by Jay Kristoff
The heavens grant us only one life, but through books, we live a thousand.
“A girl with a story to tell,” came a voice from behind her.
Smiling, Mia turned to see an old man standing beside a trolley piled high with books. He wore a scruffy waistcoat, two shocks of white hair trying to flee his balding scalp. Thick spectacles sat on a hooked nose, his back bent like a sickle. The word “ancient” did him as much justice as the word “beautiful” did Shahiid Aalea.
“Good turn to you, Chronicler,” Mia bowed.
Without asking, Chronicler Aelius plucked his ever-present spare cigarillo from behind his ear, lit it on his own and offered it to Mia. Leaning against the wall with a wince as her stitches pulled, she puffed and sighed a shade of contented gray.
Aelius leaned beside her, his own cigarillo bobbing on his lips as he spoke.
“All right?”
“All right,” she nodded.
“How was Galante?”
Mia winced again, the pain of her sutures twinging in her backside.
“A pain in the arse,” she muttered.
The old man grinned around his smoke. “So what brings you down here?”
Mia held up the tome she’d brought with her across the blood walk. It was bound in stained leather, tattered and beaten. The strange symbols embossed in the cover hurt her eyes to look at. Its clasp was tarnished brass, pages yellowed with age.
“I supposed I should return this. I’ve had it eight months.”
“I was starting to think I’d have to send out a search party.”
“That’d be unpleasant for all concerned, I’d bet.”
The old man smiled. “The late fees are rather exorbitant in a library like this.”
The chronicler had left the book in Mia’s room, right before she was posted to Galante. In the intervening months, she’d pored over the pages more times than she could count. The pity of it was, she still didn’t understand the half of it, and truth told, in recent turns, she’d become more than a little disillusioned about it. But her encounter in the Galante necropolis had renewed her interest tenfold.
The book was written by a woman named Cleo—a darkin like Mia, who spoke to the shadows just as she did. Cleo lived in a time before the Republic, and the book was a diary of sorts, detailing her journey through Itreya and beyond. It spoke of meetings between her and other darkin—meetings that ended with Cleo apparently eating her fellows. The strange thing was, from Cleo’s writing, she’d encountered dozens of other darkin in her travels. And from the look of the woman’s scribbled self-portraits, she was accompanied by dozens of passengers, wearing a multitude of different shapes—foxes, birds, serpents, and the like. An entire shadow menagerie at her command.
In all her life, the only darkin Mia had met was Lord Cassius. And the only two daemons were Mister Kindly and Eclipse.
So where the ’byss were the rest of them?
Amid nonsense scrawl and pictograms that spoke of her ever-growing madness, the latter half of the book concerned Cleo’s search for something she called “the Crown of the Moon”—just as that shadowthing in the Galante necropolis had told Mia to do. And flipping through the illustrations after her encounter, Mia had seen several that bore an uncanny resemblance to the figure that had saved her life.
Sadly, Cleo made no mention of who or what this “Moon” might be.
The book was written in an arcane language Mia had never seen, but Mister Kindly and Eclipse were both able to read it. Strangest of all, it contained a map of the world in the time before the Republic, but the bay of Godsgrave was missing entirely. Instead, a landmass filled the sea where the Itreyan capital now stood. This peninsula was marked with an X, and an unsettling declaration:
Here he fell.
“Did you read this before you gave it to me?” Mia asked.
The old man shook his head. “Couldn’t make out a bloody word. Only thing that made me think of you was the pictures. Make any sense to you?”
“ . . . Not half as much as I’d like.”
Aelius shrugged. “You asked me to look for books on darkin, and so I did. Didn’t promise you’d be any more enlightened when you were done.”
“No need to rub it in, good Chronicler.”
Aelius smirked. “I’m always on the lookout for more. If I find anything else of interest down here, I’ll send it to your chambers. But I’d not hold my breath.”
Mia nodded, dragging on her smoke. Niah’s athenaeum was actually a library of the dead. It contained a copy of every book that had ever been destroyed in the history of the written language. Moreover, it also held other tomes that had never been written in the first place. Memoirs of murdered tyrants. Theorems of crucified heretics. Masterpieces of geniuses who ended before their time.
Chronicler Aelius had told her new books were appearing constantly, that the shelves were always shifting. And though Niah’s athenaeum was a wondrous place as a result, the downside was plain: finding a particular book in here was like trying to find a particular louse in a dockside sweetboy’s crotch.
“Chronicler, have you heard of the Moon? Or any crowns said Moon might be partial to?”
Aelius’s stare turned wary.
“Why?”
“You answer questions with questions an awful lot,” Mia sighed. “Why is that?”
“Do you remember what I said that turn you first came down here?”
“See, there you go again.”
“Do you remember?”
“You said I was a girl with a story to tell.”
“And what else?”
Smoke drifted from the girl’s lips as the old man stared her down.
“You said maybe here’s not where I’m supposed to be,” she finally replied. “Which stank like horseshit at the time, and smells even worse now. I proved myself. The Ministry would all be nailed to crosses in the ’Grave if not for me. And I’m sick and bloody tired of everybody around here seeming to forget that.”
“You don’t find any irony in earning your place in a cult of assassins by saving half a dozen lives?”
“I killed almost a hundred men in the process, Aelius.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“What are you, my nursemaid?” Mia snapped. “A killer is what I am. The wolf doesn’t pity the lamb. And the—”
“Aye, aye, I know the tune.”
“And you know why I’m here. My father was executed as a traitor to entertain a mob. My mother died in a prison, and my baby brother beside her. And the men responsible need a fucking killing. That’s how I feel about it.”
The old man hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat. “Problem with being a librarian is there’s some lessons you just can’t learn from books. And the problem with being an assassin is there’s some mysteries you just can’t solve by stabbing fuck out of them.”
“Always riddles with you,” Mia growled. “Do you know about this Moon or no?”
The old man sucked on his cigarillo, looked her up and down. “I know this much. Some answers are learned. But the important ones are earned.”
“O, Black Goddess, now you’re a poet, too?”
The chronicler frowned, crushed his cigarillo out against the wall.
“Poets are wankers.”
Aelius dropped the murdered butt of his smoke into his waistcoat. He looked down at the book in Mia’s hand. Back up into her eyes.
“You can keep that. Nobody else can read it anyways.”
With a small nod, he took hold of his RETURNS trolley.
“What, that’s all the explanation I get?” Mia asked.
Aelius shrugged. “Too many books. Too few centuries.”
The old man wheeled his trolley off into the dark. Watching him fade into the shadows, the girl took a savage drag of her cigarillo, jaw clenched.
“ . . . well, that was enlightening . . .”
“ . . . AELIUS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY. BEING CRYPTIC MAKES HIM FEEL IMPORTANT . . .”
Mia scowled at the shadowwolf materializing beside her.
“Are you sure Lord Cassius never learned anything of this, Eclipse? He was head of the entire congregation. You’re telling me he knew nothing about what it was to be darkin? Cleo? The Moon? Any of it?”
“ . . . I TOLD YOU, WE NEVER LOOKED. CASSIUS FOUND ENOUGH MEANING IN LIFE BY ENDING THE LIVES OF OTHERS. HE NEEDED NO MORE THAN THAT . . .”
Mister Kindly snorted. “ . . . small things and small minds . . .”
“ . . . HAVE A CARE, LITTLE GRIMALKIN. HE WAS MY FRIEND WHEN YOU WERE STILL SHAPELESS. HE WAS AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE DARK AND AS SHARP AS THE MOTHER’S TEETH. SPEAK NO ILL OF HIM . . .”
Mia sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t understand how Cassius had never sought the truth of himself. She’d wondered on it since she was a child. Old Mercurio and Mother Drusilla had said she was chosen of the Goddess.
But chosen for what?
She remembered fighting in the streets of Last Hope with Ashlinn. Her attack on the Basilica Grande when she was fourteen. On both occasions, simply looking at the trinity—the holy symbol of Aa—had caused her agony. The Light God hated her. She’d felt it. Sure as the ground beneath her feet. But why? And what the ’byss did this “Moon” have to do with any of it?
And Remus.
Fucking Remus.
He was dead by her hand on a dusty Last Hope thoroughfare. His attack on the Mountain failed. His men slaughtered on the sands all around him. But before she’d plunged her gravebone blade into his throat, the justicus had uttered words that turned her entire world upside down.
“I will give your brother your regards.”
Mia shook her head.
But Jonnen is dead. Mother told me so.
So many questions. Mia could taste frustration mixed with the smoke on her tongue. But her answers were in Godsgrave. And Black Mother be praised, that was exactly where this mysterious patron of hers was sending her.
Time to stop moaning and start moving.
Mia limped out from the athenaeum. Down the winding stair toward the Church’s belly. Through the puddles of stained-glass light, Mister Kindly on her shoulder and Eclipse prowling before her. The Church choir rang as they trod the winding stairs, the long and twisting halls, until finally, they reached Weaver Marielle’s chambers.
She took a breath, rapped on the heavy door. It opened after a moment, and Mia found herself looking into scarlet eyes, down to a beautiful, bloodless smile.
“Blade Mia,” Adonai said.
The Blood Speaker was clad in his indecent britches and red silk robe, open as ever at his chest. The room beyond was lit by a single arkemical lamp, the walls adorned with hundreds of different masks, all shapes and sizes. Death masks and children’s masks and Carnivalé masks. Glass and ceramic and papier-mâché. A room of faces, without a single mirror in sight.
“Thou art here for a weaving,” Adonai said.
“Aye,” Mia nodded, meeting those blood-red eyes without fear. “Wounds heal in time, but I’ll not have much of it where I’m headed.”
“The City of Bridges and Bones,” the speaker mused. “No place more dangerous in all the Republic.”
“You’ve not seen my laundry basket,” Mia replied.
Adonai smirked, glanced over his shoulder.
“Sister love, sister mine? Thou hast company.”
Mia saw a misshapen form shuffle into the arkemical glow. The woman was albino pale like her brother, but what little Mia could be see of her skin was swollen and cracked, blood and pus leaking through the bandages about her hands and face. She was clad in a black velvet robe, her lips splitting as she looked at Mia and smiled.
“Blade Mia,” Marielle whispered.
“Weaver Marielle,” Mia said, bowing.
“To the ’Grave she goes. At Father Solis’s word, to a new patron’s arms. And though stitched, still she bleeds.” Adonai shivered slightly. “I smell it on her.”
“All thy hurts shall be mended, little darkin,” Marielle lisped. “Sure and true.”
The weaver nodded to the dreaded stone slab that dominated her room. It was set with leather straps and buckles of polished steel—though Marielle could weave flesh like clay and mend almost any wound, the process itself was agony. Mia hated the thought of being bound for the process, truth told. Trussed up like some hog at the spit, britches around her ankles. But, resigning herself to the pain, feeling the shadows within her shadow drink down her fear, Mia limped into the chamber.
As he closed the door behind her, Speaker Adonai caught her arm.
Mia looked up into his glittering eyes, snow-pale lashes. He leaned close, closer, and for a terrible, thrilling moment, she thought he might kiss her. But instead, Adonai spoke with lowered voice, lips brushing her ear, barely a whisper.
“Two lives ye saved, the turn the Luminatii pressed their sunsteel to the Mountain’s throat. Mine, and my sister love’s. Marielle’s debt to thee was repaid the turn she gave Naev back her face. But my debt, little Blade, is still owed. Know this, in nevernights to come. As deep and dark as the waters ye swim might turn, on matters of blood, count upon a speaker’s vow, ye may.”
Adonai fixed her his scarlet stare, voice as sharp as the gravebone at her wrist.
“Blood is owed thee, little Crow,” he whispered. “And blood shall be repaid.”
Mia glanced to Marielle. Back up into Adonai’s glittering red eyes. Her mind swimming with thoughts of Godsgrave. Braavi. Stolen maps and hidden patrons and a Ministry that seemed to feel nothing but ire toward her.
“ . . . Do you know something that I don’t, Speaker?”
A beautiful, bloodless smile was her only reply. With a swish of his scarlet robe, Speaker Adonai motioned to his sister. Mia turned to the Room of Faces and its mistress, looming above that awful slab. Marielle beckoned her with twisted fingers.
No matter what was to come, it was too late to turn back now.
And heaving a sigh, Mia lay down on the stone.
She almost wept when she saw it.
It rose from the clifftops and pierced the sky, ochre stone bleeding through to gold in the light of two burning suns. A keep carved out of the cliffs themselves, once home to one of the twelve finest familia of the Republic.
Crow’s Nest.
Mia knelt on the deck of the Gloryhound and stared, overcome with memories. Walking in the bustling port, hand in hand with her mother. The shopkeeps calling her “little dona” and bringing her sweets. Her father striding the battlements above the ocean, sea breeze playing in his hair as he stared across the waves. Dreaming, perhaps, of the rebellion that would be his undoing.
She’d been too young to understand, too small to—
Crack!
The whip snapped across her shoulder blades, bright red pain tearing her from her reverie.
“I gave no permission for you to stop! Chin to the boards!”
Mia risked a hateful glance at the executus, looming over her with a long stock whip in hand. Sweat was dripping down her face, hair clinging to her skin. A second strike across her back was her reward for her hesitation. Arms burning with fatigue, she dropped into another pushup and rose again. Black spots swum in her eyes. The two men beside her did the same, grunting with exertion.
The journey from the Hanging Gardens had taken almost three weeks. Every turn, she and the two other slaves Leona had purchased at market were been taken up on deck and run through exercises, and the sound of the executus’s stock whip was starting to haunt her dreams.
Her first comrade in captivity was a hard Liisian boy named Matteo. He looked a few years older than Mia, with softly curling hair, strong arms and a pretty smile. Despite his impressive physique, Matteo had been sick as a dog for the first week they’d been at sea—Mia guessed he’d never set foot on a ship in his life.
Her second bedfellow was a burly Itreyan named Sidonius. He was in his late twenties and looked hard as a coffin nail. Bright blue eyes and a shaven head
. He seemed the meaner of the pair, and looked at Mia like he wanted to fuck and/or kill her. She wasn’t quite sure in which order. She wasn’t sure Sidonius was either. Strangest of all, the man had a rough brand that looked to have been burned into his skin with a red-hot blade. A single word, carved right across his chest.
COWARD.
He offered no explanation for it, and Mia didn’t like him enough to ask.
After another thirty-two pushups, the executus signaled the three to stop, and Mia collapsed face first onto the deck, arms trembling.
“Your upper body strength is a jest,” the big man growled at her. “And yet, my lips are absent laughter.”
“Enough for the turn, Executus,” called Dona Leona from her seat on the foredeck. “They’ll need to be able to walk when they meet their new familia.”
“On your feet.”
Mia stood slowly, staring out at the ocean. The welts on her back tickled with the sting of her sweat. The executus’s salt-and-pepper hair whipped about in the ocean breeze, his beard bristling as he glared. Long minutes ticked by in silence, only the calls of gulls and the sounds of the distant port for company.
“Drink,” the executus finally grunted.
Mia turned and practically dashed for the water barrel lashed to the main mast. The big Itreyan, Sidonius, shoved her aside with a curse, snatching up the ladle and drinking his fill. Mia seethed, half-tempted to knock the thug on his arse as she waited her turn, but the sensible part of her brain counseled patience. When Sidonius finished drinking, Matteo flashed her his pretty smile, waved to the barrel.
“After you, Mi Dona.”
Crack!
The boy winced as the executus’s whip found his back.
“I gave no permission for you to speak!”
The boy grit his teeth, bowed apology. Mia nodded thanks, turned to the water barrel, gulping down mouthful after sweet mouthful.
It chafed her almost to screaming, bowing down to these people. Told when to eat, when to drink, when to shit. The executus’s contempt for them was matched only by Dona Leona’s ambivalence. On the one hand, the woman treated them with a sort of affection, and spoke of the glory to come on the sands of the venatus. But on the other, she had them whipped for the smallest slight. They weren’t allowed to look her in the eye. They spoke only when spoken to. Performing on command.
