by Jay Kristoff
Diamo flinched as the blade drew blood—just a tiny scratch to remember the beating by. And Solis turned his back and lowered his sword to the floor once more.
“A poor showing.”
“Apologies, Shahiid.”
Solis sighed as Diamo took his place back at the edge of the circle. “Is there none in this room who knows the song?”
“I can hold a tune.”
Mia smiled as she heard Tric speak. His eye was blackened from his brawl with Floodcaller, but he seemed in fighting spirit despite the fact that Solis had almost thrown him off the Sky Altar at evemeal. He pulled off his robe, dark leathers and a short-sleeved jerkin underneath. Mia found herself admiring the line of muscles along his arms, the tanned tautness of his skin. She thought back to their fight outside the Mountain, the imagery of lust and violence intertwined. Licking at dry lips.
“Ah. Our young half-breed,” Solis nodded. “I learned all I needed to about your form yestereve. But come, pup”—he beckoned with one hand—“let me hear you growl.”
Mia was pleased to see Tric had apparently learned from the drubbing he’d received, as he shrugged off the insult without flinching. The boy chose a scimitar from the racks and stepped into the golden light. Solis once again remained motionless, blade downturned as Tric approached. But though the Dweymeri’s form was deadly, his strikes swift and true, the match proved itself a repeat of Diamo’s bout. Tric found himself disarmed, breathless and bleeding from a fresh scratch along his cheek.
Solis turned away, shaking his head.
“Pathetic. A worse flock I’ve never had. What did your masters have you studying before you came here? Knitting and cookery?” He turned that blind stare around the circle. “The finest Blades have no need of steel at all. But each and every one of you is still expected to be able to slice the light in six before you leave these walls.” He sighed. “And I’ll wager not a one of you could slice a loaf of fucking rye.”
He pointed to the weapon racks.
“Each of you take a knife and form up in front of me. We begin at the beginning.”
“Shahiid,” said Mia.
“Ah. The talkative one returns. I wondered what that aroma was.”
“… mia, don’t…”
“Shahiid, you’ve yet to hear me sing.”
“Save yourself for Shahiid Aalea’s tutelage, girl. I know all I need of you.”
Mia stepped into the circle. “Just the same, I’d like to try.”
Solis tilted his head until his neck popped audibly. Sniffed.
“Be swift then.”
Mia stepped to the weapon racks and chose a pair of long knives, curved in the Liisian style. Plain though they looked, their weight was perfect, their edge, perfection. They were the fastest weapon on the racks—lightweight and sleek. But they were shorter than Solis’s sword, useful only at extreme close quarters. As Mia stepped back into the circle, the Shahiid chuckled.
“You face an opponent with a gladius, and choose daggers to sing with. Are you sure you know the words, girl?”
Mia said nothing, taking up a frontfoot, left-handed stance and drumming her fingers along her knife hilts. The stained-glass window above cast a dark pool at her feet. She felt Mister Kindly coiled inside it, drinking in her fear by the mouthful. And without waiting for another insult, she reached out to Solis’s shadow and pulled.
Though she’d worked the Dark a thousand times, she could never remember it feeling quite like this. Perhaps it was because this place had no suns at all, but her strength seemed greater here, the gloom easier to bend. Instead of wrapping the Shahiid’s feet in her shadow, she simply used his own, digging it into the soles of his boots. Not a person in the room could have known what she was doing. Not a ripple marred the black around the Shahiid’s feet. And yet as he tried to shift footing, the blind man found his boots glued fast to the floor.
Solis’s eyes widened as Mia struck; a whistling blow aimed right at his throat. He parried, knocking her right hand aside and sending her knife spinning across the room. But with speed a dragonmoth would envy, the girl pirouetted, hair flying, striking out with her left hand and taking a tiny nick out of the Shahiid’s cheek.
The assembled acolytes gasped. A droplet of blood spilled down Solis’s face. Tric cried out in triumph. For a second, Mia found herself grinning to the eyeteeth, filled with smug satisfaction that she’d drawn blood on this condescending bastard.
But only for a second.
Solis seized her left wrist, bending it back in a grip like iron. He swung his shortsword at his boots, two buckles sent singing off into the darkness. And with the soles still stuck fast to the floor, he stepped out and flipped clean over Mia’s head. Landing on the stone behind her, he locked the girl’s wrist up tight.
Mia cried out as he twisted, bending her double, her swordarm hyperextended. Her elbow screamed, shoulder threatening to pop clean from its socket.
“Clever girl,” Solis said, giving her arm a painful twist. “But this is the Hall of Songs, little one, not the Hall of Shadows.”
He looked down at her with those blind, pitiless eyes.
“And I did not ask to hear my shadow sing.”
Solis raised his blade in a white-knuckle grip. And bringing it down like thunder from the heavens, Mia screaming all the while, he struck
once
twice
three times
and hacked the girl’s arm off at the elbow.
1. Although they were, as it happens, exceptional. Falalalalaaaaaaa.
2. Not entirely true. Some of the books in the great library of Liis are very clever indeed.
3. Mia would lap these particular steps hundreds of times over the course of her stay in the Red Church. She would count the steps every time. And though she never spoke of it to anyone, and though she was not entirely surprised by the fact, the number of steps changed each and every time she ran them.
CHAPTER 11
REMADE
Blood. Pain. Black.
That was all Mia remembered of the moments after Solis took her arm. The pain had been white and blinding, bubbling up from her stomach along with the vomit and screams. A dark had fallen, sweet and black and full of whispers, Mister Kindly’s voice somewhere in the distance, mixed with others she didn’t know.
“… hold on, mia…”
“O, Solis, poor Solis. If only thy mother had loved thee more…”
“What a ruin. Art thou certain she be worth the pain?”
“Drusilla deems it so. Asides, her face, it pleases me.”
“… mia, hold on to me…”
“A remedy for that malady, I have at my fingertips. True and sure.”
“Behave, sister love, sister mine.”
“What a portrait could I paint on canvas such as this. What a horror I could gift the world.”
“… don’t let go…”
Mia woke with a scream.
Arkemical light in her eyes. Leather straps holding her fast. She thrashed at the restraints and felt gentle hands, a sweet voice bidding her hush, hush sweet child, and she looked up into a face that would haunt her waking dreams.
A man. Tall and slender and pale as a new-bled corpse. His eyes were pink, his skin seemed made of marble, a faint blue tracery of veins beneath. Hair swept back, white as winter snow, an open silk robe revealing a smooth, hard chest. He was the kind of beautiful that dimmed all the world beside him. But cold. Bloodless. His was the beauty of a fresh suicide, laid out in a new pine box. The kind of beautiful you know will spoil after an hour or two in the ground.
“Be still, sweet one,” he said. “Thou art safe, and hale, and whole again.”
Mia remembered Solis’s blade, the agony of her arm being hacked from her body. But looking past the leather straps and buckles around her bicep, she saw her left arm—black and blue and throbbing with pain—somehow attached once more to her elbow. She swallowed, fighting sudden nausea, air too thin to breathe.
“My arm…,”
she gasped. “He—”
“All be well, sweet child, all be true.” The man smiled with bruise-blue lips, unbuckling her arm. “Thy hurts are lessened, if not mended entire. Time shall put the rest aright.”
Mia fought down the sickness, curled her fingers into a fist. She felt a tingling in each digit, a faint ache at her elbow where Solis’s blade had cut.
“How?” she breathed.
“The bleeding was mine to end, but thy flesh is saved by my Marielle. ’Tis she owed the lion’s share of thy thanks.” The man called out. “Come, sister love, sister mine. Show thy face. In troth, I fear no shadow could hide thee from this one’s sight.”
Mia heard movement, turned her head and stifled a gasp. There in the gloom, she saw a woman, hunched and misshapen. She was an albino like the man, clad in a black robe, but what little Mia could see of her flesh was nothing short of hideous. Cracked and swollen, bleeding and seeping, rotten to the bone. She smelled of perfume, but beneath it, Mia could smell a darker sweetness. The sweetness of ruin. Of empires fallen and moldering in wet earth.
“Maw take me,” Mia breathed.
Half a smile bubbled on ruined lips. “She already has, child.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Speaker Adonai,” the man said. “My sister love, Weaver Marielle.”
“Speaker?” Mia asked. “Weaver?”
“… they are sorcerii…”
Marielle turned to Mister Kindly, now materialized at the foot of Mia’s bed. The not-cat was staring at the woman, tail switching side to side, head tilted.
“Ah, it shows itself, at last. Good turn to thee, little passenger.”
“… they are masters of the ashkahi ars magika, mia…”
The girl frowned. Thinking back to the cat-headed statues she’d seen out in the Whisperwastes, worn and pitted with time. Those monuments were all that remained of the people who’d made an empire of this land centuries past. Nothing else was left, save magical pollutants and monstrosities.
“But the Ashkahi arts are dead…”
Marielle stood beside her bed now, Mia’s skin fairly crawling in her presence. Wisps of white hair peeked out from beneath her hood, her eyes pink, just like her brother’s. A glance around the room revealed swirling traceries, four arched doors. The dim impression of faces on the walls.
“Not all that is dead truly dies,” Marielle lisped.
“The Mother keeps only what she needs,” Adonai said.
“Naev said the same thing…”
Marielle’s eyes flashed. “A friend of hers, art thou?”
“Be still, sister love, sister mine,” Adonai murmured. “This was the girl who brought Naev in from the desert. This sweet child saved her life.”
Marielle squeezed the bruises at Mia’s elbow. “I wonder, then, why I saved hers…”
“Because I asked you to, good Marielle.”
Mia looked to one of the doorways, saw the Revered Mother standing with hands folded in her sleeves. The old woman stepped into the room, long gray hair flowing loose about her shoulders. She gifted Mia a gentle smile.
“And fine work you’ve done, too. She looks right as rain.”
“Some bruising,” Adonai reported. “The bone be thrice chipped, and my sister hath no mastery over that realm. But in the flesh, Marielle is peerless. To see her weave the tendons, meld the muscle, ah…”
“I am sorry I missed it.” The Revered Mother placed her hand on Mia’s shoulder. “How are you feeling, Acolyte?”
“Like perhaps I’ve lost my mind…”
Marielle laughed, the flesh of her bottom lip splitting as she did so. She made to wipe at the dark sluice of blood but Adonai stopped her with a gentle hand. As Mia watched in disgust, the man leaned in close and licked the blood from his sister’s chin.
“My deepest thanks,” Mother Drusilla said. “To the both of you. Now, if you have no quarrel, I would speak to the acolyte alone.”
“Thy right it be. Thy guests, we are.” The beautiful man turned to his misshapen sibling. “Come, sister love, sister mine. I thirst. Ye may watch, if it please thee.”
Marielle pressed her brother’s knuckles to her malformed lips, pink eyes glittering. And with a bow to the Revered Mother, the siblings walked hand in hand from the room. When they were gone, Mia looked to Drusilla and flapped her lips like a landed fish.
Smiling, the old woman sat beside the bed, gray curls framing rosy cheeks and a tired gaze. Mia was again overcome with the impression Drusilla should be sitting beside some warm fireside with grandchildren at her knee. The woman’s smile made her feel safe. Wanted. Loved. And yet Mia knew by her tally of endings, her authority within the Church, Drusilla was the most dangerous woman within these walls.
“I apologize if Adonai and Marielle unsettled you,” the Mother said. “They often have that effect on those not of their kind.”
“Their kind?”
“… sorcerii…”
Drusilla turned to Mister Kindly. “Ah. You are here. I should have known.”
“… i am always here…”
“I would speak to the acolyte alone.”
“… she will never be alone…”
“Test me not, little one. I walked from the sunslight long ago, with arms held wide and joy in my heart. I know the dark as I know myself. When Lord Cassius is absent, I am Niah’s highest in this place. And when next I ask you to leave, I’ll not be so gentle.”
“… you need not fear me…”
Drusilla laughed softly. “One does not dwell in shadows all her life without learning a thing or two about those that share them. You have no power over me here.”
“It’s all right, Mister Kindly,” Mia said. “Don’t stray far. If I have need, I’ll call.”
The cat made of shadows stared for a long, mute moment. The old woman glared back at him. But finally, Mia felt him look to her, bob his head.
“… as it please you…”
And without a sound, he vanished.
Mia felt the shadowcat’s absence almost immediately, a slow fear creeping into her belly. Alone with the matron of a flock of murderers. Her mind burning with the memory of Solis’s eyes as he hacked off her arm. Would she regain full use of it? What if the Sp—
“You keep interesting company, Acolyte,” Drusilla said.
Mia looked to the door Marielle and Adonai had left by.
“No more than you, Revered Mother.”
“As I say, you have my apologies if the siblings put you ill at ease. Marielle and Adonai have dwelled in the Quiet Mountain for some time. In return for services rendered, we provide sanctuary in a world not entirely hospitable to those who hold the title of sorcerii.”
“I though the Ashkahi arts died along with their race?”
“The Ashkahi race is dead and gone, true.” Drusilla shrugged. “But death knows not greed. The Mother keeps only what she needs. And the Ashkahi arts live on in those brave enough to embrace the suffering they bring.”
“I saw Naev performing blood sorcery in the desert,” Mia said. “The phial, the writing. That’s how she called for help? Adonai taught her?”
“Adonai teaches nothing. The blood in the phial was his. He manipulates it from afar. His blood, and those whose blood he possesses. Such is the speaker’s gift. And his curse.”
“And his sister?”
“A flesh weaver. She can make a peerless beauty of flesh, or a hideousness that knows no bounds.”
“But if Marielle can shape flesh to her will, why is her own so…”
“Mastery of the Ashkahi arts comes with a price. Weavers use flesh like a potter uses clay. But with each use of their art, their own flesh grows ever more hideous.” Drusilla shook her head. “One must give credit to the Ashkahi. I can think of no finer torture than to have power absolute over all but your own.”
“And Adonai?”
“Blood speakers thirst after that which they hold affinity for. They know no sustenance, save that which can be found
in another’s veins.”
Mia blinked. “They drink…”
“They do.”
“But blood’s an emetic,” Mia said. “Drink too much, you’ll spew fountains.”
“Mercurio’s lessons were … eclectic, it seems.”
“You know Mercurio?”
The old woman smiled. “Quite well, child.”
Mia shrugged. “Well, he made me drink horse blood once. In case I was stranded somewhere with no water, I’d know what to expect.”
Drusilla smiled wider at that, shook her head. “’Tis true that tasting more than a mouthful of blood is a sure way to taste it a second time. Speakers are no exception. A life of torture, once more, you see? Drink a little, know constant hunger. Drink too much, know constant sickness.”
“That sounds … awful.”
“All power comes with a tithe. We all pay a price. Speakers, their hunger. Weavers, their impotence. And those who call the Dark…”—Drusilla looked down to Mia’s shadow—“… well, eventually it calls them back.”
Mia’s eyes drifted to the black at her feet. Fear surging. “You know what I am?”
“Mercurio told me of your talents. Solis told me of your little performance in the Hall of Songs. I know you are marked by the Night herself, though I know not why.”
“Marked by the Night,” Mia said. “Mercurio said the same thing.”
“Do not believe for a moment it will earn you favoritism here. Marked by the Mother you may be, but your place is not yet earned. And the next time you squander your gifts on parlor tricks to insult your Shahiid, you may lose more than a limb.”
Mia looked down at her bruised elbow. Her voice, barely a murmur.
“I didn’t mean insult, Revered Mother.”
“An acolyte has not bled Solis in years. I’m surprised he only took your arm.”
Mia frowned. “And you’re at peace with this? Masters maiming novices?”
“You are not maimed, Acolyte. You still have your arm, unless I’m mistaken. This not a finishing school for young dons and donas. The Shahiid here are artisans of death, charged with making you worthy of service to the goddess. Some of you will never leave these walls.
