Foreshadowing / The Locked Tomb

aka: Nona The Ninth

The Locked Tomb has a way of foreshadowing, directly or indirectly, most events that occur later in the story, often through small details that're easily overlooked at first.

NOTE: All spoilers are untagged. This includes spoilers for Nona the Ninth.

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Gideon the Ninth

• In an attempt to get Crux to let her leave, Gideon suggests that he say her shuttle exploded. During the final days at Canaan House, Gideon discovers that the shuttle did explode due to a bomb planted aboard it by Crux, who was furious with Ortus and Glaurica's treachery.
• The weapon utilized by (most) cavaliers is a rapier, seemingly a result of long held tradition much to Gideon's annoyance when she is forced to extensively train to use one. As revealed later, the process of lyctorhood involves putting the knowledge and skill cavaliers possess of the sword inside the less athletic body of a necromancer, so a blade that doesn't require that much muscle to wield is very helpful.
• When the heirs first arrive at Canaan House, the priests are extremely concerned that the Third brought twin necromancers, which Teacher shrugs off as their own problem that won't affect anyone else. Only one could become a Lyctor even if they were both necromancers, since it requires one sacrifice per ascension.
• Both the Third and Seventh are held up briefly when arriving at Canaan House due to discrepancies, with the Third's reason for delay obviously being their three heirs, but the Seventh's goes uncommented on, due to Cytherea flopping on the ground immediately upon landing. With later context, she was likely held up for the same reason, having kept the corpse of Dulcinea Septimus.
• When observing the priests of Canaan House, Gideon quickly dismisses the other two, noting that Teacher is the only one who seems real. This is later proven to be literally true, as when Teacher is killed, both of the other priests immediately die, implying they were merely extensions of him.
• Ianthe cryptically warns Gideon early on that it would be unwise to irritate the necromancer of the Third. The slip is notable because she says "the necromancer", not "a necromancer." It's not until much, much later that it's revealed that Coronabeth isn't a necromancer.
  • Tying in with the above, there are tons of small hints towards this reveal throughout the story, such as Coronabeth spending her time with cavaliers instead of the necromancers, not showing signs of exertion trying to call back the spirits of the Fifth, her familiarity with duels, being unable to recognize fresh human cremains, and, most explicitly, her brief attempt to challenge Gideon to a duel, which even causes an alarmed Naberius to physically restrain her.
• Due to his Psychometry allowing him to pick up details from objects he touches, Palamedes often has subtle moments of Five-Second Foreshadowing, where he will react to something unusual before telling Gideon and the others what is going on. This also ultimately sets up his final moments in the book, where he ducks out of the confrontation between Ianthe and the Eighth, having discovered who the true murderer at Canaan House is by inadvertently bumping into a message she wrote on a wall.
• During the Fifth's dinner party, Gideon overhears part of a discussion between Abigail and Dulcinea about Lyctoral history and deems the conversation extremely boring judging from Dulcinea's expression. When Palamedes confronts Cytherea near the end of the book, she reveals it's actually the moment she decided to kill the Fifth as soon as possible.
• Ianthe has a disconcerting habit of consuming parts of Naberius for a short term necromantic boost. By the end of the story, she is the only necromancer to willingly choose to ascend to Lyctorhood, and does so by murdering Naberius to consume his soul forever.
• When the bodies of the Fifth are discovered, Silas tries siphoning Colum in the labs. Teacher panics and begs he never siphon again because Canaan House is absurdly haunted, especially the labs, and it's not safe to have an empty body down there. Sure enough, Silas's second attempt to siphon Colum at Canaan House ends up getting both of the Eighth killed.
• After the first murders, and every subsequent body being discovered, Judith continues to insist to Teacher that the trials be called off and the Cohort be brought in to apprehend the murderer. Following the last discovery of Protesilaus' head, Judith again protests, but seems to realize something as Teacher again denies her request, and storms out with Marta. Several chapters later, she and Marta contact the Emperor against Teacher's will, and end up killing him in the process, believing he's the one responsible for the deaths.
• In a bit of thematic foreshadowing more than literal foreshadowing, near the end of Act 3, the Fourth discover that two bodies have been burnt up in the incinerator beyond all recognition. All of the remaining cavaliers end up examining this discovery, with the exception of Camilla. Being burnt up forever is the ultimate fate awaiting those cavaliers, should their necromancers consume their souls to become Lyctors; by the end of the book it's happened to both Naberius and Gideon (willingly, in her case). The notably absent Camilla is also the only cavalier to survive Canaan House.
• After Protesilaus goes missing, Teacher says that the First will search all of Canaan House except the Lyctoral labs and the quarters of each House, on the off chance he's there. Several chapters later, Gideon finds his severed head in Harrow's wardrobe.
  • It's heavily implied that Protesilaus is dead long before the protagonists discover so; Harrow's puppeteering of her parents serves to introduce the concept to the audience, and Pro at Canaan House is compared to a sleep walker, barely reacts to his surroundings, and is oddly in sync with his necromancer.
  • Just before the reveal, it gets a bit of Five-Second Foreshadowing as well, as his severed head is described as looking exactly the same as it did in "life", a few paragraphs before Harrow comes in to reveal he's been dead the whole time.
  • Tied into the above, one point of contention that comes up between Gideon and Harrow is that the former quite likes Dulcinea (to the point of being infatuated with her) and the latter does not, and Harrow also states that she dislikes Protesilaus even more, which Gideon considers uncalled for. Since Harrow has been puppeting her parents' corpses for years, she naturally recognized quickly that Protesilaus was Dead All Along, explaining why she didn't like him, and understandably didn't trust Dulcinea either for concealing this from the rest of the cast.
• The Awful Truth of Lyctorhood, that a necromancer has to consume their cavalier's soul to burn them for energy forever, is very extensively telegraphed by comments the First makes, the Arc Words of Gideon the Ninth, and parenthetical references by Palamedes being disgusted by it, to the point where it's Hidden in Plain Sight.
• "Dulcinea" drops multiple hints to her true identity throughout the story:
  • She makes several comments implying that she's not as young as she appears, such as calling Gideon (whom she's supposedly only 9 years older than) "a nice kid" during an early conversation, and later, a "poor baby." She tries to cover the first time by claiming it's because she feels much older than the other heirs, but the eventual reveal of her true age makes it seem like she genuinely slipped up during those instances.
  • At one point she tells Gideon that she's been "dying for what feels like ten thousand years" due to her illness. It later turns out she's actually Saint Cytherea the First, who became a Lyctor to fight her House's hereditary blood cancer and ended up consigning herself to an eternity living on the edge of a painful, wasting death, with no natural end in sight. She's been living that way for what actually has been around 10,000 years by that point in the story.
  • Similarly, when Harrow asks Dulcinea why she wants to become a Lyctor, she responds by saying "I didn't want to die" rather than "I don't want to die," both hinting that she's already a Lyctor and that she's come to regret the decision.
  • After Magnus' and Abigail's corpses are found, the necromancers try to bring back their spirits. The only one that seems to have any success is Silas, but his summoning is interrupted when the effects of his ritual accidentally drains the already sick Dulcinea to the point of fainting, and Protesilaus breaks the ritual by punching him in the face. In truth, "Dulcinea" is much stronger than she appears, and Protesilaus is actually controlled directly by her. She likely interrupted the ritual in order to stop Silas from bringing back the victims' spirits and ask them who the killer was.
  • While Gideon is being agonizingly drained by Harrow during the Avulsion trial, Dulcinea gets very emotional and tells Gideon not to ever let it happen to her again, and also says that the process is cruel and "not worth it." As someone who already knows the dark truth behind Lyctorhood and had to consume her own cavalier in the same manner, the entire situation likely dredged up some very painful memories for her.
  • Also during the Avulsion trial, Dulcinea's conversation with the Ninth about the Sixth has her explicitly state that she's barely spoken to Palamedes and would like to get to know him better; however, this doesn't seem to line up with Palamedes's behavior, which heavily hints towards him having feelings for her like Gideon does, despite apparently rarely interacting with her (unlike Gideon, who has visited her frequently). Then Camilla reveals to Gideon and Harrow right before the climax that Palamedes and Dulcinea have been pen pals for 12 years, and he even proposed marriage to her at one point, and Harrow immediately lampshades that this contradicts what Dulcinea told them earlier. A mere two pages later, as Gideon goes to set things right with Palamedes, she witnesses his confrontation with her, wherein he's realized that she's an imposter.
  • Once Harrow and Palamedes reveal to the other remaining Houses (the Second, Third, and Eighth) that Protesilaus was Dead All Along, Judith sarcastically asks if anyone else present wants to confess to already being dead or a flesh construct or anything similar. At this point, Dulcinea has been having a coughing fit from her illness and hacked up quite a bit of blood, and Gideon's narration snarks that she half-expects her to be added to the list as well. Then the twist at the climax confirms that, indeed, Dulcinea (that is, the real one) was already dead, just like her cavalier.
    • Additionally, to that same comment of Judith's, Teacher replies "Maybe later, Lady Judith." Not long after, Teacher is revealed to be just such a necromatic construct, created by the Lyctors of old.
• The ending of the book is heavily foreshadowed by multiple characters doing "the bravest and stupidest thing" they could possibly do, i.e. choosing to perform a Heroic Sacrifice. Isaac, the Second, and Palamedes all sacrifice themselves out of a sense that they were saving others, a decision that Gideon ultimately makes as well.
  • Harrow tells Gideon that she wants to see her die. Gideon answers that she won't see her die on the Ninth.

Foreshadowing leading into Harrow the Ninth

• The Law of Conservation of Detail applies to Gideon's mother, as the few things mentioned about her (namely her battered haz suit and bright red hair) are early hints as to her being the Sleeper haunting Harrow.
• Whenever Harrow mentions Gideon's longsword, she does so with disdain, believes it's "judging her", and actually seems to be afraid of it at times. Despite seeming to be irrational, it's actually true: the sword is the Soul Jar of Gideon's mother, Commander Wake, a woman who violently hates all necromancers. Several early portions of Harrow the Ninth are occupied with just how much the sword hates Harrow.
• When discussing the upcoming journey to the First, Gideon comments that she thought they'd be on an actual planet or a cool space station, and Harrow calls her stupid for ever thinking necromancers would gather on a space station, where there's no ambient thanergy. Naturally, most of Harrow takes place on a space station, albeit with the caveat of it being accessible only to Lyctors, who produce an infinite supply of their own thanergy.
• When Cytheria asks Gideon to draw her sword she is so impressed she calls Gideon "just like a picture of Nonius". Now, it could be because Nonius is best known Ninth swordsman, but in the next book we learn Nonius actually fought with Saint of Duty, so Cytheria might actually meet him.
• The eventual reveal of Gideon's true heritage is hinted at a few times:
  • Dulcinea asks to examine Gideon's eyes early on, saying it's something of a hobby of hers, which she never repeats throughout the rest of the book, which is a very early indirect hint that Gideon's eyes have several secrets tied to them.
  • During the final battle, Cytherea seems to genuinely not want to kill Gideon, and tries to convince her to beg for her life. While a large part of this would seem to be Cytherea's Villainous Crush, she curiously tells Gideon "You're not going to die here, Gideon. And if you ask me to let you live, you might not have to die at all," implying that she has some sort of larger plan for the girl that goes beyond romantic interest. Mercymorn later claims in Harrow the Ninth that Cytherea would've realized Gideon's true parentage as soon as she saw the yellow eyes.
  • Gideon's absurd resilience and durability are commented on several times throughout the book. The fact that she survived the poisoning that killed the rest of the Ninth's children is stated to be highly improbable, and when Camilla examines her after the Avulsion trial, she says that Gideon appears to be fine, even though she shouldn't be.
• Gideon is the only person to find the door to the Second's Lyctoral study, and is somewhat possessive over it as a result, referring to it as "my door" several times. Said door and the room inside did belong to her namesake when the Lyctor was at Canaan House.
• The note with Gideon's name on it and other peripheral references to a "G." at Canaan House heavily tease at one of the early reveals of the second book: that the name of the Lyctor from the Second is also Gideon.
• Similarly, during the final battle, Cytherea claims that Gideon's bravery reminds her of another Gideon she once knew long ago. Lampshaded when Gideon then expresses annoyance at the "cryptic shit" Cytherea keeps saying to her.
• When recounting why she feels responsible for killing Harrow's parents, Gideon briefly mentions that earlier on the same day she saw Harrow break into the Locked Tomb, they had wrestled and Harrow had clawed off half of Gideon's face beneath her fingernails. In the sequel, context is given to reveal that this is how Harrow had finally, inadvertently broken the final blood seal to the Tomb: she had the blood of the Emperor's daughter on her hands when she did so.
• The Mysterious Note in the Seventh's Lyctoral study, written by Cytherea saying "YOU LIED TO US" is framed with the context that follows to make it seem as though it's about the Awful Truth of Lyctorhood. In actuality, it's implied that Cytherea had realized the exact same thing that Mercy and Augustine discover late in Harrow the Ninth when they see Gideon Nav's eyes: that God has lied to his Hands for thousands of years. Mercy even says Cytherea must have known the second she saw Gideon's eyes.
• The narration specifically notes that when the gathered heirs leave Judith, it is the last time Gideon ever sees her, which obscures the fact that it's not the last time that Harrow sees her.
• During Ianthe's Evil Gloating, she makes mention of her specialty being liminal magic, and that she's fascinated by what's over the River, and what eats ghosts when they die. She also mentions that she's studied how the souls of the nine Houses/planets were displaced as the cost of the Resurrection. All of these become major plot points in the next book.
• Silas regards the Lyctoral process of consuming the soul of one's cavalier and incorporating it to burn as a heretical temptation. Although soul siphoning is dangerous to the point where God himself has cautioned against it, at least the vessels' souls generally come back. Others scoff at this as being an irrelevant distinction when Silas brings it up, but Harrow the Ninth reveals that the Resurrection Beasts are inherently drawn to Lyctors due to committing the sin of consuming a soul; the two are truly different.
• Palamedes' Last Words are "Tell Camilla— Oh, never mind. She knows what to do." Camilla answering that she does when Gideon relays that to her points towards one of the more surprising twists in the next book: that Palamedes' suicide was both a Heroic Sacrifice and a Resurrection Gambit.
• At the very beginning of their reluctant working relationship, Harrow threatens to mix bone meal into Gideon's breakfast and "punch my way through your gut" if Gideon doesn't do as she's told. Gideon, in turn, muses that this is an entirely plausible thing for Harrow to do. In the second book, after suffering weeks of attempts on her life by Gideon the First and days without sleeping, Harrowhark makes some soup, mixes in her own bone marrow, and punches her way through Gideon the First's gut in a desperate attempt to kill him.

Harrow the Ninth

• The Arc Words in Harrow's Fake Memories: "Is this how it happens?" are used extensively in different variations, getting increasingly less subtle over time with some, such as Marta's furious "Why am I here?" being more obvious statements of what Harrow's Dream Land actually represents.
• An unhappy Harrow asks if all new Lyctors struggle like she does at first, spending weeks foggy and ill. The Emperor says "Some," evasively. Quite a bit later, the Saint of Duty grudgingly admits that sometimes he "forgets", that he can't trust his own mind. Each has their cavalier alive inside of them but doesn't know it.
• When the Emperor speaks of Ortus as Harrow's caviler, the narration notes that his mouth looks strange as he says it, and moments later he seems confused when Harrow speaks of Ortus as well. It's not hard to work out that he's actually saying "Gideon"; Harrow has stripped her brain's ability to process Gideon's existence and forced it to substitute Ortus instead.
  • Likewise, these moments are noted causing a sharp pain in Harrow's skull and causing her nose to start bleeding, which recurs throughout the story several times. It's eventually revealed that this because "the work" entailed replacing part of her skull with a construct that presses against her brain whenever Harrow is presented with information that might undo it.
• There's one notable instance of fauxshadowing in Act One, with Ianthe referring to Harrow's eyes as being like "flower petals in a darkened room," which implies her eyes are actually gold; in the following Act it's clarified that Harrow's eyes are still black, and that "Ianthe was overfamiliar and frankly a pervert."
• Mercymorn has a very strong reaction to seeing Harrow for the first time, only relaxing when Harrow lies and says she is 15. It's not until much, much later that it's revealed exactly why she reacted that way, having believed she was the baby that became Gideon Nav.
• Mercymorn and the Emperor's discussion of stelitic travel both explains how the Empire's Faster-Than-Light Travel works while referencing other means to achieve it, which the civilization represented by Blood of Eden does, being able to travel to the far reaches of the universe without relying on necromancy at all.
• Act One goes to great lengths to establish that Harrow believes that Gideon's sword hates her and she even views it as literally having a soul in the River. Both of these views are true, as the sword is Commander Wake's Soul Jar.
• In his Establishing Character Moment, Ortus the First tells the Emperor that he will gladly stay and die on his command. Gideon the First does end up dying after fighting the Resurrection Beast for hours by himself.
• Ortus the First's sharing a name with Harrow's former cavalier isn't directly commented on until Act 5, but is blatantly unsubtle to the point that the fact that his name is actually Gideon, and he is Nav's namesake barely counts as a reveal.
  • When she meets 'Ortus' the first, Harrow assumes that her previous cavalier was simply named after the Lyctor in a mildly unfortunate coincidence. However, we know both from in-story cues and from the explanation of names at the end of Gideon that Ortus' name doesn't come from any mythological figure, instead, he's named for his father, Mortus the Ninth.
• The messages that Harrow hallucinates, being the dying thoughts of Commander Wake strongly hint towards all of the multiple reveals tied in with that character especially her relationship with Pyrrha Dve.
• Early in Harrow's Fake Memories, after Ortus Nigenad complains again that he's martially unsuitable to be Harrow's cavalier, Harrow retorts that unless Ortus can conjure up the spirit of Matthias Nonius to protect her, he's all she has. Guess what Ortus (and Abigail Pent) end up doing to defeat the Sleeper?
• Mercy and Augustine have a spat where Augustine tells his sister Lyctor that she's made herself unlovable and wouldn't be forgiven if she killed him, whereas eventually John would forgive Augustine if Augustine killed her. Petty bickering? Yes, but it's also about their plan to kill John. Whoever does it really has to be trusted.
• When describing the Lyctors of the Emperor, God describes Augustine as an incredibly talented spirit magician who could plunge half a city into the River at once if he wanted, and Mercymorn's Touch of Death as arising from her rote memorization of the human body, which Augustine scoffs at as a waste of time, as the only people she'd even need it for are Lyctors. Both of them attempt to murder the Emperor in those specific ways, with God even noting Mercy must have honed her ability for millennia purely to try to kill him.
• When Ianthe says Harrow's code seems like a lot of work when she could just use a blood ward to seal the letters, Harrow replies that blood wards are stupid because she can't reasonably expect to never bleed again. Turns out this is the exact weakness in the Locked Tomb's security. While John, being God and all, is certainly entitled to a better expectation of not bleeding when he doesn't want to than a traumatized teenage half-Lyctor, he still relied on a type of ward with a huge problem: no matter how difficult the key is to get, once it has been gotten, that's it.
• Attentive readers will likely recognize who The Sleeper in Harrow's Fake Memories is well in advance when their outfit is described, as the battered haz suit with an oxygen supply is one of the few mentioned details of Gideon's mysterious mother in Gideon the Ninth.
  • The same description also alludes to why the Sleeper is appearing in her Fake Memories in the first place. Gideon's longsword appears in her coffin, and it is also her Soul Jar.
  • Likewise, Harrow's Fake Memories start being taken over by nightmarish tendrils that regurgitate medical supplies, and she starts hearing the cries of a newborn in addition to the slamming doors and murmurs of her normal hallucinations, as Wake's memories of conceiving Gideon Nav bleed into Harrow's recreation of Canaan House.
• Gideon ORTUS the First's ability is briefly referenced in Act 2 when he crumbles several of Harrow's skeletons to dust before Harrow properly discovers in Act 3 that he can negate thanergy.
• The Saint of Duty attacks Harrow again and again. The first time, an aggravated Mercy tells him to do it when she's not nearby so she wouldn't have to stop him, but almost all subsequent other times involve someone coming to Harrow's rescue, at which point he always walks away. The one time Harrow is alone, he walks away immediately after she gets a good hit in. He seems to bear no personal dislike of her, and even expresses a weary camaraderie with her at the antics of their sibling Lyctors. At the end of his final attempt on Harrow's life he says "I pulled too many punches. Sorry. This wasn't my idea." and sure enough, the Emperor told him to either kill Harrow or hurt and frighten her into full Lyctoral ability.
• Similarly, despite "Ortus" the First's many attempts on Harrow's life and her telling the Emperor about them, the latter barely seems concerned and never makes any real effort to tell him to stop, only stating a few different times that he won't let either "Ortus" or Harrow kill each other in his presence. She also gets some indications that, despite God's apparent kindness and favor towards her, he doesn't really understand her or have any deep level of care for her. This all makes a lot more sense with the reveal that the Emperor was the one who ordered the Saint of Duty to attempt to murder Harrow, hoping that she would fully awaken her Lyctoral abilities, but knowing she might die instead.
• When Camilla reappears and attacks one of Harrow's constructs in self-defense, Harrow tells her that there's no way she'll win against her, as she's a Lyctor. Camilla agrees, saying she has no hope. Yet. When she reappears in The Stinger, she does so with Palamedes' eyes, revealing she found a way to become a partial Lyctor with him.
• The discovery that Palamedes survived his death by creating a "bubble" in the River helps set up the revelation that Harrow's Fake Memories are the same thing on a grander scale. With the former establishing that this sort of thing is possible, the latter doesn't come out of nowhere and can float comfortably on the suspension of disbelief.
• Ortus briefly asks Abigail to examine his family's ancestral rapier, but she makes mention of a spirit connection being too faint before they get interrupted by Harrow. They do manage to successfully summon said spirit, Matthias Nonius, at a pivotal moment in Act 5.
• Teacher's Infallible Babble alludes to multiple revelations later in the story namely why Alecto was put in the Tomb and that the Sleeper exists in "the blade without".
• There are a number of brief asides from the Emperor and an enthusiastic question from Palamedes that allude to one of the final revelations: true Lyctorhood that preserves the soul and mind of the cavalier is possible, and Harrow may've done so with Gideon.
• When describing the plan of attack against the Resurrection Beast, it's mentioned that Ulysses the First died by literally wrestling Number Eight into Hell. Augustine attempts to do the same to the Emperor in the climax.
• In her first brief Elseworld setting in Act 5, Harrow Nova and Ortus get in a minor squabble about whether Nonius ever fought a Lyctor. Nonius himself confirms he fought the Saint of Duty and goes to join him in battle after helping save Harrow.
• In Harrow's second Act 5 Elseworld, she is at a ball meant to find "Her Divine Highness" (implicitly Gideon) a spouse. There's no way for Harrow to know it yet, but that is, in fact, exactly what Gideon is—she might not actually have such a title, but she's the Emperor's daughter.
• At several points, the second-person sections of the book stop sounding like Harrow, or say things Harrow wouldn't know, or just get extremely judgemental or react with surprise to things that just happened, such as when Harrow kisses Ianthe near the beginning as part of a test from her past self, and the narration throws in a "holy shit", or when Harrow is thinking about a sword, and explicitly doesn't know what the bit on the end of the hilt is called, after which comes "It was a pommel, though". On the first read-through this just seems like Harrow describing her feelings or remembering the word, but when the Narrator All Along reveal happens, it becomes clear moments like that are actually Gideon leaking through.
• Pyrrha Dve's appearance as the dominant soul in Gideon the First's body seems in the penultimate chapter seems like a Last Episode, New Character apparently from nowhere, but there are actually many small hints of her existence prior, going all the way back to the previous novel, with the notes referring to G. & P., the letters Commander Wake addresses to "YOU AND HIM", the fact that Gideon the First sometimes acts strangely compassionate towards Harrow, and the fact that Pyrrha borrows Gideon Nav's sunglasses in the climactic chapters before entering the Emperor's chambers to avoid revealing that her eyes are not green (as, since the Saint of Duty took her original green eyes upon ascending, she took his brown ones, which would have given her away immediately).
• The incinerator scene, in which Harrow was planning to kill the Saint of Duty but saves him instead when she finds him about to be murdered by Cytherea's possessed corpse, probably has the single highest number of these:
  • When Harrow first looks into the incinerator and sees Gideon the First locked inside, she observes that his eyes look dark because of the shadows of the room. They really are dark because they're Gideon's aforementioned original brown eyes that Pyrrha received when they ascended, and she's the one in control at the moment. Harrow also notices that the Saint of Duty is not using necromancy to try to save himself from the situation, instead lying helplessly with a wound to the chest, and after pulling him out, is shocked at how slowly his Healing Factor is working. This is all because Pyrrha, as a former cavalier, is not able to use necromancy herself, even when borrowing her adept's body, and has a much weaker Healing Factor than Gideon, the actual Lyctor among them.
  • The most obvious and direct hint is that Gideon the First later cannot recall the conversation he has with Harrow after she pulls him from the incinerator—itself already used as a symbolic representation of Lyctorhood in Gideon the Ninth—in which "he" told her how to avoid his own assassination attempts on her in the future, because this was actually Pyrrha doing so as thanks for Harrow saving them. When she is incredulous about this (considering it just took place moments ago), he admits to her that he "sometimes forgets [things]", which at first sounds like random bouts of memory loss, but makes a lot more sense knowing that he has no awareness of what's happening to his body when Pyrrha is using it.
  • Similarly, in this same conversation, when "Gideon" tells Harrow how to properly set the blood wards, "he" says, "You'll be safe from us." Since the Saint of Duty himself is the only person on the Mithraeum who's been actively trying to kill Harrow so far, his use of the plural seems odd here, but is far more understandable knowing that this is Pyrrha speaking; though she herself has not tried to kill Harrow at all while controlling her adept, she's the only one who knows there are two souls Sharing a Body, and thus thinks of herself and him as a collective "we".
• Gideon in Harrow's body thinks of and immediately discards the idea of trying to pass as Harrow. Just a few chapters later, Pyrrha in Gideon the First's body introduces herself, having spent those climactic chapters, and apparently many points in the past myriad, impersonating her necromancer.

Foreshadowing leading into Nona the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth

• Gideon jokes in her narration that if someone's killed Harrow, Gideon is going to have to marry them and it would be terribly awkward if they were someone, like, weird, so maybe they could swap friendship bracelets instead. Unrelated to killing Harrow, in Nona she's gotten past her antipathy with Ianthe and apparently bonded over their sense of humor. Ianthe is weird, and the two of them have swapped friendship bracelets.
• Palamedes Sextus grasps the truth of Lyctorhood fairly early into the events of Canaan House, and rejects it as false, a misconception too ugly to be the truth. After Nona's third tantrum, he elaborates on why it repulses him, that the megatheorem is too simple and too grotesque, the petty Lysis to a true Lyctorhood, the Grand Lysis that he and Camilla ultimately perform.
• When Gideon and the others leave Judith, Gideon's narration notes it's the last time she ever sees her alive, which still holds in Nona as she is no longer Gideon, and the Captain is no longer herself.
• Silas labels Lyctorhood a blasphemy against God, a temptation too vile to succumb to. Although he refers to the Emperor when doing so, his comments indirectly mirror the truth of how John became the Emperor, by using a gift bestowed on him by the Earth, who may also be God, to consume her vast and enormous soul.
• The things that possess Colum Asht are easily dismissed as nothing more than ghosts, given how ridiculously haunted Canaan House and the First are. Until the devils reappear at the end of Nona.

Harrow the Ninth

• John tells Harrow the truth of Resurrection Beasts and comments that there were nine, five are dead, and three remain, which gives Harrow pause even in the extremely disoriented fugue she's in. During his ascension to God, John ate all the planets of the solar system and the sun itself. Although the Earth was slain, its soul was trapped inside Alecto, before John hid her inside him; as a result, he himself is the last Resurrection Beast.
• John makes brief references to having known his Lyctors before the Resurrection, being friends older than death. The first eight of his acolytes (plus the corpses of Ulysses and Titania) are the main supporting characters throughout his chapters.
• At Cytherea's funeral, the First briefly discusses when Cytherea and Loveday joined them at Canaan House, being unsure of the timeline of when all the Houses had been established, briefly referring to the Sixth having a mysterious "installation" of some sort. Said mystery is extensively teased throughout Nona and is implied to be part of why the Sixth defected.
• John cryptically accuses Wake of trying to commit Suicide by Cop without any clear reason for doing so, before Pyrrha strides in and shoots her without hesitation. It's ultimately revealed that Pyrrha was a cop before she was John's acolyte.
• Both of Ianthe's new titles as Crown Prince are alluded to briefly throughout Harrow; she follows Cytherea's tradition of dubbing herself Ianthe Naberius, and is labeled the Saint of Awe.
• Harrow's third Elseworld briefly dubs Gideon "Her Divine Highness"; John gives Kiriona exactly that title, among others.
• There are frequent references to Cristabel Oct being a zealot, which Mercymorn protests heavily. It's "M—'s nun" who is the most devout believer of John, and who ultimately sparks the fires of nuclear Armageddon by committing suicide in front of him so he can understand soul magic.
• Gideon briefly considers, then discards the idea of pretending to be Harrow; she knows her too well to attempt to. Nona, who doesn't know Harrow at all, is forced to pretend to be her and successfully does so for long enough to remove suspicion.
• When Augustine drops the Mithraeum in the River, the stoma that ordinarily only open for Resurrection Beasts open for John. The soul inside his body is that of the Earth itself, or as John renamed her, Alecto.
• Throughout her brief resurrection, Gideon views herself as nothing more than extension of Harrow. As she drowns in the River, she wonders if when they die she and Harrow will be the same person: "Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last." This ends up being a more or less direct statement of how Palamedes comes to view Lyctorhood, a Grand Lysis that fuses two souls into one.
• When John explained who Blood of Eden were to Harrow, he gave her what he said was a vital piece of advice: once you turn your back on something, you have no right to act as if you own it. Nona reveals that Blood of Eden are descended from the people who fled Earth instead of trying to save it, which enraged John.
• While explaining who "A.L." was to Harrow, John says at one point that she and the other Lyctors of the First are Alecto's children in a "very real way" and wouldn't be here if not for her. One of the revelations in Nona is that Alecto is the Earth, basically the mother of all humanity. What's more, without the necromatic magic Alecto gave John, none of the people (or ancestors of the people) who would eventually become Lyctors could have been resurrected to eventually develop the process and ascend.

Other

• When Nona was officially announced, Muir explained that Nona was originally the first part of Alecto the Ninth, but became its own book. Then you get to the bit where it's revealed that Nona is Alecto, or a part of her, and suddenly Nona originally being Alecto's first act makes a lot of sense.
  • She also said that Nona lives in a genre where the back blurb says "How do you deal with the world's most embarrassing family — AND school?! How do you cope when the biggest jerk in the universe... turns out to be your secret crush's out-of-town cousin?!?!" As it turns out, Gideon/Kiriona, who Nona thinks is the biggest jerk ever, is the cousin of Pash, Nona's secret crush.
• As Yet Unsent revealed that someone called 'Source Gram' gave Blood of Eden information about the Sixth House that only someone in the Sixth House would know, but the information was incredibly old, and the exchange was supposedly thousands of years ago. Nona reveals that Source Gram was Cassiopeia the First, the Lyctor who founded the Sixth House, and she may still be alive.

Nona the Ninth

• Camilla briefly mentions that when the Sixth found Nona and Pyrrha, they lost something precious in the process. It's not until halfway through the book that Gideon's corpse reappears alongside Ianthe.
• Nona has a horrible secret she keeps from her family, one too terrible to tell them, that makes her afraid of what they'll say. Although it briefly seems as if the fact that she's dying is her secret, she tells it too freely; the true secret is that she knew she wasn't Harrowhark the entire time.
  • The fact that Nona is dying is hinted at throughout the first half of the book, with her physical health visibly deteriorating, though in subtle ways that aren't immediate signs of how dire her health actually is.
• Nona repeatedly dreams about Gideon forgiving Harrow in Canaan House's pool, but Gideon's hands confuse her: she believes they're touching her hands but also her hands. Nona also says she hates having hands, and that they know things she doesn't. The part of Gideon Nav that makes up Nona shows up mostly in her hands.
  • Notably, Nona is confused about who she is despite knowing she is Alecto; although John pulled part of Gideon's soul out of Harrow's body, some of her is still present in Nona.
• When she goes swimming, Nona misidentifies a man-o'-war as a jellyfish, when they are in fact a siphonophore, a colonial organism made up of different structures that taken as a whole, independently evolved to look like jellyfish. Nona herself is made up of different parts, being mostly Alecto, but partly Gideon and Harrow.
• After the confrontation with the Edenites on the beach, Camilla instructs Nona to drive them home with one of the Edenite's motorcycles. During the climax en route to the Ninth House, Nona drives the megatruck for the final push in the River.
• Judith's Infallible Babble is an almost direct statement by Varun, speaking to the salt thing that was once the Earth, as is why only she understands it, it having already been established that Nona is the only person who can hear Varun singing.
• A recurring theme in John's chapters is that the media criticizes his nascent religion by bringing up the cows he slaughtered to create an impromptu barrier. Cows are sacrificial animals, meant to be consumed, and John ultimately eats all of humanity in an attempt to pull down Alecto.
• Pyrrha, as the only member of Nona's family who knew Alecto personally, quietly makes several pointed questions to Nona throughout the book, and she's the first to explicitly figure out who she is, though it becomes obvious to everyone throughout the finale.
• Nona wakes up tied to a bed and loses her temper extremely violently and without regard to her own wellbeing because of her ability to heal. In the epilogue, she does the exact same thing again, but this time as Alecto.
• Through Judith, Varun warns Nona that there is a tower in the River and there is a hole at the bottom of it. It's a few chapters more before the devils are properly revealed.
• During the duel between Camilla and Ianthe, Camilla remarks that Ianthe's got better at fighting, like she's been practicing with someone who knows what they're doing. It's revealed later that Gideon and Ianthe became genuine friends, which would explain Ianthe's sword skills improving.
• Camilla and Palamedes' entire arc throughout the book is bent towards the final decision of their lives, to perform a Grand Lysis:
  • Both of them temporarily reside in the same body as Camilla-and-Palamedes in order to defend Nona and themselves against an ambush by Merv Wing Edenites; like Paul, Nona immediately recognizes the temporary fusion as a new person. Even though the resultant thanergy shock nearly kills Camilla, she begs Pyrrha not to tell Palamedes, and says that they were happy.
  • After hearing the above, Pyrrha is completely convinced she'll never get through to the Sixth, goes to the other room to take a drink and toasts Camilla: "yet another of devotion's casualties".
  • In order to give We Suffer something to keep the Sixth House Oversight Board alive, they promise that if Eden can wait, they'll have a Lyctor soon, clearly no longer referring to Nona.
  • Camilla, at several points, reads certain messages from Palamedes over and over, letters that provoke extremely strong emotions that it takes her some time to subdue. The final moments of her life are the strongest emotions she ever shows in the series, being overwhelmed with tears of joy and relief.
  • Palamedes openly raises the question that Nona is a complete Lyctor, a Merger of Souls between Harrow and Gideon, and at several points explains his mindset that the megatheorem of the old Lyctors was too simple, too cruel, and that true Lyctorhood is an act of mutual sacrifice, love, death, and ultimately rebirth.
    • Camilla responds that she's also considered that Nona is a merger, and her reaction is "lucky them"
  • There's also some Five-Second Foreshadowing leading into it: C— and N—, who would later found the Sixth House, have a rushed Last Wish Marriage in the closing hours before the Resurrection. In the very next chapter, the Sixth likewise have a rushed, impromptu ceremony that is symbolically framed as a wedding, in the final hours before the Tomb opens.
• Asked what she thinks is sexy, Nona thinks of giant advertisement images of flowers. She is Alecto, Alecto is Earth and flowers are the reproductive structures of Earth plants, so that may be a reflection of her association with the biosphere as a whole.
• After Camilla and Palamedes become Paul, Paul offers Ianthe a chance to follow suit and merge with Naberius, which she rejects. The Unwanted Guest reveals that Lyctorhood results in the souls bleeding into each other and picking up each other's traits and memories, which Ianthe seemed pretty disturbed by- in hindsight, her saying no makes a lot of sense.

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