by Jay Kristoff
Back out in the marketplace, she stood on the stoop, fury curling her hands into fists. How dare he talk about her father like that? She was of half a mind to stomp back inside and demand apology, but her stomach was growling and she needed coin.
She was stepping down into the crush looking for a jewelry stall, when a boy a little older than her came careening out of the throng. His arms were laden with a basket of pastries, and before Mia could step aside, with a curse and a small explosion of powdered sugar, the boy plowed straight into her.
Mia cried out as she was sent sprawling, her dress powdered white. The boy was likewise knocked onto his backside, pastries strewn in the filth.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” Mia demanded.
“O, Daughters, a thousand pardons, miss. Please forgive me…”
The boy climbed to his feet, offered a hand and helped Mia up. He brushed the white powder off her dress as best he could, mumbling apologies all the while. Then, leaning down to the fallen pastries, he stuffed them back into his basket. With an apologetic smile, he plucked one of the less dirty tarts off the pile and offered it to Mia with a bow.
“Please accept this by way of apology, Mi Dona.”
Mia’s anger slowed to a simmer as her belly growled, and, with a pout, she took the pastry from the boy’s grubby hand.
“Thank you, Mi Don.”
“I’d best be off. The good father gets in a frightful mood if I’m late to almsgiving.” He smiled again at Mia, doffed an imaginary hat. “Apologies again, miss.”
Mia gave a curtsey, and scowled a little less. “Aa bless and keep you.”
The boy hurried off into the crowd. Mia watched him go, anger slowly dissipating. She looked at the sweet tart in her hand, and smiled at her fortune. Free mornmeal!
She found an alley away from the press, lifted the tart and took a big bite. Her smile curdled at the edges, eyes growing wide. With a curse, she spat her mouthful into the muck, throwing the rest of the tart with it. The pastry was hard as wood, the filling utterly rancid. She grimaced, wiping her lips on her sleeve.
“Four Daughters,” she spat. “Why would—”
Mia blinked. Looked down at her dress, still faintly powdered with sugar. Remembering the boy’s hands patting her down, cursing herself a fool and realizing, at last, what his game had been.
Her brooch was missing.
The ironsong did eventually scare off the krakens.
Or so Tric insisted, at any rate. He’d spent four hours beating the xylophone as if it owed him coin, and Mia supposed he needed some kind of vindication. As the pursuers dropped off one by one, Mister Kindly suggested the ground was growing harder as the caravan galloped closer to the mountains. Mia was reasonably certain the beasts simply grew bored and pissed off to eat someone easier. Naev ventured no opinion at all, instead lying in a pool of coagulating blood and doing her best not to die.
Truthfully, Mia wasn’t certain she’d pull it off.
Tric took the reins at her insistence. In the merciful quiet after the boy abandoned his percussionist duties, Mia knelt beside the unconscious woman and wondered where to begin.
Naev’s guts had been minced by kraken hooks, and the reek of bowel and vomit hung in the air—Four Daughters only knew how Tric was handling it with that knife-keen nose of his. Knowing the smell of shit and death well enough, Mia simply tried to make the woman comfortable. There was nothing she could really do; sepsis would finish the job if blood loss didn’t. Knowing the end awaiting Naev, Mia realized it’d be a mercy to end her.
Peeling the cloth back from Naev’s ravaged belly, Mia looked for something to bind the wounds with, settling at last on the fabric about the woman’s face. And as she peeled the veil from Naev’s head, she felt Mister Kindly swell and sigh, drinking the surge of sickening terror that would’ve otherwise made her scream.
Even still, it was a close thing.
“’Byss and blood…,” she breathed.
“What?” Tric glanced over his shoulder, almost falling off the driver’s seat. “Black Mother of Night … her face…”
Daughters, such a face …
To call her disfigured would be to call a knife to the heart “mildly inconvenient.” Naev’s flesh was stretched and twisted into a knot in the place her nose might have been. Her bottom lip sagged like a beaten stepchild, top lip snarled back from her teeth. Five deep runnels were carved into her flesh—as if her face were clay, and someone had grabbed a fistful and squeezed. And yet the hideousness was framed by beautiful curls of strawberry blond.
“What could have done that?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Love,” the woman whispered, spit dribbling over mangled lips. “Only love.”
“Naev…,” Mia began. “Your wounds…”
“Bad.”
“It’s a far cry from good.”
“Get Naev to the Church. She has much to do before she meets her Blessed Lady.”
“We’re two turns from the mountains,” Tric said. “Maybe more. Even if we get there, you’re in no condition to climb.”
The woman slurped, coughed bloody. Reaching to her neck, she snapped a leather cord, drew out a silver phial. She tried sitting up, groaned in agony. Mia pushed her back down.
“You mustn’t—”
“Get off her!” Naev snarled. “Help her up. Drag her.” She waved to the back of the wagon. “Out of this blood, where the wood is clean.”
Mia had no idea what the woman was about, but she obeyed, hauling Naev through the congealing puddle to the wagon’s rear. And there the woman pulled out the phial’s stopper with her teeth and upended the contents onto the unfinished boards.
More blood.
Bright red, as if from a fresh-cut wound. Mia frowned as Mister Kindly coiled up on her shoulder, peering through her curtain of hair. And as Naev dragged her fingers through the puddle, the cat who was shadows did his best to purr, sending a shiver down Mia’s spine.
“… interesting…”
Naev was writing, Mia realized. As if the puddle were a tablet and her finger the brush. The letters were Ashkahi—she recognized them from her studies, but the ritual itself …
“That’s blood sorcery,” she breathed.
But that was impossible. The magik of the Ashkahi had been extinguished when the empire fell. Nobody had seen real blood werking in …
“How do you know how to do that? Those arts have been dead for a hundred years.”
“Not all the dead truly die,” Naev rasped. “The Mother keeps … only what she needs.”
The woman rolled onto her back, clutching her butchered belly.
“Ride for the mountains … the simplest of them all.” Mia swore she could see tears in the woman’s eyes. “Do not end her, girl. Set mercy aside. If the Blessed Lady … takes her, so be it. But do not help Naev on her way. Does she hear?”
“… I hear you.”
Naev clutched her hand. Squeezed. And then she slipped back into darkness.
Mia bound the wounds as best she could, wrist deep in gore, fetching her cloak from Bastard’s saddlebag (he tried to bite her) and rolling it beneath Naev’s head. Joining Tric on the driver’s seat, she peered at the mountains ahead. A range of great black spurs stretched north and south, a few high enough to be tipped with snow. One looked almost like a scowling face, just as Naev described. Another long range might’ve been the broken wall she mentioned. And nestled beside a spur resembling a sad old man, Mia saw a peak that fit the bill.
It was entirely average, as far as mighty spires of prehistoric granite went. Not quite high enough to be frost-clad, not really conjuring any comparisons to faces or figures. Just a regular lump of ancient rock out here in this blood-red desert. The kind you wouldn’t look twice at.
“There,” Tric said, pointing to the spur.
“Aye.”
“You think they’d have picked something a touch more dramatic.”
“I think that’s the poin
t. Anyone looking for a nest of assassins isn’t likely to start at the most boring mountain in all creation.”
Tric nodded. Gifted her a smile. “Wisdom, Pale Daughter.”
“Fear not, Don Tric.” She smiled back. “I won’t let it go to my head.”
They rode another two turns, with Tric in the driver’s seat and Mia by Naev’s side. She wet a cloth, moistened those malformed lips, wondering who or what could have mutilated the woman’s face like that. Naev talked as if in a fever, speaking to some phantom, asking it to wait. She reached out to thin air once, as if to caress it. And as she did so, those lips twisted into a hideous parody of a smile. Mister Kindly sat beside her the entire time.
Purring.
Flowers and Bastard were both exhausted, and Mia feared either might go lame at any moment. It seemed cruel (even to Bastard) to make them run beside the wagon needlessly. Tric and Mia had passed the point of no return; they’d either make the Red Church or die now. She’d seen wild horses roaming the broken foothills, supposed there must be water someplace near. And so, reluctantly, she suggested they let the pair go.
Tric seemed saddened, but he saw the wisdom of it. They pulled the wagon to a stop and the boy untied Flowers, letting the stallion drink deep from his waterskin. He ran a fond hand over the horse’s neck, whispering softly.
“You were a loyal friend. I’ll trust you’ll find another. Watch out for the kraken.”
He slapped the horse on its hindquarters, and the beast galloped east along the range. Mia untied Bastard, the stallion glaring even as she emptied an entire waterskin into his gullet. She reached into her saddlebag, offered him the last sugar cube on an upturned palm.
“You’ve earned it. I suppose you can head back to Last Hope now if you like.”
The stallion lowered his head, gently nibbled the cube from her palm. He nickered, tossing his mane, nuzzling his nose to her shoulder. And, as Mia smiled and patted his cheek, Bastard opened his mouth and bit her hard just above the left breast.
“You son of a motherless—”
The stallion bolted across the wastes as Mia hopped about, clutching her chest and cursing the horse by the Three Suns and Four Daughters and anyone else who happened to be listening. Bastard followed Flowers east, disappearing into the dusty haze.
“I can kiss that better if you like,” Tric smiled.
“O, fuck off!” Mia spat, rolling into the wagon and flopping about on the floor. There was blood on her fingers where she touched the bite, the skin already bruising as she glanced inside her shirt. Thanking the Daughters she wasn’t a bigger girl for the first time in her life, she hissed under her breath as Mister Kindly laughed from her shadow.
“He was such a bastard…”
Naev was fading swift, and they could afford no more stops—Mia feared the woman wouldn’t last another turn, and the First of Septimus was the morrow. If they didn’t find the Church soon, there’d be no point finding it at all. They were in the foothills now, mountains curving about them like a lover’s arms. She’d read dustwraiths often made their home where the winds howled worst, and her ears strained for telltale laughter over the whispering breeze.
Blood had thickened over the wagon floor, crusted in flies. She did her best to keep them off Naev’s belly, despite knowing she was already a dead woman. Naev’s resolve had broken—when unconscious, she moaned constantly, and when awake, she simply screamed until she passed out again. She was in the midst of a howling fit as Tric brought the wagon to a halt. Mia looked up at the absence of motion after turns of riding, fatigue thick in her voice.
“Why’ve we stopped?”
“Unless you can fix these spit-machines’ wings”—Tric pointed to the snarling camels—“we’ve gone as far as we’re going to.”
The simplest mountain rose up before the camel train in sheer cliffs, broken and tumbled all about. Mia looked around, saw nothing and no one out of the ordinary. She leaned down and clutched Naev’s shoulder, shouting above her cries.
“Where do we go from here?”
The woman curled over and babbled nonsense, clawing at her rancid belly. Tric climbed down from the reins and stood beside Mia, face grim. The reek of human waste and rotten blood was overpowering. The agony on display too much to bear.
“Mia…”
“I need a smoke,” the girl growled.
She rolled out of the wagon, Tric hopping down beside her as she lit a cigarillo. The wind snatched at her fringe as she sucked down a lungful. Her fingers were crusted with blood. Naev was laughing, bashing the back of her head against the wagon floor.
“We should end it,” Tric said. “It’s a mercy.”
“She told us not to.”
“She’s in agony, Mia. Black Mother, listen to her.”
“I know! I’d have done it yesterturn but she asked me not to.”
“So you’re happy to just let her die screaming?”
“Do I look fucking happy to you?”
“Well, what do we do now? This is the simplest mountain for miles, far as I can see. I don’t see any steeple, do you? We just ride around until we drop of thirst?”
“I don’t know any more than you do. But Naev told us to ride in this direction. That blood werking wasn’t just for shits and giggles. Someone knows we’re here.”
“Aye, the fucking dustwraiths! They’ll hear her screaming miles away!”
“So is it mercy or fear ruling you, Don Tric?”
“I fear nothing,” he growled.
“Mister Kindly can smell it on you. And so can I.”
“Maw take you,” he hissed, drawing his knife. “I’m ending this now.”
“Stop.” Mia clutched his arm. “Don’t.”
“Get off me!” Tric slapped her fingers away.
Mia’s hand went to her stiletto, Tric’s hand to his scimitar. The shadows about her flared, long tendrils reaching out from the stones and swaying as if to music only they could hear.
“She’s our only way to find the Church,” Mia said. “It’s my fault those kraken got her in the first place. And she asked me not to kill her.”
“She couldn’t find her britches for a piss, the state she’s in. And I didn’t promise her a thing.”
“Don’t draw that sword, Don Tric. Things will end badly for both of us.”
“I picked you for a cold one, Mia Corvere.” He shook his head. “I just never knew how much. Where do you keep the heart that’s supposed to be inside your chest?”
“Keep it up and I’ll feed you yours, bastard.”
“Bastard I might be,” Tric spat. “But you’re the one who decides to be a cunt every turn of your life.”
Mia had her knife out, smiling.
“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Tric drew his scimitar, those pretty hazel eyes locked on hers. Confusion and rage boiling behind her stare. A soup of it, thick in her head, silencing the common sense shouting at the back of the room. She wanted to kill this boy, she realized. Cut him belly to throat and wash her hands inside him. Soak herself to the elbows and paint her lips and breasts with his blood. Her thighs ached at the thought. Breath coming faster as she pressed one hand between her legs, murder and lust all a-tumble in her head as Mister Kindly whispered from her shadow.
“… this is not you…”
“Away,” she hissed. “To the Maw with you, daemon.”
“… these thoughts are not your own…”
Tric was advancing, eyes narrowed to knife-cuts, veins standing taut in his throat. He was breathing heavy, pupils dilated. Mia glanced below his waist and realized he was hard, britches bulging, the thought making her breath quicken. She blinked sweat from her eyes and pictured her blade slipping in and out of his chest, his into hers, tasting copper on his tongue …
“This isn’t right…,” she breathed.
Tric lunged, a sweeping blow passing over her head as she swayed. She aimed a kick for his groin, blocked by his knee and tempted for a se
cond to simply drop to her own. She stabbed at his exposed belly, knowing this was wrong, this was wrong, pulling the blow at the last moment and rolling aside as he swung again at her head. He was grinning like a lunatic, and the thought struck her funny as well. Trying not to laugh, trying to think beyond her desire to kill him, fuck him, both at once, lying with him inside her as they stabbed and bit and bled to their endings on the sand.
“Tric, stop it,” she gasped.
“Come here…”
Chest heaving, hand outstretched even as she moved closer. Panting. Wanting.
“Something is wrong. This is wrong.”
“Come here,” he said, stalking her across the sand, swords raised.
“… this is not real…”
She shook her head, blinking the sting from her eyes.
“… you are mia corvere…,” said Mister Kindly. “… remember…”
She held out her hand and her shadow trembled, stretching out from her feet and engulfing the boy’s. He stuck fast in the sand and she backed away, arms up as if to ward off a blow. The knife was heavy in her grip, drawing her back, mind flooded with the thought of plunging it inside him as he plunged inside her but no, NO, that wasn’t her (this isn’t me) and with a desperate cry, she hurled her blade away.
She fell to her knees, flopped onto her belly, eyes screwed shut. Sand in her teeth as she shook her head, pushed the lust and the murder down, focused on the thought Mister Kindly had gifted her, clinging to it like a drowning man at straw.
“I am Mia Corvere,” she breathed. “I am Mia Corvere…”
Slow clapping.
Mia lifted her head at the somber sound, echoing inside her head. She saw figures around her, clad in desert red, faces covered. A dozen, gathered about a slight man with a curved sword at his waist. The hilt was fashioned in the likeness of human figures with feline heads—male and female, naked and intertwined. The blade was Ashkahi blacksteel.2
“Mia?” Tric said, his voice now his own.
Mia looked the clapping man over from her cradle in the dust. He was well built, handsome as a fistful of devils. His hair was curled, dark, peppered with gray. His face was of a man in his early thirties, but deep, cocoa brown eyes spoke of years far deeper. A half-smile loitered at the corners of his lips like it was planning to steal the silverware.
