by Jay Kristoff
“It’s incredible,” Bladesinger murmured.
“It’s disgusting,” Mia said.
Utterly nauseated, she finally surrendered her bowl of dinner to Fang, who wuffed and began chowing down with relish.
“But aye, it’s incredible,” Mia admitted. “Fine work, Maggot.”
The girl waved her wooden spoon like a queen. “Too kind, Mi Dona. Too kind.”
“What comes next?”
“It’s more an art than a science, aye?” Maggot replied, wiping her nose on her arm. “I think in few turns we might rid him of the larvae. My ma told me to drown them in hot vinegar, but I feel bad about that with all the work they’ve done. After that, we keep it clean, keep it salved, keep him dosed. His fever is still fluxing, and the infection could creep back with bad luck. He’s a long way from out of the desert, but between you and me, his odds are passing fair.”
“Will he be able to fight in the magni?” Bladesinger asked.
“Steady on,” the little girl said. “I’m not a bloody miracle worker.”
“Seems like a miracle to me.” Mia shook her head in admiration, smiled at the girl. “Your ma really taught you all this?”
“Aye. She could have taught me more, if she was given time to. Sometimes I wonder about all the knowings she took to her grave.”
“Aye,” Mia sighed. “I know what you mean.”
Maggot spooned her stew around the bowl, sucking her lip. “It’s funny, but I was thinking . . . when you take a person out of the world, you don’t just take them, do you? You take everything they were, too.” The little girl squinted at Bladesinger. “Do you ever think about that? When you kill someone in the arena?”
“No,” the woman said. “That way lies madness.”
“What do you think about, then?” Maggot asked, taking another bite.
“I think better them than me,” Bladesinger replied.
The little girl turned to Mia, talking with her mouth full. “What about you, Crow? Do you think about the things you’re taking away?”
Mia parted her lips, but found no words to speak.
Truth was, she did think about those she’d ended. More and more, it seemed. The Luminatii she’d killed at the Mountain, those she could justify easily. But everyone after that? The senator’s sons and magistratii she’d unwittingly murdered in Scaeva’s employ? Those men in the Pit at the Hanging Gardens? The gladiatii she’d killed in the arena? In some way, they all paved the way for her to be here, just a few weeks from the consul’s and the cardinal’s throats. But did that truly vindicate her?
“I think the end justifies the means,” she replied. “As long as the end isn’t mine.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“I have to.”
“Well,” Maggot smiled sadly. “Better you than me.”
Fang whined, licked at Mia’s fingers with his flat, pink tongue.
“I’m sorry, boy,” she said, kneeling to scruff the dog’s chin. “You already ate it all. Surprised you’ve got room for more.”
The mastiff whined again, deeper this time, licking at his chops. He snuffled Mia’s hand, walking in a small circle with his stubby tail between his legs. Sitting on his haunches, he made a hacking noise, as if from a hairball. And looking at Mia with his big brown eyes, the dog coughed a spray of bright red blood all over the floor.
“Maw’s teeth,” Mia cursed, flinching away.
Maggot’s bowl of stew fell from her hand, spattered over the stone.
“Crow . . .”
Mia looked up, saw a trickle of blood spill from the girl’s lips.
“I don’t feel w-well . . . ,” she whispered.
“O, shit,” Mia breathed.
Maggot slipped down off the slab, coughed a mouthful of blood. Mia rushed to her side, caught her before she fell. She looked to Bladesinger, the woman wiping at her lips and bringing her knuckles away red. As she watched, the woman clutched her belly and coughed a spatter of blood onto the stone.
Mia looked at Fang, curled up in a puddle of gore.
The empty bowl the dog had eaten her dinner from . . .
“O, shit . . .”
Poison . . .
“Help me!” she roared. “Help!”
She heard cries of pain from the verandah, bewildered curses, hacking coughs. Clutching Maggot in her arms, Mia staggered to the infirmary door and saw every gladiatii in the collegium on their knees or on their backs, mouths and hands smeared with blood, bowls of stew spilled over the tables and floor. Maggot moaned, coughed another mouthful of blood onto Mia chest. A gobsmacked Finger was staring at the carnage, several guards standing around dumbfounded.
“Don’t just stand there, fucking help me!” Mia roared.
Finger saw Maggot in Mia’s arms, hobbled to her side. Somewhere in the house, someone began clanging the alarm. Between the pair of them, Mia and Finger carried Maggot back into the infirmary, laid her on a slab. Bladesinger had collapsed, blood leaking from her mouth. Mia looked about the room, mind racing. Kneeling by Maggot’s bowl, she dipped her finger into the stew, tasted and spat. Beneath the seasoning, she could sense a bitterness, a metallic tang. Her mind racing, all the knowledge that had made her Spiderkiller’s favored student spinning in her memory, repeating the four principles of venomcraft to herself, over and over.
Delivery: Ingested.
Efficacy: Lethal.
Celerity: Five minutes or less.
Locality: Stomach and intestines.
Mia’s eyes widened, the answer coming to her in a flash.
“It’s Elegy,” she said, turning to Finger.
“Are you—”
“Yes, I’m fucking sure. Do you have cow’s milk in the kitchen? Or cream?”
“ . . . I’ve goat’s milk for the dona’s tea.”
“Set it boiling. All of it. Now.”
“But I—”
“Now, Finger!”
The cook hobbled off, and Mia started sorting through Maggot’s jars and phials. Elegy was a deadly poison, relatively difficult to concoct unless you knew what you were about. But it was one of the first toxins Mercurio had taught her how to brew, and while the antidote wasn’t well known, it was easy enough for a Blade of Our Lady of Blessed Murder to fix. Grateful the dona had allowed Maggot to restock, Mia ransacked the shelves, grabbing the ingredients she needed.
Brightweed. Lopsome. Milkthistl—
“Four Daughters . . .”
Mia turned and saw Dona Leona in her nightshift, standing by the infirmary door. Magistrae stood beside her, horror on her face as the alarm continued to ring.
“What in the Everseeing’s name . . . ,” Leona breathed.
“Poison,” Mia said. “Elegy, mixed with their evemeal. We don’t have much time. I can’t find the fucking silver nitrate . . . Do you have a mirror?”
The dona’s face was fixed on Maggot’s, watching the blood leaking from her lips.
“Leona!” Mia barked. “Do you have a looking glass?”
The woman blinked, focused on Mia. “A-aye.”
“Bring it to the kitchen. Now!” She turned to the guards hovering beside their mistress. “You, carry Maggot, you two bring Bladesinger. Hurry!”
“Do as she says!” Leona barked.
Mia gathered her armful of phials and jars, rushed across the yard with the guards in tow while Leona dashed up to her room. She could hear Maggot coughing again, Bladesinger groaning. The verandah looked like a war zone, gladiatii laid out in pools of blood. Wavewaker was facedown, Bryn leaning on a table, thick ribbons of gore and mucus spilling from her lips, Sidonius on his back. Executus stood amid the carnage, wide-eyed and horrified.
“Arkades, turn Sidonius on his side,” Mia shouted, rushing past. “Roll everyone off their backs or they’ll drown in their own blood!”
In the kitchen, Finger was leaning over a large pot, stirring the steaming milk inside. Mia pushed him out of the way, began adding her ingredients, measuring carefully despite her h
aste. She had no seconds to waste—every moment would drag Maggot and the others closer to death. But as always, the passenger in her shadow kept her nerves like steel, her hands steady. First rule of venomcraft: a poorly mixed antidote was as bad as no antidote at all.
The guards placed Maggot on the kitchen bench behind her. The girl was ghastly pale, moaning and bringing up another gout of blood.
“Keep her throat clear, she needs to breathe!”
Sweat in her eyes. Pulse hammering under her skin. Maggot coughed again, a bubble of bright red popping at her lips.
“Maggot, you keep breathing, you hear me?”
Leona arrived with a large oval looking glass from her bedroom wall.
“Will this d—”
Mia grabbed it off her, seized a kitchen knife and pried the mirror’s frame away. Taking the blade to the back of the glass, she began furiously shaving away the reflective layer of silver nitrate, gleaming flakes of metal spilling onto the kitchen bench. Maggot coughed again, head lolling on her shoulders as if her neck were broken.
“Crow, she’s stopped breathing!” Magistrae cried.
“Maggot, don’t you die on me!” Mia shouted over her shoulder.
She gathered the flakes of nitrate, crushed them to powder with a mortar and pestle. Shoving Finger aside again, she added the powder to the boiling concoction on the stove, the scent of burning metal in the air. She looked over her shoulder, saw Maggot convulsing in Leona’s arms. Prayers to the Black Mother, the Four Daughters, whoever was listening spilling over her lips.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please please please . . .”
It was ready, the concoction set. Mia scooped a healthy dose into a clay cup, turned to the girl behind her. Maggot was pale as death, still as a mill pond. The dona’s eyes were wide, her nightshift and hands spattered in the girl’s blood.
“Take a cupful to everyone affected,” she told Finger. “The unconscious ones first. Make them drink at least three mouthfuls, take a funnel if you have to, go go!”
Mia wrangled Maggot from Leona’s arms, breathing quick. Laying the girl on her back, Mia wiped the bloody foam from Maggot’s lips, forced her mouth open. Holding the cup in steady hands, she poured a goodly dose into the girl’s mouth.
“Swallow it, baby,” she whispered, massaging her throat. “Swallow.”
Maggot wasn’t listening. She surely wasn’t swallowing. Mia pulled her up to sitting position, the antidote spilling from the little girl’s lips. Leona and Magistrae helped prop up Maggot between them, and tilting her head back, Mia poured more of the draft into her open mouth.
“Swallow, Maggot,” she begged. “Please.”
Mia massaged the girl’s throat, shook her gently. Maggot wasn’t responding, wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. Hanging limp in their arms like some broken doll. The Blade in her had seen all this before. But the girl in her, the girl who looked at Maggot and saw a pale reflection of herself, she refused to believe it. Praying for some miracle, like in the books she used to read as a child. Some prince to ride in on a silver charger to wake Maggot with a kiss. Some fae godmother with her pockets full of magik and wishes to spare.
Mia felt hot tears in her eyes, a crushing weight on her shoulders. A scream was building in her belly, but her voice only a whisper.
“Please, baby.”
“It’s funny, but when you take a person out of the world, you don’t just take them, do you?”
Leona looked at Mia, eyes wide with shock, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“ . . . Crow?”
“You take everything they were, too.”
“Please,” Mia begged.
“Do you ever think about that?”
The cup slipped from Mia’s fingers, shattered on the floor.
Do you ever think about that?
1 I am not a physician, nor an expert in anatomy. However, Finger’s suggestion would seem to require an unearthly amount of flexibility on Butcher’s part.
27: severing
Mia couldn’t remember the last time she really cried.
She’d spilled a tear or two here and there along the road, but it was never the primal kind of grief. The kind where the sobs are being torn out of you, shaking you to your bones and leaving you hollowed out inside. She hadn’t cried when she failed her initiation. Hadn’t cried when Ashlinn murdered Tric. Hadn’t cried when the Ministry said a quiet mass and sealed the boy in an empty tomb in the Hall of Eulogies.
She wasn’t very good with grief, you see.
Mia preferred rage instead.
She stood in the infirmary over Maggot’s lifeless body, belly knotted with fury. The girl’s hair had been combed, the blood wiped from her face. She looked almost as if she were asleep. Otho lay beside her, just as peaceful. The big Itreyan’s eyes were closed, the lines of care that had creased his features as he fought upon the sands now smoothed away.
It was a miracle only two of them had died—as if “only” had a place anywhere in that thought. Maggot was simply too small, and had imbibed too much toxin. Otho was a grown man, strong as an ox. But he’d wolfed his entire meal down and been on the way for seconds before the effects kicked in, and by then, it was too late. More of the Falcons would have succumbed—all, in fact—if Mia hadn’t been there. She supposed whoever poisoned their meal wasn’t expecting a trained assassin to be on hand to boil up the antidote. As it was, most of the gladiatii suffered varying degrees of internal hemorrhaging, but the remedy she’d mixed had saved them all from death.
Almost all, anyway . . .
Fang lay on a bloodstained blanket, the dog’s eyes forever closed. Executus had almost wept when he found the mastiff curled up in a pool of blood on the infirmary floor. He sat beside Fang now, running one callused hand over the dog’s flanks. His fingers were shaking. From anger or grief, Mia couldn’t tell.
“How in the Everseeing’s name did this happen?” Leona demanded, looking over the bodies with her hands on her hips.
“Simply enough,” Mia murmured, eyes never leaving Maggot’s body. “Somebody dosed the onions in the pantry with Elegy, and Finger used them in the stew. Onion is porous, acts like a sponge. And the smell and flavor does a fine job of masking the toxin’s. Good delivery method. The killer knew what they were doing.”
Leona turned to Finger. The cook stood trembling between two houseguards, steel grips on both his arms. His lank hair hung over his eyes, his body shaking.
“What do you know of this?” the dona asked.
“N-nothing, Domina,” the cook replied. “I serve you faithfully!”
“Any snake would hiss the same,” Leona snarled.
Finger shook his head, his voice shaking.
“Domina, I . . . Ever you’ve treated me well and fair. I’ve no cause to harm your flock. Nor would I ever hurt the lass. She was like kin to me. I served the meal to her with my own hands.” Tears filled his eyes, snot at his lips as he looked to Maggot’s lifeless corpse. “You think me cold enough to look in her eyes and smile as I p-passed the blade that would end her?”
The man’s chest heaved, face twisting as tears spilled down his cheeks.
“Never. By the Everseeing and all his Daughters, never.”
Leona’s eyes narrowed, but she could see it in his face, plain as Mia. His thin frame trembling. Eyes swimming with grief. Either Finger was an actor worthy of the greatest theater in all the Republic, or the man was genuinely gutted at Maggot’s death.
“Who had means to get into the larder?” Leona asked.
Finger pawed his eyes, sniffled hard. “Anyone with access to the keep could get to the provisions, Domina. They’re not locked of a nevernight . . . I-I’d have kept them with more care, but I had n-no inkling a serpent lived among us.”
“Nor I,” Leona said. “But I’ve suckled one at my breast, sure and true.”
“Elegy isn’t easy to make,” Mia said. “Dangerous. Messy. But in a city as big as Crow’s Rest, there’s bound to be a way to buy it
, if you’ve the coin.”
“And how do you know this, exactly?” Arkades growled.
“I’ve made no secret of my knowledge of herblore,” Mia replied. “The difference between a remedy and a requiem can be as little as half a dram. And if we’re taking tally, my meal was dosed too.”
“Then how comes it you were not poisoned with the rest of your fellows?”
“I didn’t eat my dinner,” Mia spat.
“The second time in as many months you’ve dodged a suspicious meal.”
“Have you looked under Furian’s bandages?” Mia demanded. “It’s fucking sickening. The smell would put a scabdog off its meal, let alone the sight.”
“And so you just happen to give your draft to my dog and watch him die? Then just happen to have the ingredients to save the lives of your fellows?”
Mia turned to fully face Arkades, teeth clenched. “You accuse me of this? Poisoning an eleven-year-old girl?”
Arkades ignored her, turned to Leona. “I say if we seek a serpent among us, begin with the one who best knows poison, neh?”
Rage took Mia then, bright and blinding, and she took a step toward Arkades with her fists clenched. The big man rose with that surprising speed, shoulders squared, chin low. She could feel his growl in her chest.
“Try,” he said. “Just try . . .”
“Executus, enough,” Leona snapped. “Crow is champion of this collegium. She already stands atop the mountain. What in the Everseeing’s name would she gain by murdering all my Falcons, let alone Maggot besides?”
“What would anyone gain?” Magistrae asked, looking around the room. “If we seek the killer, first we must find the motive. How does anyone profit from this?”
“Your father would profit, Domina,” Mia said.
Leona shook her head. “He would not dare . . .”
“Think on it,” Mia replied. “He owns all your debts. You owe him coin that you simply don’t have. How have you made up your shortfalls to creditors in the past?”
“ . . . I am still working the figures,” Leona replied.
“Aye,” Mia nodded. “But even with the Whitekeep purse in consideration, have you pondered any way to conjure over three thousand silver pieces that doesn’t involve selling at least a few of your gladiatii to Pandemonium?”
