The Locked Tomb

by Tamsyn Muir

The Emperor needs new immortal servants. Gideon Nav — swordswoman, orphan, and lifelong prisoner of the Ninth House — gets dragged to Canaan House as her necromancer's cavalier. What follows is a locked-room murder mystery, a gothic horror love story, and the slow revelation that the god-emperor's empire is built on consumed souls and planetary genocide. Tamsyn Muir's series is unlike anything else in fantasy.

45 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Abigail Pent — Lady of the Fifth House — a spirit necromancer married to her own cavalier, who approached the horrors of Canaan House with the enthusiasm of an acade
• Alecto — The soul of the dead Earth given human form — John's cavalier, Harrow's obsession, and the most dangerous being in existence, who cannot tell a lie an
• Augustine the First — Saint of Patience, original Lyctor of the Fifth House — a ten-thousand-year-old charmer who uses elegance to hide the fact that he murdered his own br
• Camilla Hect — The Sixth House's cavalier — a woman of terrifying competence and devastating understatement who carried her dead necromancer's soul inside her mind r
• Colum Asht — The Eighth House's cavalier — a massive, exhausted soldier slowly being drained by his own necromancer, who bore it with grim resignation until death
• Commander Wake — Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead — a Blood of Eden commander who went undercover in the Emperor's service, conceived a child with God, and died
• Coronabeth Tridentarius — The golden twin who was supposed to be the necromancer and wasn't — a princess whose entire identity was a performance, now finding something real in
• Crux — The Ninth House's ancient marshal — a skeletal old man who hates Gideon Nav with the kind of purity usually reserved for religious conviction.
• Cytherea the First — The original Seventh House Lyctor who spent ten millennia dying of guilt and then came to Canaan House wearing a dead woman's face to burn it all down
• Dulcinea Septimus — The Duchess of the Seventh House — a terminally ill necromancer of extraordinary charm who was murdered before she could reach Canaan House, her ident
• Gideon Nav — The Ninth House's unwanted swordswoman who would rather die than serve her necromancer — and then does exactly that, because it turns out love and spi
• Gideon the First — The original Lyctor of the Second House — a soldier who consumed his cavalier Pyrrha and unknowingly carried her soul for ten thousand years.
• Harrowhark Nonagesimus — The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House — a bone necromancer of terrifying power whose entire existence is built on genocide, guilt, and an obsessive
• Hot Sauce — Nona's best friend and the leader of their school gang — a fierce, protective child who appointed herself Nona's guardian in a city on the edge of war
• Ianthe Tridentarius — The pale twin of the Third House who achieved Lyctorhood by stabbing her own cavalier in the back — brilliant, repulsive, and inconveniently in love w
• Isaac Tettares — The Fourth House's teenage necromancer — a kid who was too young for Canaan House and died proving it.
• Jeannemary Chatur — The Fourth House's teenage cavalier — fierce, young, and determined to prove herself in a contest that killed her before she had the chance.
• John Gaius — The God-Emperor of the Nine Houses — a ten-thousand-year-old necromancer who ended the world to save it, rebuilt civilization from death magic, and wo
• Judith Deuteros — Captain of the Second House — a rigid military officer whose inflexible devotion to duty was either her greatest strength or her tragic flaw, dependin
• Magnus Quinn — The Fifth House's cavalier and Abigail's husband — the kindest person at Canaan House, which in a murder mystery is another way of saying 'victim.'
• Marta Dyas — The Second House's cavalier — a no-nonsense soldier who fights with precision and has approximately zero patience for anything that isn't a direct ord
• Mercymorn the First — Saint of Joy, original Lyctor of the Eighth House — ten thousand years of bitterness, brilliance, and unresolved grief compressed into a tiny woman wh
• Naberius Tern — The Third House's cavalier — a perfectly conditioned duelist whose greatest achievement was dying so Ianthe could become a Lyctor, which is exactly th
• Nona — A six-month-old consciousness inhabiting Harrow's body who loves her friends, her dog, and her school — and is actually the amnesiac soul of a dead pl
• Ortus Nigenad — The Ninth House's original cavalier — a cowardly, poetry-obsessed swordsman who was terrible at fighting and turned out to be brave when it actually c
• Palamedes Sextus — The Sixth House's Master Warden — a necromantic genius who died to save everyone, persisted as a ghost inside his cavalier's mind, and eventually achi
• Pash — A Blood of Eden soldier and Wake's protégé — young, angry, and committed to the resistance with the zealotry of someone who inherited a cause rather t
• Protesilaus Ebdoma — The Seventh House's cavalier — a dead man walking in the most literal sense, puppeted by Cytherea as a prop for her impersonation of Dulcinea.
• Pyrrha Dve — The original cavalier of the Second House who survived inside her necromancer's body for ten thousand years — a pragmatic, grief-stricken soldier who
• Silas Octakiseron — The Eighth House's teenage Master Templar — a religious zealot who weaponized his cavalier's soul and considered this a sacrament.
• Teacher — The caretaker of Canaan House — a smiling, two-handed-waving guide who welcomed the postulants to their deaths with the cheerfulness of a camp counsel

Locations

• Canaan House — The Emperor's crumbling palace on the First House — a labyrinth of faded grandeur where eight Houses sent their best and brightest to discover the sec
• Castle Drearburh — The Ninth House's fortress — a stone crypt masquerading as a castle, where skeleton servants outnumber the living and the candles never go out because
• Dominicus System — The star system of the Nine Houses — nine planets orbiting a resurrected sun, each home to a House with its own specialty, culture, and flavour of nec
• New Rho — A besieged city beyond the Nine Houses' borders — the Nona-era safe haven where Pyrrha, Camilla, and a planetary consciousness disguised as a six-mont
• The Mithraeum — The Emperor's space station at the edge of the dominion — a floating fortress where God lives with his remaining Lyctors, waiting for the next Resurre
• The Ninth House — The driest, darkest, most miserable planet in the Emperor's system — a tomb world of bone magic and death worship where Gideon Nav spent eighteen year
• The River — The dimension of death that runs beneath reality — a necromantic underworld where ghosts drift, Lyctors fight, and the deepest current leads to a plac
• The Second House — Trentham — the military heart of the Nine Houses, producing soldiers, officers, and the Cohort's rigid chain of command.
• The Sixth House — The Library — an entire planet dedicated to knowledge, scholarship, and the quiet conviction that any problem can be solved if you read enough books a
• The Third House — Ida — the royal planet of glamour, wealth, and flesh magic, ruled by twin princesses who between them have one necromantic talent and zero impulse con

Items

• Blood of Eden — The anti-necromancy resistance movement — descendants of the humans who fled Earth before the Resurrection, fighting to destroy the empire built on th
• Resurrection Beast — The vengeful ghosts of the planets John destroyed to build the Nine Houses — cosmic horrors that hunt the Dominicus system, each one capable of annihi
• The Locked Tomb — The sealed prison beneath the Ninth House where Alecto — Earth's soul made flesh — has been entombed for ten thousand years, and which gives the entir
• The Lyctor Process — The Eightfold Word — the necromantic theorem that grants immortality by consuming your cavalier's soul, because the Nine Houses have never met a probl

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