by Jay Kristoff
Mia looked at the faces around her. Solis smiling. Jessamine grinning as if all her Great Tithes had come at once. Diamo practically drooling with anticipation. Mother Drusilla nodded to the Hands flanking Mia, and they took an arm each. It was all she could do to hold herself back. The black trembled as she grit her teeth, allowed herself to be led to the iron rings at the statue’s base, catching sight of Marielle and Adonai in the shadows. The speaker’s face was expressionless, but the weaver’s bleeding lips were split in a smile.
She was cracking her knuckles.
The Hands took hold of her shirt, Mia tensing as they readied to strip it from her back. She looked to the goddess above her, those empty eyes that followed wherever she went.
Give me strength …
“Stop.”
Mia sighed. Relief and anger in equal measure.
That bloody fool …
Mia turned. All eyes were on Tric. The boy had stepped forward from his place, staring at the assembled Shahiid. “Mother Drusilla, stop this.”
“Step back in line, Acolyte. Judgment has been made. It shall be meted.”
“Tric, don’t,” Mia hissed.
“The judgment is wrong. Mia couldn’t have murdered Carlotta.”
“I am not interested in your assessment of her character, Acolyte.”
“I’m not talking about her damned character,” Tric snapped. “Mia couldn’t have killed Carlotta yestereve without me knowing.”
“And how is that?”
“Tric, stop!”
Tric ignored Mia’s plea, spared a glance for the weaver. Lips dry. But despite knowing the punishment that might come, still he spoke.
“Because I was with her in her room.”
The Ministry shared glances among themselves, save for Solis, who was glowering at the ceiling. Drusilla looked to Marielle and her brother, back to Tric.
“You admit to being out of your chambers after ninebells?”
“I was out all nevernight. Ash can vouch. She saw me in Mia’s bed this morning.”
Drusilla turned on Ashlinn. “Is this true, Acolyte?”
Ashlinn chewed her lip. Reluctantly nodded. “Aye, Revered Mother.”
“So Mia couldn’t have killed Lotti,” Tric continued. “Despite your ‘evidence.’ You can’t ban her from Spiderkiller’s contest. I was in bed with her the whole time.”
“And why did you not inform us of this before?”
“Because I asked him not to,” Mia said.
“You can’t ban Mia from Spiderkiller’s trial,” Tric insisted. “Becoming a Blade means everything to her. She didn’t do this.”
Drusilla looked to Mia. The Ministry to the Mother.
The girl held her breath, minutes ticking by like years. The ghostly choir sung their hymn out in the dark, the pulse thundered in Mia’s veins. The Ministry spoke among themselves in hushed tones, back and forth, all Mia had worked and bled for hanging in the balance. She could have kissed Tric. She could have punched him. But he was competition. First, last and always. She didn’t love him. He didn’t love her. There was no place for it here in the dark, and both of them knew it. Why had he risked so much for her? When she’d never do the same for him?
Mother Drusilla finally spoke, stilling the turmoil in Mia’s mind.
“Very well,” the old woman said. “In light of this new evidence, it would appear Acolyte Mia’s guilt is unassured, and her punishment may be unwarranted. And though it is late in its coming, the Ministry must applaud Acolyte Tric for his honesty. Such bravery should be commended, when considered in light of its price.”
Drusilla turned to the Hands beside her.
“Bind him.”
The robed figures surrounded Tric, dragged him forward to the statue’s base, Drusilla speaking all the while. “Sadly, Acolyte Tric, honesty aside, it seems the penalty inflicted upon Acolyte Hush was not incentive enough to dissuade novices from breaking curfew. Perhaps your own punishment will prevent further disobedience.”
She turned to Marielle.
“One hundred lashes.”
A murmur rolled down the line of acolytes, Tric’s face paling. Even if Adonai prevented him bleeding out, even if Marielle stopped him dying, the agony of a hundred lashes would surely kill him. After all he’d been through, all he’d already suffered, Tric was set to end here in the bowels of this black mountain, screaming in madness and begging for death.
He’d risked all for her. Spoken true, despite knowing what it could cost.
Knowing she’d never do the same for him.
“Revered Mother,” Mia said. “Wait.”
A cool blue stare turned on the girl. “Acolyte?”
She drew a deep breath. Shadow rolling at her feet.
… Would she?
“I asked Tric to come to my room. The fault is at least half mine.” Mia steeled herself. “I should bear half the punishment.”
The hall was still as tombs. The Revered Mother looked down the line of Shahiid, asking each one silently in turn. Mouser shrugged. Solis shook his head, seeming to wager watching Tric being flayed would hurt Mia worse than undergoing the punishment herself. But Aalea nodded, and Spiderkiller also acquiesced, dark eyes fixed on Mia. Drusilla pressed her fingers to her lips, brow creased in thought.
“Bind them both,” she finally said.
The Hands escorted Tric to the statue, locked his wrists. Mia glared at Tric the whole time, shaking her head. The boy stared back, his face drawn and bloodless.
“You fucking idiot,” they whispered simultaneously.
Mia felt her shirt being torn away. She was pressed against the stone, the rock cool beneath her flesh, goosebumps rising on her bare skin. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Adonai and Marielle standing behind her. Her fear was beginning to overcome Mister Kindly’s appetite. Pulse quickening.
But what must it be like for Tric?
The boy couldn’t seem to breathe fast enough, dragging great, heaving lungfuls through clenched teeth. Wide eyes locked on the black stone he was bound to. Mia strained against the manacles, her fingertips managing to find his and squeeze tight.
“Hold on to me,” she whispered.
Tric blinked the sweat from his eyes. Nodded. And then Hands stepped up behind them, and wrapped blindfolds about their eyes, shutting out the light.
Mia felt Tric’s hand clench tight, crushing her fingers in his grip. She knew exactly where he was then. Fourteen years old. Bound to the tree outside his grandfather’s home. Waiting in the dark for the next rock to hit. The next slap. The next gob of spit.
Bastard. Whoreson. Koffi.
“Mister Kindly,” she whispered.
“… no, mia…”
“Help him.”
“… and if i help him, who helps you…?”
She felt Hands checking the manacles at her wrists. Heard footsteps as they backed away. Tric was squeezing her fingers so tight they hurt.
“You told me that to master the darkness without, first I have to face it within…”
“… not here. not like this…”
“If not here, then where?”
She felt her shadow shiver. The fear inside her rising.
“I can do this,” she hissed.
Weaver Marielle’s knuckles popping.
Mother Drusilla’s voice echoing in the blindfold black.
“Begin.”
An empty, endless moment.
“… as it please you…”
The darkness rippled about her feet, one last goodbye. And then Mister Kindly was gone, slipping across the black stone and into Tric’s shadow. She heard the boy’s breath come just a touch easier, the crushing grip on her fingers slackening as the not-cat pounced upon his fear. There, pressed against that chill stone, despite the agony to come, Mia found herself smiling. Silence rang in the hall, deep as centuries. The world holding its breath.
And then the weaver clenched her fists.
The blow was white-hot flame and rusted razors. Lemon
and salt rubbed into a fresh and bleeding wound, torn in four ragged strips across her back and peeling her lips back from her teeth in a silent scream.
Every muscle seized tight. Her back tore like paper. Mia bucked against the stone, her grip on Tric’s fingers tightened as fear rushed in to the empty void after the whiplash faded. Great, freezing tidal waves of it, crashing over her head and dragging her down. Every second bleeding into forever. Every moment spent waiting for the next blow to fall was its own agony. She found herself praying for it, just so the pause would end. And then it fell, tearing across her back in four lines of perfect pain.
She threw back her head. Mouth open but refusing to scream. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Jessamine and Diamo. Solis. She could feel their stares. Taste their smiles. The blood flowed warm and thick down her back, pooled on the empty shadow at her feet. The Weaver struck again, the sound of invisible whips cracking across the air, the pain incandescent. Still she hung on to Tric’s hand, clung to that single, burning thought; that no matter how much it hurt
(crack)
no matter how much she wanted to
(crack)
she would never
(crack)
let them
(crack)
hear
(crack)
her
(crack)
scream.
But by the tenth strike, she’d lost her grip on Tric’s hand. By the twelfth, she’d lost her grip on her terror, and the cry spilled from her lips, long and thin and trembling. She could feel Tric’s hand groping for hers, but she curled her fingers into a fist. Lowered her chin and pressed her forehead to the stone. No crutches. No passengers. No one beside her. No one inside her. Just she (crack) and the pain (crack) and the fear (crack). All of them one.
Light-headed now. Drifting but still awake. Held somewhere between consciousness and oblivion by the sorcerii and their magiks. A brief respite dawned after the twentieth scourge, the warmth flowing back up her legs, reentering her severed veins and sundered arteries, ending the winter threatening to overwhelm her. She heard Tric’s whisper from somewhere far away
“Mia take him back…”
grinding her forehead upon the stone, blood in her eyes
“Mia please…”
The dark loomed before her now. The nightmare lurking behind the wall of sleep. And as the weaver struck again, the agony flaring anew and ripped in a wordless howl from her throat, the wall began to crumble. No waking state to hold them in check, here on the edge of oblivion. No shadowcat perched above the bed, watching with his not-eyes for the nightmares to come calling. Just she. Little Mia Corvere. Alone in the dark as it swelled ever deeper, fear rushing faster, madness creeping closer. And there in the paper-thin black, so little left between them and her and her and them, she finally saw the things that had haunted her sleep all these years with her waking eyes.
(crack)
Not phantoms.
(crack)
Not nightmares.
(crack)
(crack)
(crack)
Memories.
CHAPTER 27
TRUEDARK
Don’t look.
Mia stole through the hallways of bloody stone, wrapped in a darkness so deep she could barely see. Bodies. Everywhere. Men choked and stabbed. Beaten to death with their own chains and bludgeoned to death with their own limbs. The sound of murder ringing all around, the stink of offal thick in the air. Vague shapes running past her, tangling and screaming on the floor. The cries ringing somewhere far away, somewhere the dark wouldn’t let her hear.
She slipped inside the Philosopher’s Stone like a knife between ribs. This prison. This abattoir. Down past the open cells to the quieter places, where the doors were still sealed, where the prisoners who didn’t wish to try their luck in the Descent were still locked, thin and starving. She threw the shadowcloak aside so she could see better, peering through the bars at the stick-thin scarecrows, the hollow-eyed ghosts. She could see why folks would try their luck in the Senate’s horrid gambit. Better to die fighting than linger here in the dark and starve. Better to stand and fall than kneel and live.
Unless, of course, you had a four-year-old son locked in here with you …
The scarecrows cried out to her, thinking her some Hearthless wraith come to torment them. She ran the length and breadth of the cell block, eyes wide. Desperation now. Fear, despite the cat in her shadow. They must be here somewhere? Surely the Dona Corvere wouldn’t have dragged her son out into the butchery above for the chance to escape this nightmare?
Would she?
“Mother!” Mia called, tears in her eyes. “Mother, it’s Mia!”
Endless hallways. Lightless black. Deeper and deeper into the shadow.
“Mother?”
“… i will search the other halls. swifter that way…”
“Don’t go far.”
“… never fear…”
Mia felt a chill as Mister Kindly went bounding down the corridor. The gloom closed in, and she wrenched a guttering torch from the wall, shadows dancing. A cold fear crept into her gut, but she grit her teeth, beating it back. Breath quickening. Heart pounding as she roamed corridor to corridor, calling loud as she dared.
“Mother?”
Down deeper into the Stone.
“Mother!”
And finally, she found her way into the deepest pit. The darkest hole.
A place the light had never touched.
Don’t look.
“Pretty flower.”
The girl squinted in the dark. Heart seizing tight at the sound of her voice.
“… Mother?”
“Pretty flower,” came the whisper. “Pretty, pretty.”
Mia stepped forward in the guttering torchlight, peered between the bars of a filthy cell. Damp stone. Rotten straw. The reek of flies and shit and rot. And there, curled in the corner, stick-thin and wrapped in rags and sodden drifts of her own tangled hair, she saw her.
“Mother!”
Though she held her hand up to the light, wincing, the Dona Corvere’s smile was yellow and brittle and far, far too wide.
“Pretty thing,” she whispered. “Pretty thing. But no flowers here, no. Nothing grows. What is she?” Wide eyes searched the dark, falling anywhere but Mia’s face. “What is she?”
“Mother?” Mia approached the bars with halting steps.
“No flowers, no.”
Dona Corvere rocked back and forth, closing her eyes against the light.
“All gone.”
The girl set down the torch, knelt by the bars. Looking at the shivering skeleton beyond, her heart shattering into a million glittering shards. Too long.
She’d waited too long.
“Mother, don’t you know me?”
“No me,” she whispered. “No she. No. No.”
The woman clawed the walls with bloody fingers. Mia saw scores of marks on the stone, rendered in dried scarlet and broken fingernails. A pattern of madness, carved with the Dona Corvere’s bare hands. A tally of the endless time she’d spent rotting here.
It had been four long years since Mia had seen her, but not so long she couldn’t remember the beauty her mother had been. A wit sharper than a duelist’s blade. A temper that shook the ground where she walked. Where was that woman now? The woman who’d held Mia against her skirts so she couldn’t look away? Forcing her to stare as her father flopped and twisted at the end of his rope? As the sky itself cried?
Mia could hear Scaeva’s voice in her head, an echo of the turn her father died.
“And as you go blind there in the dark, sweet Mother Time will lay claim your beauty, and your will, and your thin conviction you were anything more than Liisian shit wrapped in Itreyan silk.”
Dona Corvere shook her head, chewing at matted strands of her hair. Jewels and gold had once sparkled in that raven black, now rife with fleas and flecked with rotten straw. Mia stretched her hand through the bars. Reaching ou
t as far as she could.
“Mother, it’s Mia.”
Eyes filling with tears. Bottom lip trembling.
“Please, Mother, I love you.”
The Dona Corvere flinched at that. Peering through bloody fingers. Recognition flaring in the shattered depths of her pupils. Some remnant of the woman she’d been, clawing to surface. The woman every senator once feared. Her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re dead,” she breathed. “I am dead with you?”
“Mother, no, it’s me.”
“They drowned you. My beautiful girl. My baby.”
“Mother, please,” Mia begged. “I’ve come to save you.”
“O, yes,” she whispered. “Take me to the Hearth. Sit me down and let me sleep. I’ve earned my rest, Daughters know it.”
Mia sighed. Heart breaking. Tears in her eyes. But no. No seconds to waste. Time enough to tend her mother’s hurts when they were far from here. Time enough when they were …
… they …
Mia blinked in the gloom. Eyes searching the cell beyond.
“Mother, where’s Jonnen?”
“No,” she whispered. “No flowers. Nothing grows here. Nothing.”
“Where is my brother?”
The woman mouthed shapeless words. Lips flapping. She clawed her skin, dug her hands into her matted hair. Gritting her teeth and closing her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Gone,” she breathed. “With his father. Gone.”
“No.” Mia shook her head, pawed at her aching chest. “O, no.”
“O, Daughters, forgive me.”
It took all she had. Every ounce of herself. But Mia pushed the grief aside. Stamped it underheel. Blinked back the burning tears. Trying not to remember the nevernights she’d held her baby brother in her arms, singing to shush his little cries. Ignoring her mother’s fevered moans, she studied the heavy lock on the cell door. Drawing a pick from her belt, she set to work as Mercurio had taught her. Focusing on the task. The comfort of the rote. The darkness around her shivering. The cries of distant murder growing louder. Closer?
Don’t look.
Her mother’s hand snaked out of the shadows. Wrapped around Mia’s wrist. The girl flinched, but the Dona Corvere held her daughter tight. Rotten breath hissing.
