by Jay Kristoff
She was here, she realized.
I’m here.
The ritual was repeated, each acolyte bringing forth their tithes one by one. Some brought teeth, others eyes—the tall boy with the sledgehammer hands brought a rotting heart, wrapped in black velvet. Mia realized there wasn’t a single one of them who wasn’t a murderer. That of all the rooms in the Republic there was probably none more dangerous than the one she stood in, right at that moment.6
“Your studies begin on the morrow,” the Revered Mother said. “Evemeal will be served in the Sky Altar in a half-hour.” She indicated the row of robed figures. “Hands will be available should you need guidance, and I would suggest you avail yourselves until you find your bearings. The Mountain can be difficult to navigate at first, and getting lost within these halls can have … unfortunate consequences.” Blue eyes glittered in the dark. “Walk softly. Learn well. May Our Lady be late when she finds you. And when she does, may she greet you with a kiss.”
The old woman bowed, stepped back into the gloom. The other Ministry members left one by one. Tric wandered over to Mia, greeted her with a smile, his cheeks red with blood. He’d been bathed and scrubbed, and even his saltlocks looked a little less sentient.
“You shaved,” she smirked.
“Don’t get used to it. Happens twice a year.” He squinted at Naev, recognition slowly widening in his eyes. “How in the name of the Lady…”
“We meet again.” The thin woman bowed low. “Naev gives thanks for his assistance in the deep desert. The debt shall not be forgot.”
“How are you still walking and breathing?”
“Secrets within secrets in this place,” Mia said.
“Corvere?” said a soft voice behind her.
Mia turned to the speaker. It was the girl she’d noted; the pretty one with a jagged red bob and green, hunter’s eyes. She was studying at Mia intently, head tilted. The tall Itreyan boy with sledgehammer hands loomed beside her like an angry shadow.
“In the ceremony,” the girl said. “You said your name was Corvere?”
“Aye,” Mia said.
“Are you by chance related to Darius Corvere? The former justicus?”
Mia weighed up the girl in her mind. Fit. Fast. Hard as wood. But whoever she was, Mia was certain Scaeva and his cronies would have no allies within these walls; Remus and his Luminatii had vowed to do away with the Red Church since the Truedark Massacre, after all. Even so, Mercurio had urged Mia to leave her name behind when she crossed this threshold. It was one of the few things they’d argued about. Stupid perhaps. But her father’s death was the whole reason she’d begun walking this road. The name Corvere had been erased from the histories by Scaeva and his lackeys—she’d not leave it behind in the dust, no matter what it cost her.
“I’m Darius Corvere’s daughter,” Mia finally replied. “And you are?”
“Jessamine, daughter of Marcinus Gratianus.”
“Apologies. Is that someone I should have heard of?”
“First centurion of the Luminatii Legion,” the girl scowled. “Executed by order of the Itreyan Senate after the Kingmaker Rebellion.”
Mia’s frown softened. Black Mother, this was the daughter of one of her father’s centurions. A girl just like her—orphaned by Consul Scaeva and Justicus Remus and the rest of those bastards. Someone who knew the taste of injustice as well as she did.
Mia offered her hand. “Well met, sister. My—”
Jessamine slapped the hand away, eyes flashing. “You’re no sister to me, bitch.”
Mia felt Tric bristle beside her, Mister Kindly’s hackles rise in the shadow at her feet. She rubbed her slapped knuckles, speaking carefully.
“I grieve your loss. Truly, I do. My fath—”
“Your father was a fucking traitor,” Jessamine snarled. “His men died because they honored their oaths to a fool justicus, and their skulls now pave the steps to the Senate House. Because of the mighty Darius Corvere.”
“My father was loyal to General Antonius,” Mia said. “He had oaths to honor too.”
“Your father was a fucking lapdog,” Jessamine spat. “Everyone knows why he followed Antonius, and it had nothing to do with honor. My father and brother were crucified because of him. My mother dead of grief in Godsgrave Asylum. All of them, unavenged.” The girl stepped closer, eyes narrowed. “But not much longer. You’d best grow some eyes in back of your head, Corvere. You’d best start sleeping light.”
Mia stared the girl down, unblinking, Mister Kindly swelling beneath her feet. Naev drifted closer to the redheaded girl, lisping in her ear.
“She will step away. Or she will be stepped upon.”
Jessamine glanced at the woman, jaw clenched. After a staring contest that stretched for miles, the girl spun on her heel and stalked off, the big Itreyan boy trailing behind. Mia realized her nails were cutting her palms.
“You surely do know how to make friends, Pale Daughter.”
Mia turned to Tric, found him smiling, though his hand was also up his sleeve. She relaxed a touch, allowed herself a smile too. Bad as she was at making them, at least she had one friend within these walls.
“Come on,” the boy said. “We going to evemeal or not?”
Mia looked after the retreating Jessamine. Glanced around at the other acolytes. The reality of where she was sank home deeper. A school of killers. Surrounded by novices or masters in the art of murder. She was here. This was it.
Time to get to work.
“Evemeal sounds good,” she nodded. “I can’t think of a better place to start scouting.”
“Scouting? For what?”
“You’ve heard the saying the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”
“I always wondered about that,” Tric frowned. “Ribcage seems much quicker to me.”
“True enough. But still, you can learn a lot about animals. Watching them eat.”
“… You’re a little frightening sometimes, Pale Daughter.”
She gave him a wry smile. “Only a little?”
“Well, most times, you’re just plain terrifying.”
“Come on,” she said, slapping his arm. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
1. More balls than brains, gentlefriends. More balls than brains.
2. It refused, though sadly, they danced all the same.
3. The Rose River is possessed of the greatest misnomer in all the Itreyan Republic, and perhaps, all creation. Its stench is so awful that, when offered the choice between drowning in the Rose or being castrated and crucified, the Niahan heretic Don Anton Bosconi was famously quoted as asking his confessors, “Would you like to borrow a knife, gentlefriends?”
4. Goldwine is an Itreyan whiskey, so named for the vast fields of corn in the midlands from which it is distilled. Several familia are renowned for their recipes, most notably the Valente and Albari.
The rivalry between the two families has boiled from bad blood to outright bloodshed on more than one occasion, the most famous of which, the War of Twelve Casks, lasted four truedarks and claimed no less than thirty-two lives. Declared an official Vendetta—that is, a bloodfeud sanctioned by the Holy Church of Aa—the conflict was so named because, amid the slaughter and arson that embodied it, only twelve casks of Albari whiskey survived to see distribution throughout the Republic.
Bottles of “Twelve Cask” are thus exceedingly rare and astonishingly expensive—a single bottle has been known to fetch over forty thousand golden tossers at auction. When the summer villa of Senator Ari Giancarli was set alight by two clumsy servants, Giancarli reportedly charged back into the blazing home no less than three times—to save his wife, his son, and his two bottles of Twelve Cask.
Rumors that he saved the bottles first are, of course, gross character slurs concocted by political rivals, and have absolutely no basis in fact.
(He saved them second.)
5. One of the old man’s favorite tests early in Mia’s apprenticeship was a game he called “
Ironpriest,” in which he and the girl would see who could last the longest without speaking. Though Mia at first thought it a game to test her patience and resolve, in later years, Mercurio confessed he only invented the game to get some peace and quiet around the store.
His most infamous test, however, came about in Mia’s twelfth year. During a particularly freezing wintersdeep, the old man instructed the girl to wait on the rooftops opposite the Grand Chapel of Tsana for a messenger wearing red gloves, and follow the lad wherever he went. The matter, he told her, was of “dire import.”
The messenger, of course, was one of Mercurio’s many agents in the city. He was traveling nowhere of import—dire or otherwise—merely meant to lead Mia on a merry chase in the freezing cold and eventually back to the curio store. However, unbeknownst to Mercurio, the boy was hit by a runaway horse on his way to the temple district, and, thus, never arrived.
Mia remained on the rooftops despite the awful cold (only one sun resides in the sky during Godsgrave winters, and the chill is long and bitter). As the snows began to fall, she refused to move lest she miss her mark. When Mia hadn’t arrived by next morning, Mercurio grew worried, retracing the messenger’s assigned path until he at last arrived atop the temple district roof. There he found his apprentice, almost hypothermic, shivering uncontrollably, eyes still locked on the Chapel of Tsana. When the old man asked why in the Mother’s name Mia had stayed on the roof when she was in danger of freezing to death, the twelve-year-old simply replied, “You said it was important.”
Not without her charm, as I said.
6. Astonishingly, remarkably, impossibly incorrect.
CHAPTER 9
DARK
The old man straightened her nose out as best he could, wiped the blood from her face with a rag soaked in something that smelled sharp and metallic. And sitting her down at a little table in the back of his shop, he’d made her tea.
The room was somewhere between a kitchen and a library. All was swathed in shadow, the shutters drawn against the sunslight outside.1 A single arkemical lamp illuminated stacks of dirty crockery and great, wobbling piles of books. Mia’s pain slipped away as she sipped Mercurio’s brew, the throbbing mess in the middle of her face rendered mercifully numb. He gave her honeyseed cake and watched her wolf down three slices, like a spider watches a fly. And when she pushed the plate aside, he finally spoke.
“How’s the beak?”
“Doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Good tea, neh?” He smiled. “How’d it get broken?”
“The big boy. Shivs. I put my knife to his privates and he hit me for it.”
“Who told you to go for a boy’s cods in a scrap?”
“My father. He said the quickest way to beat a boy is to make him wish he was a girl.”
Mercurio chuckled. “Duum’a.”
“What does that mean?” Mia blinked.
“… You don’t speak Liisian?”
“Why would I?”
“I thought your ma would’ve taught you. She was from those parts.”
Mia blinked. “She was?”
The old man nodded. “Long time back, now. Before she got hitched and became a dona.”
“She … never spoke of it.”
“Not much reason to, I s’pose. I imagine she thought she’d left these streets behind forever.” He shrugged. “Anyways, closest translation of ‘duum’a’ would be ‘is wise.’ You say it when you hear agreeable words. As you might say ‘hear, hear’ or suchlike.”
“What does ‘Neh diis…’” Mia frowned, struggling with the pronunciation. “Neh diis lus’a … lus diis’a’? What does that mean?”
Mercurio raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Consul Scaeva said it to my mother. When he told her to beg for my life.”
Mercurio stroked his stubble. “It’s an old Liisian saying.”
“What does it mean?”
“When all is blood, blood is all.”
Mia nodded, thinking perhaps she understood. They sat in silence for a time, the old man lighting one of his clove-scented cigarillos and drawing deep. Finally, Mia spoke again.
“You said my mother was from here? Little Liis?”
“Aye. Long time past.”
“Did she have familia here? Someone I could…”
Mercurio shook his head. “They’re gone, child. Or dead. Both, mostly.”
“Like Father.”
Mercurio cleared his throat, sucked on his cigarillo.
“… It was a shame. What they did to him.”
“They said he was a traitor.”
A shrug. “A traitor’s just a patriot on the wrong side of winning.”
Mia brushed her fringe from her eyes, looked hopeful. “He was a patriot, then?”
“No, little Crow,” the old man said. “He lost.”
“And they killed him.” Hate rose up in her belly, curled her hands to fists. “The consul. That fat priest. The new justicus. They killed him.”
Mercurio exhaled a thin gray ring, watching her closely. “He and General Antonius wanted to overthrow the Senate, girl. They’d mustered a bloody army and were set to march against their own capital. Think of all the death that would’ve unfolded if they’d not been captured before the war began in truth. Maybe they should’ve hung your da. Maybe he deserved it.”
Mia’s eyes widened and she kicked back her chair, reaching for the knife that wasn’t there. The rage resurfaced then, all the pain and anger of the last twenty-four hours flaring inside her, the anger flooding so thick it made her arms and legs tremble.
And the shadows in the room began trembling too.
The black writhed. At her feet. Behind her eyes. She clenched her fists. Spat through gritted teeth. “My father was a good man. And he didn’t deserve to die like that.”
The teapot slipped off the counter with a crash. Cupboard doors shook on their hinges, cups danced on their saucers. Towers of books toppled and sprawled across the floor. Mia’s shadow stretched out toward the old man’s, clawing across the splintering boards, the nails popping free as it drew ever closer. Mister Kindly coalesced at her feet, translucent hackles raised, hissing and spitting. Mercurio backed across the room quicker than she’d imagine an old fellow might have stepped, hands raised in supplication, cigarillo hanging from bone-dry lips.
“Peace, peace, little Crow,” he said. “A test is all, a test. No offense meant.”
As the crockery stopped trembling and the cupboards fell silent, Mia sagged in place, tears fighting with the anger. It was all crashing down on her. The sight of her father swinging, her mother’s screams, sleeping in alleys, robbed and beaten … all of it. Too much.
Too much.
Mister Kindly circled her feet, purring and prowling just like a real cat might. Her shadow slipped back across the floor, puddling into its regular shape, just a shade too dark for one. Mercurio pointed to it.
“How long has it listened?”
“… What?”
“The Dark. How long has it listened when you call?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She curled up on her haunches, trying to hold it inside. Screw it up and push it all the way down into her shoes. Her shoulders shook. Her belly ached. And softly, she began to sob.
O, Daughters, how she hated herself, then …
The old man reached into his greatcoat. Pulled out a mostly clean handkerchief and held it out to her. Watching as she snatched it away, dabbed as best she could at her broken nose, the hateful tears in her lashes. And finally he knelt on the boards in front of her, looked at her with eyes as sharp and blue as raw sapphires.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” she whispered.
The old man’s eyes twinkled as he smiled. With a glance toward the cat made of shadows, Mercurio drew out her mother’s stiletto from his coat, stabbed it into the floorboards between them. The polished gravebone gleamed in the lantern light.
“Would you like
to learn?” he asked.
Mia eyed the knife, nodded slow. “Yes, I would, sir.”
“There’s no sirs ’round here, little Crow. No donas or dons. Just you and me.”
Mia chewed her lip, tempted to just grab the blade and run for it.
But where would she go? What would she do?
“What should I call you, then?” she finally asked.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“If you want to take back what’s yours from them what took it. If you’re the kind who doesn’t forget, and doesn’t forgive. Who wants to understand why the Mother has marked you.”
Mia stared back. Unblinking. Her shadow rippled at her feet.
“And if I am?”
“Then you call me ‘Shahiid.’ Until the turn I call you ‘Mia.’”
“What’s ‘Shahiid’ mean?”
“It’s an old Ashkahi word. It means ‘Honored Master.’”
“What will you call me in the meantime?”
A thin ring of smoke spilled from the old man’s lips as he spoke. “Guess.”
“… Apprentice?”
“Smarter than you look, girl. One of the few things I like about you.”
Mia looked at the shadow beneath her feet. Up at the sunslight glare waiting just beyond the shutters. The Godsgrave. The City of Bridges and Bones, slowly filling with the bones of those she loved. There was no one out there who could help her, she knew it. And if she was going to free her mother and brother from the Philosopher’s Stone, if she wanted to save them from a tomb beside her father’s—presuming they buried him at all—if she was going to bring justice to the people who’d destroyed her familia …
Well. She’d need help, wouldn’t she?
“All right, then. Shahiid.”
