Nona the Ninth recap

Six months after the destruction of the Emperor's station, a woman called Nona wakes each day in a besieged city with no memory of anything before her first, entirely happy six months of life. Her body is Harrowhark Nonagesimus's, and the household hiding her, Camilla Hect, Pyrrha Dve and Palamedes Sextus, who survives inside Camilla, do not know whose soul is in it. Nona works at a school, loves dogs and is adored by a gang of local teenagers, while Blood of Eden negotiates over her, the Nine Houses demand her back, and a Resurrection Beast hangs over the planet. Every night she dreams a man telling her how the old world died and the Empire was made. When the Houses finally arrive, with Ianthe, with the Emperor, and with Gideon Nav resurrected as his daughter Kiriona Gaia, the answers land at once: Camilla and Palamedes merge into a single new person called Paul, and Nona is revealed as Alecto, the Emperor's first cavalier, made from the soul of the world he destroyed and sealed for ten thousand years in the Ninth House's tomb. Nona's short life ends and Alecto wakes.

Previously: the Emperor of the Nine Houses summoned each House's necromantic heir and cavalier to compete for elevation to Lyctor, his immortal saints. Harrowhark Nonagesimus of the Ninth House went with Gideon Nav, the indentured servant she had grown up tormenting, standing in as her cavalier. The competition turned out to require a necromancer to consume their own cavalier's soul, and an ancient Lyctor was murdering the candidates; Gideon killed herself so that Harrowhark would survive it, and Harrowhark ascended carrying her. In the second book Harrowhark was taken to the Emperor's station to be trained against the Resurrection Beasts, the ghosts of worlds destroyed ten thousand years ago. She could not use any Lyctoral power, because before leaving she had had Ianthe Tridentarius cut Gideon out of her memory so that she could never consume her: Gideon's soul had been intact inside her the whole time. When that arrangement collapsed, Gideon woke in Harrowhark's body and Harrowhark's soul was left adrift in the River, the medium the dead pass through. Two of the Emperor's original Lyctors, Mercymorn and Augustine, made a long-planned attempt to kill him, revealing first that the Resurrection Beasts are the ghosts of worlds he himself destroyed. The attempt failed and the station was destroyed; Gideon escaped with Ianthe. The body of another ancient Lyctor proved to be shared with his own dead cavalier, Pyrrha Dve. A short interlude published between the two books, told through the reports of Judith Deuteros, the Second House officer who survived the First House, establishes Blood of Eden: an old, well-organised movement outside the Nine Houses dedicated to destroying the Empire and its Emperor. Judith is their prisoner, and Coronabeth Tridentarius is among them.

Six months later, in a city on a planet held by Blood of Eden and besieged from orbit by the Nine Houses' Cohort, a woman called Nona wakes up every morning happy. She has existed for six months, remembers nothing before that, and has a child's grasp of the world despite being in an adult body. She lives with Camilla Hect, Pyrrha Dve, and what remains of Palamedes Sextus, who shares Camilla's body; she works as an aide at a school, adores dogs, and is devoted to the teenagers she has befriended there. The body she lives in is Harrowhark Nonagesimus's, and the household's entire purpose is to keep it, and whoever is inside it, out of the hands of both Blood of Eden and the Nine Houses, while working out whose soul it actually holds and how Harrowhark might be recovered. Nona is not stable and is deteriorating, which everybody except Nona is counting down. A Resurrection Beast hangs in the sky over the city, and every night Nona dreams the same dream, in which a man tells her at length about a world that ended a very long time ago.

Blood of Eden's leadership takes a direct interest in Nona. She is interviewed and tested by the movement's officers, We Suffer And We Suffer among them, who understand that the body is a House Lyctor's and want to know what use can be made of it. Nona is guarded by Pash and befriended by Crown, a Third House defector living among them, and she is taken to see Judith Deuteros, the Cohort officer Blood of Eden has held since before the siege. The household's position is that they are cooperating; in practice Camilla, Palamedes and Pyrrha are buying time, because Nona's body is failing and the Nine Houses are known to be coming for it. Nona herself wants a birthday party and a dog, and is far more interested in her friends at the school than in any of it. The dream continues: the man in it describes the last years of the old world, the people who were preparing to leave it, and his discovery that he could raise and command the dead.

Pressure on the household increases from both directions. Blood of Eden splits over what to do with Nona, whether to hand her over, use her, or destroy the body before the Houses can have it, and the movement's internal politics turn on people with their own histories with the Empire. The Nine Houses open negotiations for the return of Harrowhark Nonagesimus's body, which means a price and a deadline. Varun the Eternal, the Resurrection Beast overhead, becomes an active danger rather than a fixture of the skyline. Camilla and Palamedes reach the limit of what their arrangement can sustain: sharing one body is killing them both, and every remaining option is bad. Nona's own condition worsens, and the household grows increasingly certain that whoever is inside the body, it is not Harrowhark. In the dream, the man's account reaches the end of the old world: what he did to try to stop it, what it cost, and the point at which stopping it was no longer what he was doing.

Events move toward a handover. Blood of Eden, the city's population and the household are all preparing for the Houses' arrival, and Nona is being made ready as a bargaining piece she does not fully understand. Her friends from the school are drawn in as well, because the children of an occupied city are not bystanders and Hot Sauce's group has been keeping secrets of its own. Nona's decline accelerates, and the question of what she is stops being academic: the evidence points away from Harrowhark and away from Gideon both. In the dream, the man's account reaches the Resurrection itself, the death of the old system and the raising of the Nine Houses out of what was left of it.

The siege breaks. The Nine Houses arrive in force, and with them Ianthe the First and Gideon Nav, resurrected in her own body, in the Emperor's service and going by the name he gave her, Kiriona Gaia. The Emperor comes himself. Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus, out of time and unable to continue divided, complete the union the Sixth House's art was always for, and what wakes is neither of them but a single new person who takes the name Paul. Varun the Eternal comes down on the city. And Nona is finally identified: she is Alecto, the Emperor's first cavalier, made from the soul of the world he destroyed in order to build his Empire, the sleeper in the Ninth House's sealed tomb whom Harrowhark spent her childhood guarding and loving. The dream running through the book was the Emperor's own account of it, told to her. Nona's six months end. The person she has been does not survive the answer, and Alecto wakes in her place, with Harrowhark's soul still missing and the war between the Nine Houses and Blood of Eden now entirely open.

The Nine Houses come for Harrowhark Nonagesimus's body and take the city with it. Ianthe the First arrives, and so does Gideon Nav, resurrected in her own body as the Emperor's daughter and renamed Kiriona Gaia, and finally the Emperor himself. Varun the Eternal, the Resurrection Beast that has hung over the planet for the whole book, comes down. Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus, who can no longer survive sharing a single body, complete instead the true union that Lyctorhood was always a corruption of: what wakes is neither of them but one new person, who takes the name Paul. Nona's identity is finally established. She is Alecto, the Emperor's original cavalier, made out of the soul of the world he killed in order to raise the Nine Houses, and the sleeper sealed in the Ninth House's tomb, the body Harrowhark was raised to guard and grew up loving. The dream that has run through the book was the Emperor telling her their shared history. Nona's six months are over: the person she has been ends, and Alecto wakes in her place. Harrowhark's soul is still adrift, Gideon is on the Emperor's side of the line, Blood of Eden and the Nine Houses are now openly at war, and the crime the Empire was founded on is no longer a secret to the people fighting it.