by Jay Kristoff
She looked at the scarred knuckles and heavy muscle that spoke of man who’d spent a life fighting. The cold blue eyes that spoke of long miles and longer years. The word COWARD burned into his skin.
“Just how much of the world have you seen?” she asked.
“Liis,” he replied. “Vaan. Itreya. Anywhere the banner took me.”
Mia raised an eyebrow. Remembering the way Sid had conducted himself during the Winnowing. Barking orders like a man used to command. Thinking tactics, like . . .
“You were in the Itreyan legion,” she said.
Sid shook his head. “I was Luminatii, little Crow. Served the justicus five years.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed, belly turning to ice. “You served Marcus Remus?”
“Remus?” Sid scoffed. “That treacherous shitheel? ’Byss, no. I served the justicus before him. The true justicus, girl. Darius fucking Corvere.”
Mia’s heart lurched in her chest. Tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth. Black Mother, this man had served her father.
But that makes no sense . . .
“I . . .” Mia cleared her throat. “I heard the Kingmaker’s army were all crucified . . . on the banks of the Choir. They paved the Senate house steps with their skulls.”
“I wasn’t there when Corvere and Antonius’s army fell apart.” Sid rubbed the brand at his chest, his voice growing distant. “Always wondered if I might have done some good had I been . . .”
Sid ran a hand over his dark cropped hair. He nodded at the walls around them. The bars that held them in.
“This used to be Corvere’s house, you know,” he sighed. “He and his familia used to spend summers here, I think. Little girl. Baby son. Before they gave it to that snake, Remus. To think this is where I’d end my turns. Locked in that fucker’s basement. Winning blood and glory for his widow until my guts paint the sand.”
So. Sidonius had done more than serve her father. He’d remained loyal, when the whole Republic turned against him . . .
Maw’s teeth, she’d never imagined it. To think she’d meet one of her father’s men, under this very roof? If she’d felt no kinship before for this man she’d bled beside at Blackbridge, she felt it flooding inside her chest now. The way Sidonius spoke about her father made her want to kiss the stupid sod.
“The true justicus,” he’d said.
When everyone else just called Darius Corvere “traitor.”
Mia rubbed her bruised throat, her shadow rippling as Mister Kindly drank her fear. She’d not spoken of her gift much, not to anyone. People feared what they didn’t understand, and hated what they feared. But for all the strangeness of it, Sidonius didn’t feel anything close to afraid anymore.
He’s an odd one . . .
“I can’t walk through walls,” she confessed.
Sid’s eyes came into focus, looking at her across the cell.
“I just sort of . . . Step. After a fashion. Between shadows, I mean.”
“’Byss and blood,” the big man breathed.
“But it makes me want to puke afterward,” she added. “And I can make myself unseen. But I’m almost blind when I do. It’s not the most wondrous gift, truth told.”
“And your passenger?”
“Say hello, Mister Kindly.”
“ . . . hello, mister kindly . . .”
“So you can leave these cells any time you want?”
Mia shrugged. “After a fashion.”
The Itreyan shook his head in bewilderment. “Then what in the name of the Everseeing and all Four fucking Daughters are you still doing here, little Crow?”
The portcullis shuddered upward as a guard pulled a mekwerk lever. Executus marched into the barracks, graying beard bristling, whip curled in his hand.
“Gladiatii!” he barked. “Attend!”
With shrug to Sid, Mia rose to begin her turn’s work.
14: breathing
Two suns burned the skies clear, Shiih’s smoldering yellow and Saan’s bloody red against a curtain of endless, beautiful blue.1 The heat shimmered against the endless ocean, and Mia cursed the Everseeing for the hundredth time that turn.
She danced across the circle, dodging Bladesinger’s strikes, weaving in and out of range. The woman’s face was set like stone, her wooden sword whistling as if it knew her name.
“No!” Executus bellowed from the circle’s edge. “You’re bouncing like a damned blackrabbit. You’ll wear yourself to fainting if you keep dancing in this heat. A shield is a weapon, just like your blade. Batter your foes’ strikes aside, send her off-balance.”
Mia raised the great curved rectangle of wood and iron on her right arm. It was heavy as a pile of bricks, affixed with a band of old rope. She hated the fucking thing, truth told, but it was true what Arkades said—she was sweating like a pig from dodging about so much. She tried to mark his tutelage, but as Bladesinger raised her sword and bore down on Mia like thunder, the girl instinctively skipped past Bladesinger’s guard and slapped her blade against the woman’s hamstring.
“Shit,” Bladesinger spat. “Quicker than a drakeling, this one.”
“No!”
Executus limped across the circle, drawing out the steel gladius he always wore to session.
“If you’ll not stop dancing like a bride at her wedding, I’ll bloody hobble you . . .”
Mia bristled, thinking perhaps Arkades was set to strike her. But instead, he stabbed the sword into the dirt, right in the center of the ring. He snapped his fingers at Maggot, waiting as always in the shade of the small shed in the corner of the yard.
“Rope,” Arkades commanded.
The girl dashed to the weapon racks, unslung one of the pull ropes the gladiatii used for their calisthenics. Dragging it back to Arkades, Maggot watched with curious eyes as the executus fixed one end around his blade hilt, the other to Mia’s leg.
“Dance with that, blackrabbit,” he scowled.
Arkades retired to the circle’s edge, barked at Bladesinger to attack. Unable to dodge, Mia was forced to use her shield, Bladesinger’s strikes landing like thunderclaps. The impacts jarred Mia’s arm, until finally the old rope affixing the shield to her forearm snapped clean in half, snagging up her hand in the knotted leather grip. And with a series of damp, snapping sounds, three of Mia’s fingers popped right at the knuckle.
“’Byss and fucking blood!” she bellowed, dropping her shield.
The other gladiatii in the yard turned to stare, watching as she bent double, clutching her hand. Butcher laughed, Wavewaker breaking into a round of applause. Fixing her broken shield in her glare, Mia aimed a savage kick at it (“Fucking thing!”), sent it flying across the yard before dropping onto her backside in the dust.
“Owww,” she moaned, clutching her now-sprained toes with her one good hand.
“Show me,” Executus said, limping over to kneel beside her.
Mia held up her trembling hand. Her smallest finger was jutting out at entirely the wrong angle, her ring and middle finger were both crooked. Arkades turned her hand this way and that as Mia writhed and cursed.
“You broke my fingers!” she said, glaring at Bladesinger.
The woman shrugged, slinging her long saltlocks over her shoulder.
“Welcome to the sand, Crow.”
“Stop whining, girl,” Arkades said, squinting. “They’re just dislocated. Maggot!”
The girl perked up from her shady seat near the shed, dashed over to Mia. Untying the rope at her ankle, Maggot helped Mia up, the older girl rising with a wince. The other gladiatii returned to training as Maggot led Mia by the hand across the yard. She saw Furian sparring with Wavewaker, watching from the corner of his eye. His face was a mask, her belly, as always, a knot of sickness and hunger when he was near.
Do I make him feel the same?
Maggot took Mia into a long room at the rear of the keep, set with four sandstone slabs. The stone was the same burned ochre as the cliffs about them, but it was stained a deeper red, spatter-m
ad patterns on the surface.
Bloodstains, Mia realized.
“You can sit,” Maggot said in a small, shy voice.
Mia did as she was bid, holding her throbbing hand to her chest. Maggot toddled across the room, fishing about in a series of chests. She returned with a handful of wooden splints and a ball of woven brown cotton.
“Hold out your hand,” the girl commanded.
Mia’s shadow swelled, Mister Kindly drinking her fear at the thought of what was to come. Maggot looked her digits over, stroking her chin. And gentle as falling leaves, she took hold of Mia’s smallest finger.
“It won’t hurt,” she promised. “I’m very good at this.”
“All riiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAGHH!” Mia howled as Maggot popped her finger back into place, quick as silver. She rose from the slab and bent double, clutching her hand.
“That HURT!” she yelled.
Maggot gave a solemn nod. “Yes.”
“You promised it wouldn’t!”
“And you believed me.” The girl smiled sweet as sugarfloss. “I told you, I’m very good at this.” She motioned to the slab again. “Sit back down.”
Mia blinked back hot tears, hand throbbing in agony. But looking at her finger, she could see Maggot had worked it right, popping the dislocated joint back into place neat as could be. Breathing deep, she sat back down and dutifully proffered her hand.
The little girl took hold of Mia’s ring finger, looked up at her with big, dark eyes.
“I’m going to count three,” she said.
“All riiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaFUCK!” Mia roared as Maggot snapped the joint back into place. She rose and half-danced, half-hopped about the room, wounded hand between her legs. “Shit cock twat fucking fuckitall!”
“You swear an awful lot,” Maggot frowned.
“You said you were going to count three!”
Maggot nodded sadly. “You believed me again, didn’t you?”
Mia winced, teeth gritted, looking the girl up and down.
“ . . . You are very good at this,” she realized.
Maggot smiled, patted the bench. “Last one.”
Sighing, Mia sat back down, hand shaking with pain as Maggot gently took hold of her middle finger. She looked at Mia solemnly.
“Now this one is really going to hurt,” she warned.
“Wa—” The Blade flinched as Maggot popped the finger back in.
Mia blinked.
“Ow?” she said.
“All done,” Maggot smiled.
“But that was the easiest of the lot?” Mia protested.
“I know,” Maggot replied. “I’m—”
“—very good at this,” they both finished.
Maggot began splinting Mia’s fingers, binding them tight to limit their movement. The three circles branded into the little girl’s cheek weren’t so much of a mystery anymore . . .
“Why do they call you Crow?” she asked as she worked.
Mia looked at the girl carefully, trying to ignore the warm, throbbing pain in her hand. Maggot was Liisian; tanned skin and dark, tangled hair, big dark eyes. She was skinny, thin dress hugging her thinner frame.
Not a turn over twelve, Mia guessed.
Perhaps it was seeing her in the keep where she’d grown up. Perhaps it was the mischievous intelligence glittering in those dark eyes, or the way she spoke so brazenly to her elders. But truth told, the little girl reminded Mia a little of herself . . .
“Why do they call you Maggot?” Mia replied.
“I asked first.”
“Crow is a nickname.”
Mia thought back to the first turn anyone had called her by it. Her first meeting with Old Mercurio. The old man had beaten seven shades of shit out of some alley thugs who’d stolen Mia’s brooch. The very turn after her father was hanged. She was the daughter of a traitor, wanted by the most powerful men in the Republic. And Mercurio had thought nothing of taking her in, giving her a roof, saving her life.
Black Mother, the things he risked for me . . .
Mia shook her head, thinking about this insane plan of hers.
The things he still risks for me.
“A friend gave it to me,” Mia said. “When I was a little girl. I had a piece of jewelry with a crow on it. He named me for it.”
“I’ve never owned jewelry,” Maggot mused.
“I’ve not owned any since. That one was gift from my mother.”
“Where is your mother now?”
The dona looked at her daughter, wide eyes and a broken yellow smile, far, far too wide. Mister Kindly materialized on the cell floor beside Mia, and the Dona Corvere hissed like she’d been scalded, shrinking back from the bars, teeth bared in a snarl.
“He’s in you,” she’d whispered. “O, Daughters, he’s in you.”
Mia stared at the stone floor. The old blood, spattered and brown.
“She’s gone,” Mia said.
Maggot looked at Mia, nodded sadly as she tied off the bandage.
“Mine, too,” she said. “But she taught me all she knew. And so, whenever I stitch a wound or set a bone or mend a fever, she’s still with me.”
A fine thought, Mia mused. One no doubt sung to orphans across the world since the beginning of time. But even if there were some semblance of her father in the way she fought, her mother in the way she spoke, they were still dead and gone. If they were with her at all, it was as ghosts upon her shoulder, whispering in the nevernight of all that might have been.
If not for them . . .
Mia turned her wounded hand this way and that. It was still sore, but the pain had eased. In a week or so, it’d be as new.
“You still haven’t told me why they call you Maggot,” she said.
The little girl looked deep into Mia’s eyes.
“Pray you never find out,” she said.
The girl walked out of the infirmary, Mia behind her. Maggot retreated to her seat in the shade as Executus limped over to Mia, taking a small pull from the flask at his hip as he came. Grabbing her wrist, he scowled at her wounded hand.
“You’ll not be sparring with that for a few—”
“Executus,” came a soft call.
Arkades looked up to the balcony. Dona Leona stood there, auburn hair in long flowing ringlets, her silken dress as blue as the sky above. Beside her stood a rather dapper-looking Liisian man in a frock coat far too fine for the surroundings and far too warm for the weather. He was flanked by two heavyset bodyguards in leather jerkins.
“Attend!” Arkades barked.
The yard fell still at the call, the gladiatii turning toward their mistress.
“Executus, see to Matilius.” The dona glanced to a big Itreyan man, sparring with a Liisian named Otho. “He is to accompany these men to the home of his new master.”
Arkades’s gray brows drew together in a frown. “New master, Mi Dona?”
“He has been sold to Varro Caito.”
The gladiatii shared uneasy glances, Mia noting the sudden fall in mood. Matilius set aside his practice blades, brow creased as he looked up at Leona.
“Domina,” the Itreyan said. “Have . . . I displeased you?”
Leona stared at the big man, blue eyes shining. But with a glance at the dapper man beside her, her gaze became hard as the red stone beneath her feet.
“I am no longer your domina,” she said. “But you still have no right to question me. Know your place, slave, less I have Executus gift you a parting reminder.”
The big man lowered his gaze, bewilderment swimming in his eyes.
“Apologies,” he grunted.
Leona’s cold blue stare fell on Arkades. “Executus, see to his transfer. The rest of you, back to training.”
Arkades bowed. “Your whisper, my will.”
Though he hid it well, Mia could still see the confusion in the executus’s eyes. Whatever the nature of this “sale,” Leona clearly hadn’t consulted him about it.
The big man straightened, looked at Mia, down at h
er wounded hand.
“You’ll not spar for the next three turns, girl.” He nodded to the blond Vaanian twins, working the training dummies across the yard. “Accompany Bryn and Byern to the equorium amorrow. You can help them with their practice, at least.”
Turning on his heel, the Red Lion limped across the yard. Matilius was speaking swift goodbyes among the other gladiatii in the few moments he had left. He grasped Furian’s forearm, squeezed tight. Bladesinger wrapped him in a crushing hug, Butcher and Wavewaker and Otho clapped him on the back. Matilius looked across the yard to Mia, nodded once, and she nodded in reply. She’d not known him well, but he seemed a decent sort. And it was clear he had friends here among the collegium; brothers and sisters he’d fought and bled with, and was now being forced to farewell.
Mia cruised over to the training dummies, slipped up beside Bryn and Byern. The Vaanian girl was short, almost pretty, her long topknot drenched in sweat. Byern was taller, better looking, his jaw square and his shoulders broad. His training sword hung limp in his hand as he watched Matilius say his goodbyes. The Vaanians were around Mia’s age, but each seemed older somehow.
Something in the eyes, maybe.
“Who is Varro Caito?” Mia asked softly.
The twins startled—they’d not heard Mia’s approach. With a scowl, Bryn turned back to the farewells, shooting a poison glance to the dapper Liisian on the balcony.
“A fleshmonger,” she replied. “He runs Pandemonium.”
Mia raised an eyebrow in question.
“A fighting pit,” Bryn explained. “Underground. Not sanctioned by the administratii. But the battles are bloody. And popular. Former gladiatii fetch a fine price.”
“So it’s a kind of arena?”
Byern shook his head. “No honor there. No rules. No mercy. Pandemonium is closer to a human dogfight than the venatus. And the contests, ever to the finish. Most warriors perish in a few turns. Even the best only endure a month.”
Mia watched Matilius, now being manacled by Executus and handed over to the Liisian fleshpeddler. The bodyguards checked the irons, nodded once. And with one final glance, the man was marched from the yard in the keeping of his new master.
Bryn sighed, shook her head. “He walks to his death.”
