Godsgrave

by Jay Kristoff

  Furian, the Unfallen.

  He sat atop her, crushing the air from her lungs. This close, the gnawing sickness she felt in his presence was all consuming, becoming less an illness and closer to a terrible hunger. But more pressing still was the need to breathe.

  Mia pricked one of her forks into the champion’s armpit. One good thrust and it’d slip over his ribcage and into the heart beyond. She tapped it against the hollow, trying not to sputter as Furian pressed his elbow further into her larynx.

  She pushed her steel harder, glaring wordlessly. And finally, Furian eased off, leaning back just enough to allow her to breathe.

  His voice was deep and melodic. His eyes the brown of dark chocolate, delicious but edged with bitterness. Mia tried very hard not to notice that the body he pressed against her was utterly naked.

  “What are you doing in here, slave?”

  She put her free hand on his elbow, slowly pushed it aside.

  “We need to talk,” she replied. “Brother.”

  1 Well, as breezy as one can get with a gravebone longsword and a bag of arkemical explosives pressed against one’s crotch.

  2 Situated near the bordellos and pleasurehouses of Little Liis, the Bridge of Tears is supposedly named for the sorrows of a thousand jilted lovers, who over the years have stood upon the bridge and wept upon discovery their beloved had sought the company of a sweetboy or sugargirl in the brothel district.In truth, the bridge earned its moniker long before the surrounding borough became a den of iniquity, and is actually named for the tear-shaped stonework supporting its main arch.Still, never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn, gentlefriends.

  3 Limping jacks: Godsgrave streetslang for caltrops, so named because of their similarity to jumping jacks, and the fact that people who decide to run through clusters of them tend to end up . . . O, you get the gist.

  10: secrets

  Thunder split the skies as Ash and Jessamine clashed on the cathedral roof.

  Both were soundless. No war cries or curses. No razored quips. Both had been trained in the art of death by the finest killers in the Republic, and both had marked their lessons well. Ashlinn drew two stilettos from her sleeves and met Jessamine’s charge. Mia blinked through the falling rain, that awful burning light, noticing that Ash’s weapons were discolored with poison. Though Jessamine had advantage with a longer blade, one scrape from Ash might be enough to end her.

  Mia groped toward her longsword, tried to stand. But she could manage neither—not with that accursed trinity around Ashlinn’s throat. Every time Ashlinn moved, the muted sunslight caught the medallion’s face, lancing Mia’s eyes. Clenching her teeth, it was all she could do to hold back her whimper, let alone stand and fight.

  Mister Kindly had fled, and Eclipse couldn’t approach the trinity either. Mia was alone. Awful fear swelled in her belly, terror in the face of this god and his hatred.

  All her power. All her training. All her gifts.

  And she was utterly helpless.

  Jessamine lunged across the slick tiles, the speed and feral cunning that had made her Solis’s favored pupil on display. Ash backed away, fear shining in her eyes as she realized she was outmatched. But her voice was steady and cold.

  “Nice to see you again, Jess. How’s being second in line treating you?”

  The bright notes of steel on steel.

  The percussion of thunder.

  “Tell me”—Ashlinn narrowly ducked Jessamine’s strike—“how did it taste when they teamed you up with the girl who cheated you out of becoming a Blade?”

  Jessamine remained silent, refusing to be goaded. Pushing Ashlinn back, lunging as her foe slipped on the rain-slick tile. Ashlinn scrambled back to her feet, losing her grip on one of her knives. The poisoned dagger skittered down the roof’s slope, caught itself on the gutter’s lip.

  “How did it taste when Mia killed Diamo?”

  Jessamine faltered for a moment, renewing her attack with furious intensity. Ashlinn smiled, backing up closer to where Mia lay helpless. She held her poisoned blade in front of her, deadlier poison dripping from her lips.

  “Were you fucking him?” Ash asked. “I never found out. How did it taste bending the knee to the girl who murdered him?”

  “Shut up,” Jessamine whispered.

  “He died messy, Jess,” Ashlinn said. “Puking blood. Shit in his britches. Could you smell it from the testing circle? I got a whiff from up in the bleachers.”

  “Shut up!”

  Jessamine lunged, face twisted with rage. Ashlinn spun aside, and with her foe off-balance, found time to reach into a belt pouch. Grasping a handful, flinging out her hand, a bright flash of arkemical powder bursting in Jessamine’s eyes. The redhead staggered back, sputtering and blinded. Ashlinn closed for the kill, but with her stomach seething, Mia lashed out with her boot, knocking Ashlinn’s feet out from under her.

  Jessamine and Ashlinn went down together, rapier and poisoned blade both clattering to the tiles. The girls fell to brawling, clawing at each other’s faces, punching and kicking and cursing. They tumbled down the sloping roof, rolling to a halt on the gutter’s edge. Ashlinn lay underneath Jessamine, hands wrapped around the redhead’s throat. Jessamine punched hard, splitting Ash’s lip. Still half-blinded, she groped for Ash’s collar, wrapping up the gold chain in her fist and strangling back. The chain snapped clean, the trinity dropping thirty feet onto the cobbles below. Thunder rolled, lightning tearing across the skies as the medallion fell out of sight, the pain in Mia’s skull, the sickness in her belly slowly fading.

  “You fucking traitor,” Jessamine spat, punching Ash in the jaw.

  “Get . . . off m-me!”

  “I’ll show you what dying messy looks like.”

  Jessamine wrapped her fingers around Ash’s throat, punched her again with her free hand. She was raising her fist to strike again when a voice rose above the storm.

  “Jess, th-that’s enough.”

  The redhead refused to look over her shoulder, bloodshot eyes locked on Ashlinn. Mia was on her feet, not looking anything close to steady, but slowly making her way down the roof with her gravebone longsword in hand.

  “Fuck you, Corvere,” Jessamine spat.

  “We n-need her alive.” Mia spit the taste of vomit off her tongue. “She double-crossed the braavi. But they p-paid a fortune. There’s no way she just incinerated a map that valuable. Presuming she even has it, we can’t find it if she’s dead.”

  “I don’t take orders from you.”

  Mia sighed. “You’re my Hand, Jess. That’s exactly what you do.”

  Jessamine turned to glare at Mia, sodden hair in her eyes. Her frustration, the rage of the past seven nevernights in Mia’s company finally getting the better of her.

  “I should be delivering this offering. I should be the Blade here, not you.”

  “Nobody said life was fair, Red.”

  “Fair?” Jessamine laughed. “Who the f—ckkkg . . .”

  Jessamine reeled backward, blood gushing from her throat. Ashlinn stabbed the girl again, the poisoned blade that had fallen into the gutter flashing in her hand. Jessamine gasped, hands to her punctured neck, arterial red spraying between her fingers and down her sodden tunic. Ashlinn stabbing again. And again.

  Mia roared Jess’s name as thunder crashed, as Ashlinn grabbed the Hand’s collar and slung her forward. Jessamine clutched Ash’s wrist in desperation, trying to stop her fall. But with a sickening crunch, the girl toppled off the roof and onto the fence bordering the basilica grounds, impaled on the wrought-iron spikes below.

  The novices below cried out in horror, ran screaming for the Luminatii, for the cardinal, for anyone. Arcs of jagged blue white lit the skies as Ashlinn dragged herself to her feet, soaked with Jessamine’s blood.

  “You bitch,” Mia whispered.

  Ashlinn wiped her knuckles across split lips. Pawing at her throat, she realized the trinity was gone.

  “Mia, you don’t understand what’s
happening here . . .”

  Mia raised her blade. “You killed her.”

  Blood soaking Ashlinn’s hands.

  Rage swimming in Mia’s eyes.

  Lightning reflected on the pale edge of her longsword, in the empty gaze of the dead girl hanging on the wrought-iron fence below their feet.

  The basilica bells started ringing again—a warning this time. Acolytes were gathered in the courtyard below, howling, “Murder! Murder!” Mia stepped forward, blade poised. With the trinity over the edge of the building, Mister Kindly and Eclipse had returned, filling the terrifying emptiness she’d felt with the strength of cold steel. Ash’s feet were snared in her own shadow—she had nowhere to run. But Mia had spoken truth to Jessamine; if she killed the girl now, she’d not see that map. And after her last flaying before the Ministry, she’d be damned if she returned to them empty-handed.

  But if she returned with the girl who’d brought the Ministry to their knees?

  Black Mother, imagine the look on Solis’s face . . .

  So, Mia drew back her sword and cracked the crow hilt across Ashlinn’s jaw. The girl tumbled onto her backside, half-senseless. Mia set about searching Ash’s clothing, boots, sleeves, finding blades and toxins and arkemical powders and hurling them off the roof. Ashlinn sat up, dazed, and Mia pressed her sword tip into the flesh above the girl’s heart. She could hear the faint sound of heavy boots over the thunder.

  “ . . . luminatii, mia . . .”

  “ . . . GOD-BOTHERING CURS. LET THEM COME . . .”

  “ . . . so eager for blood, dear mongrel . . . ?”

  “ . . . SO EAGER TO RUN, LITTLE MOGGY . . . ?”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, Eclipse,” Mia whispered. “But living to fight another turn is probably the goal here.”

  The shadowwolf growled grudging assent, and Mia turned to Ashlinn.

  “Right. You can get off this roof two ways. Feet or face first?”

  “Is . . . this a t-trick question?”

  Mia dug the razored point of her blade into Ashlinn’s skin. Gravebone was harder than steel, sharp enough to bleed stone. One soft push . . .

  “You try to make a break, or even breathe in a way I don’t like, we paint the cobbles an interesting shade of Ashlinn. Are we clear?”

  “ . . . mia, we must go . . .”

  The blade twitched. “Clear?”

  Ash winced. “As Dweymeri crystal.”

  Mia slipped her belt from around her waist. “Hold out your wrists.”

  “Didn’t know you were so inclined,” Ash smirked. “Honestly, all you n—”

  The blade sank deeper, and Ashlinn winced in pain. With a hurt glance, she offered her wrists. Mia looped the belt around them, cinching tight. She could hear the legionaries clearly now, a multitude of citizens gathered beyond the cathedral gates, looking in horror at Jessamine’s dangling corpse.

  Mia stood, pulled on the leather strap.

  “Move.”

  She led Ashlinn to a downspout behind the bell tower. A gargoyle spewed rainwater from its mouth into the churchyard two stories below.

  “Traitors first,” Mia insisted.

  “Going to be hard climbing with my hands tied, neh?”

  “You’ll manage. And don’t even think about running when you hit the floor. Throwing knives run quicker than you, and I’m carrying six in your size.”

  Ash scowled, but for all her moaning, shimmied down the spout without much trouble. Mia followed, Mister Kindly whispering urgent warnings in her ear. The girls ran across the basilica grounds, past a necropolis littered with familia tombs. They vaulted the iron fence as a troop of Luminatii rounded the cathedral, shouted, “Halt!” Mia snatched the belt around Ash’s wrists, dragging her captive into the streets.

  The legionaries were wearing steel breastplates and carrying burning sunsteel longswords, but they vaulted that fence quicker than Mia would’ve given them credit for—a murder on Aa’s holy ground was no chucklefest for his faithful. Mia looked at the crowd around her, pausing to snatch the full braavi purse from Ashlinn’s belt.

  “Corvere, don’t you fucking d—”

  Mia slung the bag in a wide arc, scattering a shower of glittering gold into the mob. The reaction was instantaneous, astonishingly violent, the people around them erupting as they realized the sky had somehow rained a living fortune. People flocked into the street from the taverna and stores all around, beggars, bakers, butchers, cutting off the cadre of Luminatii and punching and shouting and kicking over Ashlinn’s gold.

  Ashlinn wailed as Mia dragged her away through the driving rain. They dashed over a broad bridge, into the warrens behind the administratii buildings, and there, finally, Mia pulled Ashlinn into a small alcove.

  “Do you realize how much—”

  “Shut up,” Mia hissed. Reaching out to the shadows around them, Mia plucked them with clever fingers, twisting and weaving them into a mantle about her shoulders. With a flick of her wrist, she enveloped Ashlinn as well, just as she’d done the turn they stole into Speaker Adonai’s chambers. Memories of their turns in the Red Church made Mia think of Jessamine, the sight of the Hand’s body dangling from those wrought-iron spikes burned in her mind’s eye.

  Jess, Tric, every Blade murdered in the Luminatii pogrom, the capture of the Ministry . . . Ashlinn was responsible for all of it. The girl in her arms might as well have been a snake, coiled and ready to strike.

  “Not a sound,” Mia whispered, pressing her gravebone blade to Ash’s throat.

  All the world was black beneath Mia’s cloak, but she still heard the legionaries shouting to each other as they searched the Godsgrave backstreets. The girls waited, pressed against each other beneath Mia’s shadows for endless minutes.

  A whisper finally rose over the pattering rain.

  “ . . . they are gone, mia . . .”

  Ashlinn swallowed against the blade at her throat. “You kill me now, I swear by the Mother you’re never going to see that map they’ve got you chasing.”

  “Good thing I’m not going to kill you, then,” Mia said. “Mister Kindly, you check the rooftops. Eclipse, you scout ahead, make sure the way back to the chapel is clear.”

  “ . . . SO BE IT. BUT IF YOU KILL ANYONE WHILE I AM GONE, I WILL BE MOST UPSET . . .”

  She felt the shadows about her ripple, the not-cat and not-wolf slipping from the dark at her feet. Mister Kindly flitted up the wall, shadow to shadow, Eclipse spilling across the cobbles and off into the street. She could feel Ash’s heart beating, smell a faint perfume of lavender and fresh sweat on her skin.

  “You’re taking me back to the chapel?” the girl asked.

  “There’s a dose of Swoon on the blade at your throat, Ash. I don’t much fancy knocking you out and carrying you back, but I will if must. Now, shut the fuck up.”

  “They’ve been hunting me for eight months. They get their hands on m—”

  “You can count the shits I give on no hands, Ashlinn.”

  “I didn’t want to kill Tric, Mia.”

  Ashlinn winced as Mia pushed her gravebone stiletto up under her chin.

  “Don’t you dare say his name.”

  Ashlinn raised her hands, spoke slow and careful. Mia could hear the fear in her voice, the slight tremble that told her that, for all Ash’s front, the girl didn’t want to die.

  “I wanted the Ministry, Mia. Anyone else was just wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Including your own brother?”

  “So. It was you that killed Osrik.”

  “No,” Mia replied. “But only because Adonai ended him before I got the chance. The pair of you killed Tric. You betrayed your vows. You betrayed the Church.”

  “To avenge my father! You of all people should understand that.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Ashlinn.” Mia tightened her grip. “My father is dead.”

  “Aye?” Ash snarled. “Well, so is mine.”

  That gave Mia pause. Unspoken questions hanging in the air. The rai
n was dying now, the skies still a sullen gray. Ashlinn drew a long ragged breath.

  “We dodged the Church and their Blades for eight months,” she murmured. “They finally caught us in Carrion Hall. My father was good. One of the finest Blades to ever serve the Black Mother. But everyone’s luck runs out eventually.”

  Mia simply shook her head, refusing to bite. Ashlinn Järnheim was made of lies. She’d lied all through their training at the Church. She’d lied to the Ministry, to Mia, to everyone she ever met. She’d struck at the heart of Jessamine on the basilica roof, she was striking at Mia’s heart now. Every word she spoke was poison.

  “I’m not going to tell you to shut up again, Ash.”

  Ashlinn sighed, her temper fraying. “You have no fucking idea what’s going here, do you? I know you, Mia. Do you have any idea what the Red Church actually is? Do you think they’re ever going to let you kill Scaeva when he pays their wages?”

  Mia felt the consul’s name like a fist in her belly.

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Why do you think Scaeva isn’t dead already? Half the Senate want him in the ground, you think they couldn’t afford to hire a Blade to do him over if he wasn’t protected by Sanctity? Julius Scaeva is a fucking bastard, but he’s not a fucking fool. He’s been a patron of the Church for years.”

  “They’d never—”

  “They’re assassins, of course they would! There’s no sanctity to what the Red Church does. They murder people for money. Half of them are psychopaths and the rest are just sadistic bastards. They’re not servants of some divine Goddess of Night, they’re fucking whores.”

  Mia’s mind was racing. She knew nothing Ash said could be trusted . . . but somewhere in her words, Mia could hear the ring of truth. People who posed a threat to Scaeva either got killed like her father, or bought like the braavi. Wouldn’t it make sense he’d buy the Church, too? Why else would they order her Scaeva wasn’t to be touched?

  “How do you know all this?” she asked.

  “Because I’m a sneaky bitch, Mia.”