by Jay Kristoff
“… Fear?”
Mia nodded. “He’s been drinking mine for years. Not enough to make me forget common sense, mind. But enough to make me stand tall in a knife-fight or snatch-job. He makes me strong.”
“That makes no sense,” Tric scowled. “If he’s eating your fear, you never learn how deal with it yourself. That’s not strength, that’s a crutch…”
“Well, it’s a crutch I’m willing to loan you, Don Tric.” Mia glared. “So instead of lecturing me on my faults, I’d rather you said ‘thank you, Pale Daughter,’ and got your sorry arse inside the Church before they slit our throats and leave us for the kraken.”
The boy stared down at their clasped hands. Nodded slow.
“… Thank you, Pale Daughter.”
She stood, pulled him to his feet. Mister Kindly didn’t need to be asked—simply flowed across the join where their shadows intersected. Anxiety began eating Mia’s insides immediately, cold worms gnawing at her belly. But she did her best to stomp on them with her boots, as Tric marched her across the broken ground toward Mouser.
“You’re ready then?” the Shahiid asked.
“We’re ready,” Tric said.
Mia smiled to hear his voice, almost a full octave deeper. He squeezed her fingers and closed his eyes, allowing Mouser to tie the blindfold. Tying Mia’s, the Shahiid grasped their hands, led them across the broken ground. She heard a word spoken—something ancient and humming with power. And then she heard stone; the great cracking and rumbling of stone. The ground shuddered beneath her, dust rising in a choking pall. She felt a rushing wind, smelled a greasy arkemical tang in the air.
Hands took her own, led her forward, across broken ground and onto smooth rock. The temperature dropped suddenly, the light beyond her eyelids dying slow. They were somewhere dark now; inside the mountain’s belly, she supposed. Mouser leading her by the hand, they reached stairs, climbing up, up in an ever-widening spiral. Twisting and turning, a soft vertigo filling her mind, all track of the direction she’d come from or the direction they were headed fading. Up. Down. Left. Right. Concepts with no meaning. No memory. She felt an almost overwhelming desire to call Mister Kindly back, to feel that familiar touch she no longer quite knew how to live without.
At last, after what seemed like hours, Mouser released his grip. For a moment she faltered. Imagining she stood at the mountain’s peak, nothing about her but a straight fall to her death. Arms outstretched to keep her balance. Breathing hard.
“Come back,” she whispered.
She felt the not-cat rush back in a flood, pouncing on the butterflies in her belly and dismembering them one by one. The blindfold was removed and she blinked, saw an enormous hall, bigger than the belly of the grandest cathedral. Walls and floor of dark granite, smooth as river stones. Soft arkemical light shone from within beautiful windows of stained glass, giving the impression of the sunslight outside—though in truth they could be miles within the mountain by now. Tric stood beside her, gazing about the room. Vast pointed archways and enormous stone pillars were arranged in a circle, soaring stone gables seemingly carved in the core of the mountain itself.
“Trelene’s great … soft…”
Word failed as the boy looked toward the room’s heart. Mia followed his gaze, saw the statue of a woman, jewels hung like stars on her ebony robe. The figure was colossal, towering forty feet above their heads, carved of gleaming black stone. Small iron rings were embedded in the rock, about head height. In her hands she held a scale and a massive, wicked sword, broad as treetrunks, sharp as obsidian. Her face was beautiful. Terrible and cold. Mia felt a chill trickle down her spine, the statue’s eyes following as she walked closer.
“Welcome to the Hall of Eulogies,” Mouser said.
“Who is she?”
“The Mother.” Mouser touched his eyes, then his lips, then his chest. “The Maw. Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Almighty Niah.”
“But … she’s beautiful,” Mia breathed. “In the pictures I’ve seen, she’s a monstrosity.”
“The Light is full of lies, Acolyte. The Suns serve only to blind us.”
Mia wandered the mighty hall, running her hands over the spiral patterns in the stone. The walls were set with hundreds of small doors, two feet square, stacked one upon another as if tombs in some great mausoleum. Her footfalls rang like bells in the vast space. The only sound was the tune of what might have been a choir, hanging disembodied in the air. The hymn was beautiful, wordless, endless. The place had a feeling unlike any other she’d visited. There were no altars nor golden trim, but for the first time in her life, she felt as if she were somewhere … sanctified.
Mister Kindly whispered in her ear.
“… i like it here…”
“What are these names, Shahiid?” Tric asked.
Mia blinked, realized the floor beneath them was engraved with names. Hundreds. Thousands. Etched in tiny letters on polished black stone.
“The names of every life claimed by this Church for the Mother.” The man bowed to the statue above. “Here we honor those taken. The Hall of Eulogies, as I said.”
“And the tombs?” Mia asked, nodding to the walls.
“They house the bodies of servants of the Mother, gone to her side. Along with those we have taken, here we also honor those fallen.”
“But there are no names carved on these tombs, Shahiid.”
Mouser stared at Mia, the ghostly choir singing in the dark.
“The Mother knows their names,” he finally said. “No other matters.”
Mia blinked. Glancing up at the statue looming above her head. The goddess to whom this Church belonged. Terrible and beautiful. Unknowable and powerful.
“Come,” said Shahiid Mouser. “Your chambers await.”
He led them from the grand hall, through one of the vast pointed arches. A great flight of steps spiraled up into the black. Mia remembered Old Mercurio’s willow switch, the accursed library stairs he’d made her run up and down so many times she’d lost count. She smiled at the memory, even as she thanked the old man for the exercise, climbing in long, easy strides.
They ascended, the Shahiid of Pockets behind them, silent as the plague.
“Black Mother,” Tric panted. “They should have named it the Red Stairwell…”
“Are you well?” she whispered. “Mister Kindly helped?”
“Aye. It was…” The boy shook his head. “To look inside and find only steel … I’ve never felt anything like it. Crutch be damned. Being darkin must be a grand thing.”
They tromped up the stairs into a long corridor. Arches stretching away into lightless black, spiral patterns on every wall. Shahiid Mouser stopped outside a wooden door, pushed it open. Mia looked in on a large room, furnished with beautiful dark wood and a huge bed covered in lush gray fur. Her body ached at the sight. It’d been at least two nevernights since she slept …
“Your chambers, Acolyte Mia,” Mouser said.
“Where do I stay?” Tric asked.
“Down the hall. The other acolytes are already settled. You two are the last to arrive.”
“How many are there?” Mia asked.
“Almost thirty. I look forward to seeing which are iron and which are glass.”
Tric nodded in farewell and followed Mouser down the corridor. Mia stepped inside and dropped her pack by the door. Habit forced her to search every corner, drawer and keyhole. She finished by peering under the bed before collapsing atop it. Contemplating untying her boots, she decided she was too exhausted to bother. And dropping back into the pillows, she crashed into a sleep deeper than she’d ever known.
A cat made of shadows perched on the bedhead, watching her dreams.
“… someone comes…”
She woke to Mister Kindly’s cold whisper in her ear. Her eyes flashed open and she sat up as a soft rapping sounded at her door. Mia drew her dagger, clawed the hair from sand-crusted eyes. Forgetting where she was for a moment. Back in her old room above Mercurio’s sh
op? Back in the Ribs, her baby brother asleep beside her, parents in the next room …
No.
Don’t look …
She spoke uncertainly. “Come in?”
The door opened softly and a figure swathed in black robes entered, crossing the room to halt at the foot of the bed. Mia raised her gravebone blade warily.
“You either picked the wrong room or the wrong girl…”
The intruder raised her hands. She pulled back her hood, and Mia saw strawberry blond curls, familiar eyes peering out between veils of black cloth.
“Naev . .?”
But that was impossible. The woman’s guts had been torn to ribbons by those kraken hooks. After two turns rotting in the sun, her blood would’ve been swimming with poison. How in the Maw’s name was she even alive, let alone walking and talking?
“You should be dead…”
“Should be. But is not.” The thin woman bowed. “Thanks to her.”
Mia shook her head. “You don’t owe me thanks.”
“More than thanks. She risked her life to save Naev. Naev will not forget.”
Mia stepped back as Naev produced a hidden blade from within her sleeve, Mister Kindly puffing up in her shadow. But Naev drew the knife along the heel of her hand, blood welling from the cut and spattering on the floor.
“She saved Naev’s life,” the woman said. “So now, Naev owes it. On her blood, in the sight of Mother Night, Naev vows it.”
“You don’t need to do this…”
“It is done.”
Naev leaned down and began unlacing Mia’s boots. Mia yelped, tucked them underneath her. The woman reached for the ties on Mia’s shirt, and Mia slapped her hands away, backing off across the bed with her own hands raised.
“Now, look here…”
“She must undress.”
“You really picked the wrong girl. And most people offer a drink first.”
Naev put her hands on her hips. “She must bathe before she meets the Ministry. If Naev may speak plain, she reeks of horse and excrement, her hair is greasier than a Liisian sweetbread and she is painted in dried blood. If she wishes to attend her baptism into the Blessed Lady’s congregation looking like a Dweymeri savage, Naev suggests she saves herself the pain and simply step off the Sky Altar now.”
“Wait…” Mia blinked. “Did you say bath?”
“… Naev did.”
“With water?” Mia was up on her knees, hands clutched at her breast. “And soap?”
The woman nodded. “Five kinds.”
“Maw’s teeth,” Mia said, unlacing her shirt. “You picked the right girl after all.”
Dark figures gathered in gaze of a stone goddess, bathed with colorless light.
It had been twelve hours since Mia arrived at the Quiet Mountain. Four since she woke. Twenty-seven minutes since she’d dragged herself from her bath and down to the Hall of Eulogies, leaving a scum of blood and grime on the water’s surface that could’ve walked away by itself if given a few more turns to gestate.
The robe was soft against her skin, her hair bound in a damp braid. Soap scent drifted about her when she turned to look among the other acolytes—twenty-eight in all, dressed in toneless gray. A brutish Itreyan boy with fists like sledgehammers. A wiry lass with bobbed red hair, eyes filled with wolf cunning. A towering Dweymeri, with ornate facial tattoos and shoulders you could rest the world on. Two blond and freckled Vaanians—brother and sister, by the look. A thin boy with ice-blue eyes, standing near Tric at the end of the row, so still she almost missed him. All of them around her age. All of them hard and hungry and silent.
Naev stood close by Mia, swathed in shadows. Other quiet figures in black robes stood at the edge of the darkness, men and women, fingers entwined like penitents in a cathedral.
“Hands,” Naev had whispered. “She will find two kinds in the Red Church. The ones who take vocations, make offerings … what commonfolk call assassins, yes? We call them Blades.”
Mia nodded. “Mercurio told me such.”
“The second are called Hands,” Naev continued. “There are twenty Hands for every Blade. They keep her House in order. Manage affairs. Make supply runs, like Naev. No more than four acolytes in every flock become Blades. Those who survive the year but fail to pass the grade will become Hands. Other folk simply come here to serve the goddess as they can. Not everyone is suited to do murder in her name.”
So. Only four of us can make the cut.
Mia nodded, watching the black-robed figures. Squinting in the dark, she could see the arkemical scar of slavery on a few cheeks. After the acolytes had finished assembling beneath the statue’s gaze, the Hands spoke a scrap of scripture, Naev along with them, each speaking by rote.
“She who is all and nothing,
First and last and always,
A perfect black, a Hungry Dark,
Maid and Mother and Matriarch,
Now, and at the moment of our deaths,
Pray for us.”
A bell rang, soft, somewhere in the gloom. Mia felt Mister Kindly curled about her feet, drinking deep. She heard footsteps, saw a figure approaching from the shadows. The Hands raised their voices in unison.
“Mouser, Shahiid of Pockets, pray for us.”
A familiar figure stepped onto the dais around the statue’s base. Handsome face and old eyes—the man who’d met Mia and Tric outside the Mountain. He was robed in gray, his blacksteel sword the only embellishment. He took his place, faced the acolytes, and with a grin that could easily make off with the silverware and the candelabras, too, he spoke.
“Twenty-six.”
Mia heard more footsteps, and the Hands spoke again.
“Spiderkiller, Shahiid of Truths, pray for us.”
A Dweymeri woman stalked from the gloom, tall and stately, her back as straight as the pillars around them. Long hair in neat, knotted locks, streaming down her back like rope. Her skin was dark like all her people, but she wore no facial tattoos. She seemed a moving statue, carved of mahogany. Clasped hands were stained with what might have been ink. Her lips were painted black. A collection of glass phials hung at her belt beside three curved daggers.
She took her place on the dais, spoke with a strong, proud voice.
“Twenty-nine.”
Mia watched on in silence, gnawing at her lip. And though Mercurio had schooled Mia well in the subtle art of patience, curiosity finally got the best of her.5
“What are they doing?” Mia whispered to Naev. “What do the numbers mean?”
“Their tally for the goddess. The number of offerings they have wrought in her name.”
“Solis, Shahiid of Songs, pray for us.”
Mia watched a man stride from the shadows, also clad in gray. He was a huge lump of a thing, biceps big as her thighs. His head was shaved to stubble, so blond it was almost white, scalp lined with scars. His beard was set in four spikes at his chin. He wore a sword belt, but his scabbard was empty. As he took his place, Mia looked into his eyes and realized he was blind.
“Thirty-six,” he said.
Thirty-six murders? At the hands of a blind man?
“Aalea, Shahiid of Masks, pray for us.”
Another woman padded into the soft light, swaying as she came, all curves and alabaster skin. Mia found her jaw agape—the newcomer was easily the most beautiful woman she’d laid eyes on. Thick black hair cascading to her waist, dark eyes smeared with kohl, lips painted bloody red. She was unarmed. Apparently.
“Thirty-nine,” she said, with a voice like sweet smoke.
“Revered Mother Drusilla, pray for us.”
A woman slipped out of the darkness, soundless as cot death. She was elderly, curling gray hair bound in braids. An obsidian key hung about her throat on a silver chain. She seemed a kindly old thing, eyes twinkling as she looked over the group. Mia would’ve expected to find her in a rocking chair beside a happy hearth, grandchildren on her knee and a cup of tea by her elbow. This couldn’t be the chief ministe
r of the deadliest band of—
“Eighty-three,” the old woman said, taking her place on the dais.
Maw take me, eighty-three …
The Revered Mother looked over the group, a gentle smile on her lips.
“I bid you welcome to the Red Church, children,” she said. “You have traveled miles and years to be here. You have miles and years to go. But at journey’s end, you will be Blades, wielded for the glory of the goddess in the most sacred of sacraments.
“Those who survive, of course.”
The old woman gestured to the four figures around her.
“Heed the words of your Shahiid. Know that everything you were prior to this moment is dead. That once you pledge yourself to the Maw, you are hers and hers alone.” A robed figure with a silver bowl stepped up beside the Revered Mother, and she beckoned Mia. “Bring forth your tithe. The remnants of a killer, killed in turn and offered to Our Lady of Blessed Murder in this, the hour of your baptism.”
Mia stepped forward, purse in hand. Her stomach was turning flips, but her hands were steady as stone. She took her place before the old woman and her gentle smile, looked deep into pale blue eyes. Felt herself being weighed. Wondered if she’d been found wanting.
“My tithe,” she managed to say. “For the Maw.”
“I accept it in her name with her thanks upon my lips.”
Mia sighed as she heard the response, almost falling to her knees as the Revered Mother embraced her, kissed one cheek after another with ice-cold lips. She squeezed Mia tight as the girl breathed deep, blinking back hot tears. And turning to the silver bowl, the old woman dipped one stick-thin hand inside and drew it back, dripping red.
Blood.
“Speak your name.”
“Mia Corvere.”
“Do you vow to serve the Mother of Night? Will you learn death in all its colors, bring it to the deserving and undeserving in her Name? Will you become an Acolyte of Niah, and an earthly instrument of the dark between the stars?”
Mia found herself struggling to inhale.
The deep breath before the plunge.
“I will.”
The Revered Mother pressed her palm to Mia’s cheek, smearing the blood down her skin. It was still warm, the scent of salt and copper filling the girl’s lungs. The old woman marked one cheek, then the other, finally smudging a long streak down Mia’s lips and chin. The girl felt the gravity of that moment in her bones, dragging her belly to her boots. The Mother nodded and Mia backed away, hugging herself, licking the blood from her lips, near weeping, laughing. One step closer to avenging her familia. One step closer to standing on Scaeva’s tomb.
