by Jay Kristoff
But still, her mind swum with images of her fight in the necropolis. That thing and its gravebone blades, the tentacles writhing at the edges of its cowl. Though she couldn’t find it in her to be afraid with the shadows so thick at her feet, she knew there was something grander at play here.
She looked at the book under her arm, running her fingers across the timeworn cover. The tarnished brass clasp.
“Seek the crown of the moon,” she muttered.
“ . . . we have until midbells . . .”
The girl hooked her thumbs into her belt.
Realized she was dying for a smoke.
“Time enough to take my library books back.”
* * *
Her cell smelled like piss and stale misery.
The straw was musty, the bucket in the corner crusted in filth and flies. Mia had been escorted from the Pit, Teardrinker nodding farewell as she was taken out through the gates. Four heavyset legionaries had marched her across the roiling marketplace, finally locking her in a holding pen inside a large administratii building. Though her price was settled, coin had yet to be paid. She had a few hours before her new domina took full possession. A few hours to pull together the tattered threads of her plan.
“ . . . we must inform the viper . . .”
Mia scowled at Mister Kindly. He was only a darker shape against the shadows thrown by the bars across the floor. The cells beside Mia’s were empty, but she kept her voice a whisper.
“I wish you wouldn’t call her that.”
“ . . . you have another term less flattering . . . ?”
“You could use her bloody name.”
The not-cat made a sniffing sound; impressive for a creature without lungs.
“ . . . we were supposed to be purchased by leonides. leonides’s daughter bought you instead. the viper has no way of knowing this. she and eclipse will be waiting for us at leonides’s collegium in whitekeep as planned . . .”
“That was something of an oversight,” Mia admitted.
“ . . . this entire plan is oversight and folly, stitched together by jiggery-fuckery . . .”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“ . . . a pity, then, that the viper does not . . .”
Mia sighed. “You’ll have to go tell her. Can you make your way to Whitekeep?”
“ . . . i am certain i can find a ship to stow aboard. but what will you do . . . ?”
“What else can I do?” Mia shrugged. “Train in Leona’s stable. Fight. Win. The destination hasn’t changed, just the starting point.”
“ . . . and where do i tell the viper to meet you? where is your new dona’s collegium . . . ?”
“I’ve no fucking idea.”
“ . . . o, aye. you certainly know what you’re doing . . .”
Mia flipped the knuckles at the shadowcat, dragged her matted hair behind her ears. She was still covered in dried blood, old sweat, dust. Sitting in the straw, she tried not to picture the faces of the men she’d killed in the Pit. She’d needed to impress, and she’d done so . . . after a fashion. She’d killed dozens who’d stood in her way before now. But still, those Pit fighters had only been doing as they were bid . . .
“I feel like shit,” she sighed.
“ . . . you do not smell particularly pleasant either . . .”
“That’s not what I—”
“ . . . you cannot afford to pity those men, mia. swimming this deep, your compassion will only serve to drown you. you must be as hard and as sharp as the men you hunt . . .”
“If not for the pity I took in my final trial at the Red Church, I’d have been at the initiation feast when Ashlinn and Osrik poisoned the Ministry. We’d all be dead.”
“ . . . you’re just going to keep rubbing that in, aren’t y—”
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, and the not-cat faded away like smoke. Mia looked up to see an administratii unlocking her cell. The man was stocky, bearded, clad in white robes marked with the three suns of the Itreyan Republic. Beside him stood a young boy in a short-sleeved novice frock, carrying a tall chair and a mahogany box.
Dona Leona walked softly into the cell, followed by one of the most well built men Mia had ever seen. He was Itreyan, perhaps in his mid-thirties, thick beard going gray at the edges, thick hair swept up and back in a long tail. His skin was like leather, and a particularly vicious scar bisected his brow, cheek and lip, twisting his features into a perpetual scowl. His stare was bloodshot, and he leaned heavily on a walking stick, its handle shaped like a lion’s head. Looking down, Mia saw he was missing his left leg below the knee, an iron pin affixed there instead.
He scowled at Mia with steel-gray eyes, his voice like cracking stone.
“She’s a girl.”
Dona Leona raised one perfectly manicured brow. “I noticed.”
“’Byss and blood, Dona, you dropped a thousand silver on this slip? I’m not a miracle worker. I need good clay to work with.”
“She killed five men in five minutes,” Leona said. “She was worth every coin.”
“A bloody good thing, then. Since we’ve not a beggar left to our names.”
“We’ve two other purchases this trip, both fine stock. And you’ve no cause to rebuke me, Executus. If you weren’t out drinking the Garden dry yestereve, you’d have been with me this morn when I made purchase.”
The big man grunted, looked again at Mia.
“On your feet, slave.”
Mia complied mutely, stood with hands clasped. The man limped in a circle around her, iron leg clanking on the stone. He poked the muscle at her gut, squeezed her biceps with massive hands, checked her teeth. Mia endured the inspection silently, eyes downturned. She could smell goldwine on his breath.
“She’s too short,” he declared. “No reach in these arms.”
“She is fast as the wind,” Leona replied.
“She’s too young. It’ll be years before she’s ready for the sand.”
“Five men,” Leona repeated, “in five minutes.”
“She’s a girl,” the big man growled.
“So was I,” the dona replied softly. “And you never thought lesser of me for it.”
“One sniff of her and the men will lose their fucking minds.”
“Did my father not say the same about me when I’d visit the collegium? And was it not you who asked that I be allowed to stay? To learn?”
“A different tale, Mi Dona. You were the domini’s daughter. This slip’s going to be down in the barracks with the rest of them.”
“And until she proves herself in the Winnowing, you will ensure my investment comes to no harm,” Leona said coolly.
“She’ll never survive the Winnowing.”
“Then you will have the distinct pleasure of saying ‘I told you so,’ Executus.”
The big man scowled at Mia. She met his stare, just for a second. Fury burned in the blacks of her pupils as a silent vow echoed in her mind.
You’ll be eating those words come truelight, bastard.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“They call me Crow, Mi Don,” she replied, eyes once more to the floor.
“Do I look a fucking don to you, girl? You will address me as Executus.”
It was all Mia could do not to bury her knee in his bollocks. Punch his teeth loose from his jaw and dance on his head.
“Yes, Executus,” she replied.
The man glowered, his expression turned all the darker by his scar. Bladework, she reckoned. Probably earned somewhere on the sand. He moved like a fighter. Graceful and powerful, despite the missing leg.
“We sail on the morrowtide,” Leona said. “The sooner we return to Crow’s Nest and begin her training, the better.”
Mia’s heart surged in her chest.
“ . . . Crow’s Nest?” she whispered.
The slap knocked her back into the wall. Her head cracked on the stone and she collapsed to her knees, gasping. She was back on her feet in a moment, eyes flashing
with hatred as she glared at the man who’d slapped her. But quick as silver, the executus’s fist crashed into her belly, sending her to her knees once more.
He’s fast . . .
Mia felt a brutish hand in her hair, dragging back her head as she gasped in pain.
“You forget your place, girl,” the big man said. “If ever again you speak in presence of your domina without being spoken to, I’ll set my blade to your tongue and feed it to my fucking dog. Do you hear me?”
Patience . . .
“Yes, Executus,” she whispered.
The man grunted, released his hold. Mia glanced up at Leona, saw the woman regarding her with a cool, imperious gaze. Whatever her opinion of Mia’s martial skills, it was clear her new domina had no issue with her man’s brutal methods.
After a moment’s tense silence, Dona Leona turned to the administratii, still waiting patiently in the corridor.
“Come, then, be about your work.”
The administratii shuffled into the cell, his novice beside him. The boy plonked the tall chair down beside Mia, opened the mahogany box he carried and proffered it to the administratii. Inside Mia saw a collection of iron needles. Powders in stoppered phials, small bottles of ink. Her shadow surged, fear swelling in her belly. She knew this was coming. It was all part of the game. But still . . .
“Sit,” the administratii said.
Mia dragged herself up from the floor, glanced at the buckles and straps on the chair’s armrests. They obviously intended to bind her for what came next. She knew if she spoke again, she’d only earn herself another blow. And so she fixed her stare on the small barred window, the blue sky beyond. And she remained standing.
The executus growled deep, raised his hand to strike.
“Do as you’re—”
“No,” Dona Leona said, watching Mia with curious eyes. “Let her stand.”
“All respect, Dona Leona,” said the administratii, “but this is no simple inkwerk. The process is arkemical. The pain immense. She is likely to swoon.”
Mia thought back to her scourging at Weaver Marielle’s hands and almost laughed at the word. That same laughter twinkled in the Dona Leona’s eyes.
“A hundred silver says she does nothing of the sort.”
The executus groaned softly. The administratii looked taken aback.
“I am not a gambling man, Mi Dona.”
“But you are a man who insists on telling me what I already know?” Leona’s tone turned razor-sharp. “I grew up in the finest gladiatii collegium in all the Itreyan Republic. I know how a damned slave brand works. Now proceed.”
The administratii almost succeeded in stifling his sigh. He turned to the box, set about unstopping phials, mixing components into a shallow glass bowl. The poisoncrafter in Mia watched with interest, noting the way the arkemical concoction came together, bubbling and hissing and spitting black.2
The administratii dipped his needle, raised it to Mia’s face. The novice stood behind her, held her head steady. The girl forced herself to be still, grit her teeth. Lining up the steel against Mia’s cheek, the administratii hefted a thin jeweler’s hammer. The girl held her breath. And without further foreplay, the administratii smacked the needle through Mia’s cheek and straight into the bone beyond.
Black fire. Burning agony. Mia’s eyes grew wide, pupils dilated, the pain lancing through her skull and stealing her breath away. Her knees buckled, black stars bursting in her eyes. The administratii stepped back, obviously expecting her to fall. But with her shadow swelling, chest heaving, the girl remained on her feet.
Mia looked at Leona. The dona was watching her with a growing smile.
“Well?” the woman asked the administratii. “Proceed!”
The man shrugged, and with no more pause for drama, began hammering the needle into Mia’s cheek, over and over again. Small series of three tiny blows, each like a thunderclap in her head.
tapTAPTAP
tapTAPTAP
Fingernails digging into her palms.
White spots swelling before her eyes.
The room rolling beneath her like a ship in a storm.
tapTAPTAP
tapTAPTAP
The anticipation was the worst of it. The moment between one sequence and the next. That tiny respite that seemed an eternity, waiting for the pain to begin again. Adonai’s scourging, Marielle’s weaving . . . nothing she’d ever felt in her life had come close, made all the worse by the bitter thought that in this moment, to the world outside this cell, her life was no longer her own.
tapTAPTAP
If not for Mister Kindly, she thought she might have broken.
tapTAPTAP
But at the end
after all the pain
all the praying
cheek bleeding
legs trembling
Mia still stood.
“A good thing,” Dona Leona declared, “that you are not a betting man, sir.”
The administratii packed up his gear without a word. Aiming a poison glance at Mia, he gave a curt bow to the dona, and with his novice trailing behind, swept from the cell with a rustle of black cloth. Leona turned to her executus with a triumphant smile.
“You ask for clay to work with, Executus? I give you steel.”
The big man looked at Mia with narrowed eyes. “Steel breaks before it bends.”
“Four Daughters, you’re never happy are you?” Leona sighed. “Come. We should let her rest. She will need her strength in turns to come.”
The dona cupped Mia’s face, wiping her wounded cheek with a gentle thumb. Sapphire blue eyes burning into her own.
“We will bleed the sands red, you and I,” she said. “Sanguii e Gloria.”
Gifting her a final smile, Leona swept from the room in a flurry of blue silk. The executus limped after her, locked the door behind him. The clank of his iron leg faded with his dona down the corridor.
Mia sank to her knees. Her cheek was swollen, throbbing with pain. Her palms were bleeding from the press of her nails. She ran her fingertips over her skin, feeling the raised ridges of the two interlocking circles branded just below her right eye. But beneath the remembered agony, her mind was racing, the dona’s words tumbling inside her skull with the echoes of the hammer blows.
They’re taking me to—
“ . . . crow’s nest . . . ?”
She glanced up at the not-cat, once more cleaning his not-paw with his not-tongue. Licking at parched lips, she tried to find her voice.
“It was the home of the Familia Corvere. My familia. Consul Scaeva gave it to Justicus Remus as reward for ending my father’s rebellion against the Senate.”
“ . . . and now leona owns it . . . ?”
Mia shrugged mutely. The not-cat tilted his head.
“ . . . are you well . . . ?”
Her father, holding her hand as they walked in fields of tall sunsbell flowers. Her mother standing atop battlements of ochre stone, cool wind playing in her long dark hair. Mia had grown up in Godsgrave—her father’s role as justicus meant he could never stay away from the City of Bridges and Bones for long. But every few summersdeeps, they’d traveled to Crow’s Nest for a week or two, just to be with one another. Those had been the happiest turns of Mia’s life. Away from Godsgrave’s crush, its poison politics. Her parents seemed happier there. Closer somehow. Her brother Jonnen had been born there. She remembered visits from General Antonius, the would-be king who’d hanged beside her father. He and her parents would stay up late into the night, drinking and laughing and O, so alive.
All of them gone now.
“ . . . i should go. find a ship bound for whitekeep. tell the viper to seek you in crow’s nest . . .”
“ . . . Aye,” she nodded.
“ . . . will you be all right while i am gone . . . ?”
The thought should have terrified her. She knew if Mister Kindly weren’t there, it would have. For seven years, ever since her father died, the shadowcat had been beside
her. She knew he had to leave, that she couldn’t do this all by herself. But the thought of being alone, of living with the fear he usually drank to nothing . . .
“I’ll be well enough,” she replied. “Just don’t dawdle.”
“ . . . i will be swift. never fear . . .”
She sighed. Pressed her hand to the brand on her throbbing cheek.
“And never, ever forget.”
1 Mia often counted stairs in the Mountain as she climbed them. She was never surprised when the tally changed. Some of the more “temperamental” flights, such as the one leading to the Hall of Song, shifted constantly, whereas the flight leading to the Sky Altar seemed almost lazy by comparison. Interestingly enough, the stairs leading up to the chambers of the Hall of Eulogies remained constant in number.Three hundred and thirty-three.
2 The arkemy of slave brands is a secret tightly guarded by the Itreyan administratii. The process not only marks a person’s skin, but also the bone beneath, and the tattoo will bleed through scar tissue and reassert itself should the recipient decide to remove their brand through knifework or flame.There are only four ways to remove an arkemical brand.First, at the hands of the administratii, after one’s freedom is purchased or earned. Second, by Ashkahi sorcery. Third, by hacking out pieces of one’s own skull, but since wandering about with a missing cheekbone is something of a giveaway of one’s fugitive status, the agony is hardly worth it. And lastly, by dying—through some rude semblance of Old Ashkahi bloodmagik, the arkemical brand is tied to the recipient’s own life, and once it ends, the mark on their cheek will slowly dissolve over the course of the next few minutes.Thus, the only freedom most slaves ever achieve is in the arms of death.
6: mortality
The athenaeum opened at the touch of Mia’s finger, the colossal stone doors swinging wide as if they were carved of feathers. And taking a deep breath, clutching her tome to her breast, she limped out into her favorite place in the entire world.
Looking out over the mezzanine to the endless shelves below, the girl couldn’t help but smile. She’d grown up inside books. No matter how dark life became, shutting out the hurt was as easy as opening a cover. A child of murdered parents and a failed rebellion, she’d still walked in the boots of scholars and warriors, queens and conquerors.
