by Jay Kristoff
“Kill her!” the boy roared, stamping his foot.
The crossbowmen tightened their fingers on their triggers. The centurion looked at Mia, drew breath to shout.
“Lo—”
A chill stole over the scene—the legionaries, the assassins, the crowd gathered in the street beyond. Despite the blazing heat, goosebumps shivered on Mia’s bare skin. A familiar shape rose up behind the soldiers, hooded and cloaked, twin gravebone swords clutched in its ink-black hands. Mia recognized it immediately—the same figure that had saved her life in the Galante necropolis. The same one who’d given her that cryptic message.
“SEEK THE CROWN OF THE MOON.”
Its face was hidden in the depths of its cloak. Mia’s breath hung in white clouds before her lips, and despite the heat, she found herself shivering in its chill.
Without a word, the figure struck the closest soldier, its gravebone blade splitting his breastplate asunder. The other legionaries cried out in alarm, turning their crossbows upon their assailant. As the figure wove among them, blades flashing, they fired. The crossbow bolts struck home, thudding into the figure’s chest and belly. But it seemed not to slow at all. The crowd in the street beyond fell to panicking as the figure wheeled and spun among the soldiers, cutting them to bloody chunks, raining red.
Mia moved swift despite her fatigue, grabbing her wriggling brother by the scruff of his neck. Solis charged across the broken flagstones toward her, and Mia brought up her blade to block his onslaught. The Shahiid’s strikes were deathly quick, sheer perfection. And hard as she tried, swift as she was, she felt a blow sail past her guard and slice into her shoulder.
Mia spun aside, dropping her stolen blade as she cried out. Within seconds she could feel the Rictus in her veins, a numbing chill spreading out from the wound, flowing down her arm. With a grunt of effort, she threw up her hand, wrapped up Solis’s feet in his shadow again as she tumbled onto her backside, her brother clutched tight to her chest. The Shahiid stumbled, cursed, trying to rip his bare feet free from her grip. Mister Kindly and Eclipse coalesced on the stone between them, the shadowcat hissing and puffing up, the shadowwolf’s growl coming from beneath the earth.
“… back, bastard…”
“… YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HER…”
Behind Mia, the strange figure finished its grim work. The churchyard looked like the floor of an abattoir, pieces of legionaries scattered all across it, the bystanders fleeing in panic. The figure’s gravebone blades dripped with gore as it stepped across the flagstones, stood above the fallen girl, leveling a sword at Solis’s throat. The Revered Father of the Red Church seemed unperturbed despite the trio of shadowthings arrayed against him, lips pulled back over his teeth, white breath hanging in the air between them.
The figure spoke, its voice tinged with a strange reverberation.
“THE MOTHER IS DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, SOLIS.”
“Who are you, daemon?” he demanded.
“YOU TRULY ARE BLIND,” it replied. “BUT WHEN DARK DAWNS, YOU WILL SEE.”
The figure knelt beside Mia. Her right arm was numb, she was barely able to keep her head up. But she still clung to her brother like grim death—after all the blood and miles and years, she’d be damned to come all this way and discover he lived, only to lose him again. For his part, between the presence of this strange wraith and the bloody murder it had just unleashed, Jonnen seemed frozen with fear.
The figure reached out one hand. It was black and gleaming, as if dipped in fresh paint. As it touched her wounded shoulder, Mia felt a stab of pain, ice-cold and black, all the way to her heart. She hissed as the earth surged beneath her, a frozen vertigo setting all the world awhirl.
She felt sorrow. Pain. An endless, lonely chill.
She felt she was falling.
And then she felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER 3
EMBER
Mercurio awoke in darkness.
The pain in his head felt like the kind earned after a three-turn bender, and yet he could recall no recent debauchery. His jaw ached, and he could taste blood on his tongue. Groaning, he slowly sat upright in a bed lined with soft gray fur, hand to his brow. He had no idea where he might be, but something … the scent in the air perhaps, dragged him back to younger years.
“Hello, Mercurio.”
He turned to his left, saw an old woman seated beside his bed. She looked to be around his age, her long gray hair bound in neat braids. She was dressed in dark gray robes, cool blue eyes pouched in deep wrinkles. At first glance, a bystander might’ve expected to find her in a rocking chair beside a merry hearth, a handful of grandsprogs around her, an old moggy on her knee. But Mercurio knew better.
“Hello, you murderous old cunt,” he replied.
Drusilla, Lady of Blades, smiled in reply.
“You always did have a silver tongue, my dear.”
The old woman lifted a cup of steaming tea from the saucer in her lap, sipped slowly. Her eyes were fixed on Mercurio as he peered around the bedchamber, breathed deep, finally understanding where he was. The song of a choir hung in the cool, dark air. He smelled candles and incense, steel and smoke. He remembered the Ministry accosting him in the Godsgrave chapel. The scratch from the poisoned blade in Spiderkiller’s hand. The old man realized the blood he could taste belonged to pigs.
They’ve brought me back to the Mountain.
“You haven’t changed your decor much,” he sighed.
“You know me, love. I was never one for extravagance.”
“The last time I was in this bed, I told you it really was the last time,” Mercurio said. “But if I knew you were this hungry for a return performance…”
“O, please,” the old woman sighed. “You’d need a block and tackle to get it up at your age. And your heart could barely stand it when we were twenty.”
Mercurio smiled despite himself.
“It’s good to see you, ’Silla.”
“Would that I could say the same.” The Lady of Blades shook her head and sighed. “You addle-minded old fool.”
“Did you really drag me all the way to the Quiet Mountain for a rebuke?” Mercurio reached to his coat for his smokes and found both smokes and coat missing. “You could’ve just chewed my cods off back in the ’Grave.”
“What were you thinking?” Drusilla demanded, setting aside her tea. “Helping that idiot girl in her idiot schemes? Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“I’m not fresh fallen from the last rains, ’Silla.”
“No, you’re the bishop of Godsgrave!” Drusilla stood, prowling around the bed, eyes flashing. “Years of faithful service. Sworn to the Dark Mother. And yet you helped a Blade of the Church break the Red Promise and murder one of our own patrons!”*
“O, Goddess, don’t play the wounded devotee with me,” Mercurio growled. “It’s as obvious as a beagle’s bollocks that you and your nest of snakes wanted Cardinal Duomo dead. You’ve all been in bed with Scaeva for years. Did Lord Cassius know? Or was this something you and the others conspired to behind his back?”
“You’re a fine one to speak of conspiracies, love.”
“How do you think the rest of the congregation would react if they knew, ’Silla? That the Ministry was content to bend over and spread cheek for our beloved People’s Senator? The hands of Niah upon this earth, become lapdogs of a fucking tyrant?”
“I should have you killed for your betrayal,” Drusilla snarled.
“And yet I can’t help notice I’m not dead.” The old man peered under the sheets. “Or that I’m sans trousers. You certain I’m not here for an encore? I’ve learned a few tricks since—”
Drusilla hurled a gray robe at the old man’s head.
“You are here to serve as the worm you are.”
“… As bait?” Mercurio shook his head. “You really think she’s stupid enough to come after me? After all she’s been through, after all she’s—”
“I know who Mia Corvere is,” Drusilla snapped. “This is a girl
who gave up any chance at a normal life or happiness to see her parents avenged. She sold herself into slavery on a gambit that even a lunatic would consider insanity, for a single chance to strike down the men who destroyed her house. She is fearless. Reckless beyond reckoning. So if there is one thing I’ve learned about your little Crow, it is this: there is nothing that girl will not do for her familia. Nothing.”
The old woman leaned over the bed, stared into the old man’s eyes.
“And you, dear Mercurio, are more a father to her than her father ever was.”
The old man stared back, saying nothing. Swallowing the bile flooding his mouth. The Lady of Blades only smiled, leaning a little closer. He could still see her beauty beneath the scars of time. Remember the last nevernight they’d been in this bedchamber together, all those years ago. Sweat and blood and sweet, sweet poison.
“You may wander in the Mountain if you wish,” Drusilla said. “I’m certain you remember where everything is. The congregation has been informed of your betrayal, but you are not to be touched. We need you breathing for now. But please, don’t push the friendship by being more the fool than you’ve already been.”
Drusilla reached under the sheet between his legs, squeezed tight as he gasped.
“A man can still breathe without these, after all.”
The old woman held on a moment longer, then released her icy grip. Lips still curled in her matronly smile, the Lady of Blades took her saucer and cup back up, turned, and stalked toward the bedchamber door.
“Drusilla.”
The Lady of Blades glanced over her shoulder. “Aye?”
“You really are a cunt, you know that?”
“Ever the flatterer.” The old woman turned back to him, her smile vanished. “But a man like you should know exactly where flattery gets you with a woman like me.”
Mercurio sat in the gloom after she left, wrinkled brow creased with worry.
“Aye,” he muttered. “In deep shit.”
* * *
He’d lurked in the bedchamber a few hours more, nursing his aching head and wounded ego. But boredom eventually bid him pull on the gray robe Drusilla had given him, tie the thin strip of leather about his waist. He didn’t bother trying to arm himself—Mercurio knew the only ways out of the Quiet Mountain were a two-week trek across the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, out through Speaker Adonai’s blood pool, or by leaping off the railings of the Sky Altar and into the shapeless night beyond.
Escape from here without help or wings was all but impossible.
He stepped from the bedchamber, leaning on the cane they’d (rather thoughtfully) left him, out into the gloom of the Quiet Mountain. Ice-blue eyes that seemed born to scowl surveyed the dark around him. The disembodied choir sung faintly, nowhere and everywhere at once. The halls were black stone, lit by windows of stained glass and false sunslight, decorated with grotesque statuary of bone and skin. Spiral patterns covered every inch of wall, intricate and maddening.
As soon as Mercurio’s feet touched the flagstones outside Drusilla’s room, he felt the presence of a robed figure, watching from the gloom. One of Drusilla’s Hands, no doubt, tasked to be his shadow for the duration of his stay.* He ignored the figure, wandered about his way, listening to it following behind. His old knees creaked as he descended the stairs, down the wending paths and through the labyrinthine dark, until he finally stepped into the Hall of Eulogies.
He looked around the vast space, forced to admire the grandeur even after all these years. Enormous stone pillars were arranged in a circle, stone gables carved from the Mountain itself soaring above. The names of the Church’s countless victims were scribed on the granite at his feet. Unmarked tombs of the faithful lined the walls.
The space was dominated by a colossal statue of Niah herself. Her black eyes seemed to follow Mercurio as he stepped closer, squinting in the false light. She held a scale and a wicked sword in her hands, her face beautiful and serene and cold. Jewels glittered on her ebony robe like stars in the truedark sky.
She who is All and Nothing.
Mother, Maid, and Matriarch.
Mercurio touched his eyes, his lips, his heart, looking up at his Goddess with clouded eyes. As he stood there in the hall, a knot of young folk entered from the steps below. They regarded the old bishop with wary stares as they passed, meeting his gaze only briefly. Smooth skin and bright eyes and clean hands, teenagers all. New acolytes by the look, just beginning their training.
He stared after them wistfully as they left. Remembering his own tutelage within these walls, his devotion to the Mother of Night. How long ago it all seemed now, how cold he’d grown inside. Once he’d been fire. Breathed it. Bled it. Spat it. But now, the only ember that remained was the one he kept burning for her—that snot-nosed, stuck-up little lordling’s bitch who’d wandered into his shop all those years ago, a silver brooch shaped like a crow in her hand.
He’d never made time for familia. To live as a Blade of the Mother was to live with death—with the knowledge that every turn could be your last. It hadn’t seemed fair to take a wife when she’d likely end a widow, nor make a child who’d probably be raised an orphan. Mercurio never thought he’d a need for children. If you’d asked him why he’d taken that raven-haired waif in all those years ago, he’d have muttered something about her gift, her grit, her guile. He’d have laughed if you’d told him he needed her as much as she needed him. He’d have cut your throat and buried you deep if you’d told him that one turn, he’d love her like the daughter he’d never had.
But in his bones, even as he ended you, he’d have known it true.
And now, here he was. A worm on Drusilla’s hook. For all his bluff, he knew the Lady of Blades spoke truth—Mia loved him like blood. She’d never let him die in here, not if she thought she had a chance to save him. And with those wretched daemons riding her shadow and eating her fear, in Mia’s head there was always a chance.
The old man peered at the granite colossus above him. The sword and scales in her hands. Those pitiless black eyes, boring into his own.
“Where the fuck are you?” he whispered.
He left the hall, Drusilla’s Hand lurking at a respectful distance behind as the old bishop shuffled on his way through the Mountain’s maze, his cane beating crisp on the black stone. His knees were aching by the time he reached his destination—he didn’t remember there being quite so many stairs in this place. Two dark wooden doors loomed before him, carved with the same spiral motif as decorated the walls. Each must have weighed a ton, but the old man reached out with one gnarled hand and pushed them open with ease.
Mercurio found himself on a mezzanine overlooking a forest of ornate shelves, laid out like a garden maze. They stretched off into a space too dark and vast to see the edges. On each shelf were piled books of every shape and size and description. Dusty tomes and vellum scrolls and famished notebooks and everything in between. The grand Athenaeum of the Goddess of Death, peopled with the memoirs of kings and conquerors, theorems of heretics, masterpieces of madmen. Dead books and lost books and books that never were—some burned on the pyres of the faithful, some simply swallowed by time, and others simply too dangerous to write at all.
An endless heaven for any reader, and a living hell for any librarian.
“Well, well,” said a croaking, hollow voice. “Look what the scabdogs dragged in.”
Mercurio turned to see an old Liisian man in a scruffy waistcoat, leaning on a trolley piled with books. Two shocks of white hair sprung from either side of his scalp, and a pair of finger-thick spectacles adorned his hooked nose. His back was so bent, he looked like a walking question mark. A fine cigarillo smoldered on his bloodless lips.
“Hello, Chronicler,” Mercurio said.
“You’re a long way from Godsgrave, Bishop,” Aelius growled.
The chronicler stepped closer, squared up against Mercurio, and glowered. As they stood there, face-to-face, Aelius seemed to stand taller, his shadow growing longer. The
air rippled with some dark current, and Mercurio heard the shapes of colossi moving out between the shelves. Coming closer.
Aelius’s dark eyes burned as he considered Mercurio’s, his voice growing harder and colder with every word.
“If I can still call you ‘Bishop’ at all, that is,” he spat. “I thought you’d be ashamed to show your face outside your bedchamber after what you pulled. Let alone drag yourself down here. What brings your traitorous hide to the Black Mother’s library?”
Mercurio pointed to the ever-present spare behind the chronicler’s ear.
“Smoke?”
Chronicler Aelius hung still for a moment, eyes burning with dark flame. Then, with a small chuckle, he unfolded his arms, clapped Mercurio on his thin shoulder. Lighting the cigarillo on his own, he handed it over.
“All right, whippersnapper?”
“Do I look all right, old man?” Mercurio asked.
“You look like shite. But it’s always polite to ask.”
Mercurio leaned against the wall and gazed out over the library, dragging a sweet gray draft into his lungs. The smoke tasted of strawberries, the sugared paper setting his tongue dancing.
“They don’t make them like this anymore,” Mercurio sighed.
“Same might be said of everything in this room,” Aelius replied.
“How’ve you been, you old bastard?”
“Dead.”*
The chronicler settled in beside him.
“You?”
“Much the same.”
Aelius scoffed, breathed a plume of gray. “Still got a pulse in you from what I can see. What the ’byss you sulking about down here for, lad?”
Mercurio drew on his cigarillo. “It’s a long story, old man.”
“A story about your Mia, I take it?”
“… How’d you guess?”
Aelius shrugged his bone-thin shoulders, his eyes twinkling behind his improbable spectacles. “She always struck me as a girl with one to tell.”
“We might be nearing the final page, I fear.”
“You’re too young to be such a pessimist.”
