The Unwanted Guest
Tamsyn Muir
The Unwanted Guest is a one act play in six scenes included in the paperback edition of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. (I will assume you have already read Nona, in the sense that there will be spoilers.) You can find scans of The Unwanted Guest easily enough with an Internet search. It's 32 pages and has three characters with spoken lines: Ianthe Tridentarius, Palamedes Sextus, and another at first identified only as "Voice". Ianthe has become a lyctor already, swallowing her cavalier Naberius Tern in the accepted way. Palamedes has not yet accomplished this with his cavalier, Camilla Hect, whose corpse Palamedes believes is in Ianthe's custody. Palamedes is a necromancer, so there are many things he can do with a corpse. Palamedes is the unwanted guest referred to in the title. He's been besieging Ianthe for Camilla's body, unsuccessfully. Ianthe, who is bored with the whole thing, consents to a riddle game with him. (This is very much in character for Ianthe.)
We then have 31 pages of dialog in which Palamedes tries to figure out Ianthe's game. There is almost no actual battle and only a tiny amount of blood is shed. I don't entirely understand everything that Ianthe and Palamedes speak of. I also don't understand when and where this is all supposed to be taking place, or indeed whether anything like this is supposed to have taken place at all. It is pretty clearly not meant to be understood literally -- is it all a metaphor for some other sort of contest between Ianthe and Palamedes? I surmise that whatever happened probably took place before the events of Nona, since by the time that book begins Palamedes and Camilla are both present, taking care of and teaching Nona, albeit sharing a single body.
If you've read the books of the Locked Tomb series, you will not be surprised to hear that The Unwanted Guest is puzzling and raises more questions than it answers. That's the nature of the entire series. Readers of the Locked Tomb get used to being confused more or less all the time.
I loved this. Palamedes and Ianthe and the initially unknown Voice are all very much themselves. And Palamedes is perhaps the most intelligent character in the whole series, and the most skilled necromancer aside from Harrow, so it's a pleasure to spend time with him. We even get some new information about how it is to be a lyctor.
*Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”
Gideon, speaking to Palamedes Sextus
Gideon the Ninth