness to God making her alive again, you know what I mean?

01:26:27 K: Yeah, we’ve discussed before how there’s that huge gap in the story that we still have of what exactly happened between Gideon dying on Canaan House and Harrow then being with God on the Mithraeum and what happened with Gideon’s body when B.O.E. arrived and all of that. That’s still a huge question mark.

01:26:49 B: Well, not even that. I specifically mean the event that Camilla just references as an aside in Nona where B.O.E. had Gideon’s body and then there was a battle with the Empire’s forces and then God took Gideon’s body. Yeah. And how did she become Kiriona?

01:27:07 K: How it actually was revived, because obviously it’s preserved for a while. Yeah. So we have her first on Canaan House witnessing the death, and then potentially witnessing the resurrection. And yeah, I agree, I think the resurrection would have to be more tied to Gideon as the Jesus figure.

01:27:20 B: Yeah. Not to say that Palamedes is not super important to Camilla, but I think that this intentional Mary Magdalene parallel is resonating more with Jesus as Gideon.

01:27:35 K: Although, I guess, the quote is referring to Pal in that instance. But I think maybe that is more to signpost her as that figure, if not necessarily referring to Pal in the same way as Gideon or serving the same role in the story here as Gideon does.

01:27:48 B: Thunderon made a Tumblr post from before Nona, so this is very prophetic, but it’s still relevant, so I do want to quote it. They say, “Tamsyn has made it overtly clear that Camilla’s storyline is paralleling a lot of Mary’s Biblical experiences. I think by following this string of theory, we can get a rough grasp on what we’re going to see in Alecto the Ninth. Muir said “copy and paste” with John 20:13 and went with it. Respect. But that line made me sit back and think, “Why?” Because Muir has shown that she doesn’t put in Biblical references for no reason. Her Biblical references usually foreshadow plot points. So why does Muir use this line, in this situation, with Camilla Hect? In the Bible, Mary Magdalene is a witness to three major Biblical events. She witnesses: the Crucifixion of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, and the Empty Tomb. In Gideon the Ninth, Camilla is there to witness Gideon’s death, which I established is our crucifixion. What about the other two?” And so we just talked about the potential resurrection with God resurrecting Gideon, or at least the event where they lost Gideon, and Cam was definitely there to witness Kiriona waking up from her false sleep after they stole her from Ianthe’s ship, which, not the resurrection, but it’s interesting that she was also there. And then, one thing that I do want to point out as potentially relevant is that Paul was there in the empty tomb to see Alecto waking up. And, correct me if I’m wrong because it’s been a while since I read that part of Nona, but I’m pretty sure they were there. Boom. The empty tomb!

01:29:04 K: Yeah, exactly, that’s what the empty tomb immediately called to mind. Absolutely.

01:29:09 B: Just one last thing on Mary Magdalene, which I personally think is quite funny. I was reading the Wikipedia article about her because it’s been a long time since I was in Sunday school. And I got to this part, which really made me laugh: “The portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute began in 591, when Pope Gregory I made an Easter sermon which identified Mary Magdalene with two other women in the gospel of Luke: Mary of Bethany and the unnamed ‘sinful woman’ who anointed Jesus’s feet. This resulted in a widespread belief that Mary Magdelene was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman. In 1969—” [laughs] So fifteen hundred years later—

01:29:47 K: Took a minute.

01:29:48 B: “—Pope Paul VI removed the identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and the ‘sinful woman’ from the General Roman Calendar, but the view of her as a former prostitute has persisted in popular culture.” And I genuinely was laughing out loud, because in Nona the Ninth, the teacher Joli assumes that Cam is a prostitute. That’s what Pyrrha explains to Cam about the interaction that they have, and that’s got to be an intentional joke, right? If she had Camilla say that exact line.

01:30:15 K: Yeah, I think that’s definitely on purpose. Again, the signposting a little bit, slash, the in-jokes for readers who catch on to what’s going on there. I think that feels very appropriate to the kind of stuff that she puts in the text.

01:30:26 B: Yeah. And nothing against sex workers, but justice for Mary Magdalene for being misrepresented for fifteen hundred years. [both laugh] That seems to be Tamsyn’s point as well. [laughs]

01:30:38 K: I think, yeah, very funny in that one Wikipedia paragraph to be like, “Oh, this happened in 500-whatever, but then in 1969, we fixed it.” [Baily laughs] It’s like, that is a lot of time covered from one sentence to the next that we’re just not addressing there. That is many, many, many years of human existence.

01:30:57 B: Pope Paul VI, most feminist Catholic pope.

01:31:01 K: Don’t know anything about this man, but yeah, let’s just go on the record saying that. Official belief of One Flesh, One End.

01:31:08 B: So, now that we’ve covered Cam and Pal’s names and important characteristics, I wanted to go over their relationship to each other and their childhood history. They grew up together in the Sixth House. They’re kind of the epitome of “indoor kids.” The Sixth House is this closed-up space station on Mercury. Windows are an exciting for Sixth House children in the “Doctor Sex” short story. Fire is a big fear, just like in the Ninth House. Also of note is the fact that Cam and Pal, in the “Doctor Sex” short story, have never seen wood up close before, and they’re absolutely shocked to see paper. So their whole world is metal and plastic. There are no organic elements, really. They had to pass a lot of exams and beat a lot of other candidates to obtain their positions as Master Warden and Hand. There’s also— the Sixth House is kind of like Iceland. There’s low genetic diversity. So, Cam and Pal are second cousins, meaning that they share a great-grandparent, and there’s a genetic registry, so they know exactly which people they can have kids with. I highly recommend the “Doctor Sex” short story. It’s got a lot of fun background. It’s like a slice-of-life from when they’re thirteen. We’ll link it in the show notes.

01:32:20 K: Yeah, it’s got a very charming story arc of its own as well as just being a really nice little glimpse at their lives as children, as indoor kids in the Sixth House. But yeah, one thing that we also see is there definitely seems to be a very hands-off, or just very unique form of parenting in the Sixth, that definitely doesn’t mirror what we would consider a traditional nuclear family style. Pal’s mother seems to be completely uninvolved in raising Palamedes, at least by age thirteen. Parents aren’t really involved with each other at all. There’s a parenting buy-out system where it seems you do less work, or teaching, in exchange for raising a child, which we learn Pal’s father, that applies to. And we also know that Cam has two dads because Juno Zeta refers to seeing them all the time, but we don’t really know anything else about them. And we know that Cam has a half-sister, Kiana.

01:33:10 B: Yeah, so we have these little details about their family life, but we know basically nothing.

01:33:16 K: Well, and it also seems very hard to apply what maybe we would consider of a family structure to what we know about them in terms of what their relationships with their parents or siblings, half-siblings, actually were growing up in the Sixth House model of things. Cam and Pal do have each other, though, and we get the sense that they never really spend any time apart. Literally have spent every hour together since childhood, already spending all of their time together in the “shuck,” small room, at age eighteen.

01:33:47 B: Thirteen.

01:33:48 K: And then we see this mirrored at Canaan House together too– oh, at thirteen. And then we see this really mirrored in their time at Canaan House together too, where they’re constantly together.

01:33:58 B: Yeah, and they also seem to be sharing the bed in the Sixth House chambers. We get this quote when Gideon first sees their quarters: “Gideon had peeked through the open door of the bedroom, into a dark nest where a huge whiteboard stared down at the ancient, wheezing four-poster bed, very neatly made. There was no question about whether or not Camilla inhabited the horrible cot attached to the end, cavalier-style. It sagged beneath assorted weapons and tins of metal polish.” [laughs] So it is not being used. We also, in their introductory scene in Gideon the Ninth, when Gideon talks about how long – well, doesn’t talk – indicates how long Harrow has been gone in the facility under Canaan, Camilla says to Pal, “‘I wouldn’t have left you alone for twenty-seven hours.’” And Pal says, “‘Of course not. I’d be dead.’” But imagine never being away from someone for even a single day. [laughs] That’s actually kind of wild.

01:34:51 K: Yeah, I was gonna say, it’s a very dry quote, but actually twenty-seven hours, that’s just over a day. Having someone in your life who, the thought of spending that amount of time away from them is an impossibility, that is a very intense relationship. And we see that intensity really displayed as well in their devotion to each other. They clearly love each other very much. That is where this is all coming from. They’re so devoted to each other. Just the arc of their whole relationship over the series, we have—

01:35:28 B: I only put one quote from Nona in the notes because I didn’t want to make us both cry. [laughs]

01:35:35 K: I know, I know. I’m trying to talk my way into this. It’s fine. They love each other a lot. We both feel fine about it. We will talk more in a future episode about their relationship in Nona the Ninth and further in the series and how that changes, but we have– the quote that we wanted to include here from Nona the Ninth is where it says, “‘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.’”

01:36:05 B: Oh, my god.

01:36:06 K: My voice cracked on saying “love.” That’s how capable I am of talking about them. But it is, they spent all their time together, and they have such a single-minded, hard-working focus towards everything that they do, and also towards their devotion for each other, and the intensity of that, and how much they feel it, and how loyal they are to that, and how much they stand by that for each other throughout the whole series is something that is very overwhelming and admirable and I love them so much.

01:36:33 B: Well, and that aspect of their relationship, the fact that they’re so devoted to and respectful of each other, started when they were kids. We get this quote from the “Doctor Sex” short story, which, again, is set when they’re thirteen, where Cam says, “Attractive and competent? You got put in the Alexandrites. They got Cohort recommendations for out-of-system deployment.” And I’d just like to note that the point of the Alexandrites is to diversify the gene pool. [both laugh] Cam goes on to say, “The Warden used to joke about losing me to the Alexandrites. This was him flattering himself. If I hadn’t been his cavalier, I would have worked in data.” But imagine, your thirteen-year-old necromancer partner is joking about losing you to the people whose job it literally is to leave the system and find attractive people to bring back to the Sixth. [laughs]

01:37:17 K: Very high opinions of each other in many different ways.

01:37:19 B: But yeah, there’s always this mutual respect between them. They always seem to use each other’s titles, at least in front of the narrators that we see in the books. And I wanted to quote this funny post from scholarhect on Tumblr, who says, “Oh, and I finally get why Camilla always calls him ‘Warden,’” and they go on to quote from “Doctor Sex,” where Camilla says, “One of the Collections team found their voice and said, “‘Scholar Sextus, this is all conjecture. Unless you’ve used psychometry, in which case it’s a breach.’ I was pleased they’d called him Scholar Sextus.” And then scholarhect posted this edited version of another Tumblr post by beadyeyes, which goes, “If I had a smartass adept, I would hype him up so much. I would make him wait outside so I could go in first and be like, ‘Get ready, here comes the most specialest Master Warden ever. If you don’t cheer and clap for him I’ll fucking blow this whole building up.” [both laugh]

01:38:11 K: That is the vibe! Yeah. I think knowing how young Pal became Warden too, you do get a sense of, probably not a lot of people did take him seriously or use the correct title all the time too, and the idea of Cam doing that as a sign of respecting that about him, and how that devotion to that plays out with each other is very nice. And I think another key part of their dynamic as well, too, and where their devotion to each other really leaps out in Gideon the Ninth where it becomes clear how strongly they do feel about each other as a necromancer-cavalier pair is when we grasp that Pal really clearly understands that this original version of Lyctorhood is pretty evil, and won’t even consider the idea of sacrificing Cam for power. It never crosses his mind once he does put together what’s going on here that that is something that he would ever, ever do. He says, in Gideon the Ninth, that “‘if I’m right—if Lyctorhood is nothing more or less than the synthesis of eight individual theorems… then it’s wrong. There’s a flaw in the underlying logic. The whole thing is an ugly mistake.’” So, Pal says this about the idea of Lyctorhood before we learn anything later in Harrow the Ninth that there ever could’ve been another way, the idea that it was a mistake all along. But he recognizes immediately that there is something innately wrong about it, and that that cannot be— the way that cannot be something that he would ever do and he doesn’t consider for a heartbeat that he would do that to Cam. I think that speaks so much to their relationship.

01:39:40 B: He says to Judith that, quote, “‘My conscience doesn’t permit me to help anyone do what we have all embarked upon.’” So it’s against his conscience to proceed with Lyctorhood, because he understands what it is. And he says to Ianthe that he discarded Ianthe’s conclusion as “...ghastly. Ghastly, and obvious.” Ghastly is a pretty good word. That’s what it is. I also wanted to briefly touch on the whole shipping controversy around Cam and Pal. There are the folks who see Cam, or maybe even Pal, as asexual or aromatic. I don’t know if we have a ton of textual information in the books about Cam’s sexuality. We never see her be interested in anyone, but we never see her not being interested in anyone, I guess is the best way to put it. She’s not a narrator except for in that one story where she’s thirteen, so, respect to the people who see themselves in her, it’s just not something that I personally gleaned from reading. Then we have the childhood-friends-to-lovers people. A classic. Kind of bland, but it’s classic for a reason. I get it. Then there are the people who are like—

01:40:54 K: Yeah, I love to hate on friends-to-lovers or childhood-friends-to-lovers generally, because I feel like it’s usually put up against something that’s a much more interesting dynamic, and I find it very hard to root for when there’s another option, but when it hits well, it hits well, and I think in this case, it does hit well.

01:41:13 B: Then there’s the idea of a queerplatonic partnership, or a, quote, “secret third thing,” which, again, not something that I personally have any experience with, but if that’s something that resonates with you and your life experience, that totally makes sense. Yeah, I feel like I’m constantly seeing stuff from people who are so invested in arguing that their interpretation is the only correct one. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I feel like there’s not enough textual information to make a firm conclusion about the nature of their relationship.

01:41:45 K: Yeah, and I think we’re not in the business of doing that. I think what we can off of the text is that they love each other, they’re very devoted to each other, they value each other and place each other above all else except for perhaps their conscience, all else in terms of, their driving focuses in the story is each other, and, again, not to get into Nona too much, but where their arc leads them is this synthesis of them together, and that being this perfect, complete whole. I don’t personally agree or find it as validating enough to insist that you have to discard one interpretation or that it there can’t be anything romantic or sexual, it must only be this pure, platonic— I think there is a love there and people are going to read it is as they’re going to read it, and I think that is very valid. I think you can feel the emotions you want to feel about the relationship that they have and the love that they have for each other. I don’t think you can take away that that is there in one form or the other. I think we’ve said on this before that we’re also just not particularly interested in the people who balk at shipping them or considering the different forms of that love because a note in a text someplace indicates that they are second cousins, and that’s super important to the canon of the story. I think it’s such a ridiculous thing to focus on, to be honest.

01:43:10 B: Yeah, especially in a series where there’s necrophilia, there’s cannibalism, there’s murder, there’s twin incest which is made fairly explicit on-page, much more so than anything between Pal and Cam. Yeah.

01:43:23 K: Yeah, if you’re reading these books and you’re like, “Oh my god, they share a great-grandparent. How dare you even consider that the love that they have for each other after growing up together in this very small gene pool could be anything more than pure, platonic cousins,” I just think that’s not really the vibe. To each their own, but we’re certainly not interested in those sort of squabbles.

01:43:48 B: The last thing I want to touch on in this podcast— and believe me, I had to cut so many notes out of this document. I had a whole section on their relationship with Gideon and Harrow, their relationship with Dulcie, and hopefully we can make that a discussion in a future episode.

01:44:03 K: All of which we will get to, one way or another, in one episode or another. We’ve got so much book to cover.

01:44:10 B: Yeah, especially the stuff about Dulcie, I’m sure we will fit that in in a future ep.

01:44:14 K: We will. We will.

01:44:15 B: The last thing I wanted to cover about them and their relationship is how, even though they have a more equal partnership than most necromancers and cavaliers, they’re still part of the Empire of the Nine Houses, and they still – even though we would think of them as good people, especially compared to so many of the other characters in this series – they still adhere to this unhealthy necro-cav dynamic in many ways, and still benefit from and are a cog of the Empire for most of their story.

01:44:47 K: Yeah. Babylyctor says on Tumblr, “I get drama and pain are entertaining, but being ready to die for another person at any moment is not ideal. I’d say the worst thing is everything that comes before this expectation of constant servitude. No matter how you sugarcoat it, it’s servitude. Camilla ‘I wouldn’t leave you alone for twenty-seven hours’ is responsible for Palamedes in a way he’s not for her.” And I think that is an important balance to keep in check when we talk about this idea of having this very intense relationship, someone you couldn’t be apart from for twenty-seven hours, that it is presented from that angle, that she wouldn’t leave him alone. He says he’d die without her. She is there to protect him, to ensure his safety. That is the nature of their devotion. It’s not that he doesn’t have that same devotion to her, he does, but that is very much in the relationship, and in the arc of Cam gathering the skull fragments and trying to keep him alive in that way. That is an act of devotion that she is carrying out for him specifically.

01:45:41 B: Yeah, they live in the society of the Nine Houses, no matter what their feelings are about each other. Coronabeth on Tumblr says, “The necro-cav relationship is unbalanced and unhealthy and just generally bad, and no matter how much love and respect Palamedes has for her, Camilla is still his cavalier. And when you think about it, he prepared for his death by tying his soul to a piece of his skull with the intent that Camilla would wade through whatever carnage there was and put him back together. Camilla is just supposed to bear that burden and carry out whatever endgame Pal had in mind while grieving him and never complaining.” And of course it’s so indicative of their devotion to each other that Camilla does do this, she does pick up all the fragments of his skull, and painstakingly reconstruct it, and carry it with her for months and months and months. But that’s not something that we would find acceptable in a relationship in our world, you know what I mean? It’s because they live in the Nine Houses that that’s something that we the reader see as admirable.

01:46:36 K: And have this dynamic that’s ultimately based on servitude, which goes more one way than another.

01:46:42 B: Babylyctor elaborates in the same post: “Palamedes seems to understand how fucked up everything is, at least a bit. But still he exploded and tasked Cam with picking up the pieces. That’s cruel. Even the people who we’d call ‘the good ones’ are immersed in this fucked-up dynamic.” I thought it was kind of important to point out and describe, especially given all the great discussion people are having about it in these posts, the fact that even though we see Cam and Pal as potentially the only morally good people in this series, their lives are still shaped by the Empire.

01:47:16 K: Yeah, but that being said, we do also see the ways in which there is some pushback to this idea, or what it should mean. As you were saying, Pal does reject the idea that he would ever take up Lyctorhood the way that it’s originally presented, that he would ever do that to Cam. There is a very clear line that is there in terms of how he views their relationship. He doesn’t think that her servitude to him should be in that way, and it seems, based on the events of Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth, that Pal figured out an alternative to the version of Lyctorhood that killed the cavalier, which is interesting that that is something he strove for. In Harrow the Ninth, to Harrow, he says, “Tell me you finished the work. You out of everyone could have worked out the end to the beginning I was starting to explicate. Your cavalier, Reverend Daughter—”. So there is the sense there that he was starting to put that together, he was starting to figure out that there was another way.

01:48:10 B: So I guess my big question here is, did he figure out a version of quote, unquote, “perfect Lyctorhood,” which was this big theory in the fandom before Nona came out, the idea that there was some way to have an equitable Lyctorhood that left both parties alive, or was Pal always theorizing about the grand lysis that is completed in Nona? We don’t actually know yet. Maybe we’ll find out in Alecto. But this idea of quote, unquote “perfect Lyctorhood” might not actually exist, and Pal might not have thought of it. I also wanted to point out that lots of people have speculated that Cam totally would’ve sacrificed herself so that Pal could become a Lyctor at the end of Gideon the Ninth, specifically because she doesn’t prevent Gideon from doing this. She obviously sees exactly what Gideon is doing, and she’s like, “Yeah, that seems reasonable.” And maybe Pal sacrificed himself first specifically to prevent this. We don’t know exactly what they were thinking.

01:48:59 K: Yeah. The rejection of the dynamic is coming from Pal by not wanting Cam to do that. The rejection of the dynamic is never coming from Cam herself balking in any way at the suggestion that she would be expected to do that. I think that really speaks to how internalized that dynamic is with the necromancers and cavaliers, this devotion which we’ve been speaking of in a very positive way, but in a very consuming, unhealthy way, where, even as we see toward the end of Gideon the Ninth, the way that the relationship between Gideon and Harrow has intensified in a way where that is what Gideon’s devotion leads her to take that action. I think that that says a lot about the unhealthy balance of the dynamic between necro and cavalier that just because Pal was uncomfortable with doesn’t mean that Cam was in the same way.

01:49:47 B: They do complete that grand lysis in Nona the Ninth, and we’re not gonna talk too much about Nona the Ninth, again. But that conclusion that they do come to about Lyctorhood is an equitable solution in that both Pal and Cam die, but should we as the reader take that to be a good— I really don’t think that’s the way Tamsyn’s presenting it in the book. Does that approach fully overturn or subvert the negative aspects of House culture? And was it what they originally intended to do all along after figuring out Lyctorhood, studying and maybe changing how the original Lyctors do it, or was it just the best they could do in the circumstances? Again, we don’t know yet, but I feel like the way the scene is written, we’re not really supposed to see that as a triumphant subversion of what the original Lyctors did.

01:50:37 K: No, I think it feels very tragic in a way. It feels very much like they are able to be together in a way that they wanted, they are able to achieve this, but also we have lost both of them as a reader, and I think you really feel that as you’re reading it, as a loss of both of them. I would be very curious, again, if there was even a possibility in Pal’s mind of another version of perfect Lyctorhood that simply wasn’t possible due to what had happened to him, or if that was what they were working towards all along, or wanted all along, because of their own devotion to each other and how they saw that as being the endgame.

01:51:16 B: Exactly. To slightly shift the topic from their eventual Lyctorhood back to their original relationship with each other that we see in Gideon the Ninth, Judith, in “As Yet Unsent,” the short story that came with the Harrow paperback, is generally a pretty biased narrator, but she says some stuff that’s kind of true. She says in her internal narration, “The relationship between cavalier and necromancer could so easily curdle into codependency… a loss of self on both sides. An obsessive fusion of halves, not two complementary forces.” And they do literally lose themselves on both sides. Judith also rags on Camilla for becoming, quote, “an empty remembrance of someone who should have taught you the danger of obsession.” So, again, she’s not the most unbiased narrator out there, but she’s telling us some facts. And their relationship is quite codependent. Is that healthy?

01:52:21 K: Yeah, I think the very nature of the necro-cav dynamic and the way that we see it play out in this book with such intensity and, again, we keep saying the word devotion, going back to that, does put that kind of codependency on a pedestal in a little bit way, where we feel that and we see how much that’s tied into the love that they have for each other as this very intense thing. But is that actually— are we meant to view that as ideal? Are we meant to view that as healthy? I think it is very questionable. Nikkicafeina on Tumblr says, “Can't believe Camilla Hect waited until the back end of book three to drop the arc words for this series: Love and freedom don't coexist. What a star. The single most codependent thing I've ever heard. Succinctly sums up that there is not a single person in this universe who knows how to love in a healthy way. Hope someone figures out that death is natural, separation is necessary, and boundaries are essential.”

01:53:12 B: [laughs] We will see.

01:53:14 K: Yeah, that’s a very different take. Who knows. I think that love is presented in a very codependent, intense way in this series, and that does feel like a very major point of it.

01:53:27 B: Yeah. Codewitch has a post much along the same lines, saying, “Whenever someone in the Locked Tomb fandom calls Camilla, the whole Cam/Pal thing, ‘normal’ or ‘comparatively well adjusted’—” and I would personally add, saying that Cam is, quote, “the one with the braincell,” which is a take I see all the time. Sorry. Codewitch continues, “I’m like. Look, don’t let Cam’s deadpan demeanor or Pal’s nerdiness seduce you: they may not be disaster lesbians but it’s purely on technicality. They are what you see in the dictionary when you look up ‘codependent’. Cam carried fragments of his bones for months with nary a necromancer nor a plan in sight. They shared a body passing notes to each other because a bone hand wasn’t good enough. Both killed themselves rather than let the other die. Cam died to become Paul. Pal was already dead but he died again to become Paul. This is toxic codependency 101.” I mean, literally toxic. It leads to death. It should have a skull and crossbones on the label.

01:54:13 K: Exactly, yeah. And that’s why I think when I talk about not being able to separate the romantic or platonic, or finding it foolish to try to separate the romantic from it, I do think there is something that is very familiar in a romantic sense there, where we are very used to seeing romantic love presented in a very— we are used to seeing love that is intense, and devoted, and codependent, and all of those things, presented as a form of romantic love. We are used to seeing that being an expression of romantic love. So I think that it is very valid to read it that way, because that is how we are used to seeing those two things presented very similarly, almost? And I think seeing that, though, as a good baseline, or in any way healthier than other relationships in this series is maybe not the ideal interpretation to take from this. To be fair, they are healthier than certain other relationships in this series. [Baily laughs] But I would not say they are ideal.

01:55:07 B: To wrap up this discussion section, I wanted to read from this very long post by theriverbeyond on Tumblr that I think sums up very eloquently what we’ve been trying to get at. They say, “It is soooooo interesting to compare the way the Sixth engage with the necro-cav dynamic,” contrasts them with Third and Eighth houses, “which are two of the most explicitly exploitative but also in my opinion the most honest necro-cav relationships in the entire series – they're literally exploitative, literally consumptive, literally violent, built on unquestioning devotion that demands blood. Pal and Cam seem almost idyllic in comparison, and yet their relationships are no less shaped by the Empire's cult of violent and required devotion. … There's no extricating their intimate relationship from the setting of violence in which that relationship is trapped in, i.e. the cavalier as meat, the cavalier as a battery, and the human body as something to be consumed and exploited. And they KNOW their relationships are built on violence. Palamedes seems visibly uncomfortable with the power dynamic inherent to the necro-cav existence! … Yet they exist within and directly benefit from the bloody gears of the Empire without complaint. … Instead of rejecting the paradigm at all, Pal and Cam seem to have taken the stance of ‘through the power of love we can make necro-cav healthy, actually’, but again this is dishonest – no amount of romanticization of necro-cav consumption allows their relationship to actually be non-exploitative.” And I would like to add that the Sixth House has fully seceded from the Empire by the end of Nona, so in a way, they are no longer existing within and benefitting from the Empire, but still, I think their whole story throughout Gideon and Harrow follows this.

01:56:36 K: Yeah, and in a way, you could see their becoming Paul also as a way of stepping outside of that narrative and that dynamic, but whether that is an ultimately healthy or tragic thing is still very questionable. It’s just a removal of themselves from that dynamic in a similar way.

01:56:56 B: Like, feeding their deaths into the death empire. Is that subversive? [laughs]

01:57:02 K: Yeah, exactly. Do we feel good about that? I don’t personally think I feel good about that. Theriverbeyond continues, “Their relationship is especially interesting because of how Cam has thrown herself into the position of ‘cavalier’ with complete abandon, leaving Pal unwilling to truly extricate himself from the role he has been assigned despite his clear discomfort with that level of devotion. See: ‘I can't bear this, I'm eating your life’, ‘I never had rights to [your soul]’ – but, you know, he didn't have to become the Master Warden, he didn't have to accept Cam's devotion, he didn't have to choose her as his cavalier. He chose to bear this, and he chooses to accept her ceding rights to her soul. I mean he does explode himself to prevent her from throwing herself on a spike to force his ascension but like, that didn't really stick, did it? Pal wants to escape the societal hierarchy he was born into, Cam says ‘no’, and he accepts that answer, again and again and again. ‘There was no alternative’ / ‘We had the choice to stop’.”

01:57:52 B: Yeah, interesting quote from Cytherea there to end the post. I do agree with this, but I think it also is worth mentioning, the thing that we discussed a bit earlier, the fact that the Empire relies so much on the exploitation of children. Pal and Cam became cavalier and necromancer as children, and that shaped the course of their lives from them. Can you meaningfully make a choice as a child to take up full responsibility for another person’s life? Probably not. In our society, we would not say that that is an informed choice. And yet the fact that they’re forced to make it as children, or heavily encouraged, slash, coerced into making that choice as young children has completely shaped their whole lives up until they’re twenty years old. And it’s only at twenty years old that they start considering that there has to be another avenue from the choice that they made as kids.

01:58:49 K: Yeah, and I also think, everything we’re saying, we live in a society. I don’t think it’s a sense that Cam or Pal as children, in stepping into these roles, is making a choice to accept those societal roles. It’s not something that you would see as an option to accept or not accept. It’s the framework that you exist in. It is the way that things function, and so I think how it does play out is that you have someone who begin to care about, and that is the only framework in which you know how to learn to care about them, is that if this is someone who I want in my life, who I have this friendship with, who I care about, what do I do with these feelings of care for another person? You are shown that the way that you express that is through this dynamic of devotion as necro and cavalier. That is the dynamic that will allow you to have a friendship, and have a closeness, and to be in each other’s lives, so I don’t think it’s so much that that’s a choice that either of them make to accept the dynamic, it’s that that is the only avenue that they have to have this relationship.

01:59:54 B: Exactly. They didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. They exist in the context of all in which they live and what came before them, so to speak. [both laugh]

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

02:00:05 B: All right, it’s time for bone of the week!

02:00:10 K: What a great note to end that on.

02:00:13 This week, Kabriya is guessing the location of this bone.

02:00:16 K: Ah, bone of the week!

02:00:19 B: I have for you, the capitate bone. C-A-P-I-T-A-T-E. Where is it located?

02:00:27 K: Okay, my very first thought is head region, because we’ve got “cap.” That’s a very head word. We’ve got “decapitate,” which is a very head and neck word. So, it would be a real red herring if this had nothing to do with the head and neck region. If I had to choose between the two of them, I would say the… Well, I don’t think it’s part of the skull, so maybe more part of the neck area? But I also think probably I’m just completely wrong.

02:00:59 B: Are you locking in neck?

02:01:01 K: I am locking in.

02:01:03 B: Unfortunately, that is incorrect. You were fooled! You were fooled and tricked!

02:01:06 K: Oh, no! I was fooled and tricked. Where is it?

02:01:14 B: The capitate bone, according to Wikipedia, “is a bone in the human wrist found in the center of the carpal bone region, located at the distal end of the radius and ulna bones. It articulates with the third metacarpal bone (the middle finger) and forms the third carpometacarpal joint. The capitate bone is the largest of the carpal bones in the human hand.”

02:01:35 K: Wow, the middle finger.

02:01:36 B: Now you must observe this bone.

02:01:41 B: Observe the bone? How will I observe the bone? How will the listeners observe the bone?

02:01:46 B: Well, you have to rank its sexiness, so it would be good if you could observe it. The Wikipedia link is in the notes.

02:01:51 K: Okay. Let me— I will try to describe this bone for the listeners who cannot observe. So what we’re seeing here is a palm, and it’s the bones that are kind of the very base of your hand before it goes into the wrist. There’s a few little bones that are like these little nuggets grouped together, and then the finger bones all shoot out from them. So this is one of the bones that is really in the base of your hand there.

02:02:22 B: It kind of looks like a chicken nugget.

02:02:24 K: The heel of your palm, a little bit. Yeah, nugget was the word that came to mind. [Baily laughs] It’s not a sexy bone, I don’t think. It’s really just smushed in there with a few other bones, and I think it’s not helping that it’s directly sitting between the wrist bones and the finger bones, which are objectively more sexy. Those are just more sexy bones, and it’s kind of like the thing stuck in between them.

02:02:49 B: But it performs a function, in its subdued way. If you didn’t have this bone, you wouldn’t be able to move your fingers.

02:02:55 K: Okay, some people are into performing a function in a subdued way, but that’s not top-rank sexiness for me. I appreciate that. I appreciate that it has a purpose. I think all of the bones in our body do, so if we start ranking sexiness on serving a purpose…

02:03:13 B: So true. Very true. It’s sexiness, it’s not, could you live if this bone were removed.

02:03:20 K: Exactly. I mean, I guess you could.

02:03:21 B: That’s a different ranking. [laughs]

02:03:22 K: That’s a different ranking system. I’m gonna say... I mean, it’s got some curves to it. I’m gonna say maybe a three? I’m not that into it.

02:03:33 B: Yeah, I think that’s fair. I agree. I think one is too harsh.

02:03:37 K: The capitate bone. Yeah, because there are worse bones. There are definitely worse bones.

02:03:41 B: Exactly. Yeah. The name of the bone comes from the Latin word for “capit,” which means head, so you were totally on the right track, but it’s just because it has a small head shape in it. [laughs] Totally misleading.

02:03:53 K: Oh, well that’s a little– yeah. Don’t like that.

02:03:58 B: Yeah, I think three is fair.

02:03:59 K: I’m gonna remember that, though. I really need to start internalizing these more, because we had a question on our pop quiz two days ago that was about a bone in the wrist that started with the letter S, and one of my friends suggested scaphoid, and I was like, “I know we’ve done a lot of bones on this pod, and I’m pretty sure the scaphoid’s somewhere else on your body. I don’t know.” And he was like, “No, I hurt my wrist. That’s definitely where the scaphoid is.” I felt like such a fool! I was like, I’m not a bone expert at all! And I know you talked about the scaphoid on the pod, so I embarrassed myself. I tried to show off my bone knowledge, and I was wrong.

02:04:34 B: Awwww. Sad!

02:04:39 K: But I’ve never broken a bone in my life, so I’m really coming into this whole thing at a disadvantage. [Baily laughs] I don’t think you’ve broken a bone either, have you?

02:04:46 B: I have. I have broken a bone. I broke my– one of the bones in my forearm when I was four years old. I was riding my dad like a horse, and fell into a tent peg.

02:04:58 K: Oh wow, so you couldn’t be in that Reddit community of people who’ve never broken a bone, whatever they’re called. If anyone doesn’t know about this, they’re so funny, there’s a Reddit community that’s entirely people who haven’t broken a bone, and they brag about it, and then if someone breaks a bone, they have to be like, “I must leave now. I’m so sorry. I’m no longer one of you.” And I’m not an active member of this community—

02:05:20 B: And everyone makes fun of them and calls them, like, “toothpick bones.” [laughs]

02:05:25 K: I’m not part of the community, but I like knowing that I could be, and if the day ever comes when I break a bone, I will be a little bit sad for that reason, and also probably because I’ll be in, I imagine, excruciating amounts of pain. Not me. I’ve never broken a bone.

02:05:42 B: [laughs] I actually vividly remember when I did break that bone when I was four. I still had full movement in my arm, because there’s another bone in your wrist, so I could still move. I vividly remember, I was lying in my little twin bed, I had my Lion King-themed sheets because it was 1997, and I was noting in my head, “Wow, it’s incredibly painful when I move my hand from beside my body to up above my body. I’ve never felt this before. I’ll just keep doing it.” Examine the sensation. [laughs]

02:06:07 K: Interesting. Take some notes here. How very Sixth House of you. What an appropriate story to end this episode on.

(Slow, groovy rock music)

02:06:16 K: Thanks for joining us for an episode in which we finally got to some big reveals about the murder in Canaan House, Pal’s tragic explosion, and a discussion that we were very excited to get to about the Sixth House characters we love so much. If you have more thoughts on any of these events, relationships, characters, theories, and you want to chat with us, you can always find us at @onefleshonepod on Twitter, TikTok, and Tumblr, or drop us an email at onefleshonepod@gmail.com. We love from hearing from you, and we love chatting with you, and we’re very excited to be doing this again! We will be looking next time at Chapter Thirty-Six, so get hyped for that.

02:07:00 B: We’ll see you next time on One Flesh, One End.

(Slow, groovy rock music continues)

02:07:06 B: Thank you so much to all of our supporters on Patreon at patreon.com/onefleshonepod. And thanks especially to:

02:07:16 K: Adrian J., Alex, Amber, Spookybean, Bridget Lowery, Camille, Chel, Relmin, Deceptive Egg, Eli Swihart, Erin M., Esther Wright, George, Gina, Grace, Heather Cartwright, Jack, JJ, Turtle on Mars, Jess, Katelynne S., Keisha,

02:07:40 B: Ludwinas, Maria, Aaron Storm, Dudley, Persephone, Hammy, Quill, Apple, Rosemary of the Sea, Sara H., Simon H., Sonya, Taj, Timothy Bennett, Trans Rights are Human Rights (so true), Truth in Advertising, Virginia, Vulcan Charm, Waloose, Will Matchett, and Zach.

(Slow, groovy rock music fades out)