by Jay Kristoff
“… you fear…”
“That should please you.”
“… mercurio would not have sent you here needlessly…”
“The Luminatii have been trying to take down the Church for years. The Truedark Massacre changed the game.”
“… if ill befell them, there would still be traces…”
“You suggest we go out into the Whisperwastes and look?”
“… that, wait here, or return home…”
“None of those options hold much appeal.”
“… fat daniio’s job offer still stands, i am sure…”
Her smile was thin and pale. She turned back to the sea, watching the sunslight glint and catch upon the gnashing waves. Dragging deep on her smoke and exhaling plumes of gray.
“… mia…?”
“Yes?”
“… there is no need to be afraid…”
“I’m not.”
A pause, filled with whispering wind.
“… no need to lie, either…”
Mia ended up stealing most of her supplies.
Waterskins, rations, and a tent from Last Hope General Supplies and Fine Undertakers. Blankets, whiskey, and candles from the Old Imperial. She’d already marked the finest stallion in the garrison stable for stealing, despite being as much at home in the saddle as a nun in a brothel.
She told herself the thievery would keep her sharp, and sneaking back into the robbed stores to deposit compensation on the countertops afterward struck her as good sport.11 Seated at the Imperial’s hearth, she enjoyed a final bowl of widowmaker chili and waited for the nevernight winds to begin, bringing blessed cool after a turn of red heat.
Mia glanced up as the front door creaked open, admitting curling fingers of dust.
The boy who entered looked Dweymeri—leviathan ink facial tattoos (of terrible quality), salt-kissed locks bound in matted knots. But his skin was olive rather than brown, and he was too short to be an islander; barely a head taller than Mia, truth told. Dressed in dark leathers, carrying a scimitar in a battered scabbard, smelling of horse and a long road. When he prowled into the room, he checked every corner with hazel eyes. As his stare roamed the alcoves, Mia pulled the shadows about herself, and faded like a watermark into the gloom.
The boy turned to Fat Daniio, polishing that same grubby cup with the same grubby cloth. Eyeing the man over, the boy spoke with a voice soft as velvet.
“Blessings to you, sir.”
“A’right,” Fat Daniio replied. “What’ll you ’ave?”
“I have this.”
The boy placed a small wooden box upon the counter. Mia’s eyes narrowed as it rattled. The boy looked around the room again, then spoke in a tight whisper.
“My tithe. For the Maw.”12
1. The tomcat was, as you probably suspect, named for his fondness for urinating outside designated areas—a name that had been tolerated by her mother, and met with uproarious approval by her dear-departed father.
2. Captain Puddles lurked under the bed, licking at dusty paws. The aforementioned something lingered yet beneath the curtains.
3. She’d learned to hear the music by now.
4. That dubious honor belonged to the Lonesome Rose, a pleasure house in the Godsgrave docklands frequented by syphilitic lunatics and newly released convicts, run by a Vaanian madam so disease-stricken she affectionately referred to her own nethers as “the Orphan Maker.”
5. The only man in Last Hope who knew how to play it—a local tomb raider nicknamed Blue Paulo—had been found strung up from the rafters in his room two summers previous. Whether his end was suicide or the protest of another resident particularly opposed to harpsichord music was a topic of much speculation and very little investigation in the weeks following his death/murder.
6. Coins in the Republic came in three flavors—the least valuable being copper, the middle child, iron, and the fanciest, gold. Gold coins were as rare as a likable tax collector, most plebs never laying eyes on one in their lives.
Itreyan coinage was originally referred to as “sovereigns,” but given the Itreyan’s penchant for brutally murdering their kings, the term had fallen out of vogue decades past. Coppers were now sometimes referred to as “beggars” and irons as “priests,” since those were the people usually found handling them with the most enthusiasm. There was no commonly accepted slang for gold coins—anyone rich enough to possess them likely wasn’t the sort who went in for nicknames. Or handled their own money.
So for argument’s sake, let’s call them golden tossers.
7. No rainbows were present in the room at this time.
8. He did not, although Fat Daniio did owe the captain a weighty debt, incurred during a drunken argument about the aerodynamics of pigs and the distance from the Old Imperial to the stable across the way. The debt, which would take the form of an extended session of … oral pleasure for the crew of Trelene’s Beau (which Daniio would apparently undertake while performing a handstand with his arse-end painted blue) had yet to be cashed in, but the threat of it hung heavy in the air whenever the Beau and its crew were in port.
9. Boy, Girl, Man, Woman, Pig, Horse, and, if sufficient notice and coin was given, Corpse.
10. Insubordination or drunken and disorderly behavior were the most common, although one legionary had been posted to Ashkah for murdering his cohort’s cook after being served corned beef for evemeal on no less than 342 consecutive nevernights.
“Would it kill you,” he’d roared, “to serve [stab] some fucking [stab] salad?”
11. O, look, there is good in her! Cue the swelling violiiiiiiins.
12. O, very well. A primer, if you’ll indulge me.
In all religions, there must be an adversary. An evil for the good. A black for the white. For folk of the Republic, this role is filled by Niah, Goddess of Night, Our Lady of Blessed Murder, sisterwife to Aa, also (as you’ve no doubt surmised) referred to as the Maw.
In the beginning, Niah and Aa’s marriage was a happy one. They made love at dawn and dusk, then retired to their respective domains, sharing rule of the sky equally. Fearing a rival, Aa commanded Niah bear him no sons, and dutifully, the Night bore the Light four daughters—Tsana, the Lady of Fire, Keph, the Lady of Earth, and finally the twins Trelene and Nalipse, the Ladies of Oceans and Storms, respectively. However, Niah missed her husband in the long, cold hours of darkness, and to alleviate her loneliness, she chose to bring a boychild into the world. The Night named her son Anais.
Aa, however, was outraged at his wife’s disobedience. As punishment, Niah was banished from the sky. Feeling betrayed by her husband, Niah vowed vengeance against Aa, and has not spoken to him since. Aa himself is still sulking about the whole affair.
And what became of Anais, you might ask? The rival Aa so rightly feared?
That, gentlefriend, would be spoiling things.
CHAPTER 4
KINDNESS
Captain Puddles had loved his Mia.
He’d known her since he was a kitten, after all. Before he’d forgotten the warm press of his siblings around him, she’d cradled him in her arms and kissed him on his little pink nose and he’d known she’d always be the center of his world.
And so when Justicus Remus had stooped to seize the girl’s wrist at his consul’s command, Captain Puddles spat a yellow-tooth hiss, reached out with a paw full of claws, and tore the justicus’s face from eyehole to lip. Roaring, the big man seized the brave captain’s head with one hand, his shoulders with the other, and with an almost practiced ease, he twisted.
The sound was like wet sticks snapping, too loud to be drowned by Mia’s scream. And at the end of those dreadful damp pops, a black shape hung limp in the justicus’s hand; a warm, soft, purring shape Mia had fallen asleep beside every nevernight, now purring no more.
She lost herself then. Howling, clawing, scratching. Dimly aware of being seized by another Luminatii and slung over his shoulder. The justicus clutched his bleeding face and drew his
sword, fire uncurling down its length, the steel glowing with painful, blinding light.
“Not here, Remus,” Scaeva said. “Your hands must be clean.”
The justicus bellowed at his men, and her mother had screamed and kicked. Mia called for her, but a sharp blow struck her head, and it was all she could do to not fall into the black beneath her feet as the Dona Corvere’s cries faded into nothing.
Servants’ stairs, spiraling down. A passageway through the Spine—not the wondrous halls of polished white gravebone and crystal chandeliers and marrowborn1 in all their finery. A dim and claustrophobic little tunnel, leading out into the grounds beyond. Mia had squinted up—the Ribs arching into stormwashed skies, the great council buildings and libraries and observatories—before the men threw her into an empty barrel, slammed the lid, and tossed it into a horsedrawn cart.
She felt the cart whipped into motion, the trundle of wheels across cobbles. Men rode in the tray beside her, but she couldn’t make out their words, stricken by the memory of Captain Puddles lying twisted on the floor, her mother in chains. She understood none of it. The barrel rasped against her skin, splinters plucking at her dress. She felt them cross bridge after bridge, the haze of semiconsciousness thin enough now for her to start crying, hiccupping and heaving. A fist slammed hard against the barrel’s flank.
“Shut up, you little shit, or I’ll give you something to wail about.”
They’re going to kill me, she thought.
A chill stole over her. Not at the thought of dying, mind you; in truth, no child thinks of herself as anything less than immortal. The chill was a physical sensation, spilling from the darkness inside the barrel, coiling around her feet, cold as ice water. She felt a presence—or closer, a lack of one. Like the feeling of empty at an embrace’s end. And she knew, sure and certain, that something was in that barrel with her.
Watching her.
Waiting.
“Hello?” she whispered.
A ripple in the black. A silent, ink-spot earthquake. And where there had been nothing a moment before, something gleamed at her feet, caught by the tiny chinks of sunslight spilling through the barrel’s lid. Something long and wicked-sharp as only gravebone can be, its hilt crafted to resemble a crow in flight. Last seen skittering beneath the curtains as Consul Scaeva slapped her mother’s hand away and spoke of pleading and promises.
Dona Corvere’s gravebone stiletto.
Mia reached toward it. For the briefest moment, she swore she could see lights at her feet, glittering like diamonds in an ocean of nothing. She felt an emptiness so vast she thought she was falling—down, down into some hungry dark. And then her fingers closed on the dagger’s hilt and she clutched it tight, so cold it almost burned.
She felt the something in the dark around her.
The copper-tang of blood.
The pulsing rush of rage.
The cart bounced along the road, her stomach curdling until at last they drew to a halt. She felt the barrel lifted, slung, crashing to the ground with a bang that made her almost bite her tongue clean through. She heard voices again, loud enough to ken the words.
“I’m sick to my guts on this, Alberius.”
“Orders are orders. Luminus Invicta, aye?” 2
“Sod off.”
“You want to trifle with Remus? With Scaeva? The saviors of the bloody Republic?”
“Saviors my arsehole. You ever wonder how they did it? Captured Corvere and Antonius right in the middle of an armed camp?”
“No, I bloody don’t. Help me with this.”
“I heard it was magiks. Black arkemy. Scaeva’s in truck—”
“Get staunch, you bloody maid. Who cares how they did it? Corvere was a fucking traitor, and this is traitor’s get.”
The barrel lid was torn away. Mia squinted up at two men, dark cloaks thrown over white armor. The first was a man with arms like treetrunks and hands like dinnerplates. The second had pretty blue eyes and the smile of a fellow who choked puppies for sport.
“Maw’s teeth,” breathed the first. “She can’t be more than ten.”
“Never to see eleven.” A shrug. “Hold still, girl. This won’t hurt long.”
The puppy-choker clutched Mia’s throat, drew a long, sharp knife from his belt. And there in the reflection on that polished steel, the little girl saw her death. It would’ve been easy then, to close her eyes and wait. She was ten years old, after all. Alone and helpless and afraid. But here is truth, gentlefriends, no matter the number of suns in your sky. At the heart of it, two kinds of people live in this world or any other: those who flee and those who fight. Your kind has many terms for the latter sort. Berserker. Killer instinct. More balls than brains.
And it shouldn’t surprise you, knowing what little you know already, that in the face of this thug and his blade, and laden with memory of her father’s execution
never flinch
never fear
instead of wailing or breaking as another ten-year-old might have, young Mia gripped the stiletto she’d fished from the darkness, and slipped it straight up into the puppy-choker’s eye.
The man screamed and fell backward, blood gushing between his fingers. Mia rolled from the barrel, the sunslight impossibly bright after the darkness within. She felt the something come with her, coiled in her shadow, pushing at her heels. She saw they’d brought her to some mongrel bridge, a little canal choked with filth, boarded windows all around.
The dinnerplate man’s eyes grew wide as his friend went down screaming. He drew a sunsteel sword and stepped toward the girl, flame rippling down its edge. But movement at his feet drew his eyes to the stone, and looking down, he saw the girl’s shadow begin to move. Clawing and twisting as if alive, reaching out toward him like hungry hands.
“Light save me,” he breathed.
The blade wavered in the thug’s grip. Mia backed away across the bridge, bloody knife in one trembling fist, the something still pressing at her heels. And as the puppy-choker clawed back to his feet with his face painted blood, the little girl did what anyone would have done in her position—ratio of balls to brains be damned.
“… run . .!” said a tiny voice.
And run she did.
The Dweymeri boy underwent much the same exchange with Fat Daniio as Mia,3 although he suffered it with silent dignity.
The innkeeper informed him a girl had been asking the same questions, gestured to her booth—or at least, the booth she’d been sitting at. Mia had stolen up the stairwell by that point and was listening just out of sight, silent as an Itreyan Ironpriest.4
After muttering thanks, the Dweymeri boy asked if there were rooms available, paying coin from a malnourished purse. He was headed up the stairs when one of the local card players, a gent named Scupps, spoke.
“Yer one of Wolfeater’s mob?”
The boy replied with a deep, soft voice. “I know no Wolfeater.”
“He’s no crewman off the Beau.” Mia recognized this second voice as Scupp’s brother, Lem. “Look at the size of ’im. He’s barely tall enough to reach Wolfeater’s balls.”
Laughter.
“Mebbe that’s the point?”
More laughter.
The Dweymeri boy waited to ensure there was no more hilarity forthcoming, then continued up the stairs. Mia had slipped into her room, watching from the keyhole as the boy padded to his own door. His feet made barely a whisper, though Mia knew the boards squeaked like a family of murdered mice. The boy glanced over his shoulder toward her door, sniffed once, then slipped inside.
The girl sat in her room, considering whether to approach him or simply light out of Last Hope at turn’s end as she planned.5 He was obviously looking for the same thing she was, but he was likely a cold-blooded psychopath. She doubted many novices seeking the Red Church had motives as altruistic as her own.
As soon as the town bells rang in nevernight, she heard the boy head downstairs, soft as velvet. She felt her shadow stir and stretch, insubstantia
l claws digging at the floorboards.
“… if i do not return by the morrow, tell mother i love her…”
The girl snorted as the not-cat slipped beneath her door. She waited hours, reading by candlelight rather than open her shutters to the sun. If she was leaving this turn, she’d need do it at twelve bells, when the watchtower changed shifts. Easier to steal the stallion then. The knowledge she could have just bought some old nag raised its hand at the back of the lesson hall, and was shushed by the thought she shouldn’t be heading out into the wastes on anything but the finest horse this town had to offer.6
She felt a rippling chill, a sense of loss, and the cat who was shadows hopped up onto the bed beside her. Blinked with eyes that weren’t there. Tried to purr and failed.
“Well?”
“… he ate a sparing meal, watched the ones who insulted him between mouthfuls, and followed them home when they left…”
“Did he kill them?”
“… pissed in their water barrel…”
“Not too bloodthirsty, then. And afterward?”
“… climbed up on the stable roof. he has been watching your window ever since…”
A nod. “I thought he marked me when he first entered.”
“… a clever one…”
“Let’s see how clever.”
Mia packed her things, books bound in a small oilskin satchel on her back. She’d hoped she might slip out unnoticed, but now this Dweymeri boy watched her, it was no longer a question of if she’d deal with him. Only how.
She snuck out from her room, across the squeaky floorboards, making no squeak at all. Sliding up to an empty room opposite, she slipped two lockpicks from a thin wallet, setting to work and hearing a small click a few minutes later. Slipping from the window, flitting across the roof, she felt sunslight burning the wind-blown sky, adrenaline tingling her fingertips. It was good to be moving again. Tested again.
Dashing across the alley between the Imperial and the bakery next door, boots less than a whisper on the road. The not-cat prowled in front, watching with his not-eyes.
