Gideon the Ninth

Two is for discipline, heedless of trial;

Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile;

Four for fidelity, facing ahead;

Five for tradition and debts to the dead;

Six for the truth over solace in lies;

Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies;

Eight for salvation no matter the cost;

Nine for the Tomb, and for all that was lost.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN neater, perhaps, if all of Gideon’s disappointments and woes from birth downward had used that moment as a catalyst: if, filled with a new and fiery determination, she had equipped herself down there in the dark with fresh ambition to become free. She didn’t. She got the depression.

She gave a rather brusque hand-wave to the geriatric fan club behind her and they scattered: tottering, kissing the floor and rattling both their prayer beads and their unlubricated knee joints, disappearing into the darkness and down the tier.

She didn’t run. Gideon never ran unless she had to.

I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady.”

Gideon resented the answer me, but she begrudgingly cast her mind back through a montage of rotting furniture, assholes, and astringent tea.

Her necromancer’s mouth was still puckered up with a sourness that would’ve impressed a lemon, but she asked abruptly:

Gideon could only see the back of his head, but he kept looking at the girl who’d basically clouted him like a whipped dog, the arrogant line of his head and shoulders drooping.

Gideon said aloud, “Your parents must have been so relieved to die.”

“Whoo,” she managed, scrubbing away tears of mirth. “Oh damn. Give me a moment. Okay—like hell I will, Nonagesimus.”