DARKDAWN

THE NEVERNIGHT CHRONICLE BOOK III

Jay Kristoff

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Neverafter PTY LTD 2019

Maps by Virginia Allyn

Cover illustration © Kerby Rosanes

Other cover images © Shutterstock.com (sun textures)

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Jay Kristoff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008180119

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008180102

Version: 2020-05-01

Dedication

for my readers

I couldn’t have done it without you, either

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Well, here we …

Dramatis Personae

Epigraph

Book 1: The Dark Within

Chapter 1: Brother

Chapter 2: Boneyards

Chapter 3: Ember

Chapter 4: Gift

Chapter 5: Epiphanies

Chapter 6: Imperator

Chapter 7: Be

Chapter 8: Scoundrel

Chapter 9: Slumber

Book 2: Dying Light

Chapter 10: Infidelity

Chapter 11: Incendiary

Chapter 12: Veritas

Chapter 13: Conspiracy

Chapter 14: Reunions

Chapter 15: Finesse

Chapter 16: Tempest

Chapter 17: Departures

Chapter 18: Tales

Chapter 19: Quiet

Book 3: A House of Wolves

Chapter 20: Sunder

Chapter 21: Amai

Chapter 22: Vipers

Chapter 23: War

Chapter 24: Majesty

Chapter 25: Heritance

Chapter 26: Promises

Chapter 27: Feed

Chapter 28: Hatred

Chapter 29: Standing

Book 4: The Ashes of Empires

Chapter 30: Could

Chapter 31: Was

Chapter 32: Is

Chapter 33: Wellspring

Chapter 34: Ribbons

Chapter 35: Ashes

Chapter 36: Baptism

Chapter 37: Away

Chapter 38: Momentum

Chapter 39: Fathomless

Book 5: She Wore the Night

Chapter 40: Fate

Chapter 41: Anything

Chapter 42: Carnivalé

Chapter 43: Crimson

Chapter 44: Daughter

Chapter 45: Lover

Chapter 46: Father

Chapter 47: All

Chapter 48: Tithe

Chapter 49: Silence

Chapter 50: Silver

Dicta Ultima

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Jay Kristoff

About the Publisher

Maps

Well, here we are again, gentlefriend.

I think perhaps an apology is in order. Both for the conclusion of the second part of Mia’s tale, and for the state I left you in afterwards. You seemed quite upset. Be assured there will be no cliff-hangers in this, our final dance together. As promised, her birth you’ve witnessed, her life you’ve lived. All that remains is her death.

But before the smut and butchery begin in earnest, allow me one final refresher for those with memories as reliable as your narrator. And then we can get on with killing our murderous little bitch, yes?

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Mia Corvere – assassin of the Red Church, gladiatii of the Falcons of Remus, and now the most infamous murderer in the Itreyan Republic. The child of a failed rebellion, Mia has spent the last eight years of her life pursuing a murderous vendetta against the men who destroyed her familia.

After discovering the Red Church had a hand in her father’s murder, Mia broke ranks with the assassins and sold herself to a gladiatii stable. Upon winning the grand games of Godsgrave, Mia made several stunning discoveries in quick succession:

 Her baby brother, Jonnen, whom she presumed dead, had been stolen by her mortal enemy, Consul Julius Scaeva, and raised as his son.

 Jonnen actually is Scaeva’s son. Meaning Mia’s mother, Alinne, was sleeping with the man who would eventually oversee her husband’s murder and her own death in the Philosopher’s Stone.

 Like Mia, Jonnen is darkin, possessed of the ability to control shadows.

At the conclusion of the grand games, Mia assassinated Grand Cardinal Francesco Duomo. She also apparently murdered Scaeva and stole back her brother before falling to her almost-certain death in a flooded arena full of stormdrakes.

… Maw’s teeth, that really was a thrilling finale, wasn’t it?

Mister Kindly – Mia’s companion since childhood, Mister Kindly is – depending on who you ask – a daemon, passenger, or familiar, with the ability to eat people’s fear. He is made of shadows and sarcasm. Despite his acerbic wit, he obviously has a deep and abiding fondness for Mia. Just don’t let him hear you say that.

He wears the shape of a cat, though like most things about him, his appearance is not entirely genuine.

Eclipse – another shadow daemon, Eclipse was passenger to Cassius, former Lord of Blades in the Red Church. She bound herself to Mia when Cassius died.

Eclipse wears the shape of a wolf, and she and Mister Kindly get along about as well as most cats and dogs do.

Ashlinn Järnheim – a former Red Church acolyte of Vaanian blood. Ashlinn betrayed the Ministry to avenge her father, Torvar, and almost brought the Red Church to its knees. After Mia foiled her plot, Ashlinn fell into the service of Cardinal Duomo, who tasked her to retrieve a map to an undisclosed location in Old Ashkah – a map of some vital import to the Red Church. Fearing betrayal, Ashlinn had the map scribed on her back with arkemical ink, which will fade in the event of her death.

Ashlinn assisted Mia with her plot to win the grand games, and the pair eventually became lovers.[fn1] After the conclusion of the games, Ashlinn was accosted by the Church Ministry and Consul Scaeva – still very much alive – who revealed Mia had only killed a doppelgänger crafted by the Flesh Weaver, Marielle, and that Scaeva had been working with the Red Church to see his rival, Cardinal Duomo, killed.

For an encore, Scaeva revealed he was also Mia’s father.

Ashlinn was then attacked by Red Church assassins, but rescued by a familiar shadowy figure …

Tric – an acolyte of the Red Church of mixed Itreyan/Dweymeri blood, also Mia’s former lover. He was murdered by Ashlinn Järnheim as part of her plot to capture the Red Church Ministry, and his corpse was pushed off the side of the Quiet Mountain.

Tric has apparently returned to life, albeit in a darker, magikal form. He accosted Mia in the necropolis of Galante and gave her several cryptic warnings without revealing his identity. He later rescued Ashlinn from Red Church assailants.

How he returned from the realm of the Black Mother or why he saved the girl who murdered him is anyone’s guess.

Old Mercurio – Mia’s confidant and mentor before she joined the Red Church. Mercurio was a Church Blade himself for many years and was serving as bishop of Godsgrave. Despite being a terminally grumpy old prick, he assisted Mia with her plot to kill Duomo and Scaeva, fully aware his actions would incur the Ministry’s wrath.

During the finale of the grand games, he was captured by the Church and taken back to the Quiet Mountain by order of …

Julius Scaeva – thrice-elected consul of the Itreyan Republic, known as the ‘People’s Senator’. The position of consul is usually shared, but Scaeva has maintained sole leadership of the Senate since the Kingmaker Rebellion eight years ago.

Using the rebellion as an excuse to extend his tenure, Scaeva has been working with the Red Church with the goal of claiming the title of imperator and perpetual emergency powers over the Republic. He presided over the execution of Mia’s father, sentenced his lover, Mia’s mother, to die in the Philosopher’s Stone, stole Mia’s baby brother, and ordered Mia drowned in a canal, despite knowing she was his daughter.

The word ‘cunt’ doesn’t really seem to do him justice.

But speaking of …

Drusilla – Lady of Blades in the Red Church and, despite her apparent age, one of the deadliest assassins in the Republic. Though she claims devotion to the Black Mother, Niah, Drusilla has been working in league with Consul Scaeva to ensure his ambition of seizing control of the Itreyan Republic.

The Lady of Blades has disliked Mia ever since the girl failed her trials as a Red Church acolyte. Presumably Mia’s recent betrayals have not elevated her in Drusilla’s opinions.

Solis – Revered Father and Shahiid of Songs, master in the art of steel, and surliest man alive. He is apparently blind, though he displays little impediment when wielding a sword. Solis was once a prisoner in the Philosopher’s Stone and was the only survivor of a bloody cull known as ‘the Descent’, in which the prisoners were encouraged to murder each other en masse in exchange for freedom. Solis’s victory earned him his name, which in the tongue of Old Ashkah means ‘the Last One’.

Mia cut his face during their first sparring session in the Quiet Mountain. He cut off her arm in retaliation. Solis chose to keep the scar, along with his grudge for the girl who bested him.

Spiderkiller – Shahiid of the Hall of Truth and mistress of poisons. Mia was one of Spiderkiller’s most promising acolytes, but the Shahiid’s fondness for the girl had all but disappeared – even before Mia chose to betray the Church’s teachings.

If she ever offers you a glass of goldwine, I’d advise you to refuse.

Mouser – master of thievery and Shahiid of Pockets. A charming fellow with a young man’s face, an old man’s eyes, and a penchant for wearing ladies’ underthings.

The Mouser had no enmity towards Mia before her betrayal, though presumably she’s been struck off his Great Tithe gift list thanks to her recent fuckarsery.

Aalea – mistress of secrets and Shahiid of Masks. Seductive and beautiful, Aalea’s tally of murders is seconded only by the notches on her bedpost.

She was actually quite fond of Mia before the girl’s betrayal, but no member of the Church Ministry attained their position by being sentimental.

Marielle – one of two albino sorcerii who serve the Red Church. Marielle is a master of Flesh Weaving, a form of ancient magik practised in the fallen Empire of Ashkah. She can sculpt skin and muscle as easily as clay, but the toll she pays for her power is terrible – her own flesh is hideously deformed, and she has no power to alter it.

In keeping with her unsettling appearance, Marielle also seems overly fond of her brother, Adonai.

Adonai – the second sorcerii who serves the Quiet Mountain. Adonai is a blood speaker who works with human vitus – he can pass messages in blood, manipulate it with but a thought, and transport people and once-living objects through the blood pools in Red Church chapels. Thanks to Marielle’s arts, he is handsome beyond compare.

He murdered Ashlinn’s brother, Osrik, during the Luminatii assault on the Mountain, and he owes a debt to Mia for saving his life, yet to be called in.

‘Blood is owed thee, little Crow. And blood shall be repaid.’

Aelius – chronicler of the Quiet Mountain. Aelius is master of the Red Church’s great Athenaeum – a vast and ever-growing library of books that were destroyed, lost to time, or never even written in the first place. He also wrangles the enormous carnivorous ‘bookworms’ that roam the dark between the shelves, and his tasks are made ever more difficult by the fact that, like everything else in the Black Mother’s library, Aelius himself is dead.

Still, it’s a living …

Naev – a Hand of the Red Church who manages supply runs in the Whisperwastes of Ashkah. After some initial difficulties, she and Mia became friends and confidants.

Naev was disfigured by Weaver Marielle out of jealousy over an affair with her brother, Adonai. But after Mia foiled the assault on the Quiet Mountain, Marielle restored Naev’s beauty as a favour to her saviour.

Naev keeps her face veiled, and her feelings beside.

Hush – an accomplished Blade of the Red Church. Apparently mute, Hush communicates through a form of sign language known as Tongueless.

Though he and Mia were acolytes together and he assisted her in her trials, he remains loyal to the Ministry. He attempted to capture Ashlinn at the Ministry’s behest, though the girl escaped with Tric’s help.

Francesco Duomo – Grand Cardinal of the Church of the Light and the most powerful member of the Everseeing’s ministry. Though apparently allied with Julius Scaeva, the cardinal and the consul were in fact bitter rivals. Along with Scaeva and Justicus Marcus Remus, Duomo passed sentence on the failed Kingmaker rebels, including Mia’s father, Darius.

It’s safe to say Mia took the cardinal’s actions personally – she trimmed his beard all the way to the bone in front of a hundred thousand screaming people.

Alinne Corvere – Mia’s mother, and a fearsome politician who almost succeeded in bringing down the Itreyan Republic. Her marriage to Justicus Darius turned out to be one of friendship and political expedience – she was, in fact, lover to Julius Scaeva and bore him two children: Mia and Jonnen.

Despite her relationship with Scaeva, the consul showed no compunction in casting her aside after her husband’s failed rebellion. Alinne was imprisoned in the Philosopher’s Stone, where she died in madness and misery.

Mia has only recently learned her mother was not the paragon she once believed.

Darius ‘the Kingmaker’ Corvere – the man Mia called ‘Father’. Former justicus of the Luminatii Legion, Darius forged an alliance with his lover, General Gaius Maxinius Antonius, which would have seen Antonius crowned as king of Itreya.

However, with the assistance of the Red Church, both men were captured on the eve of battle, and Darius was hanged with his would-be king, Antonius, beside him.

To say Mia took his death badly would be something of an understatement.

Jonnen Corvere – Mia’s baby brother. Thought to be dead along with his mother, Mia has recently learned the boy was raised as Scaeva’s legitimate son under the name ‘Lucius’ – Scaeva’s wife, Liviana, is apparently unable to bear him children.

Jonnen has no idea about his true parentage, and was taken too young to remember his true name or sister at all.

Furian – the Unfallen, and champion of the Remus Collegium. Furian was darkin like Mia, able to bend the shadows to his will. However, he had no passenger and refused to explore his gift, believing it an abomination.

Mia killed Furian during the climax of the grand games. At the moment of his death, she was shown a brief vision of a night sky, set with a large, glowing orb, and heard the words ‘The many were one. And will be again.’

After seeing this phantasm, Mia realized her shadow was dark enough for four.

Sidonius – a former member of the Luminatii who served under Darius Corvere. Sid was drummed out of the legion after he refused to participate in General Antonius’s planned rebellion against the Senate. Sold into slavery, he was eventually purchased by the House of Remus and fought as gladiatii in the Venatus Magni.

When Mia was sold to the same collegium, Sidonius learned of her identity and took the girl under his wing, acting as a surrogate older brother to the young Blade.

He has the manners of a goat and the heart of a lion.

The Falcons of Remus – Bladesinger, Bryn, Wavewaker, Butcher, Felix, and Albanus – gladiatii of the Remus Collegium all, and Mia’s friends and allies throughout the games. Though she apparently betrayed and murdered them all, Mia actually orchestrated their escape from Godsgrave.

They are currently at large somewhere in Itreya, and presumably quite drunk.

Aa – head of the Itreyan pantheon, Father of Light, also known as the Everseeing. The three suns, known as Saan (the Seer), Saai (the Knower), and Shiih (the Watcher), are said to be his eyes, and one or more is usually present in the heavens, with the result that actual nighttime, or truedark, in the Republic occurs only for one week every two and a half years. At the time of this tale, truelight – the moment all three suns shine in the heavens – has come and mostly gone.

Truedark approaches, gentlefriends.

Tsana – Lady of Fire, She Who Burns Our Sin, The Pure, Patron of Women and Warriors, and firstborn daughter of Aa and Niah.

Keph – Lady of Earth, She Who Ever Slumbers, The Hearth, Patron of Dreamers and Fools, secondborn of Aa and Niah.

Trelene – Lady of Oceans, She Who Will Drink the World, The Fate, Patron of Sailors and Scoundrels, thirdborn daughter of Aa and Niah, and twin to Nalipse.

Nalipse – Lady of Storms, She Who Remembers, The Merciful, Patron of Healers and Leaders, fourthborn of Aa and Niah, and twin to Trelene.

Niah – the Maw, the Mother of Night, and Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Sisterwife of Aa, Niah rules a lightless region of the hereafter known as the Abyss. She and Aa initially shared the rule of the sky equally, but, commanded to bear her husband only daughters, Niah disobeyed Aa’s edict and bore him a son.

In punishment, Niah was banished from the skies by her beloved, allowed to return only for a brief spell every few years.

And as for what became of their son?

Well, gentlefriend, I believe it’s time for some answers.

Epigraph

When all is blood,

blood is all.

—MOTTO OF THE FAMILIA CORVERE

BOOK 1

CHAPTER 1
BROTHER

Eight years of poison and murder and shit.

Eight years of blood and sweat and death.

Eight years.

She’d fallen so far, her little brother in her arms, fingers still sticky and red. The light of the three suns above, burning and blinding. The waters of the flooded arena below, crimson with blood. The mob howling, bewildered and outraged at the murders of their grand cardinal, their beloved consul, both at the hands of their revered champion. The greatest games in Godsgrave’s history had ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the entire Republic. The arena was in chaos. But through it all, the screams, the roars, the rage, Mia Corvere had known only triumph.

After eight years.

Eight fucking years.

Mother.

Father.

I did it.

I killed them for you.

She’d hit the water hard, the sights and sounds of Godsgrave Arena swallowed up as she plunged beneath the surface. Salt burning in her eyes. Breath burning in her lungs. Crowd still roaring in her ears. Her little brother, Jonnen, was struggling, punching, wriggling in her arms like a landed fish. She could sense the serpentine shadows of stormdrakes, cruising towards her through the murk. Razor smiles and dead eyes.

Truelight was so bright, even here beneath the surface. But even with those three awful suns in the sky, even with all the outrage of the Everseeing pouring down, her own shadows were with her. Dark enough for four now. And Mia reached towards the outflow in the arena floor – the wide spout from which all that salt and water flowed and she

Stepped

into the

shadows

inside it.

It left her dizzied and sick – she could still feel that blinding sunslight in the sky above. Mia sank like a stone in her armour, weighed down by black iron and sodden falcon’s wings. Pulling Jonnen down with her, she hit the bottom of the outflow pipe with a dull clunk. She had only moments, only the breath she’d brought with her. And she’d not planned to have a struggling child in her arms when she did this.

Dragging herself and the boy along the pipe, she found a pocket of air inside the pressure valve, just as Ashlinn had promised. Surfacing with a ragged gasp, she pulled her brother up beside her. The boy sputtered in her arms, wailing, struggling, flailing at her face.

‘Unhand me, wench!’ he cried.

‘Stop it!’ Mia gasped.

‘Let me go!’

‘Jonnen, stop it, please!’

She wrapped the boy up, pinning his arms so he couldn’t punch anymore. His cries echoed on the pipe above her head. Struggling with her armour’s clasps and straps with her free hand, she dragged the pieces away, one by one. Shedding the skin of the gladiatii, the assassin, the daughter of vengeance, sloughing those eight years off her bones. It’d been worth it. All of it. Duomo dead. Scaeva dead. And Jonnen, her blood, the babe she’d thought long buried in his grave …

My little brother lives.

The boy kicked, thrashed, bit. There were no tears for his murdered da, only fury, rippling and red. Mia had thought the boy dead years ago – swallowed up inside the Philosopher’s Stone with her mother and the last of her hope. But if she’d had any lingering doubts he could be a Corvere, that he could be her mother’s son, the boy’s bloody rage put them all to the sword.

‘Jonnen, listen to me!’

‘My name is Lucius!’ he shrieked, his voice echoing on the iron.

‘Lucius, then, listen!’

‘I won’t!’ he shouted. ‘You k-killed my father! You killed him!’

Pity swelled inside Mia, but she clenched her jaw, hardened her heart against it.

‘I’m sorry, Jonnen. But your father …’ She shook her head, breathed deep. ‘Listen, we need to get out of this pipe before they start draining the arena. The stormdrakes will come back this way, do you understand?’[fn1]

‘Let them come, I hope they eat you!’

‘… O, I LIKE HIM …’

‘… why does that not surprise me …’

The boy turned to the dark shapes coalescing on the wall beside them, the air around them growing chill. A cat made of shadows and a wolf of the same, staring at him with their not-eyes. Mister Kindly’s tail twitched side to side as he studied the child. Eclipse simply tilted her head, shivering slightly. Jonnen fell silent for a moment, wide, dark eyes looking first to Mia’s passengers, then to the girl who held him.

‘You hear them, too …,’ he breathed.

‘I’m like you,’ Mia nodded. ‘We’re the same.’

The boy stared at her, perhaps feeling the same sickness, hunger, longing she did. Mia looked him over, tears welling in her eyes. All the miles, all the years …

‘You don’t remember me,’ she whispered, her voice shaking. ‘You were only a baby when they t-took you away from us. But I remember you.’

She was almost overcome for a moment. Tears in her lashes and a sob caught in her throat. Recalling the baby boy wrapped in swaddling on her mother’s bed the turn her father died. Staring up at her with his big, dark eyes. Envying him that he was too young to know their father had ended, and all their world besides.

But he wasn’t Jonnen’s father at all, was he?

Mia shook her head, blinked back those hateful tears.

O, Mother, how could you …

Looking at the boy now, she could barely speak. Barely force her jaw to move, her lungs to breathe, her lips to form the words burning in her chest. He had the same flint-black eyes as she, the same ink-black hair. She could see their mother in him so clearly, it was like peering into a looking glass. But beyond the her in him, something in the shape of Jonnen’s little nose, the line of his puppy-fat cheeks …

She could see him.

Scaeva.

‘My name is Mia,’ she finally managed. ‘I’m your sister.’

‘I have no sister,’ the boy spat.

‘Jonn—’ Mia caught herself. Licked her lips and tasted salt. ‘Lucius, we have to go. I’ll explain everything, I swear it. But it’s dangerous here.’

‘… ALL WILL BE WELL, CHILD …’

‘… breathe easy …’

Mia watched as her daemons slipped into the boy’s shadow, eating away at his fear as they’d always done for her. But though the panic in his eyes lessened, the rage only swelled, the bunched muscles in his little arms suddenly flexing against hers. He wriggled and bucked again, slipping a hand free and clawing at her face.

‘Let me go!’ he cried.

Mia hissed as his thumb found her eye, whipping her head away with a snarl.

‘Stop it!’ she snapped, temper flaring.

‘Let go!’

‘If you’ll not be still, I’ll hold you still!’

Mia pushed the boy hard against the pipe, pressing him in place as he kicked and spat. She could understand his rage, but in truth, she had no time to spend on hurt feelings right now. Working at the remaining buckles on her armour with her free hand, she slipped off the long leather straps that held her breastplate and spaulders in place, dropping the armour to the floor of the valve. She kept her boots, her studded leather skirt, the threadbare, bloodstained tunic beneath. And using the straps, one each for his wrists and ankles, she bound up her brother like a hog to slaughter.

‘Unhand m—ffll-ggmm!’

Jonnen’s protests were muted as Mia tied another thong about his mouth. And gathering the boy into her arms, she held him tight, looked him hard in the eyes.

‘We have to swim,’ she said. ‘I’d not waste my breath on shouting if I were you.’

Dark eyes locked on hers, glittering with hate. But the boy seemed sensible enough to comply, finally dragging a deep draught into his lungs.

Mia pulled them below and swam for their lives.

They surfaced in sapphire water a half hour later to the sound of pealing bells.

With Jonnen in her arms, Mia had swum through the vast storage tanks below the arena, through the echoing dark of the mekwerk outflow pipes, catching her breath where she could and finally spilling out into the sea a few hundred feet north of Sword Arm harbour. Her brother had glared at her all the while, bound hand and foot and mouth.

Mia felt wretched at having to tie her own kin up like a spring lamb, but she had no idea what else to do with him. She couldn’t possibly have left him up there on the victor’s plinth with the cooling corpses of his da and Duomo. Couldn’t ever have left him behind. But in all her planning with Ashlinn and Mercurio, she’d not bargained on having to wrangle a nine-year-old boy after having murdered his father right in front of him.

His father.

The thought swam behind her eyes, too dark and heavy to look at for long. She pushed it aside, focusing on getting them into shallower waters. Ash and Mercurio were waiting for her aboard a swift galley named the Siren’s Song, berthed at the Sword Arm. The sooner they were out of Godsgrave, the better. Word would be spreading across the metropolis about Scaeva’s assassination, and if they didn’t know already, the Red Church would soon learn their richest and most powerful patron was dead. A storm of knives and shit was about to start raining down on Mia’s head.

As she swam towards the Sword Arm docks, she saw the streets of the metropolis beyond were in chaos. Cathedrals were ringing a death knell across the City of Bridges and Bones. Folk were emerging from taverna and tenements, bewildered, outraged, terrified as rumour of Scaeva’s murder uncoiled through the city like blood in the water. Legionaries were everywhere, armour glinting under that awful sunslight.

With all the fuss and bother, precious few folk noticed the bedraggled and bleeding slavegirl paddling slowly towards the shore with a boy trussed up in her arms. Picking her way carefully through the gondolas and dinghies bobbing about the Sword Arm jetties, Mia reached the shadows beneath a long timber boardwalk.

‘I’m going to hide us for a moment,’ she murmured to her brother. ‘You won’t be able to see for a while, but I need you to be brave.’

The boy only glared, dark curls hanging in his eyes. Stretching out her fingers, Mia dragged her mantle of shadows about her and Jonnen’s shoulders. It took real effort with truelight blazing above her – the sunslight scorching and bright. But even with her passengers now riding with her brother, the shadow beneath Mia was twice as dark as it had been before Furian’s death. Her grip on the dark felt stronger. Tighter. Closer.

She remembered the vision she’d seen as she slew the Unfallen before the adoring crowd. The sky above her, not bright and blinding, but pitch-black and flooded with stars. And shining high above her head, a pale and perfect orb.

Like a sun, but somehow … not.

‘THE MANY WERE ONE. AND WILL BE AGAIN.’

Or so the voice she’d heard had said. Echoing the message from that Hearthless wraith with the gravebone blades who’d saved her skin in the Galante necropolis.

Mia didn’t know what it meant. She’d never had a mentor to show her what it was to be darkin. Never found an answer to the riddle of what she was. She didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But she knew this, sure as she knew her own name: since the moment Furian had died at her hands, a newfound strength was flowing in her veins.

Somehow, she was … more.

The world fell into muzzy blackness as she pulled on her shadowcloak, and she and her brother became faint smudges on the watercolours of the world. Jonnen squinted in the gloom beneath her mantle, watching her with suspicious eyes, but at least his struggles had ceased for now. Mia followed Mister Kindly’s and Eclipse’s whispered directions, slowly climbing a barnacle-encrusted ladder and up to the jetty proper with Jonnen under one arm. And there, in the shadow of a shallow-bottomed trawler, she curled down to wait, cross-legged, dripping wet, arms around her brother.

Mister Kindly coalesced in the shadow at Jonnen’s feet, licking at a translucent paw. Eclipse melted from the boy’s shadow, outlined black against the trawler’s hull.

‘… I WILL RETURN …’ the not-wolf growled.

‘… you will be missed …’ the not-cat yawned.

‘… WILL YOU MISS YOUR TONGUE AS MUCH, WHEN I TEAR IT FROM YOUR HEAD …?’

‘Enough, the pair of you,’ Mia hissed. ‘Be swift, Eclipse.’

‘… AS IT PLEASE YOU …’

The shadowwolf shivered and was gone, flitting along the cracks in the jetty’s boards and off along the harbour wall.

‘… i hate that mongrel …’ Mister Kindly sighed.

‘Aye, so you’ve said,’ Mia muttered. ‘About a thousand times now.’

‘… more than that, surely … ?’

Despite her fatigue, Mia’s lips twisted in a smile.

Mister Kindly continued with his pointless ablutions and Mia sat cradling her brother for long minutes, muscles aching, salt water stinging in her cuts as the suns blazed overhead. She was tired, beaten, bleeding from a dozen wounds after her ordeals in the arena. The adrenaline of her victory was wearing off, leaving a bone-deep fatigue in its wake. She’d fought two major battles earlier in the turn, helped her fellow gladiatii from the Remus Collegium escape their bondage, slaughtered dozens, including Duomo and Scaeva, won the greatest contest in the history of the Republic, seen all her plans come to fruition.

An emptiness was slowly creeping in to replace her elation. An exhaustion that left her hands shaking. She wanted a soft bed and a cigarillo and to savour the taste of some Albari goldwine on Ashlinn’s lips. To feel their bones collide, then sleep for a thousand years. But more, beneath it all, beneath the longing and the fatigue and the pain, looking down at her brother, she realized she felt …

Hungry.

It was similar to what she’d felt in the presence of Lord Cassius. Of Furian. She’d felt it when she first saw the boy on his father’s shoulders at the victor’s plinth. She felt it as she glanced at him now – the longing of a puzzle, searching for a piece of itself.

But what does it mean? she wondered.

And does Jonnen feel the same?

‘… i have an ill feeling, mia …’

Mister Kindly’s whisper dragged her eyes from the back of her brother’s head. The shadowcat had stopped pretending to clean his paw, instead staring out at the City of Bridges and Bones from within Jonnen’s shadow.

‘What’s to fear?’ she murmured. ‘The deed is done. And all things considered, nothing went too badly tits up.’

‘… what difference does it make, the direction your breasts are pointing …?’

‘Spoken like someone who’s never owned a pair.’

Mister Kindly glanced at the boy he was riding.

‘… we seem to have some unexpected luggage …’

Jonnen mumbled something unintelligible beneath his gag. Mia had no doubts his sentiments were less than flattering, but she kept her eyes on the shadowcat.

‘You worry too much,’ she told him.

‘… and you not enough …’

‘And whose fault is that? You’re the one who eats my fears.’

The daemon tilted his head, but he gave no reply. Mia waited in silence, staring out at the city beyond her veil of shadows. The sounds of the capital were muted beneath her cloak, the colours naught but dull white and terra-cotta blurs. But she could still hear tolling bells, running feet, panicked shouts in the distance.

‘The consul and cardinal slain!’

‘Assassin!’ came the cry. ‘Assassin!’

Mia glanced down to Jonnen, saw he was staring at her with unveiled malice. She knew his thoughts then, as surely as if he’d spoken aloud.

You killed my father.

‘He imprisoned our mother, Jonnen,’ Mia told the boy. ‘Left her to die in agony inside the Philosopher’s Stone. He killed my father, and hundreds more besides. Do you not remember him on the victor’s plinth, throwing you at me to save his own wretched skin?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to understand. But Julius Scaeva was a monster.’

The boy bucked suddenly, violently, smacking his forehead into her chin. Mia bit her tongue, cursing, grabbing her brother and squeezing him tight as he launched into another bout of struggling. He tugged against his waterlogged straps, bruising his skin as he strained to free himself. But for all his fury, he was only a nine-year-old boy. Mia simply held him until his strength ran out, until his muted cries died, until he finally went limp with a soft sob of rage.

Swallowing the blood in her mouth, she wrapped him in her arms.

‘You’ll understand one turn,’ she murmured. ‘I love you, Jonnen.’

He flailed once more, then fell still. In the awkward quiet afterwards, Mia felt a cool shiver down her spine. Goosebumps prickled on her skin, and her shadow grew darker as she heard a low growl from the boards beneath her feet.

‘… THEY ARE NOT THERE …’ Eclipse declared.

Mia blinked, her belly lurching a little to the left. Squinting in the glare, she peered at the murky blur of the Siren’s Song, rocking gently at berth a few jetties down.

‘You’re certain?’ she asked.

‘… I SEARCHED FROM BOW TO STERN. MERCURIO AND ASHLINN ARE NOT ABOARD …’

Mia swallowed hard, her tongue thick with salt. The plan had been for Ash and her old teacher to meet each other at the Godsgrave chapel, gather their belongings, then make their way to the harbour and await Mia aboard the Song. With the time it took for her to swim from the arena to the ocean and out again …

‘They should be here by now,’ she whispered.

‘… shhhh …’ came a murmur at her feet. ‘… do you hear that …?’

‘… Hear what?’

‘… it appears to be the sound of… breasts tilting skyward …?’

Mia scowled at the jest, dragging her sopping hair over her shoulder. Her heart was beating faster, her thoughts racing. There was simply no way Mercurio or Ash would have been late – not with all their lives at stake.

‘Something’s happened to them …’

‘… I CAN SEARCH THE CHAPEL, REPORT BACK …?’

‘No. If she … If they …’ Mia chewed her lip, dragged herself to her feet despite her fatigue. ‘We go together.’

‘… even our new luggage …?’

‘We can’t just leave him here, Mister Kindly,’ Mia snapped.

The not-cat sighed.

‘… and the tits continue to rise …’

Mia looked down at her brother. The boy seemed temporarily defeated, sullen, shivering, silent. He was soaking wet, dark eyes clouded with anger. But with Mister Kindly riding his shadow, he was unafraid at least. So Mia stood, pulling Jonnen up afterward and slinging him over her shoulder with a wince. He was heavy as a bag of bricks, bony elbows and knees jabbing her in all the wrong places. But Mia was hard as nails after the months she’d spent training in the Remus Collegium, and wounded as she was, she knew she could manage him for a time. Moving slowly beneath Mia’s shadowcloak, the unlikely quartet groped their way down the jetty and onto the crowded boardwalk, gentle water lapping beneath them.

Following her passenger’s whispered directions, stealing past the patrols of legionaries and Luminatii, Mia slipped out into the streets beyond the harbour. Her brother’s weight on her shoulders made her muscles groan in protest as she made her way through the warren of Godsgrave’s back alleys. Her pulse was thumping in her veins, her belly turning slow, cold somersaults. Eclipse was prowling out ahead. Mister Kindly was still riding Jonnen. And without her passengers, Mia was left trying to fight off fearful thoughts about what might’ve delayed Mercurio and Ash.

Luminatii?

The Ministry?

What could have gone wrong?

Goddess, if anything has happened to them because of me …

Creeping through squeezeways and over little bridges and canals, the group finally reached the wrought-iron fences surrounding the city’s necropolis. Mia’s boots were near soundless on the gravel, one hand stretched out before her, groping blind. Almost inaudible beneath the peal of cathedral bells, Eclipse’s whispers guided her through the twisted gates to the houses of the city’s dead, along rows of grand mausoleums and mouldy tombs. In a weed-choked corner of the necropolis’s old quarter, she stepped through a door carved with a relief of human skulls. A passageway leading down to the boneyards waited beyond.

It was sweet bliss, being out of the light of those awful suns. Her sweat was burning in her wounds. Throwing aside her shadow mantle, Mia slipped Jonnen off her shoulder. He was little, but Goddess, he wasn’t light, and her legs and spine practically wept with relief as she placed him onto the chapel floor.

‘I’m going to free your feet,’ she warned. ‘You try to run, I’ll tie you tighter.’

The boy made no sound behind his gag, watching silently as she knelt and loosened the strap about his ankles. She could see the mistrust swimming in those black eyes, the unabated anger, but he made no immediate break for freedom. Looping the strap through the bonds at his wrists, Mia stood and walked on, tugging the little boy along behind her like a sullen hound on a soggy leash.

She made her way quietly through twisted tunnels of femurs and ribs – remains of the city’s destitute and nameless, too poor to afford tombs of their own. Pulling on a hidden lever, she opened a secret door in a stack of dusty bones, and finally slipped into the Red Church chapel hidden beyond.

Mia crept down the twisting hallways, lined with the skeletons of those long perished. Shuffling behind her, Jonnen was wide-eyed, gazing at the bones all around them. But surrounded by the dead as he was, Mister Kindly stayed coiled in his shadow, keeping the worst of his fear at bay as they moved farther into the chapel.

The corridors were dark.

Silent.

Empty.

Wrong.

Mia felt it almost immediately. Smelled it in the air. The faint scent of blood wasn’t out of place in a chapel to Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but the lingering aroma of a tombstone bomb and burned parchment certainly was.

The chapel was far too quiet, the air far too still.

Suspicion ever her watchword, Mia pulled Jonnen closer and werked her mantle of shadows back about their shoulders. Creeping onwards in near blindness. Jonnen’s breathing seemed far too loud in the silence, her grip on his leash damp with sweat. Her ears strained for the slightest sound, but the place seemed deserted.

Mia stopped in a bone-lined hallway, the hair on the back of her neck prickling. She knew, even before she heard Eclipse’s warning growl.

‘… BEHIND …’

The dagger flashed from out of the darkness, gleaming silver, poison-dark. Mia twisted, damp hair whipping in a long black ribbon behind her, spine bent in a perfect arch. The blade sailed over her chin, missing her by a breath. Her free hand touched the ground, pushed her back up to standing, heart hammering.

Her mind was racing, brow creased in confusion. Beneath her cloak of shadows, she was almost blind, aye – but the world should have been just as blind to her.

Blind.

O, Goddess.

He stepped out from the dark, silent despite his bulk. His grey leathers were stretched taut across the barn-broad span of his shoulders. His ever-empty scabbard hung at his waist, dark leather embossed with a pattern of concentric circles, much like a pattern of eyes. Thirty-six small scars were etched into his forearm – one for every life he’d taken in the Red Church’s name. His eyes were milky white, but Mia saw his eyebrows were gone entirely. The once-blond stubble on his head was crisped black as if burned, and the four sharp spikes of his beard were charred nubs.

‘Solis.’

His face was swathed in shadows, blind eyes fixed on the ceiling. He drew two short double-edged blades from his back, both darkened by poison. And, hidden as Mia was beneath her mantle, he still spoke directly to her.

‘Treacherous fucking quim,’ he growled.

Mia reached for her gravebone dagger with her free hand. Heart sinking as she realized she’d left it buried in Consul Scaeva’s chest.

‘O, shit,’ she whispered.

CHAPTER 2
BONEYARDS

The Revered Father of the Red Church strode forward, blades raised.

‘I wondered if you’d be fool enough to return here,’ he snarled.

Mia tightened her sweating grip on her brother’s leash. Sensing movement, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a slender boy with shocking blue eyes stepping from the necropolis shadows. He was death-pale, dressed in a charred black doublet. Two wicked knives gleamed in his hands, their blades black with toxin.

Hush.

‘Well?’ Solis sneered. ‘Nothing to say, pup?’

Mia stayed silent, wondering how Solis could sense her under her shadowcloak at all. Sound, perhaps? The scent of her blood and sweat? Regardless, she was exhausted, unarmed, wounded – in no shape to fight. Sensing her fear, the spreading cold in her gut, Mister Kindly slipped from the boy’s shadow into her own to quell it. And as the daemon flitted away from the dark about his feet, little Jonnen kicked Mia hard in the shins and snatched his hands from her sweating grip.

‘Jonnen!’ she cried.

The boy turned and bolted. Mia reached for him, hand outstretched and trying to catch him up. And Solis simply hefted his blades, lowered his head, and charged.

Mia swayed aside, the Shahiid’s blade whistling past her cheek as Hush closed in behind her. Spinning swift, she threw aside her shadowcloak, werking the shadows and tangling up the boy’s feet instead. He stumbled, fell, Mia slipping under another one of Solis’s sweeping strikes. Glancing to the cool dark in the corridor behind the Shahiid, she saw Jonnen fleeing back the way they’d come. And clenching her jaw tight she

Stepped

into the gloom

at Solis’s back

and bolted down the corridor after her fleeing brother.

‘Jonnen, stop!’

Eclipse growled warning, and Mia twisted aside as one of Solis’s short swords came whistling at her out of the black. It struck the bone wall in front of her as she reached a sharp corner, remained quivering inside some long-dead skull. Mia grabbed it as she rushed past, twisting it loose and clutching it in her left hand as she ran on.

Dashing on his little legs, Jonnen found himself overtaken quickly. As Mia pounded up the corridor behind him, he glanced over his shoulder, put on a new spurt of speed. His hands were still bound, but he’d managed to drag the gag free from his mouth, shouting as she picked him up and slung him under her arm.

‘Unhand me, wench!’ he cried, wriggling in fury.

‘Jonnen, be still!’ Mia hissed.

‘Let me go!’

‘… still like him, do you …?’ Mister Kindly whispered from Mia’s shadow.

‘… LESS AND LESS WITH EACH PASSING MOMENT …’ Eclipse replied, flitting out ahead.

‘… well, now you appreciate how i feel about you …’

‘Shut it, the pair of you!’ Mia gasped.

She bounced off a bone wall and stumbled around another corner, Solis and Hush close on her heels. Kicking through the tomb’s doorway, Mia dashed up the crumbling stairs and back into the awful glare of those three burning suns. Despite Mister Kindly feasting on her fear, her heart was threatening to burst from her ribs.

She’d spent the entire turn fighting for her life already – she was in no shape to tackle a fully armed Blade of the Red Church, let alone the former Shahiid of Songs. Charred eyebrows aside, Solis was one of the deadliest men alive with a blade. The last time they’d tangled, he’d hacked her arm clean off at the elbow. Hush was no slouch, either, and whatever kinship Mia and the boy might have had in their turns as acolytes seemed long evaporated. She was a traitor to the Red Church in his eyes, worthy only of a slow and very painful murder.

She was outnumbered. And in her current state, outclassed.

But how the ’byss could Solis see me?

Mia Stepped through the shadows to give herself some kind of lead, but with the three suns blazing overhead and her exhaustion from the great games thickening her blood, she only managed to travel a few dozen feet. She clipped her shin on a tombstone, staggered, and almost fell. She might’ve pulled on her mantle again, but Solis seemed able to sense her anyway. And truth told, she was too tired to manage it all – the wriggling boy in her arms, the desperate chase, werking the dark. Wild eyes searching now for any way of escape.

She skipped up onto a low marble tomb and vaulted the wrought-iron fence of the necropolis. Hitting the ground hard, she gasped, almost falling again. She was in the grounds of a grand chapel to Aa now, built beside the houses of the dead. She could see a broad cobbled road scattered with citizens beyond the churchyard, tall tenements lining the street, flowers in the window boxes. The chapel itself was limestone and glass, the three suns on its belfry mirroring the three suns above.

Black Mother, they were so bright, so hot, so—

‘… MIA, BEWARE …!’

A dagger sailed from Hush’s outstretched hand, whistling towards her back. She twisted with a cry, the blade slicing through a lock of her long, dark hair and sailing past her scarred cheek, close enough for her to smell the toxin on the blade. It was Rictus – a fast-working paralytic. One good scratch and she’d be helpless as a newborn babe.

They want me alive, she realized.

‘Release me, villain!’ her brother shouted, thrashing again.

‘Jonnen, please—’

‘My name is Lucius!’

The boy bucked and kicked under Mia’s arm, still trying to free himself from her grip. He managed to drag his hand loose from the sodden leather bonds about his wrists, and with a gasp, he threw it up into Mia’s face. And as if the suns were suddenly extinguished in the sky, all the world went black.

She stumbled in the sudden dark. Her boot clipped a broken flagstone, and her legs went out from under her. Mia gritted her teeth as she hit the ground, hissing in pain as she tore her knees and palms bloody. Her brother also fell, crying out as he tumbled across the gravel to a graceless halt.

The boy rose from the dirt. The boy she’d thought long dead. The boy she’d just snatched from the clutches of a man he should have hated.

‘Assassin!’ he roared. ‘The assassin is here!’

And fast as he could, he dashed out into the street.

Mia blinked hard, shook her head – she could hear Jonnen yelling as he ran, but she could see nothing at all. In a rush, she realized her brother had somehow werked the shadows over her eyes, completely blinding her. It was a trick she’d never learned, never tried, and she’d have admired the boy’s creativity if he wasn’t turning out to be such a troublesome little prick.

But the shadows were hers to werk just as much as Jonnen’s, and death was running right on her heels. Mia curled her fingers into claws, tore the darkness away from her eyes just as the Revered Father and his silent companion vaulted the iron fence and dropped into the churchyard behind her.

Mia hauled herself to her feet, blinking hard as her sight returned. Her arms felt like putty. Her legs were shaking. Turning to face Solis and Hush, she was barely able to raise her stolen sword. Her shadow writhed around her long leather boots as the two killers fanned out to flank her.

‘Call the guards!’ Jonnen cried from the street beyond. ‘Assassin!’

The citizens turned to stare, wondering at the ruckus. A priest of Aa stepped out from the chapel doors, clad in his holy vestments. A cadre of Itreyan legionaries down the block turned their heads at the sound of the boy’s cries. But Mia could pay heed to none of it.

Solis lunged at her throat, his blade a blur. Desperate, drawing on the dark new strength in her veins, she reached out, tangled up the Shahiid’s feet in his own shadow before he could reach her. Solis snarled in frustration, his strike falling short. Hush hurled another knife and Mia cried out, smashing it from the air with her stolen sword in a hail of bright sparks. And then she charged the silent boy, desperate to even the scales before Solis could break loose of her shadow werking.

Hush drew a rapier from his belt, met her charge, steel on steel. Mia knew the boy from the brief comradeship they’d shared as acolytes in the halls of the Quiet Mountain. She knew where he’d come from, what he’d been before he joined the Church, why he never spoke. It wasn’t because he lacked a tongue, no – it was because the owners of the pleasure house he’d been enslaved to as a child had knocked out all his teeth so he could better service their clientele.

Mia had been training in the art of the sword since she was ten years old. Hush had still been on his hands and knees on silken sheets. They’d both trained under Solis, true, and the boy had proved himself no novice with a blade. But in the last nine months, Mia had trained under the whip of Arkades, the Red Lion of Itreya – schooled in the arts of the gladiatii by one of the greatest swordsmen alive. And though she was exhausted, bleeding, bruised, her muscles were still hardened, her grip still callused, her form drilled into her hour upon hour beneath the burning sunslight.

‘Guards!’ came Jonnen’s call. ‘She’s here!’

Mia struck low, forcing Hush aside, her backswing whistling through the air. The boy stepped away like a dancer, blue eyes glittering. Mia raised her blade, telegraphing another strike. But with a deft flick of her boot, she scooped up a toeful of grit from the earth beneath them – an old gladiatii trick – and kicked it right at Hush’s face.

The boy reeled back and Mia’s blade sliced him across the chest, just a few inches short of splitting his ribs clean open. His doublet and the flesh beyond parted like water, but still the boy made no sound. He staggered back, one hand pressed to his wound as Mia raised her blade for the deathblow.

‘… MIA … !’

She turned with a gasp, barely deflecting the strike that would have split her head apart. Solis had hacked his boots away, left them wrapped in tendrils of his own shadow, and charged Mia barefoot. The big man collided with her, sent her flying, her backside and thighs shredded on the stone as she hit the ground. She tumbled back up onto her feet with a black curse, fending off the flurry of strikes Solis aimed at her head, neck, chest. She struck back, sweat-soaked and desperate, long black hair stuck to her skin, Mister Kindly and Eclipse working hard to eat her fear.

‘Guards!’

This was no fresh Blade of the Church she faced now, no. This was the deadliest swordsman in the congregation. And no cheap tricks learned in the arena would avail Mia here. Only skill. And steel. And sheer, bloody will.

She struck back at Solis, their blades ringing bright beneath the burning suns. His white eyes were narrowed, fixed somewhere in the empty over her left shoulder. And yet the blind man moved as if he saw her every strike coming from a mile away. Forcing her back. Beating her down. Wearing her out.

The crowd in the street had gathered outside the chapel gates now, drawn like flies to a corpse by Jonnen’s cries. The boy stood in the middle of the thoroughfare, waving at the cadre of legionaries, who were even now tromptromptromping towards them. Mia was tired, weak, outnumbered – she had only moments before this situation dissolved into a puddle of shite.

‘Where’s Ashlinn and Mercurio?’ she demanded.

Solis’s blade streaked past her chin as he smiled. ‘If you’ve a wish to see your old master alive again, girl, you’d best drop your steel and come with me.’

Mia’s eyes narrowed as she struck at the big man’s knees.

‘You don’t call me girl, bastard. Not as if the word were kin for “shit”.’

Solis laughed and launched a riposte that almost took Mia’s head off. She twisted aside, sweat-soaked fringe hanging in her eyes.

‘Perhaps you only hear what you want to hear, girl.’

‘Aye, laugh now,’ she wheezed. ‘But what will you do without your beloved Scaeva? When your other patrons learn the saviour of the fucking Republic died at the hands of one of your own Blades?’

Solis tilted his head and smiled wider, stilling the heart in Mia’s chest.

‘Did he?’

‘Halt! In the name of the Light!’

The legionaries burst through the chapel gates, all glittering armour and blood-red plumes on their helms. Hush was on his knees, the Rictus from Mia’s stolen blade rendering him numb and lethargic. Mia and Solis hung still, swords poised as the legionaries spread out into the courtyard. The centurion leading them was burly as a pile of bricks, heavy brows and a thick beard bristling beneath his glittering helm.

‘Put down your weapons, citizens!’ he barked.

Mia glanced at the centurion, the troops around them, the crossbows aimed square at her heaving chest. Jonnen forced his way through the soldiers, pointing right at her and shouting at the top of his lungs.

‘That’s her! Kill her now!’

‘Get back, boy!’ the captain snapped.

Jonnen scowled at the man, drew himself up to his full height.[fn1]

‘I am Lucius Atticus Scaeva,’ he spat. ‘Firstborn son of Consul Julius Maximillianus Scaeva. This slave murdered my father, and I order you to kill her!’

Solis tilted his head slightly, as if taking note of the lad for the first time. The centurion raised an eyebrow, looking the little lordling up and down. Despite his dishevelled appearance, the grime on his face and sopping robes, it could hardly be missed that he was clad in brilliant purple – the colour of Itreyan nobility. Nor that he wore the triple-sun crest of the Luminatii legion upon his chest.

‘Kill her!’ the boy roared, stamping his foot.

The crossbowmen tightened their fingers on their triggers. The centurion looked at Mia, drew breath to shout.

‘Lo—’

A chill stole over the scene – the legionaries, the assassins, the crowd gathered in the street beyond. Despite the blazing heat, goosebumps shivered on Mia’s bare skin. A familiar shape rose up behind the soldiers, hooded and cloaked, twin gravebone swords clutched in its ink-black hands. Mia recognized it immediately – the same figure that had saved her life in the Galante necropolis. The same one who’d given her that cryptic message.

‘SEEK THE CROWN OF THE MOON.’

Its face was hidden in the depths of its cloak. Mia’s breath hung in white clouds before her lips, and despite the heat, she found herself shivering in its chill.

Without a word, the figure struck the closest soldier, its gravebone blade splitting his breastplate asunder. The other legionaries cried out in alarm, turning their crossbows upon their assailant. As the figure wove among them, blades flashing, they fired. The crossbow bolts struck home, thudding into the figure’s chest and belly. But it seemed not to slow at all. The crowd in the street beyond fell to panicking as the figure wheeled and spun among the soldiers, cutting them to bloody chunks, raining red.

Mia moved swift despite her fatigue, grabbing her wriggling brother by the scruff of his neck. Solis charged across the broken flagstones towards her, and Mia brought up her blade to block his onslaught. The Shahiid’s strikes were deathly quick, sheer perfection. And hard as she tried, swift as she was, she felt a blow sail past her guard and slice into her shoulder.

Mia spun aside, dropping her stolen blade as she cried out. Within seconds she could feel the Rictus in her veins, a numbing chill spreading out from the wound, flowing down her arm. With a grunt of effort, she threw up her hand, wrapped up Solis’s feet in his shadow again as she tumbled onto her backside, her brother clutched tight to her chest. The Shahiid stumbled, cursed, trying to rip his bare feet free from her grip. Mister Kindly and Eclipse coalesced on the stone between them, the shadowcat hissing and puffing up, the shadowwolf’s growl coming from beneath the earth.

‘… back, bastard …’

‘… YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HER …’

Behind Mia, the strange figure finished its grim work. The churchyard looked like the floor of an abattoir, pieces of legionaries scattered all across it, the bystanders fleeing in panic. The figure’s gravebone blades dripped with gore as it stepped across the flagstones, stood above the fallen girl, levelling a sword at Solis’s throat. The Revered Father of the Red Church seemed unperturbed despite the trio of shadowthings arrayed against him, lips pulled back over his teeth, white breath hanging in the air between them.

The figure spoke, its voice tinged with a strange reverberation.

‘THE MOTHER IS DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, SOLIS.’

‘Who are you, daemon?’ he demanded.

‘YOU TRULY ARE BLIND,’ it replied. ‘BUT WHEN DARK DAWNS, YOU WILL SEE.’

The figure knelt beside Mia. Her right arm was numb, she was barely able to keep her head up. But she still clung to her brother like grim death – after all the blood and miles and years, she’d be damned to come all this way and discover he lived, only to lose him again. For his part, between the presence of this strange wraith and the bloody murder it had just unleashed, Jonnen seemed frozen with fear.

The figure reached out one hand. It was black and gleaming, as if dipped in fresh paint. As it touched her wounded shoulder, Mia felt a stab of pain, ice-cold and black, all the way to her heart. She hissed as the earth surged beneath her, a frozen vertigo setting all the world awhirl.

She felt sorrow. Pain. An endless, lonely chill.

She felt she was falling.

And then she felt nothing at all.

CHAPTER 3
EMBER

Mercurio awoke in darkness.

The pain in his head felt like the kind earned after a three-turn bender, and yet he could recall no recent debauchery. His jaw ached, and he could taste blood on his tongue. Groaning, he slowly sat upright in a bed lined with soft grey fur, hand to his brow. He had no idea where he might be, but something … the scent in the air perhaps, dragged him back to younger years.

‘Hello, Mercurio.’

He turned to his left, saw an old woman seated beside his bed. She looked to be around his age, her long grey hair bound in neat braids. She was dressed in dark grey robes, cool blue eyes pouched in deep wrinkles. At first glance, a bystander might’ve expected to find her in a rocking chair beside a merry hearth, a handful of grandsprogs around her, an old moggy on her knee. But Mercurio knew better.

‘Hello, you murderous old cunt,’ he replied.

Drusilla, Lady of Blades, smiled in reply.

‘You always did have a silver tongue, my dear.’

The old woman lifted a cup of steaming tea from the saucer in her lap, sipped slowly. Her eyes were fixed on Mercurio as he peered around the bedchamber, breathed deep, finally understanding where he was. The song of a choir hung in the cool, dark air. He smelled candles and incense, steel and smoke. He remembered the Ministry accosting him in the Godsgrave chapel. The scratch from the poisoned blade in Spiderkiller’s hand. The old man realized the blood he could taste belonged to pigs.

They’ve brought me back to the Mountain.

‘You haven’t changed your decor much,’ he sighed.

‘You know me, love. I was never one for extravagance.’

‘The last time I was in this bed, I told you it really was the last time,’ Mercurio said. ‘But if I knew you were this hungry for a return performance …’

‘O, please,’ the old woman sighed. ‘You’d need a block and tackle to get it up at your age. And your heart could barely stand it when we were twenty.’

Mercurio smiled despite himself.

‘It’s good to see you, ’Silla.’

‘Would that I could say the same.’ The Lady of Blades shook her head and sighed. ‘You addle-minded old fool.’

‘Did you really drag me all the way to the Quiet Mountain for a rebuke?’ Mercurio reached to his coat for his smokes and found both smokes and coat missing. ‘You could’ve just chewed my cods off back in the ’Grave.’

‘What were you thinking?’ Drusilla demanded, setting aside her tea. ‘Helping that idiot girl in her idiot schemes? Do you realize what you’ve done?’

‘I’m not fresh fallen from the last rains, ’Silla.’

‘No, you’re the bishop of Godsgrave!’ Drusilla stood, prowling around the bed, eyes flashing. ‘Years of faithful service. Sworn to the Dark Mother. And yet you helped a Blade of the Church break the Red Promise and murder one of our own patrons!’[fn1]

‘O, Goddess, don’t play the wounded devotee with me,’ Mercurio growled. ‘It’s as obvious as a beagle’s bollocks that you and your nest of snakes wanted Cardinal Duomo dead. You’ve all been in bed with Scaeva for years. Did Lord Cassius know? Or was this something you and the others conspired to behind his back?’

‘You’re a fine one to speak of conspiracies, love.’

‘How do you think the rest of the congregation would react if they knew, ’Silla? That the Ministry was content to bend over and spread cheek for our beloved People’s Senator? The hands of Niah upon this earth, become lapdogs of a fucking tyrant?’

‘I should have you killed for your betrayal,’ Drusilla snarled.

‘And yet I can’t help notice I’m not dead.’ The old man peered under the sheets. ‘Or that I’m sans trousers. You certain I’m not here for an encore? I’ve learned a few tricks since—’

Drusilla hurled a grey robe at the old man’s head.

‘You are here to serve as the worm you are.’

‘… As bait?’ Mercurio shook his head. ‘You really think she’s stupid enough to come after me? After all she’s been through, after all she’s—’

‘I know who Mia Corvere is,’ Drusilla snapped. ‘This is a girl who gave up any chance at a normal life or happiness to see her parents avenged. She sold herself into slavery on a gambit that even a lunatic would consider insanity, for a single chance to strike down the men who destroyed her house. She is fearless. Reckless beyond reckoning. So if there is one thing I’ve learned about your little Crow, it is this: there is nothing that girl will not do for her familia. Nothing.’

The old woman leaned over the bed, stared into the old man’s eyes.

‘And you, dear Mercurio, are more a father to her than her father ever was.’

The old man stared back, saying nothing. Swallowing the bile flooding his mouth. The Lady of Blades only smiled, leaning a little closer. He could still see her beauty beneath the scars of time. Remember the last nevernight they’d been in this bedchamber together, all those years ago. Sweat and blood and sweet, sweet poison.

‘You may wander in the Mountain if you wish,’ Drusilla said. ‘I’m certain you remember where everything is. The congregation has been informed of your betrayal, but you are not to be touched. We need you breathing for now. But please, don’t push the friendship by being more the fool than you’ve already been.’

Drusilla reached under the sheet between his legs, squeezed tight as he gasped.

‘A man can still breathe without these, after all.’

The old woman held on a moment longer, then released her icy grip. Lips still curled in her matronly smile, the Lady of Blades took her saucer and cup back up, turned, and stalked towards the bedchamber door.

‘Drusilla.’

The Lady of Blades glanced over her shoulder. ‘Aye?’

‘You really are a cunt, you know that?’

‘Ever the flatterer.’ The old woman turned back to him, her smile vanished. ‘But a man like you should know exactly where flattery gets you with a woman like me.’

Mercurio sat in the gloom after she left, wrinkled brow creased with worry.

‘Aye,’ he muttered. ‘In deep shit.’

He’d lurked in the bedchamber a few hours more, nursing his aching head and wounded ego. But boredom eventually bid him pull on the grey robe Drusilla had given him, tie the thin strip of leather about his waist. He didn’t bother trying to arm himself – Mercurio knew the only ways out of the Quiet Mountain were a two-week trek across the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, out through Speaker Adonai’s blood pool, or by leaping off the railings of the Sky Altar and into the shapeless night beyond.

Escape from here without help or wings was all but impossible.

He stepped from the bedchamber, leaning on the cane they’d (rather thoughtfully) left him, out into the gloom of the Quiet Mountain. Ice-blue eyes that seemed born to scowl surveyed the dark around him. The disembodied choir sung faintly, nowhere and everywhere at once. The halls were black stone, lit by windows of stained glass and false sunslight, decorated with grotesque statuary of bone and skin. Spiral patterns covered every inch of wall, intricate and maddening.

As soon as Mercurio’s feet touched the flagstones outside Drusilla’s room, he felt the presence of a robed figure, watching from the gloom. One of Drusilla’s Hands, no doubt, tasked to be his shadow for the duration of his stay.[fn2] He ignored the figure, wandered about his way, listening to it following behind. His old knees creaked as he descended the stairs, down the wending paths and through the labyrinthine dark, until he finally stepped into the Hall of Eulogies.

He looked around the vast space, forced to admire the grandeur even after all these years. Enormous stone pillars were arranged in a circle, stone gables carved from the Mountain itself soaring above. The names of the Church’s countless victims were scribed on the granite at his feet. Unmarked tombs of the faithful lined the walls.

The space was dominated by a colossal statue of Niah herself. Her black eyes seemed to follow Mercurio as he stepped closer, squinting in the false light. She held a scale and a wicked sword in her hands, her face beautiful and serene and cold. Jewels glittered on her ebony robe like stars in the truedark sky.

She who is All and Nothing.

Mother, Maid, and Matriarch.

Mercurio touched his eyes, his lips, his heart, looking up at his Goddess with clouded eyes. As he stood there in the hall, a knot of young folk entered from the steps below. They regarded the old bishop with wary stares as they passed, meeting his gaze only briefly. Smooth skin and bright eyes and clean hands, teenagers all. New acolytes by the look, just beginning their training.

He stared after them wistfully as they left. Remembering his own tutelage within these walls, his devotion to the Mother of Night. How long ago it all seemed now, how cold he’d grown inside. Once he’d been fire. Breathed it. Bled it. Spat it. But now, the only ember that remained was the one he kept burning for her – that snot-nosed, stuck-up little lordling’s bitch who’d wandered into his shop all those years ago, a silver brooch shaped like a crow in her hand.

He’d never made time for familia. To live as a Blade of the Mother was to live with death – with the knowledge that every turn could be your last. It hadn’t seemed fair to take a wife when she’d likely end a widow, nor make a child who’d probably be raised an orphan. Mercurio never thought he’d a need for children. If you’d asked him why he’d taken that raven-haired waif in all those years ago, he’d have muttered something about her gift, her grit, her guile. He’d have laughed if you’d told him he needed her as much as she needed him. He’d have cut your throat and buried you deep if you’d told him that one turn, he’d love her like the daughter he’d never had.

But in his bones, even as he ended you, he’d have known it true.

And now, here he was. A worm on Drusilla’s hook. For all his bluff, he knew the Lady of Blades spoke truth – Mia loved him like blood. She’d never let him die in here, not if she thought she had a chance to save him. And with those wretched daemons riding her shadow and eating her fear, in Mia’s head there was always a chance.

The old man peered at the granite colossus above him. The sword and scales in her hands. Those pitiless black eyes, boring into his own.

‘Where the fuck are you?’ he whispered.

He left the hall, Drusilla’s Hand lurking at a respectful distance behind as the old bishop shuffled on his way through the Mountain’s maze, his cane beating crisp on the black stone. His knees were aching by the time he reached his destination – he didn’t remember there being quite so many stairs in this place. Two dark wooden doors loomed before him, carved with the same spiral motif as decorated the walls. Each must have weighed a ton, but the old man reached out with one gnarled hand and pushed them open with ease.

Mercurio found himself on a mezzanine overlooking a forest of ornate shelves, laid out like a garden maze. They stretched off into a space too dark and vast to see the edges. On each shelf were piled books of every shape and size and description. Dusty tomes and vellum scrolls and famished notebooks and everything in between. The grand Athenaeum of the Goddess of Death, peopled with the memoirs of kings and conquerors, theorems of heretics, masterpieces of madmen. Dead books and lost books and books that never were – some burned on the pyres of the faithful, some simply swallowed by time, and others simply too dangerous to write at all.

An endless heaven for any reader, and a living hell for any librarian.

‘Well, well,’ said a croaking, hollow voice. ‘Look what the scabdogs dragged in.’

Mercurio turned to see an old Liisian man in a scruffy waistcoat, leaning on a trolley piled with books. Two shocks of white hair sprung from either side of his scalp, and a pair of finger-thick spectacles adorned his hooked nose. His back was so bent, he looked like a walking question mark. A fine cigarillo smouldered on his bloodless lips.

‘Hello, Chronicler,’ Mercurio said.

‘You’re a long way from Godsgrave, Bishop,’ Aelius growled.

The chronicler stepped closer, squared up against Mercurio, and glowered. As they stood there, face-to-face, Aelius seemed to stand taller, his shadow growing longer. The air rippled with some dark current, and Mercurio heard the shapes of colossi moving out between the shelves. Coming closer.

Aelius’s dark eyes burned as he considered Mercurio’s, his voice growing harder and colder with every word.

‘If I can still call you “Bishop” at all, that is,’ he spat. ‘I thought you’d be ashamed to show your face outside your bedchamber after what you pulled. Let alone drag yourself down here. What brings your traitorous hide to the Black Mother’s library?’

Mercurio pointed to the ever-present spare behind the chronicler’s ear.

‘Smoke?’

Chronicler Aelius hung still for a moment, eyes burning with dark flame. Then, with a small chuckle, he unfolded his arms, clapped Mercurio on his thin shoulder. Lighting the cigarillo on his own, he handed it over.

‘All right, whippersnapper?’

‘Do I look all right, old man?’ Mercurio asked.

‘You look like shite. But it’s always polite to ask.’

Mercurio leaned against the wall and gazed out over the library, dragging a sweet grey draught into his lungs. The smoke tasted of strawberries, the sugared paper setting his tongue dancing.

‘They don’t make them like this anymore,’ Mercurio sighed.

‘Same might be said of everything in this room,’ Aelius replied.

‘How’ve you been, you old bastard?’

‘Dead.’[fn3]

The chronicler settled in beside him.

‘You?’

‘Much the same.’

Aelius scoffed, breathed a plume of grey. ‘Still got a pulse in you from what I can see. What the ’byss you sulking about down here for, lad?’

Mercurio drew on his cigarillo. ‘It’s a long story, old man.’

‘A story about your Mia, I take it?’

‘… How’d you guess?’

Aelius shrugged his bone-thin shoulders, his eyes twinkling behind his improbable spectacles. ‘She always struck me as a girl with one to tell.’

‘We might be nearing the final page, I fear.’

‘You’re too young to be such a pessimist.’

‘I’m sixty-fucking-two,’ Mercurio growled.

‘As I say, far too young.’

Mercurio found himself chuckling, warm grey spilling from his lips. He leaned back against the wall, feeling the smoke buzz in his blood.

‘How long have you been down here, Aelius?’

‘O, a while,’ the chronicler sighed. ‘Never saw much sense in counting the years, though. It’s not as though I really have a choice about when I leave.’

‘The Mother keeps only what she needs,’ Mercurio murmured.

‘Aye.’ Aelius nodded. ‘She does at that.’

Mercurio tilted his head back, looked out on all those dead books with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Do you hate her for it?’

‘Blasphemy,’ the old ghost scolded.

‘Is it?’ Mercurio asked. ‘If she doesn’t care what we say or do?’

‘And what makes you say that?’

‘Well, look at what this place has become,’ Mercurio growled, waving his cane at the dark. ‘Once, it was a house of wolves. Each murder, an offering to Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Feeding her hunger. Making her stronger. Hastening her return. And now?’ He spat on the flagstones. ‘It’s a whorehouse. The Ministry feed their own coffers, not the Maw. Their hands drip with gold, not red.’

Mercurio shook his head, breathing smoke as he continued.

‘O, we say all the words, make all the gestures, aye. “This flesh your feast, this blood your wine.” But still, when all the praying is done, we drop to our knees for the likes of Julius fucking Scaeva. How can you say Niah cares, if she allows this poison to fester in her own halls?’

‘Maw’s teeth.’ Aelius raised one snow-white brow. ‘Someone woke up on the wrong side of bed this morn.’

‘Fuck off,’ the old man spat.

‘What do you want her to do?’ the chronicler demanded. ‘She’s been banished from the sky for millennia, boy. Allowed to rule for a handful of turns every two and a half years. How much say over all this do you think she has? How much influence do you think she can exert in the prison her husband made for her?’

‘If she’s so powerless, why call her a goddess at all?’

Aelius’s frown deepened into a scowl. ‘I never said she was powerless.’

‘Because you were never one to state the fucking obvious.’

The chronicler looked at Mercurio hard. ‘I remember when you first arrived here, boy. Green as grass, you were. Soft as baby shite. But you believed. In her. In this. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.’

Mercurio scowled. ‘I’ve as much need for old Ashkahi proverbs as I have for a second ballsack, old man.’

‘You might have more need than you know, with young Drusilla on the prowl,’ Aelius smirked. ‘Point is, you had faith, boy. Where’d it go?’

Mercurio pressed the cigarillo to his lips, thinking long and hard.

‘I still believe,’ he replied. ‘The God of Light and Goddess of Night and their Four fucking Daughters. I mean, this place exists. You exist. The Dark Mother obviously still has some small sway.’ Mercurio shrugged. ‘But this is a world ruled by men, not divinities. And for all the blood, all the death, all the lives we’ve taken in her name, she’s still so fucking far away.’

‘She’s closer than you think,’ Aelius said.

‘I swear by all that’s holy, if you tell me she dwells in the temple of my heart, we’re going to find out if folk can return from the dead twice.’

‘They can’t, actually,’ the chronicler shrugged. ‘Not even the Mother has that power. You die once, you might make it back with her blessing. But cross back over to the Abyss once more? You’re gone forever.’

‘That threat was supposed to be rhetorical, old man.’

Aelius grinned, smudged his cigarillo out against the wall, and dropped the butt into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Come with me.’

The chronicler leaned on his RETURNS trolley, began wheeling it down the long ramp from the mezzanine to the Athenaeum floor below. Mercurio watched the old man shuffling away, dragging on his own smoke.

‘Come on, whippersnapper!’ Aelius barked.

The bishop of Godsgrave sighed and, pushing himself off the wall, followed the chronicler down the ramp into the library proper. Side by side, the pair wandered through the maze of shelves, mahogany and parchment and vellum all around. Every now and then, Aelius would stop and place one of his returned tomes back into its allotted place, almost reverently. The shelves were too tall to see over, and each aisle looked much the same. Mercurio was soon hopelessly lost, and a part of him wondered how in the Mother’s name Aelius made sense of this place.

‘Where the ’byss are we going?’ he grumbled, rubbing his aching knees.

‘New section,’ Aelius replied. ‘They pop up all the time in this place. When they want to be found, that is. I stumbled onto this one almost two years ago. Right before your girl arrived here for the first time.’

Out in the dark, Mercurio could hear bookworms shifting their massive bulks among the shelves. Leathery hides scraping along the stone, deep, rumbling growls reverberating through the floor. The air was dry and cool, echoing with the faint song of that beautiful choir. There was a peace to this place, no doubt. But Mercurio wondered if he’d manage an eternity in it with quite as much calm as Aelius.

They turned down a long shelf, twisting off in a gentle curve. As they walked the rows of dusty tomes wrapped in old skins and polished wood, Mercurio realized the curve was slowly tightening – that the shelf was turning in an ever-smaller spiral. And somewhere near the heart of it, out in all that dark, Aelius came to a stop.

The chronicler reached up to the top shelf, pulled down a thick book, and placed it in Mercurio’s hands.

‘The Mother keeps only what she needs,’ he said. ‘And she does what she can. In the small ways that she can.’

Mercurio raised an eyebrow, cigarillo still smouldering at his lips as he examined the tome. It was bound in leather, black as a truedark sky. The edges of the pages were stained blood-red, and a crow in flight was embossed in glossy black on the cover.

He opened the book, looked down to the first page.

‘Nevernight,’ he muttered. ‘Stupid name for a book.’

‘Makes for interesting reading,’ Aelius said.

Mercurio opened the book to the prologue, rheumy eyes scanning the text.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

People often shit themselves when they die.

Their muscles slack and their souls flutter free and everything else just … slips out. For all their audience’s love of death, the playwrights seldom—

Mercurio flipped through a few more pages, softly scoffing.

‘It has footnotes? What kind of wanker writes a novel with footnotes?’

‘It’s not a novel,’ Aelius replied, sounding wounded. ‘It’s a biography.’

‘About who?’

The chronicler simply nodded back to the book. Mercurio flicked through a few pages more, scanning the beginning of chapter three.

… dropped him into the path of an oncoming maidservant, who fell with a shriek. Dona Corvere turned on her daughter, regal and furious.

‘Mia Corvere, keep that wretched animal out from underfoot or we’ll leave it behind!’

And as simple as that, we have her name.

Mia.

Mercurio faltered. Cigarillo hanging from suddenly bone-dry lips. His blood ran cold as he finally understood what he held in his hands. Glancing up at the shelves around him. The dead books and lost books and books that never were – some burned on the pyres of the faithful, some swallowed by time, and others …

Simply too dangerous to write at all.

Aelius had wandered off down the twisted row, hands in his pockets and muttering to himself, a trail of thin grey smoke left behind him. But Mercurio was rooted to the spot. Utterly mesmerized. He began flipping faster through the pages, eyes scanning the flowing script, snatching only fragments in his haste.

‘The books we love, they love us back.’

‘I will give your brother your regards.’

‘Who or what is the Moon?’ she asked.

Mercurio reached the end, turning the book over and over in his hands. Wondering why there were no more pages and looking around the library of the dead in mute wonder and fear.

‘I found another one, too,’ Aelius said, returning from farther down the row. ‘About three months back. Wasn’t there one turn, next turn, there it was.’

The chronicler handed Mercurio another heavy tome. It was similar to the one he already held, but the pages were edged in sky blue rather than blood-red. A wolf was embossed on the black cover instead of a crow. Juggling the first book into the crook of his elbow, he opened the second’s cover and peered at the title.

‘Godsgrave,’ he muttered.

‘Follows on from the first,’ Aelius nodded. ‘I think I liked this one better, actually. Less fucking about at the start.’

The choir sang in the ghostly dark around them, echoing through the great Athenaeum. Mercurio’s hands were shaking, cigarillo falling from his mouth as he fumbled with the first tome, opening it finally to the title page.

And there it was.

NEVERNIGHT

BOOK 1 OF THE NEVERNIGHT CHRONICLE

by Mercurio of Liis

The old man closed the book, looked at Niah’s chronicler with wondering eyes.

‘Holy shit,’ he breathed.

CHAPTER 4
GIFT

Arkemical globes twinkled in the arched ceilings and the music swelled in Mia’s chest and all around her was pale bone and glittering gold. She stood between her father and mother, little hands clutching theirs, staring down at the dance floor in wide-eyed wonder. Elegant donas in dazzling gowns of red and pearl and black, swaying and twirling in the arms of smooth dons in long frock coats. Delicious food arrayed on silver trays and singing crystal glasses filled with sparkling liqueurs.

‘Well, my dove?’ her father asked. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s so beautiful,’ Mia sighed.

The little girl could sense people’s eyes on them as they stood there at the top of the winding stairs. The doorman had announced their arrival at the grand palazzo, and all had turned to stare. The dashing justicus of the Luminatii Legion, Darius Corvere. His lovely and formidable wife, Alinne. Her parents made their way through the marrowborn crowd, the pretty smiles, the polite nods, the faces hidden by exquisite Carnivalé masks. The palazzo’s ballroom was filled to bursting, and all of Godsgrave’s finest had been invited to the affair – the election of a new consul always brought out the most beautiful of people.

‘Will you dance, my dear?’ her father asked.

Alinne Corvere softly scoffed, one hand pressed to her swollen belly. Mia knew the baby would come soon. She hoped it would be a boy.

‘Not unless you’ve a barrow stowed under that doublet, husband,’ she replied.

‘Alas,’ Darius replied, reaching beneath the folds of his costume. ‘I’ve only this.’

Mia’s father presented her mother a blood-red rose, bowing low for the benefit of the onlookers around them. Alinne smiled and took the bloom, inhaling deeply as she regarded her husband. But again, she ran a hand over her belly, demurring with a glance from those dark, knowing eyes.

Mia’s father turned and knelt before her.

‘What about you, my dove? Will you dance?’

Mia had been feeling strange all week, truth told. Since truedark had fallen, her belly had been all aflutter, and nothing quite felt the way it should. But still, as her father offered his hand, she couldn’t help but smile, caught up in the warmth of his eyes.

‘Yes, Father,’ she lisped.

‘We should give our congratulations to our new consul,’ her mother warned.

‘Soon enough,’ her father nodded, offering his arm to Mia. ‘Mi Dona?’

The pair of them swept out onto the dance floor, the other marrowborn revellers parting to let them through. Mia was only nine years old, not yet tall or old enough to dance properly. But Darius Corvere propped her little feet upon his and led her gently to the rush and pull of the music. Mia saw the couples around them smiling, charmed as ever by the handsome justicus and his precocious daughter. She looked about her in wonder, caught up in the song and the dresses and the glittering lights above.

The three suns had sunk below the horizon over a week ago, and the Mother of Night was nearing the end of another brief reign of the sky. Mia could hear the popopopopop of the fireworks in the city beyond, meant to frighten the Night back to the Abyss. All over Godsgrave, folk were huddled about their hearths, waiting for Aa to open his eyes again. But here, in her father’s arms, Mia found she wasn’t afraid at all. Instead of being frightened, she felt safe.

Strong.

Loved.

She knew her father was a handsome man, and she was old enough to note the longing stares of the marrowborn ladies as they watched him sweep past across the ballroom floor. But despite the finest of Godsgrave’s donas (and no few dons) staring after him wistfully, Mia’s father had eyes only for her.

‘I love you, Mia.’

‘I love you, too.’

‘Promise you’ll remember. No matter what comes.’

She gave him a puzzled smile. ‘I promise, Father.’

They danced on, twirling across the polished boards to the magikal song. Mia looked to the ceilings high above her, pale and gleaming. The consul’s extravagant palazzo sat at the base of the first Rib, right near the Senate House and Godsgrave’s Spine. The dance floor was a revolving mosaic of the three suns, circling each other just as the dancers did. The building was carved from the gravebone of the Rib itself, same as the longsword at her father’s waist, the armour he wore when he rode to war. The heart of the Itreyan Republic, chiselled from the bones of some long-fallen titan.

Mia peered through the crowd and saw her mother, speaking with a man upon a dais at the end of the room. He was resplendent in robes of brilliant purple, a golden laurel around his brow and golden rings upon his fingers. His hair was thick and dark, his eyes were darker still, and he was – though Mia would never have admitted it – perhaps a little more handsome than her father.

Mia saw her mother bow to the handsome man. An elegant woman seated on the dais looked displeased as the man kissed Alinne Corvere’s hand in turn.

‘Who is that, Father?’ Mia asked.

‘Our new consul,’ he replied, his eyeline following hers. ‘Julius Scaeva.’

‘Is he a friend of Mother’s?’

‘Of a sort.’

Mia watched as the handsome man placed one hand on Alinne Corvere’s swol len belly. A brief touch, light as feathers. A glance between them, quick as silver.

‘I do not like him,’ the girl declared.

‘No fear, my dove,’ the justicus replied. ‘Your mother likes him well enough for both of you. She always has.’

Mia blinked, looking up at her father with black, narrowed eyes. There was a length of rope about his neck in place of his cravat now, tied in a perfect noose.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘O, wake up, Mia,’ he sighed.

‘Father, I—’

‘Wake up.’

‘Wake up.’

Mia felt a hard kick in her belly. A child’s voice, somewhere distant.

‘Wake up, curse you!’

Another kick, this time into the fresh wound at her shoulder. Mia gasped with pain and opened her eyes, seeing a silhouette leaning over her in the gloom. Without thinking, she lashed out with her good hand, seizing the figure’s throat. It squeaked and thrashed, little fingers digging into her forearm. Only then, through the pain and retreating toxic haze did she recognize …

‘… Jonnen?’

She released the boy’s neck as if his skin were scalding metal. Utterly aghast, she reached out to smooth his filthy purple toga.

‘O, Jonnen, I’m sor—’

‘My name is Lucius!’ the boy spat, slapping her hands away.

Mia caught her breath, tried to still her thundering heart. She was horrified at herself – she’d almost hurt him without thinking. Her mind was swimming with pictures of a glittering ballroom and a truedark sky and Scaeva’s hand on her mother’s belly. Of an arena full of people, screaming as she buried her gravebone dagger in Scaeva’s chest. Of Jonnen’s face, pale and horrified as she laid his father low before him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’

The boy simply scowled, his eyes as dark and bottomless as Mia’s. She glanced around them, wondering where they might be. A vast black space surrounded them, lit by the glow of a single lantern on the ground beside her. The ghostly light extended only a handful of feet, and beyond that lay a darkness too deep to fathom.

The floor was uneven beneath her, and Mia realized it was made entirely of human faces and hands – stone reliefs, carved from the snow-pale bedrock itself. The faces were all female – all the same woman, in fact – her features beautiful, her tresses long and gently curled. But her expressions were all of anguish, of terror, her stone mouths open wide and silently screaming. The multitude of hands were upturned to the hidden ceiling, as if it were about to collapse.

Mia blinked hard, trying to remember how she got here. She recalled her confrontation with Solis and Hush. That spectral figure who’d rescued her in the Galante necropolis, once more saving her skin among the houses of Godsgrave’s dead. She could still feel Solis’s poison in her veins, though she noted the wound at her shoulder had been bound with a scrap of dark cloth. She still felt sluggish from the toxin, cold from the brittle chill around her. She felt the ache of her wounds and the tug of dried blood crusting on her skin, and somewhere distant, a nameless, shapeless anger. And looking around at that sea of frozen, terrified faces, like the sensation of sound for a man long since deafened, Mia suddenly realized she felt …

Afraid.

She searched the dark about her. Seeking her passengers among those stone hands and open mouths and realizing she couldn’t feel them anywhere. Her skin prickled, her belly rolled, and with a hiss of pain, she forced herself to her feet.

‘Mister Kindly?’ she called. ‘Eclipse?’

No answer. Nothing but the thud of her pulse in her veins, the dreadful empty of their absence. Eclipse had walked beside her since Lord Cassius had died, Mister Kindly since her father had been hanged. She’d not been without them save by request for an age. But now, to find herself alone …

‘Where are we?’ she whispered, studying the sea of faces and hands.

‘I do not know,’ Jonnen said, a small tremble in his voice.

Her heart softened, and she reached out to him in the dark. ‘It’s all right, Jonnen, I’m here with—’

‘My name is Lucius!’ he shouted, stamping his little foot. ‘Lucius Atticus Scaeva! I am firstborn son of Consul Julius Maximillianus Scaeva, and I am honourbound to kill you!’ He pointed an accusing finger, cheeks pink with fury. ‘You murdered my father!’

Mia withdrew her hand, studying the boy’s face. The bared teeth and quivering lip. Those dark, brooding eyes, so like her own. So like his.

‘I used to sing to you,’ she said. ‘When you were little and it stormed. You hated the thunder.’ She found herself smiling at the memory. ‘A squalling, pink-faced screamer with a pair of lungs on him that might wake the dead, you were. The nursemaids couldn’t do anything to still you. I was the only one who could give you calm. Do you remember?’

She cleared her throat, croaking a rusty tune.

‘In bleakest times, in darkest climes,

When wind blows cold—’

‘You sound like a harpy shrieking for supper,’ the boy snarled.

Mia bit her lip, struggling to keep her infamous temper in check. She’d spent almost eight years plotting the deaths of the men who’d killed her kin. Six years training under the most dangerous killers in the Republic, another year in service to the Red Church, almost another year fighting for her life on the sands of Itreya’s arenas, up to her armpits in blood. Never once in all that time did she learn how to deal with a spoiled marrowborn brat grieving the loss of his bastard father. But still, she tried to imagine what the boy must think. How he must feel looking at the girl who’d murdered his da.

In truth, it wasn’t that hard to see his side. She remembered her own version of this moment, years past. Watching the men who hanged her own da in the forum. Her vow of vengeance ringing in her head, the hatred like white-hot acid in her veins.

Did Jonnen now feel the same way about her?

Am I his Scaeva?

‘Jonnen, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know this is hard. I know you’re frightened and angry, that there’s things you—’

‘Do not speak to me, slave,’ he growled.

Her hand went to the arkemical brand on her cheek. The twin circles that marked her as the property of the Remus Collegium. She could feel the scar on the other side of her face. The gash cutting down through her brow, curling in a cruel hook along her left cheek – a memento from her ordeals on the sands. She thought briefly of Sidonius. Bladesinger and the other Falcons. Wondering if they’d made it to safety.

‘I am no slave,’ she said, iron creeping into her voice. ‘I’m your sister.’

‘I have no sister,’ Jonnen snarled.

‘Half sister, then,’ Mia said. ‘We’ve the same mother.’

‘You’re a liar!’ he cried, stamping his feet again. ‘Liar!’

‘I’m not lying,’ Mia insisted, pinching the bridge of her nose to stop the ache. ‘Jonnen, listen to me, please … you were too young to remember. But you were taken from our mother as a babe. Her name was Alinne. Alinne Corvere.’

‘Corvere?’ he scoffed, his dark eyes narrowed. ‘The Kingmaker’s wife?’

Mia blinked. ‘… You know of the rebellion?’

‘I am no gutter urchin, slave,’ Jonnen said, straightening his filthy robes. ‘I’ve a memory sharp as swords, all my tutors swear it. I know of the Kingmaker. My father sent that traitor to the hangman, and his harlot to the Philosopher’s Stone.’

‘Mind your tongue,’ Mia warned, her finger rising along with her temper. ‘That’s your mother you’re talking about.’

‘I am the son of a consul!’ the boy stormed.

‘Aye,’ Mia nodded. ‘But Liviana Scaeva is not your mother.’

‘You dare?’ Jonnen pulled his little hands into fists. ‘You may be the daughter of some traitor’s whore, but I am no bas—’

Her slap sent him stumbling, dropping onto his backside like a brick. Mia could feel rage in her veins, swelling and rolling, threatening to swallow her whole. Jonnen blinked up at her, wide eyes brimming with tears, one hand raised to his burning cheek. He was a marrowborn lordling, heir to a vast estate, child of a noble house. Mia imagined no one had ever laid hands on him before. Especially no one with a slave brand. But still …

‘Brother or no,’ Mia warned, ‘you don’t talk about her that way.’

Beneath her anger, Mia was horrified at herself. Exhausted and frightened and aching all the way to her bones. She’d thought Jonnenw dead all these years, else she’d never have left him in Scaeva’s keeping. She should have been throwing her arms about him for joy, not knocking him onto his pompous little arse.

Especially not for telling the truth.

Mia had learned from Sidonius that her parents’ marriage was one of expedience, not passion. Darius Corvere was in love with General Antonius, the man who’d sought to become king of Itreya. The Kingmaker’s arrangement with his wife was a political alliance, not a grand love affair. And it was no strange thing – such was life in many marrowborn houses of the Republic.

But of all the men Alinne Corvere could have taken as a lover, borne a child to, of all the men in all the world, how could she have chosen Julius fucking Scaeva?

Jonnen pawed at his eyes, at the handprint Mia had etched on his cheek. She could see he wanted to cry. But he stomped the tears down instead, clenching his teeth and turning his hurt to hate.

Maw’s teeth, he really is my brother.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mia said, softening her voice. ‘These are sharp truths I’m speaking. But your father was an evil man, brother. A tyrant who wanted to carve himself a throne out of the Republic’s bones.’

‘Like the Kingmaker did?’ Jonnen spat.

Mia swallowed hard, feeling the boy’s words like a punch to the stomach. Though she tried to keep a grip on it, she could feel herself growing angry again. As if Jonnen’s rage were somehow stoking her own.

‘You’re just a boy. You’re too young to understand.’

‘You’re a liar!’ The boy climbed to his feet, his temper and volume rising along with him. ‘My father beat yours, and you’re just mad about it!’

‘Of course I’m mad about it!’

‘You tricked him!’ the boy shouted. ‘On the victor’s stage! You hid that knife in your armour and you never would have touched him otherwise!’

‘I did what needed to be done,’ she snapped. ‘Julius Scaeva deserved to die!’

‘You don’t fight fair!’

‘Fair?’ she cried. ‘He killed our mother!’

‘You have no honour, no …’

The boy’s voice died, the twisted snarl on his face slackening into silent wonder. Mia followed his eyeline to the floor, that tableau of wailing faces and open hands, lit by the spectral glow of their single lantern. There, on the graven stone, she could see their shadows, dark and tenebrous in the ghostly light. And they were moving.

Jonnen’s shadow was slithering back, like a viper coiling to strike. Her own shadow was reaching towards his, hair flowing as if in a gentle breeze. In a blinking, Jonnen’s shade lashed out at hers, wrapping its hands around its opponent’s throat. Mia’s shadow surged and rippled as the smaller shadow slipped hands about its neck. The shades lashed and slashed at each other, sudden violence painted in rippling black, though Mia and Jonnen both stood still and unharmed.

Mia could see the perfect fury in her brother’s eyes, reflecting the war in the dark between them. It seemed as if their shadows were playing out their innermost feelings: his hatred, her affection scorned. And she knew it then, sure as she knew her own name – this boy would kill her if he could. Cut her throat and leave her for the rats. She watched those ribbons of darkness, recalling that her shadow had reacted the same in Furian’s presence. Looking at her brother, she felt the same sickness and longing she’d felt near other darkin. As if she’d fallen asleep with someone beside her and woken to find herself alone. The sense of something … missing.

She forced calm into her voice. Willed her shadow to still itself.

‘I am your sister, Jonnen,’ she said. ‘We’re the same, you and I.’

The boy made no reply, hateful stare still fixed on her. But the enmity between their shadows slowly calmed, the shades returning to their normal shapes, only faint ripples to mark anything was odd about them at all. The darkness around them was deathly silent. The wide eyes of a thousand stone faces watching them.

‘How long has it spoken to you?’ Mia asked softly. ‘The dark?’

Jonnen remained silent. Little hands curled into little fists.

‘I wasn’t much older than you, the turn it first spoke to me.’ Mia sighed, tired in her soul. ‘The turn your father hanged mine, ordered me drowned, ripped you from our mother’s arms. The turn he destroyed everything.’

The boy looked at their shadows, his dark eyes clouded.

‘Eight long years it took me,’ she continued. ‘All those miles and all that blood. But it’s over now. For good or ill, Julius Scaeva is dead. And we’re a familia again.’

‘Lost,’ he spat, ‘is what we are, Kingmaker.’

Mia looked about them, peering into the blackness beyond the circle of their lantern’s light. From the chill in the air, the silence engulfing them, she’d guess they were far underground. In some hidden part of the necropolis, perhaps.

Why had that Hearthless one saved her life, only to abandon her down here?

Where were Mister Kindly and Eclipse?

Mercurio?

Ashlinn?

Why was she still standing here like some frightened maid?

Mia picked up the lantern. Its surface was pale and smooth as raven’s claws, carved with reliefs of an odd crescent shape.

Gravebone, she realized.[fn1]

She could still feel that longing inside her. Looking at the boy, at their shadows on the floor. But there was something more, she realized. Something tugging at her out there in all that dark and all that cold. As she shifted the lantern in her hand, she realized their shadows weren’t moving in response to the light. Instead, they remained fixed in one direction, like iron being pulled towards a lodestone.

Mia was tired beyond sleeping. Bruised and bleeding and afraid. But the will that had kept her moving when all seemed lost, when the whole world seemed against her, when her task seemed all but impossible, bid her keep walking. She didn’t know where they were, but she knew they couldn’t stay. And so she held out her hand to her brother.

‘Come.’

‘Where?’

She nodded to their shadows on the floor. ‘They know the way.’

The boy looked at her, rage and mistrust in his eyes.

‘Our familia had a saying,’ Mia said. ‘Before your father destroyed it. Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a. Do you know what that means?’

‘I do not speak Liisian,’ the boy growled.

‘When all is blood, blood is all.’

She held out her hand again.

‘Blood is all, little brother,’ she repeated.

Jonnen looked up at her. In the dark, among those beautiful howling faces and open hands and the ghostly gravebone light, Mia could see the reflection of his father in those bottomless black eyes.

But in the end, he took her hand.

‘Do you feel that?’

Mia’s voice echoed in the gloom, far too loud for comfort. They’d been walking for what seemed like miles, through a twisting labyrinth of tunnels. The walls and floor were all made of those stone hands and faces, uneven under her feet.

It felt singularly disconcerting to be walking on a surface of silent screams. Mia felt sure this was part of the Godsgrave necropolis, but nothing looked familiar, and she’d no idea why anyone would have spent years carving the walls and floors like this. The farther they walked, the more ill at ease she felt. She’d occasionally catch movement from the corner of her eye, swearing that one of the stone hands had moved, or a face had turned to follow her as she passed. But when she looked at them direct, they were motionless.

The darkness was oppressive, the air heavy, sweat burning in the cuts and gouges on her skin. That nameless, shapeless anger was budding in her chest, and she had no idea why. With every step, the feeling that had been dogging Mia since she woke in this place grew more pronounced. The pull of moth to flame.

For the time being, Jonnen’s fear of the dark seemed to have overcome his hatred for her, and though he’d refused to keep hold of Mia’s hand for long, he stayed close on her heels. As she led him on through the tunnels, gravebone lantern held high, she’d sometimes glance back and find him staring at her with unveiled hatred.

In complete defiance of the lantern’s ghostly light, their shadows were still stretching away down the corridor, now far longer than they should have been.

With every step, the pull seemed to grow stronger.

The anger burning brighter in her breast.

‘I do not like it here,’ Jonnen whispered.

‘Nor I,’ Mia replied.

They walked on, pressing closer together. Mia could feel a fury, thrumming in the air around her. A sense of deep and abiding rage. Of pain and need and hunger all entwined. It was the same sensation she’d felt during the truedark massacre. The same as she’d felt during her victory in the arena.

The sense of malice in this city’s very bones.

The air felt oily and thick, and Mia swore she could smell blood. The faces on the walls were definitely moving now, the ground shifting under their feet as stone hands reached towards them, stone lips mouthed silent words. Mia’s heart almost leapt from her throat as she felt fingers touch hers. Looking down, she saw Jonnen taking hold of her hand again and gripping it tight, eyes wide with fear.

Hunger.

Anger.

Hate.

The tunnel opened into another chamber, too vast to see the walls. The anguished faces beneath their feet sloped downwards to form a large basin, barely visible in the lantern’s pale glow. The shore was all open hands and mouths, and Mia saw the basin was filled with liquid – black and velvety and still, spilling over the eyes and into the mouths of those faces closest to the edge. It looked like tar, but the reek was unmistakable. Salty and copperish and tinged with rot.

Blood.

Black blood.

And there, on that silently screaming shoreline, Mia saw two familiar shapes. Staring out at the pool of black with their not-eyes.

‘Mister Kindly!’ she cried. ‘Eclipse!’

Her passengers remained motionless as she stumbled across the faces and palms, sinking to her knees beside them. Sighing with relief, she ran her hands over their bodies, their shapes shifting and rippling like black smoke in a breeze. But neither one broke their stare from that pool of velvet darkness.

Mister Kindly tilted his head, speaking as if in a daze.

‘… do you feel it …?’

‘… I FEEL IT …’ Eclipse replied.

‘Mia?’

She turned at the voice, heart leaping in her chest. And there in the gloom, among the stone eyes and empty screams, Mia saw a sight more beautiful than any she could recall. A tall girl dressed in the bloodstained garb of an arena guard, another gravebone lantern in her hand, a gravebone sword at her waist. Blonde hair dyed henna-red, tanned cheeks smattered with freckles, eyes the blue of sunsburned skies.

‘Ashlinn …’ Mia breathed.

She ran. So light and fast it felt like she was flying. All the hurt and exhaustion became distant memory, even the sight of that black pool was forgotten. Stumbling over the stone faces, heart bursting in her chest, Mia flung her arms open and crashed into Ashlinn’s embrace. She hit so hard, she almost knocked the taller girl off her feet. Overcome with maddening joy at seeing her again, Mia wove her fingers into Ashlinn’s hair, touched her face to see if she was real, and breathless, she finally dragged the girl in for a hungry kiss.

‘O, Goddess,’ she whispered.

Ashlinn tried to speak, her words smothered by Mia’s mouth. Mia could taste blood from the reopened split in her lip, heedless of the pain, pressing her body tight against Ash’s.

‘I’m never letting you go again.’ She seized Ash’s cheeks in both hands and crushed their lips together again. ‘Never, do you hear me? Ever.’

‘Mia,’ Ashlinn protested, placing a hand on her chest.

‘What?’ Mia whispered.

Overcome, she lunged at the girl’s mouth again, but Ashlinn turned aside, looked deep into her eyes, and pushed her gently away. Mia stared hard into that sunsburned blue, blinking in confusion.

‘… Ash, what is it?’

‘HELLO, MIA.’

Mia’s blood ran cold as she heard the voice behind her. The temperature around them grew chill as she turned, her skin prickling. She saw a familiar figure, twin gravebone blades upon its back. Its robes were dark and frayed at the hems, its hands black, shadows writhing like tentacles at the edge of its hood.

Mia glanced at Ashlinn, saw fear swimming plain in her blue stare. She pulled herself from her lover’s arms, turned to face the strange figure. Pale wisps of breath spilled from her bloody lips.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘My mysterious saviour.’

The figure bowed low, robes rippling in some phantom breeze. Its voice was hollow, sibilant, reverberating somewhere in the pit of her belly.

‘MI DONA.’

‘I suppose thanks are in order.’ Mia folded her arms, tossed her hair over her shoulder. ‘But they can come after introductions. Who the ’byss are you?’

‘A GUIDE,’ the figure replied. ‘A GIFT.’

‘Speak plainly,’ Mia snarled, temper rising. ‘Who are you?’

‘Mia …’ Ashlinn murmured, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

‘Speak!’ Mia demanded, stepping forward with clenched fists.

The figure raised those ink-black hands, drew back its hood. In the ghostly light, Mia saw pitch-black eyes and flawless alabaster skin. Dark, thick saltlocks, swaying as if they were alive. He was still achingly handsome – strong jaw and high cheekbones, once scrawled with hateful ink stains, then made perfect by the weaver’s hands.

Lips she’d once kissed.

Eyes she’d once drowned in.

A face she’d once adored.

Mia looked into Ashlinn’s frightened blue eyes. Back to the pools of bottomless black that passed for his.

‘Black fucking Mother,’ she breathed.

CHAPTER 5
EPIPHANIES

‘How?’ Mia whispered.

She looked Tric up and down, crossing her arms over her breasts and shivering in the cold. He was different than he’d been – his once-olive skin was now carved of marble, his once-hazel eyes were pools of purest darkness. He seemed a statue in the forum, wrought cold and perfect from the stone by some master’s hand and now come to life. His face was beautiful. Flawless. Pale and smooth as gravebone, cutting just as deep. Her heart could scarcely believe the tale her eyes were telling.

But there was no mistaking the boy she’d known.

The boy she’d loved?

‘But she …’ Mia turned to Ashlinn, bewildered. ‘You killed him.’

Ashlinn was uncharacteristically silent, her eyes bright with fear. Mister Kindly and Eclipse were still sitting side by side on that strange shoreline, and Jonnen had joined them, dark eyes locked on that darker pool. The stone faces around them mouthed silent entreaties, stone tresses flowing as if in a wintersdeep wind. But Mia simply stood, staring at her old flame. Trying to ignore the flood of emotion rushing through her chest and simply make sense of it all.

‘How can you be here if you’re dead?’

Tric’s black eyes glinted in the cold lantern light.

‘THE MOTHER KEEPS ONLY WHAT SHE NEEDS.’

Mia drew a few deep breaths, her lungs aching from the chill. She’d heard tell of wraiths returning from the Hearth to haunt the living, dismissed most of them as old wives’ tales. But this was no children’s fable standing before her. This was her old friend, sure as her heart was beating in her chest. The boy who’d travelled with her through the Whisperwastes of Ashkah, who’d been her ally and confidant during the Red Church trials, who’d shared her bed and chased her nightmares away during her darkest hours. Her first real lover.

Killed by her second.

Mia could feel Ashlinn behind her, close enough to reach out and touch. She could still taste the girl’s lips. Smell the perfume of sweat and leather on her skin. She knew Tric must have seen them together, that he must have witnessed the passion and joy Mia had felt kissing his murderer.

‘I …’ She shook her head. Searching for some explanation. Wondering why she felt the need to explain anything at all. ‘I thought you were dead …’

Those pitch-black eyes flickered to Ashlinn.

‘I AM,’ Tric replied.

‘He saved my life, Mia,’ Ashlinn murmured behind her. ‘The Ministry ambushed me at the chapel. They took Mercurio back to the Mountain. They were set to steal me, too, but … Tric … he helped me.’

Mia’s stomach sank at the news of Mercurio’s capture.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why help you after what you did to him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ash put a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Mia, I have to tell y—’

‘What’s your game, Tric?’ Mia turned back to the boy, burning with curiosity and indignity. ‘Why save Ashlinn after she killed you? Why save Jonnen and me, then leave us to wander like rats in the dark?’

At the sound of his name, Mia’s brother turned from the black pool. He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes like a boy just woken from sleep. He seemed to notice Tric for the first time, but Mia could see suspicion in his stare instead of fear. Curiosity narrowed his eyes as he looked Ashlinn up and down, and a healthy dose of hatred resurfaced as his gaze fell on her.

Tric’s eyes were fixed on Mia. She realized she hadn’t yet seen him blink.

‘IT’S TRUELIGHT,’ he replied. ‘THE THREE EYES OF AA THE EVERSEEING BURN BRIGHT IN THE SKY ABOVE. MOTHER NIAH IS NEVER SO FAR AWAY FROM THIS WORLD AS SHE IS AT THIS MOMENT. AND IT’S ONLY THROUGH HER WILL THAT I WALK THIS WORLD AT ALL. IT TOOK ALL I HAD TO DO WHAT I DID.’

‘And Mister Kindly?’ Mia asked. ‘Eclipse? Why separate us?’

‘THEY WERE DRAWN HERE WHILE YOU SLEPT.’

Mia looked to that darkened shore, her passengers sitting beside it. Now that the joy of seeing Ashlinn, the shock of seeing Tric, was wearing off, she could still feel the pull of this place thrumming under her skin. The black, intoxicating malice reverberating in that vast black pool. Looking down at her feet, she could see her shadow stretching towards it, despite the lantern’s light. And she realized she wanted to join it.

‘No more riddles, Tric,’ she said. ‘Tell me once and for all what’s going on here.’

‘IT WILL NOT PLEASE YOU.’

‘Fucking speak, damn you!’ she demanded.

The shadow of a smile curled Tric’s bloodless lips. ‘YOU STILL HAVE A STRANGE WAY OF MAKING FRIENDS, PALE DAUGHTER.’

The words made Mia’s heart ache, dispelling any lingering suspicion that this apparition wasn’t her old friend. She remembered their time together, the promises they’d made each other, the way his touch had made her feel …

‘Please,’ she whispered.

The Hearthless boy breathed deep, as if he were about to speak. All the air around him seemed to hush, the whispering stone faces and writhing stone hands at last falling still. His saltlocks swayed like dreaming vipers, the tattered edge of his robe danced in a wind that touched only him.

‘I FELT THE BLADE.’ Tric glanced at Ashlinn. ‘WHEN SHE SLIPPED IT INTO MY CHEST. I FELT THE WIND AS SHE PUSHED ME OFF THE SKY ALTAR, DOWN INTO THE BLACK BEYOND THE QUIET MOUNTAIN. BUT I DIDN’T FEEL THE GROUND.’

Mia sensed Ashlinn beside her, shivering as her lover reached down and took hold of her hand. She realized she couldn’t feel her fingers for the chill in the air. The very world seemed to hold its breath.

‘I WOKE IN A PLACE WITH NO COLOUR,’ Tric continued. ‘BUT IN THE DISTANCE AHEAD, I SAW A FLICKERING FLAME. A HEARTH. I KNEW I’D BE SAFE THERE. I COULD FEEL ITS WARMTH, LIKE A LOVER’S HANDS ON MY SKIN.’ The wraith shook his head. ‘BUT AS I TOOK MY FIRST STEP TOWARDS IT, I HEARD A VOICE BEHIND ME, AS IF FROM FAR AWAY.’

‘What did it say?’ Mia heard herself whisper.

‘THE MANY WERE ONE,’ Tric replied. ‘AND WILL BE AGAIN; ONE BENEATH THE THREE, TO RAISE THE FOUR, FREE THE FIRST, BLIND THE SECOND AND THE THIRD.’

O, Mother, blackest Mother, what have I become?

Mia felt her belly flip, remembering the book that Chronicler Aelius had given her during her tutelage in the Red Church. She’d asked the old man for a tome about the darkin, and he’d returned with a beaten, leather-bound diary.

‘Cleo’s journal,’ she said. ‘Those were her words.’

‘NO,’ the deadboy replied. ‘THEY’RE NIAH’S. SHE SANG THEM TO ME IN THE DARK, THE MUSIC OF HER PROMISES DROWNING OUT THE LIGHT OF THAT TINY HEARTH AND ALL DESIRE TO SIT BESIDE IT. AND WHEN HER LULLABY WAS DONE, THE MOTHER SHOWED ME A PATH, ACROSS THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS. AND THROUGH COLD SO FIERCE IT BURNED, THROUGH A BLACK SO BLEAK IT ALMOST SWALLOWED ME WHOLE, I CLAWED MY WAY BACK.’

Tric pulled up the sleeves of his robe, and Mia saw his hands and forearms were black, spattered, as if he’d dipped his arms in ink all the way to the elbows.

‘AND I BECAME.’

‘Became what?’

‘HER GIFT TO YOU,’ he replied. ‘HER GUIDE.’

Mia simply shook her head in question.

‘YOU’RE LOST,’ Tric said. ‘IT’S AS I ONCE TOLD YOU. YOUR VENGEANCE IS AS THE SUNS, MIA. IT SERVES ONLY TO BLIND YOU.’

Mia swallowed, finishing the words he’d spoken to her in the Galante necropolis.

‘Seek the Crown of the Moon.’

‘… The Crown of the Moon?’ Ashlinn breathed.

Mia turned to the girl beside her, hearing the strange note in her voice.

‘That means something to you?’

Ashlinn’s eyes were still fixed on Tric. She looked as incredulous as Mia felt.

‘… Ash?’

Ashlinn blinked, focusing on Mia’s face.

‘The map,’ she said. ‘The one Duomo hired me to find.’

Mia swallowed, remembering the first time she’d fallen into Ashlinn’s bed. The sweet kisses and cigarillo smoke afterwards, long red hair parting to reveal the intricate inkwerk on her lover’s back. Ashlinn had been hired by Cardinal Duomo to retrieve a map from a ruin on the coast of Old Ashkah. But fearing betrayal, she’d had the map branded on her skin with arkemical ink that would fade in the event of her death – the same kind that was used in the slave brand on Mia’s cheek. In all the chaos leading up to the magni, they’d never truly found time to discuss it.

‘Duomo believed it led to a weapon,’ Ashlinn said softly. ‘A magik that would undo the Church. Scaeva and the Ministry must have believed it, too, or they’d never have sent you to steal it back, Mia. I don’t know the truth of it. But I do know the map leads to a place deep in the Ashkahi wastes. A place called the Crown of the Moon.’

‘WHERE YOU MUST GO,’ Tric said.

‘Why?’ Mia demanded. ‘What the ’byss is this Moon? And why do I give a beggar’s cuss about its fucking crown?’

‘YOU ARE THE MOTHER’S CHOSEN,’ Tric replied.

‘O, bollocks,’ Mia snapped. ‘If I’m chosen of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, why am I running for my life from her own damned assassins? If I’m so la-dee-fucking-da, why have I lived up to my neck in blood and shit for the past eight years?’

‘THE RED CHURCH HAS LOST ITS WAY,’ Tric replied. ‘AND THE MOTHER IS VERY FAR FROM HERE, MIA. BUT SHE HAS DONE WHAT SHE CAN TO SET YOU ON YOUR PATH. SHE SENT YOU SALVATION AS A CHILD THROUGH MERCURIO. SHE SENT YOU CLEO’S JOURNAL THROUGH AELIUS. SHE SENT YOU THE MAP THROUGH …’ Tric’s eyes flashed as he glanced at Ashlinn. ‘… HER. SHE SENT YOU ME. YOU CAN’T IMAGINE THE STRUGGLE IT TOOK TO INFLUENCE THIS WORLD FROM WITHIN THE WALLS OF HER PRISON. BUT STILL, IN WHAT TINY WAY SHE CAN, SHE’S GIVEN YOU ALL THE AID SHE MAY.’

‘But why?’ Mia demanded. ‘Why me?’

Tric steepled his black fingers at his lips, staring for long, silent moments.

‘IN THE BEGINNING, NIAH AND AA’S MARRIAGE WAS A HAPPY ONE,’ he finally said. ‘THE LIGHT AND THE NIGHT SHARED RULE OF THE SKY EQUALLY, MAKING LOVE AT DAWN AND DUSK. FEARING A RIVAL, AA COMMANDED NIAH BEAR HIM NO SONS, AND DUTIFULLY, SHE GAVE HIM FOUR DAUGHTERS – THE LADIES OF FIRE, EARTH, OCEAN, AND STORMS. BUT IN THE LONG, COLD HOURS OF DARKNESS, NIAH MISSED HER HUSBAND. AND TO EASE HER LONELINESS, SHE BROUGHT A BOYCHILD INTO THE WORLD.’

Tric looked to the pool of darkness at his back, sorrow in his voice.

‘THE NIGHT NAMED HER SON ANAIS.’

‘And Aa banished Niah from the sky for her crime,’ Mia said, her temper fraying. ‘This is children’s lore, everyone knows it. What’s it to do with me?’

Tric pointed one finger to the pool, the smooth black surface mirroring the ceiling above as if it were glass. And reflected in it, she could see a pale orb, hanging in the dark like smoke.

‘IN THE EMPIRE OF OLD ASHKAH, THEY KNEW ANAIS BY ANOTHER NAME.’

Mia looked at the glowing orb – the same she’d seen in the moment she slew Furian in Godsgrave Arena – and felt her shadow grow darker still.

‘The Moon,’ she realized.

Tric nodded. ‘HE WAS THE EATER OF FEAR. THE DAY IN THE DARKNESS. HE REFLECTED HIS FATHER’S LIGHT AND BRIGHTENED HIS MOTHER’S NIGHT. IN THE EMPIRE OF OLD ASHKAH, HE TAUGHT THE FIRST SORCERII THE ARTS ARCANE. A GOD OF MAGIK AND WISDOM AND HARMONY, WORSHIPPED ABOVE ALL OTHERS. NO SHADOW WITHOUT LIGHT, EVER DAY FOLLOWS NIGHT, BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE …’

‘There is grey …,’ Mia murmured.

‘HE WAS THE BALANCE BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAY. THE PRINCE OF DAWN AND DUSK. AND FEARING HIS GROWING POWER, THE EVERSEEING RESOLVED TO SLAY HIS ONLY SON.’

The stone reliefs began moving again as Tric spoke. Graven hands shifting to cover sightless eyes. Mouths widening in horror. The orb in the pool shifted, became a sharp, crescent shape, dripping blood. In the back of her mind, Mia swore she could hear other voices. Thousands of them, just beyond the edge of hearing.

And they were screaming.

‘AA STRUCK WHILE ANAIS SLEPT,’ Tric continued. ‘HE CUT OFF HIS SON’S HEAD AND HURLED HIS BODY FROM THE HEAVENS. ANAIS’S CORPSE PLUMMETED TO THE EARTH, TEARING THE LAND ASUNDER AND THROWING ALL THE WORLD INTO CHAOS. THE ASHKAHI EMPIRE IN THE EAST WAS COMPLETELY DESTROYED. AND WHERE HIS SON’S BODY LAY IN THE WEST, AA COMMANDED HIS FAITHFUL TO BUILD A TEMPLE TO HIS GLORY. THAT TEMPLE BECAME A CITY, AND THAT CITY BECAME THE NEW HEART OF HIS FAITH.’

‘The Ribs.’ Ash glanced at the gravebone blade at her waist. ‘The Spine.’

‘This whole place …’ Mia realized, looking around them.

Tric nodded. ‘A GOD’S GRAVE.’

Heart hammering, mouth dry, Mia pictured the illustration she’d found at the end of Cleo’s journal – a map of Itreya before the rise of the Republic. The bay of Godsgrave had been missing entirely, a peninsula filling the Sea of Silence where the Itreyan capital now stood. And in that spot, three words had been scribed in blood-red ink.

‘Here he fell …’ she whispered.

‘HERE HE FELL.’ Tric nodded. ‘BUT GODS DON’T DIE SO EASILY. AND THE MOTHER KEEPS ONLY WHAT SHE NEEDS. ANAIS’S SOUL WASN’T EXTINGUISHED.’

Tric drew a long, slow breath, as if before a deep plunge.

‘IT WAS SHATTERED.’

His bottomless eyes were fixed upon Mia’s.

‘SOME PIECES POOLED HERE, IN THE HOLLOWS BENEATH THIS CITY’S SKIN. THE PART OF HIM THAT RAGED. THAT HATED. THAT WISHED ONLY FOR IT ALL TO END, JUST AS HE HAD.’ The wraith glanced at Mister Kindly and Eclipse, now watching him with their not-eyes. ‘IN TIME, OTHER SHARDS GAINED A SEEMING OF THEIR OWN, CRAWLING FROM THE MIRE BENEATH HIS GRAVE. CUT OFF FROM WHAT THEY’D BEEN, AND KNOWING NOT WHAT THEY WERE, THEY SOUGHT OTHERS LIKE THEM. FEASTING ON FEAR AS ANAIS HAD ONCE DONE, AND TAKING WHATEVER SHAPES AND MANNERISMS THOSE THEY RODE FOUND COMFORT IN.’

‘Daemons,’ Mia said. ‘Passengers.’

Those pitch-black eyes returned to the girl’s. ‘AND LASTLY, THE LARGEST FRAGMENTS OF THE WHOLE, THE PARTS WHICH WERE STRONGEST, FOUND THEIR WAY …’

‘… People,’ Ash breathed.

‘Darkin,’ Mia said.

Tric nodded. ‘BUT AT THE HEART OF YOU – DAEMONS OR DARKIN – YOU ARE ALL THE SAME. SEARCHING FOR THE MISSING PIECES OF YOURSELF. SEEKING TO BECOME WHOLE AGAIN. THE SCATTERED PIECES OF A SHATTERED GOD.’

Eclipse scoffed. ‘… THIS IS MADNESS …’

‘… i mean to cause no one alarm, but i concur with the mongrel …’

‘LOOK AT YOUR SHADOW, MIA,’ Tric said. ‘WHAT DO YOU SEE?’

Mia looked to the darkness at her feet. It was still stretching out towards that pool of black blood, just as Jonnen’s was. But even with her passengers sitting on the shore across from her, it was still …

‘Dark enough for two,’ she said.

‘SO IT WAS WITH CLEO,’ Tric said. ‘SHE ALSO LEARNED THE TRUTH OF WHAT SHE WAS. CHOSEN BY THE MOTHER, SHE JOURNEYED ACROSS THE LANDS OF ITREYA, SEEKING TO UNITE THE SHATTERED PIECES OF ANAIS’S SOUL. SHE GATHERED A LEGION OF PASSENGERS TO HER SIDE. SEEKING OTHERS LIKE HER AND—’

‘Eating them,’ Mia said, recalling the journal.

‘TAKING THE SHARDS OF HIS ESSENCE INTO HERSELF.’

Mia frowned. ‘So the fragment that was inside Furian …’

‘IS NOW PART OF YOU. IN SLAYING HIM WITH YOUR OWN HAND, YOU’VE CLAIMED IT AS YOURS. MERGING TWO INTO A LARGER WHOLE. THE MANY WERE ONE. AND WILL BE AGAIN.’

‘But Lord Cassius died right in front of me. I didn’t feel any stronger.’

‘CASSIUS WASN’T SLAIN BY A DARKIN. THE FRAGMENT IN HIM WAS LOST FOREVER. EVENTUALLY, EVEN GODS CAN DIE.’

Mia’s pulse was thumping in her veins, her belly a roiling slick of ice. She could feel the malice emanating from that blackened pool, the fury in the air around her. She understood it now, at last. It was the same fury she’d reached out and touched during the truedark massacre, the night she’d first truly wielded the power within her. Tearing the Philosopher’s Stone to pieces. Storming the Basilica Grande and destroying the grand statue of Aa outside it. Embracing the black and bitter rage in this city’s bones.

It was the rage of a child, betrayed by the one who should have loved it most.

The rage of a son, by his father slain.

The deadboy’s bottomless eyes bored into her own.

‘Cleo’s journal … she spoke of a child inside her,’ Mia said.

‘… SHE WAS A LUNATIC, MIA …’ Eclipse growled.

‘This whole tale sounds like lunacy,’ she breathed.

‘NO,’ Tric replied. ‘IT’S—’

‘… destiny …?’ Mister Kindly scoffed.

Tric turned bottomless eyes on the shadowcat.

‘IF SHE HAS COURAGE ENOUGH TO SEIZE IT.’

‘… this is the darkest shade of nonsense …’

Eclipse concurred with a sneer.

‘… YOU HONESTLY WISH ME TO BELIEVE THIS IDIOT MOGGY IS A GOD …?’

‘ANAIS’S SOUL SHATTERED INTO HUNDREDS OF FRAGMENTS. YOU’RE NO MORE GODLIKE THAN A DROP OF WATER IS THE OCEAN. BUT YOU MUST FEEL YOU’RE ALL BOUND TO EACH OTHER? DON’T YOU SENSE YOU ARE … INCOMPLETE?’

Mia knew what the Hearthless boy was talking about. The sickness and hunger she’d always felt around Cassius, Furian, now Jonnen. She never felt as whole as when Mister Kindly and Eclipse walked in her shadow. And she felt stronger than ever since Furian had died at her hands.

But still, it seemed sheer madness – this talk of fragmented gods and shattered souls, of restoring the balance between light and dark.

‘YOU MUST MAKE WHOLE WHAT WAS BROKEN, MIA. YOU MUST RETURN MAGIK TO THE WORLD. RESTORE THE BALANCE BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAY, LIKE IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. LIKE IT WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE. ONE SUN. ONE NIGHT. ONE MOON.’

She motioned to the blackened pool. ‘If it’s pieces of him I’m supposed to seek, that seems a good place to start.’

‘NO,’ Tric said. ‘THIS IS ANAIS’S FURY. THIS IS HIS RAGE. THE PART OF HIM THAT HAS LAIN IN THE DARK AND FESTERED, THAT WANTS ONLY TO DESTROY. YOU MUST REMAKE THE WORLD, MIA. NOT UNDO IT. THIS IS YOUR PURPOSE.’

Mia’s eyes narrowed. ‘My purpose was avenging my familia. It was killing Remus, Duomo, and Scaeva. And I’ve done that, after living neck-deep in blood and shit for eight fucking years. No thanks to your precious Mother.’

‘Mia …’ Ashlinn murmured.

‘The Red Church captured Mercurio, Tric. Maw knows what they want with him, but he’s in their hands. They probably know he helped me murder Scaeva. I have to—’

‘Mia,’ Ashlinn said.

She turned to her lover, saw fear swimming in that beautiful blue.

‘What is it?’ Mia asked.

‘I have to tell you something,’ Ash said. ‘About Scaeva.’

‘So tell me?’

‘… You should sit down.’

‘Are you jesting?’ Mia scoffed. ‘Spit it out, Ashlinn.’

The Vaanian girl chewed her lip. Drew a deep and shivering breath.

‘He lives.’

Jonnen’s eyes grew wide, his little mouth hanging open. Mia felt her heart skip a beat, an awful dread turning her gut colder than the deadboy behind her.

‘What are you talking about?’ Mia hissed. ‘I put a gravebone blade right through his ribs. I cut his fucking heart in two!’

Ash shook her head. ‘He was a double, Mia. An actor, fleshcrafted by Weaver Marielle to look like Scaeva. The consul was in league with the Red Church, and they knew our plan to win the magni all along. They wanted you to kill Duomo. Scaeva’s going to use the cardinal’s public murder as an excuse to exercise permanent emergency powers, claim the title of imperator, become king of Itreya in all but name.’

Mia’s head was swimming. Heart racing. Skin filmed with icy sweat.

Could it be true?

Could he have seen her coming?

Could she have been so blind?

Her legs felt weak. Dizzy from exhaustion, loss of blood, Solis’s toxin still lingering in her veins. She glanced to Jonnen, saw the boy looking at her with triumph in his black eyes. She’d been so careful. So certain. She could remember the elation as her blade parted Scaeva’s chest, the maddening joy as his blood splashed across her chin and lips, warm and thick and lovely red.

‘O, Goddess …’

She blinked at Ashlinn, searching desperately for the lie, the ruse.

‘How do you know this?’

‘Scaeva told me. When they ambushed me in the chapel. And Mia … he told me something else besides.’ Ash swallowed thickly, her voice shaking. ‘But I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to give it voice, knowing what it will do to you.’

‘I thought it was finished …’ Mia could feel bitter tears brimming in her eyes. Too tired and hurt to push them back anymore. ‘Eight f-fucking years, and I … I actually let myself believe it was done.’

She sank to her knees on a sea of screaming faces, tempted just to start screaming along with them.

‘What could be worse than that?’

‘O, Goddess, forgive me …’

Ashlinn sank down on the stone beside her. Taking Mia’s hands in her own, she took a deep, trembling breath.

‘Mia …’

Ash shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks.

‘Mia … he’s your father.’

CHAPTER 6
IMPERATOR

Mia sat on a black shoreline, a war of three colours in her head.

The first was the red of blood. The red of rage. She felt it curl her hands to fists. Fill her to brimming, toe to crown. Spitting curses and fire and stomping about on those anguished stone faces. It was bliss to give in to it for a while, embracing the temper she was so notorious for. At least she knew where it came from now. Swimming in the air about her, the city above her, changing the architecture beneath her skin.

All her life.

The rage of a god laid low.

The second was cool steel grey. Suspicion, slipping into her belly like a knife, cold and hard. There was a moment where she prayed it was all a trick – manipulation from a man who’d always proved himself three steps ahead. But in her darkest depths, it all rang true. The way Scaeva had looked at her that turn in her mother’s apartments. That turn he’d stretched out his hand and taken her whole world away. The gleam in his eyes as he’d looked down at her and smiled, dark as bruises.

‘Would you like to know what keeps me warm at night, little one?’

And so fury killed suspicion. Drowned it beneath a scarlet flood.

But after suspicion’s cool grey had come sorrow. Black as storm clouds. Turning her curses to sobs and her fury to tears. She’d slumped down on that voiceless, howling shore and cried. Like a child. Like a fucking babe. Letting her grief, her horror, her anguish spill up out of her lips and down her cheeks until her eyes were red as blood and her throat aching and raw.

Darius Corvere. Justicus of the Luminatii. Leader of the Kingmaker Rebellion. The man who’d given her puzzles for Great Tithe gifts, who’d read her tales before bedtime, whose stubble had tickled her cheeks when he kissed her goodnight. The man who’d propped her little feet upon his own and whisked her about that shining ballroom.

‘I love you, Mia.’

‘I love you, too.’

‘Promise you’ll remember. No matter what comes.’

The man she’d adored, the man she’d grieved, the man she’d devoted the last eight years of her life to avenging. The man she’d called Father.

Nothing close.

Ashlinn sat behind her as she wept, gentle arms about her waist, forehead pressed cool and smooth against her back. Mister Kindly and Eclipse sat close by, watching silently. Jonnen looked at her with a newfound confusion glittering in those bottomless eyes. Black as crow’s feathers. Black as truedark.

Just like Scaeva’s.

Just like mine.

‘His wife can’t have children,’ Ashlinn murmured, her voice thick with grief. ‘Scaeva, I mean. I suppose that’s why he took Jonnen … afterwards …’

‘All good kings need sons,’ Mia whispered. ‘Daughters, not so much.’

‘I’m sorry, love.’ Ash took her hand, pressed Mia’s scabbed and bleeding knuckles to her lips. ‘Black Mother, I’m so sorry.’

Eclipse drifted closer, wrapping her translucent body around Mia’s waist and resting her head in the girl’s lap. Mister Kindly lay across her shoulders, entwined in her hair, tail curled protectively across her chest. Mia drew comfort from their smoky chill, the whisper-light feel of their bodies against hers, Ash’s arms around her. But her eyes were soon drawn back to that black pool before them, the copper stink of blood hanging heavy in the air. She looked down at her empty hands again, the passengers beside her, the shadow beneath her, darker than it had ever been.

The many were one.

And will be again?

She looked to the silent Hearthless boy standing before her. His black eyes were fixed on Ashlinn. On their fingers entwined. She remembered those eyes had been hazel once. That those fingers had touched her in places no one ever had.

His revelation still rang in her ears. The weight of the truth she’d sought all these years, now ill-fitting and crooked upon her shoulders. Part of her still found it impossible to believe – even with the memory of the truedark massacre singing in her head, the power and fury she’d wielded so effortlessly, shadows cutting like swords in her outstretched hands. She’d killed so many men, giving in to the rage that had sustained her through all the years and all the miles and all the sleepless nevernights.

It was creeping back into her now, slipping out towards her from that pool. Toxic. Narcotic. Smothering sorrow’s black beneath waves of familiar, comforting red.

If she was angry, she didn’t need to think.

If she was angry, she could simply act.

Hunt.

Stab.

Kill.

That bastard. The spider at the centre of this whole rotten fucking web. The man who’d sentenced her mother to die in the Philosopher’s Stone, who’d ordered her drowned, who’d used her to rid himself of his rivals, and at last, put himself within arm’s reach of his bloody throne. The man who’d manipulated her from afar all these years, pushing her, twisting her, turning her into …

She looked down at her trembling, open hands.

Into this.

So she gave in to the rage. Let it choke the grief inside her. And into the dark, she whispered, ‘If a killer is what he wants, a killer is what he’ll get.’

Ash blinked. ‘What?’

Mia stood with a wince. Stretched out her hand.

‘Give me the sword, Ash.’

Ashlinn looked down at the longblade at her waist. She’d recovered it from Mia’s chambers in the Godsgrave chapel. It was gravebone, sharp as sunslight, its hilt carved like a crow in flight. The sword had once belonged to Darius Corvere, taken from his study in Crow’s Nest by Marcus Remus. Mia had killed Remus in turn – cut his throat in a dusty shithole on the coast of Ashkah, and claimed the blade as her own.

Avenging her father, or so she thought.

‘I love you, Mia.’

‘I love you, too.’

‘Give it to me,’ Mia said.

‘Why?’ Ash asked.

‘Because it’s mine.’

‘Mia …’ Ashlinn rose to her feet, caution and care turning her voice to velvet. ‘Mia, whatever you’re thinking … you’re exhausted. You’re wounded. What Tric just told us … it can’t be easy to—’

‘Give me the fucking sword, Ashlinn!’ Mia shouted.

The shadows flared, the darkness ringing in her voice and turning it to hollow iron. The darkness twisted about her feet, mad patterns and shapes, strobing black. The red-amber eyes of the crow on the hilt twinkled in the ghostly light. The pool behind her rippled, as if kissed by the smallest stone.

Ashlinn went pale beneath her freckles. Mia saw she was actually trembling. But she still stood her ground. Gritted her teeth and curled her hands into fists to stop the shakes. Standing up to Mia like nobody else ever dared.

‘No,’ she replied.

Mia growled. ‘Ash, I’m warning you …’

‘Warn me all you like,’ Ash said, taking a deep breath. ‘I know you’re angry. I know you’re hurt. But you need to think.’ She waved at the dark behind and below Mia. ‘Away from this cursed pool. With the blood washed off your skin and a cigarillo in your hand and a nevernight’s sleep between you and all this shit.’

Mia scowled, but the iron in her stare wavered.

‘Give me my sword, Ashlinn.’

The girl reached out and ran one gentle hand down the cruel scar on Mia’s cheek. Along the bow of her lips. The look in her eyes melted Mia’s heart.

‘I love you, Mia,’ Ash said. ‘Even the part of you that frightens me. But you’ve been hurt enough for one turn. I’ll not see you hurt again.’

Tears welled in Mia’s eyes. Black rising from beneath the red. The walls loomed about her, ready to come crashing down. Her hands fluttered at her sides as if she were desperate for an embrace, but too torn to beg for one. With a murmur of pity, a glance to the Hearthless boy watching them, Ashlinn stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Mia. She kissed her brow, pulled her in tight, Mia sinking into her arms.

‘I love you,’ Ash whispered.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mia breathed into Ashlinn’s hair, hands roaming her back.

‘It’s all right.’

‘No.’ Mia’s hands moved down over Ashlinn’s hips, her fingers brushing the longsword’s hilt. And with a flourish, Mia drew the blade from the scabbard and stepped back out of Ash’s reach. ‘It isn’t.’

‘You …’ Ashlinn’s eyes were wide, mouth open. ‘You … fucking …’

‘Bitch?’

Mia flipped the sword in her hand, wiping her tears away on her grubby sleeve.

‘Aye,’ she nodded. ‘But I’m a clever fucking bitch.’

Mia turned to Tric, sniffed hard, and spat.

‘How do I get out of here?’

‘YOU MUST LISTEN—’

‘I must nothing,’ Mia snapped. ‘Julius Scaeva is in Godsgrave, do you understand that? The real Julius Scaeva. A hundred thousand people saw him cut down by an assassin’s blade. He needs to show himself in front of the mob to assure them all is well before the city goes up in flames. And his doppelgänger is dead. So are you going to show me the way out of this fucking hole, or leave me to wander in the dark playing guess-a-game? Because one way or another, I’m going back up to the ’Grave.’

‘I remember the path we walked here on,’ came a small voice.

Mia looked to her brother, standing on the black shoreline in his grubby purple robes. The boy was watching her with his big dark eyes, obviously not quite sure what to make of her anymore. He’d not wanted to believe they were siblings, that was plain enough. But if what Ash said about his father still being alive was true, then it all might be true. And when Mia had been the one who killed his da, it was simple – she was an enemy, hated and feared. But now Jonnen knew his father still lived, how did he feel about the sister he’d never known?

‘You do?’ Mia asked.

The boy nodded. ‘I’ve a memory sharp as swords. All my tutors say.’

Mia held out her hand to her brother. ‘Come, then.’

The boy looked up at her, suspicion and hunger swimming in his eyes. But ever so slowly, he took her hand. Mister Kindly sat on Mia’s shoulders, purring softly as Eclipse prowled about her ankles. She lifted the gravebone lantern and took a step into the darkness, but Tric moved to stand in front of her. Looming over her like some beautiful bloodless wraith from a fireside tale.

She could feel the chill radiating off his body, where once she’d felt a warmth that made her ache. Her eyes trailed up the alabaster line of his throat, the cut of his jaw, the soft crease of the dimple at his cheek. Pale as milk. Pale as death.

‘You said the Mother sent you to be my guide,’ Mia said. ‘Show me the way.’

‘THIS ISN’T YOUR PATH, MIA.’ Tric spoke softly. ‘ASHLINN SPEAKS TRUTH. YOU’RE WOUNDED. ANGRY. YOU NEED SLEEP AND A DECENT MEAL AND A MOMENT TO BREATHE.’

‘Tric,’ Mia said. ‘Do you remember that time we were acolytes and you talked me out of doing something I desperately wanted by appealing to my sensible side?’

The boy tilted his head.

‘… NO.’

‘Me either,’ Mia replied. ‘Now show me the way. Or get the fuck out of it.’

The boy glanced at Ashlinn. The dark around them rang with the song of murder. The pool rippling in quiet fury. Tric looked down into Mia’s eyes. Bottomless black. Utterly unreadable. But finally, he heaved a frosty sigh.

‘FOLLOW ME.’

‘To the forum!’

The criers were on every bridge, the bellboys on every cobbled street. The shout rang up and down the thoroughfares and through the taverna, over the canals from the Nethers to the Arms and back again. All of Godsgrave ringing.

‘The forum!’

Chaos had tried to take root in their time beneath the city, and Mia could smell blood and smoke in the air. But as they surfaced from the tunnels beneath Godsgrave’s necropolis, she could see all-out anarchy hadn’t broken loose quite yet. Luminatii and soldiers patrolled the streets, shoving folks with shield and truncheon. Gatherings of more than a dozen were swiftly broken up, along with the noses of anyone who protested too vigorously. The legion seemed to have been briefed of trouble ahead of time – almost as if the consul had anticipated chaos after the end of the games.

Always a step ahead, bastard …

And now the announcement was rippling through the streets. Floating up over the balconies and terracotta roofs and ringing across the canals. Shushing rumour and quieting unrest and promising the answers all in the city sought.

Was the cardinal really slain? The consul, too?

The saviour of the Republic, laid low by the blade of a mere slave?

Mia had stolen a cloak from some washwoman’s line, another strip of cloth to wrap around the scar and slave brand on her face. They made their way through the Sword Arm and down towards the Heart, Ashlinn to her left, Tric to her right, Jonnen in her arms. The boy’s weight made her muscles ache, her spine groan in protest. But even if she was no longer the assassin who killed his father, she was still the abductor claiming to be his long-lost sister, and Mia didn’t trust him not to make a break for it if given half the chance. Even if she didn’t fear the clever little shit doing a runner, she was still loath to let him go. She couldn’t lose him now.

Not after all this.

With both Eclipse and Mister Kindly riding in his shadow, the boy seemed a little more sedate. Watching her with clouded eyes as they slipped through the Godsgrave streets, over the wending cobbles and through the grand piazzas of the marrowborn district, closer, ever closer to the forum. The crowd around them was alight with fear, curiosity, violence waiting in the wings. Mia saw the flash of hidden blades. The glint of bared teeth. The potential for ruin, just a breath and a wrong word away.

Every grudge. Every slave, every unhappy pleb, every malcontent with a bone to pick. She saw how fragile it all was – this so-called ‘civilization’. The rage boiling at the heart of this place. Godsgrave felt like a barrel full of wyrdglass, wrapped in oil-soaked rags. Waiting for the spark that would send it all up in flames.

In the forum, a few hundred feet from the first Rib, they found the streets were simply too crowded to get any closer. The thoroughfares and bridges were packed with folk of every kind, young and old, rich and poor, Itreyan, Liisian, Vaanian, Dweymeri. Instead of trying to push on, Mia and her comrades forced their way to the base of the mighty statue of the Everseeing in the forum’s heart.

The effigy towered above the mob, fifty feet high, carved of solid marble. Three arkemical globes representing the three suns were held in one of Aa’s outstretched hands. In his other, he held out a mighty sword. Mia had destroyed this very statue the truedark she turned fourteen, but Scaeva had ordered it rebuilt, paying the fee from his own coffers. One more pious gesture to buy the mob’s adoration.

With Jonnen in Tric’s arms, the quartet climbed the statue, finding a place to rest in the great folds of the Everseeing’s robes. Peering out over the mob below.

‘Black Goddess, look at them all,’ Ash breathed beside her.

Mia could only stare. The crowd she’d fought in front of at the Venatus Magni had been impressive, but it seemed every citizen of Godsgrave had been ushered here for the announcement. The Ribs rose above them, sixteen gravebone arches, gleaming white and towering high into the sky. Soldiers and Luminatii shoved their way through the mob, cracking skulls and holding order by the throat. Desperation and fear hung in the air like blood-stink in a butchery. At least they had their perch to themselves – though he seemed to be struggling in the truelight as much as Mia, Tric’s chill presence dissuaded other folk from climbing too close.

Mia narrowed her eyes in the truelight glare. The journey up from beneath the city had been long, silent, a hundred twists and turns. She had no idea of how long they’d trekked – time had seemed meaningless in the hollow dark below the city’s skin. But now she was away from it, she longed for it again. That black pool. Those silent, wailing faces. She missed it, like she missed Mister Kindly and Eclipse when they were apart. Missed it like a part of herself had been torn away.

The many were one.

She pushed the thought aside. Focused on the rage. Her knuckles white on the hilt of her gravebone sword. None of it, the Moon, Niah, Cleo, Mercurio, Ashlinn, Tric, none of it fucking mattered.

Not until that bastard’s dead.

Trumpets sounded, ringing crisp and clear in the truelight glare. The suns above were living things, beating upon her shoulders, grinding her beneath their light like a worm under a boot. The shadows in the folds of the Everseeing’s robes were her only respite, and Mia clung to them like a child to its mother’s skirts. But she stood taller as the fanfare sounded, squinting past the great open ring of the forum and the circle of mighty pillars crowned with statues of the Senate’s finest. The Senate House itself stood to the west, all fluted columns and polished bone. The first Rib loomed to the south, the balcony of the consul’s palazzo crowded with Luminatii in gravebone plate and senators in green laurel wreaths and rippling white robes trimmed in purple.

The trumpets rang long and loud, stilling the shouts, the whispers, the uncertainty brewing in the City of Bridges and Bones. Truth told, Mia had never truly considered the consequences of her scheme in the magni far beyond seeing Duomo and Scaeva dead. But with rumour of the consul’s death running rife, all seemed on the verge of calamity.

What would happen to this place if the consul truly fell?

What truly would become of this city, this Republic, if she cut off its head? Would it simply thrash and roil for a time, then grow another? Or, like a god laid low by his father’s hand, shatter into a thousand pieces?

‘Merciful Aa!’ came a cry from the street below. ‘Look!’

A shout from a rooftop behind. ‘Four Daughters, is it him?’

Mia felt her heart drop and thump inside her chest. Squinting in the glare towards the balcony of the consul’s apartments as the Luminatii and senators stepped aside.

O, Goddess.

O, merciful Black Mother.

His purple robe was still drenched with blood, his golden laurel missing. A bandage was wrapped around his throat and shoulder, soaked with red. His face was pale, his salt-and-pepper hair damp with sweat. But there could be no mistaking the man as he stepped forward and raised his hand like a shepherd before the sheep. Three fingers outstretched in the sign of Aa.

‘Father,’ Jonnen said.

Mia glared at her brother, wondering if he’d be troublesome enough to shout for help – but he seemed afeared enough of the Hearthless boy holding him to keep quiet for now. The crowd, however, were overcome with a wave of jubilance, a deafening, giddy roar rippling from those near enough to see with their own two eyes, out, out into the forum. Folk farther back began shouting, demanding the truth, to see, shoving and brawling. Soldiers stepped in, truncheons at the ready. The streets swayed and rolled, folk shoving and spitting and pushing each other off bridges and into the canals below, chaos budding higher, building upw—

‘My people!’

The cry rang through horns scattered about the forum, amplified and echoing on the walls of the Senate House, the gravebone of the Spine. Like some kind of magik, it brought stillness to the chaos. Balance to the edge of the knife.

Though he was too far away for Mia to really see his expression, Julius Scaeva’s voice was hoarse with pain. She could see Scaeva’s wife, Liviana, by his side, her gown red as bloodstains, her throat glittering with gold. Mia looked down to Jonnen beside her, saw his eyes fixed on the woman who’d claimed to be his mother.

The boy glanced up at Mia. Looked away again just as swift.

Scaeva drew a deep breath before continuing.

‘My people!’ he repeated. ‘My countrymen! My friends!’

Silence fell in the City of Bridges and Bones. The air was still enough to hear the whispers of the distant sea, the gentle prayer of the wind. Mia had known the love of the crowd in the arena, sure and true. She’d brought them to their feet, roaring in adoration, made them thrill and cry and sing her name like a hymn to heaven. But never once in her time on the sands had she held them in thrall like this.

They called Julius Scaeva ‘Senatum Populiis’ – the People’s Senator. The Saviour of the Republic. And though it sickened her to acknowledge, she marvelled to see him still the entire city like millpond water with a mere handful of words.

‘I have heard whispers!’ Scaeva called. ‘Whispers that your Republic is beheaded! That your consul is slain! That Julius Scaeva is fallen! I have heard these whispers, and in turn, I shout my defiance before you all!’ He slammed one bloody fist down on the balustrade. ‘Here I stand! And by God, here I stay!’

A roar. Thunderous and joyous, spreading like wildfire through the crowd. Mia could see folk below her embracing, cheeks wet with jubilant tears. Her stomach turned, her lips curled, her grip on her sword so tight her hand was shaking.

After a suitable time, Scaeva held up his hand for silence, and the hush fell like an anvil once more. He drew a deep breath, then coughed, once, twice. Hand going to his blood-soaked shoulder, he swayed on his feet before the mekwerk horn. Soldiers and senators stepped forward to aid the consul lest he fall. Dismay rippled through the mob. But with a shake of his head, Scaeva pushed his well-meaning helpers aside and stood tall again, despite his ‘wounds’. Brave and staunch and O, so very strong.

The crowd lost their collective mind. Rapture and bliss swept through them in a flood. Even as her mouth soured, Mia had to admire the theatre of it. The way this snake turned every snag and stumble to bitterest advantage.

‘We are wounded!’ he cried. ‘There is no doubt. And though it pains me greatly, I speak not of the knife blow I bear, no. I speak of the blow dealt to us all! Our counsel, our conscience, our friend … nay, our brother, is taken from us.’

Scaeva bowed his head. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with grief.

‘My people, it cleaves my heart to bring you tidings ill as these.’ The consul steadied himself against the balustrade, swallowed as if overcome with sorrow. ‘But I must confirm that Francesco Duomo, grand cardinal of Aa’s ministry, and the Everseeing’s chosen on this blessed earth … is slain.’

Dismayed cries rang through the forum. Anguished wails and gnashing teeth. Scaeva slowly held up his hand, like a maestro before an orchestra.

‘I grieve the loss of my friend. Truly. Long were the nevernights I sat in his radiance, and I shall carry the heavenly wisdom he gifted me for the rest of my years.’ Scaeva hung his head, heaved a sigh. ‘But long have I warned that the enemies of our great Republic stood closer than my brothers in the Senate would believe! Long have I warned the Kingmaker’s legacy still festers in our Republic’s heart! And yet not even I dared imagine that on this most holy feast, in the greatest city the world has known, the paragon of the Everseeing’s faith might be cut down by an assassin’s blade? In sight of us all? Before the three unblinking eyes of Aa himself? What madness is this?’

He rent his purple robe and howled at the sky.

‘What madness is this?’

The crowd roared again, dismay to rage and back again. Mia watched the emotion roll up and down like waves on a storm-wracked beach, Scaeva wringing them for every drop.

The consul spoke again once the bedlam had subsided.

‘As you know, my friends, to safeguard the security of the Republic, it was my intention to stand for a fourth term as consul in the truedark elections. But in the face of this assault upon our faith, our freedom, our familia, I have no other choice. As of this moment, by the emergency provisions of the Itreyan constitution, and in the face of the undeniable threat to our glorious Republic, I, Julius Scaeva, do hereby claim title of imperator and all powers …’

Scaeva’s voice was momentarily drowned out by the volume of the mob. Every man, woman, and child was cheering. Soldiers. Holy men. Bakers and butchers, sweetgirls and slaves, Black Goddess, even the fucking senators up there on that awful little stage. The constitution of the Republic was being torn up in front of them. Their voices being reduced to a pale echo in an empty chamber. And still, all of them,

Every

Single

One

They didn’t cry.

They didn’t rage.

They didn’t fight.

They fucking cheered.

When a babe is frightened, when the world goes wrong, who does it cry for? Who seems the only one who can make it right again?

Mia shook her head.

Father …

Scaeva held up his hand, but it seemed even the maestro couldn’t calm the applause now. The people stomped their feet in time, chanted his name like a prayer. Mia stood, bathed in the thunder of it, sick to her bones. Ashlinn reached down, squeezed her hand. Glancing to the deadboy beside her, Mia wasn’t certain if she should squeeze it back.

It seemed an age before the mob stilled enough for Scaeva to speak again.

‘Know I do not take this responsibility lightly,’ he finally shouted. ‘From now until truedark, when I am certain our friends in the Senate will ratify my new position, my people, I will be your shield. I will be your sword. I will be the stone upon which we may rebuild our peace, reclaim that which was taken from us, and reforge our Republic so that it shall be stronger, greater, and more glorious than ever it was before!’

Scaeva managed a smile at the elated response, though he seemed now to be wilting. His wife whispered in his ear and he pawed his bloody shoulder, nodded slow. A centurion of the Luminatii stepped forward, began to usher him and his wife away under guard. But with one final show of strength, Scaeva turned back to the mob.

‘Hear me now!’

A hush fell at his cry, deep and still as the Abyss itself.

‘Hear me!’ he called. ‘And know it true! For I speak to you now. You.’

Mia swallowed hard, her jaw clenched and aching.

‘Wherever you may be, whatever shadow has fallen over your heart, whatever darkness you may find yourself in …’

Mia noted the emphasis on ‘shadow’ and ‘darkness’. The fervour in Scaeva’s voice. And though they stood hundreds of feet apart, with a hundred thousand or more between them, for a second, she felt as if they were the only two people in the world.

‘I am your father,’ Scaeva declared. ‘I always have been.’

He held out his hand as the crowd raised theirs.

‘And together? Nothing can stop us.’

CHAPTER 7
BE

The flash of a gravebone sword.

A bubbling gasp.

A spatter of red.

Another guard sank to his knees and Mia

Stepped

across

the hallway

to the second man, his eyes going wide as he saw his comrade fall. Her gravebone sword cut through muscle and bone like mist. His muscles slackened, his bladder loosed, piss and blood pooling on the polished stone floor as he sank to his knees and from there, to his end.

Mia dragged the bodies to an antechamber and crouched in the shadows, curtains of long dark hair draped about her face. Listening for footfalls. The forum outside was still awash with sound, people uncertain whether to celebrate Scaeva’s speech or mourn their slain cardinal. Godsgrave was in the grip of a guilty elation, breathing easier after salvation had been snatched from calamity. Their father had defied death. Escaped the assassin’s blade.

Who could now deny he was the chosen of Aa? Who better to claim the title of imperator and lead the Republic through the dangers it now faced?

Mia stole through the gravebone halls, silent and swift. She Stepped between the shadows as easily as another girl might have skipped from one puddle to another in the falling rain. It was a gift she’d practised for years; though it seemed much simpler since Furian had died by her hand. She recalled her brother using the shadows to blind her in the necropolis, musing idly if she might learn to do the same. She wondered how much truth lay in Tric’s tale of splinters of shattered god inside her. What other gifts she might discover inside herself, if she embraced them and what she was.

The walls about her were hung with beautiful tapestries, lined with statues of solid marble, lit by chandeliers of singing Dweymeri crystal. She could hear music somewhere distant – strings and a harpsichord, a touch of sombreness in the shadow of the cardinal’s death. The gravebone longblade in her hand was a comforting weight, the stink of blood in her nostrils a sweet perfume, the wolf made of shadows a soothing growl in her ear.

‘… TWO MORE AHEAD …’

They fell as the last two had done, the shadows rippling, the girl coalescing out of nothingness, as if coming into focus before their wondering eyes. The men were Luminatii, gravebone armour and blood-red cloaks and feathered plumes upon their heads. The helms did wonders to smother what little sound they made as they died, and their cloaks a fine job of mopping up the mess afterwards.

Her heart was hammering despite the daemon in her shadow. Her thoughts drifting to Ashlinn, Tric, Jonnen. She’d asked the former to guard the latter, watch him as if her life depended on it. ‘I’m not a fucking nursemaid,’ had come the protest, and there was more waiting in the wings. But Mia’s kiss had quickly silenced them all.

‘Please,’ was all she’d said. ‘For me.’

And that had been enough for now.

How much longer, she wasn’t entirely sure.

‘I’LL BE OF NO USE IN THIS,’ Tric had told her. ‘THE LIGHT IS TOO BRIGHT.’

‘You made short work of those soldiers in the necropolis,’ she’d pointed out. ‘Truelight or no.’

‘THE WALLS BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE MOTHER’S REALM ARE THINNER IN THE HOUSES OF THE DEAD. AND IT’S THROUGH NIAH’S WILL I WALK THIS EARTH, NO OTHER’S. I’LL GROW STRONGER THE NEARER WE DRAW TO TRUEDARK. BUT HERE AND NOW …’

He’d looked about them, shaken his head.

‘BESIDES, THIS IS A FOOLISH PLAN, PALE DAUGHTER.’

She’d wanted to give him a quip in reply, but hearing him call her by that name had made her chest ache instead. She’d looked at him, black hands hidden in his sleeves, black eyes hidden beneath his hood. His beautiful alabaster face, framed all in darkness. Wondering what might have been, then choking those wonderings dead.

‘Please don’t do this,’ Ash had begged.

‘I have to,’ she’d replied. ‘He almost never makes public appearances anymore. That’s why we struck at him during the magni, remember? I have to take him now before he goes to ground again.’

‘You’re presuming that was him at all,’ Ash had protested. ‘Scaeva could have a dozen doubles for all we know. He’s been in league with the Red Church for years. Who’s to say he’s still in the city? Or if he is, who’s to say he’s not baiting you?’

‘He probably is,’ Mia said.

‘Then what’s to stop him from killing you?’ Ash demanded.

‘Solis and Hush both used blades poisoned with Rictus. They want me alive.’ Mia glanced at her brother. ‘Because I have something he wants, too.’

‘Mia, please …’

‘Mister Kindly, stay here with Jonnen. Keep him calm.’

‘… o, joyousness …’

‘Eclipse, with me.’

‘… AS IT PLEASE YOU …’

‘YOU MUST LET THE PAST DIE, MIA,’ Tric warned.

She’d looked him in the eye then. Her voice hard and cold.

‘Sometimes the past won’t just die. Sometimes you have to kill it.’

And she was gone.

Slipping through the forum until it grew too crowded, the soldiers too thick. Then on beneath her mantle of shadows, the world blurred shapeless, the suns blazing overhead as Eclipse guided her steps. She moved slow as she needed, quick as she dared, into the looming shadow of the first Rib. Over the wrought-iron fence, past the dozens of Luminatii posted around a heavy set of polished gravebone doors, into the consul’s private apartments beyond. She had vague recollections of this place from the ball she’d attended as a child, whisked around that glittering ballroom on her father’s …

… no, not her father.

O, Mother, how could you?

She stalked the shadows like a wolf on the scent of fresh blood, Eclipse scouting ahead, just a black shape on the walls. Dodging slaves and serving staff and soldiers, only a breeze on the backs of their necks, a shiver down their spines as she passed them over. All of Mercurio’s and Mouser’s lessons ringing in her head, her muscles taut, her blade poised, not a single movement wasted, not a whisper to her steps. Her old teacher would have swelled with pride to see her. All of it, the lectures, the practice, the pain – she could feel all of it perfectly distilled in her veins. Every choice she’d made had brought her to this moment. Every road she’d walked had led her inexorably here. Where it was always going to end.

Eclipse’s whispers finally led them to a grand study. A vast oaken desk was set at the room’s far end, bookshelves lining the wall, overflowing with tomes and scrolls. The floor was carved with a shallow relief and stained by some work of arkemy – a rumoured hobby of Scaeva’s, and one he apparently excelled at. It was a great map of the entire Republic, from the Sea of Silence to the Sea of Stars.

Mia’s heart was pounding thumpathump against her ribs as she tossed aside her shadow mantle. Hair stuck to the sweat and dried blood on her skin. Muscles aching, wounds burning, adrenaline and rage battling exhaustion and sorrow.

And there, near the balcony, he stood.

Staring out into the dazzling sunslight as if nothing in the world were amiss.

He was just a silhouette against the glare as she stole across the room towards him, her mouth dry as dirt, her grip on her sword damp with sweat. Despite the passenger in her shadow, she’d feared he might’ve already been gone, that Ashlinn’s words might’ve proved true, that the man who spoke to the adoring mob might’ve been just another actor wearing his face.

But as soon as she drew close, she knew.

A cool sickness in the pit of her belly. A slow horror that gave way to a sinking feeling of inevitability. The final pieces in the riddle of her life, who she was, what she was, why she was, at last clicking into place.

That feeling …

That O, so familiar feeling.

Mister Kindly materialized on the floor of the Philosopher’s Stone beside her, his whisper cutting in the gloom. The dona Corvere took one look at the shadowcat and hissed like she’d been burned. Shrinking back from the bars of her cell, into the far corner, teeth bared in a snarl.

‘He’s in you,’ the dona had whispered. ‘O, Daughters, he’s in you.’

‘Hello, Mia,’ Scaeva said.

He didn’t turn to look at her. Eyes still fixed on the sunslight outside. He’d changed from his torn and bloodied costume into a long toga of pristine white. Shadow on the wall. Fingers entwined behind his back. Defenceless.

But not alone.

She saw his shadow move. Shivering as the sickness and hunger inside her swelled to bursting. And from the smudge of darkness across the study wall – dark enough for two – Mia heard a faint and deadly hiss.

A ribbon of blackness uncurled from under the imperator’s feet. Slithering across the floor and rising up, thin as paper, licking the air with its not-tongue.

A serpent made of shadows.

‘… She has your eyes, Julius …’ it said.

The rage flared then, bright as those three suns in the cursed heavens outside. The blood in her veins, the blood that they shared, set to boiling. She didn’t care in that moment, not about any of it. Mercurio or Jonnen. Ashlinn or Tric. The Red Church and the Black Mother and the poor, broken Moon. She’d have opened her wrists for the chance to drown him in her blood right then. She’d have smashed herself to pieces just to cut his throat upon the shards.

She didn’t realize she was running until she was almost upon him, her blade raised high, her lips peeled back, eyes narrowed.

The serpent hissed warning.

Pulse rushing in her ears.

And, turning towards her, Julius Scaeva held up his hand.

A flash of light. A stab of pain. A blinding flare like a punch to her face, sending her sprawling backwards, yowling like a scalded cat. A golden chain hung between Scaeva’s fingers, and at the end of it dangled three brilliant suns – platinum, rose, and yellow gold. The Trinity of Aa, repeated on every chapel spire and church window from here to Ashkah. But this one had been blessed by a servant of true faith.

Eclipse whimpered, the serpent at Scaeva’s feet twisted and writhed in agony. Mia was on her back, fingernails clawing the graven floor as Scaeva raised the sigil into the few feet and thousand miles between them. The light was white fire and rusty blades, lancing into the cool dark behind her eyes. Her belly roiled and her vision burned and her mouth filled with bile, that blinding, blistering, burning light reducing her to a ball of helpless agony.

‘It’s g-good to see you, daughter,’ Scaeva said.

How?

Beyond the pain, she could still feel it – the same longing she’d felt in the presence of every other like her. Scaeva was darkin, she was sure of it. But that Trinity, Black Mother, those three spheres of incandescent flame …

‘H-How?’ she managed.

‘How d-do I … endure it?’

Julius Scaeva’s voice trembled as he spoke, and through her own tears, Mia could see them welling in his eyes also. But still, the imperator of the Itreyan Republic held those awful suns up between them. His hand was shaking. His passenger coiling into knots of agony at his feet. Faint wisps of smoke snaked from between his fingers.

But still, he held on.

‘The same way I just laid c-claim to a throne.’ Scaeva twisted the Trinity this way and that, veins standing taut in his neck, hissing through gritted teeth. ‘A matter of will, daughter m-mine. To claim true power, you need not soldiers … n-nor senators, nor servants of the holy. All you need is the will to do what others will n-not.’

The nausea swelled in her throat, the pain of the Everseeing’s flame almost blinding. But still, Mia managed to reply, her voice dripping hatred.

‘I’m n-not … your f-fucking daughter.’

Scaeva tilted his head, looked at her with something close to pity.

‘O, Mia …’

He knelt in front of her, bringing the Trinity ever closer. Mia scrambled farther away, scuttling backwards on arse and elbows like some crippled crab. Pressed back against the wall, she found herself gasping for breath, tears streaming unchecked down her scarred cheeks, hand raised against the conflagration of those three blessed circles. She could see tendons corded in Scaeva’s arm, sweat glistening on his shaking fist, dripping onto the polished gravebone floor between them.

But still, he held on.

‘M-May I put this away?’ he asked. ‘Do you think … we have it in us to s-speak like civilized people? For a … m-moment at least?’

Fire inside her skull. Hatred like acid in her veins. But ever so slowly, pain-wracked and sickened, Mia nodded.

Scaeva stood at once, slipped the Trinity back out of sight in his robes. The relief was immediate, dizzying, a sob slipping up and over her lips. As Mia struggled to catch her breath, Scaeva walked away across the room, leather sandals whispering on the vast map carved into the floor. With shaking hands, he filled a small glass of water from a singing crystal carafe.

‘May I offer you a drink?’ he asked, his voice once more smooth and sweet as toffee. ‘Goldwine is your favourite poison, neh?’

Mia said nothing, glaring at Scaeva as her pulse slowed to a gallop. Watching him like a bloodhawk. Mercurio had always taught her to study her prey. And though she’d dreamed about Julius Scaeva almost every nevernight for the past eight years, this was the first time she’d seen him up close since she was ten.

The imperator was handsome, she had to admit – almost painfully so. Black curls dusted with the faintest hints of grey at his temples. Shoulders broad, bronze skin contrasting sharply with the snow-white of his robes. A wisdom earned from decades in the halls of power glittering in dark eyes.

Mercurio had taught her to sum folk up in a blinking, and Mia had ever been an apt pupil. But looking Scaeva over – this man who’d bent the Itreyan Senate to his will, who’d carved himself a kingdom in a Republic that murdered its kings centuries ago – she found herself blank. Almost all about him beyond the superficial was hidden. He was a killer. A cold-blooded bastard. But beyond that … he was an enigma.

With the Trinity gone, Eclipse retreated from the shelter of Mia’s shadow, rippling with indignity. Scaeva’s own passenger slipped free and slithered across the floor, watching the not-wolf with something close to hunger. Mia could see the imperator’s shadow was moving on the wall, its robes rippling, its hands reaching out towards hers, gentle as lambs.

‘Well.’ Scaeva turned to face her, sipping from his crystal glass. ‘Reunited at last. This is all rather exciting, neh?’

‘Not as exciting as it’s g-going to be,’ she said, chest still heaving.

‘It is good to see you, Mia. You’ve grown into quite an astonishing young lady.’

‘Go fuck yourself, you unspeakable cunt.’

Scaeva smiled faintly. ‘An astonishing young woman, then.’

He poured a splash of top-shelf goldwine into a singing crystal tumbler. Padding softly towards her, he placed the glass on the floor a good safe distance away, then retired to the other side of the study. She saw a square table there, low to the ground, flanked by two divan lounges. A chessboard was embossed into the table’s surface, a game in full swing. Even at a glance she could tell the white side was winning.

‘Do you play?’ Scaeva asked, eyebrow raised towards her. ‘My opponent was our good friend Cardinal Duomo. We sent runners back and forth with our moves – he didn’t trust me enough to meet face-to-face in the end.’ The imperator motioned to the board, the golden rings on his fingers glinting. ‘He was close to winning this one. Poor Francesco was always better at chess than the true game.’

Scaeva chuckled to himself, which served only to inflame the rage in Mia’s breast. She had no knives, nothing to throw, but she still clutched her gravebone sword. Her mind was awash with all the ways she might bury it in his chest. Unperturbed, Scaeva took a seat near the chessboard, resting his glass upon the divan’s crushed-velvet arm. Reaching into his robe, he pulled out a familiar gravebone dagger, a crow carved on the hilt – the dagger she’d murdered his double with just hours before. It was still bloodstained, its amber eyes sparkling as he placed it upon the table.

‘What can I do for you, Mia?’

‘You can die for me,’ she replied.

‘You still wish me dead?’ The imperator raised one dark eyebrow. ‘What in the Everseeing’s name for?’

‘Is this a jest?’ she scoffed. ‘You killed my father!’

Scaeva looked at her with pity. ‘My love, Darius Corvere was—’

‘He raised me!’ she snapped. ‘I may not have been daughter of his blood, but he loved me all the same! And you murdered him!’

‘Of course I did.’ Scaeva frowned. ‘He tried to destroy the Republic.’

‘You hypocritical shitstain, what the ’byss did you just do in the forum?’

‘I succeeded at destroying the Republic.’

Scaeva looked her in the eye with genuine amusement.

‘Mia, if Darius Corvere’s rebellion had triumphed, his beloved General Antonius would now be king of Itreya. The Senate House would be a ruin and the constitution in ashes. And I don’t blame the man for trying. Darius gave his best. The only difference between he and I is that his best wasn’t good enough to win the game.’

Mia hauled herself to her feet, fingernails cutting into her palms. On the wall, her shadow seethed and flared, reaching towards Scaeva’s, hands twisting to claws.

‘This isn’t a game, bastard.’

‘Of course it is,’ Scaeva scowled, glancing at the chessboard. ‘And the rules are simple: win the crown or lose your head. Darius understood the price of failure full well, and still he chose to play. So please, before you speak again of how much he loved you, consider he was willing to risk your life for the sake of his lover’s throne.’

‘He was a good man,’ she said. ‘He did what he thought was right.’

‘As do I. As do most men, all things considered. But where Darius was set to take Antonius’s throne by marching an army on his own capital, I took it with simple words …’ He gave a small shrug. ‘… Well, perhaps a murder or three. But you cannot seriously consider me a tyrant and Darius Corvere a paragon when he was prepared to slaughter thousands and I killed only a handful. I raised you better than that.’

Mia’s breath was trembling in her chest.

‘You never raised me! You ordered me drowned in a fucking canal!’

‘And witness what you became.’ Scaeva breathed the words like a spell, looking her over with a kind of wonder. ‘When last we met, you were a snot-nosed marrowborn whelp. You had servants and pretty dresses and all you ever wanted handed to you on silver platters. Have you considered for a moment what your life would have been without me?’

Scaeva picked up the black king, moved it across the board, and knocked the white king on its side.

‘Think on it a moment, Mia,’ he said. ‘Pretend that Antonius claimed his throne. That Darius stood at his right hand. And watered with the blood of a thousand innocents, all their dreams flowered to reality instead of turning to ashes on the wind.’

Scaeva picked up a black pawn, held it out upon his palm.

‘What would have become of you?’

The imperator let the question hang unanswered a moment. A maestro before the crescendo.

‘You’d have been married off to some marrowborn fool for the sake of political alliance,’ he finally said. ‘Squeezing out pups, tending the home fires, and feeling the fire inside your own breast slowly die. Naught but a cow in a silken dress.’ He held the pawn up between his fingers, turned it this way and that. ‘Because of me, you are solid steel. A blade sharp enough to cut the sunslight in six. And still you find it within yourself to hate me.’

Scaeva gave a soft, bitter chuckle as he looked her in the eye.

‘All you are? All you have become? I gave you. Mine is the seed that planted you. Mine are the hands that forged you. Mine is the blood that flows, cold as ice and black as pitch, in those veins of yours.’

He leaned back on the divan, black eyes burning into her own.

‘In every possible sense, you are my daughter.’

Julius Scaeva extended his hand, gold glinting upon his fingers. Upon the wall, his shadow did the same.

‘Join me.’

Mia’s laughter bubbled in her throat, threatening to choke her.

‘Are you fucking mad?’

‘Some might say,’ Scaeva replied. ‘But what possible reason do you have left to want me dead? I killed a man who claimed to be your father. But he was a liar, Mia. A would-be usurper. A man perfectly willing to risk his familia for the sake of his own failed ambition. I killed your mother, aye. Another deceiver. Willing to share my bed and cut my throat before the sweat had even cooled. Alinne Corvere knew the stakes she wagered supporting … nay, encouraging Darius’s gambit. Her life. Her son’s. And yours besides. And she weighed them all lighter than a throne.’

The shadowviper slithered across the ground towards Mia, licking the air. Scaeva spun the gravebone stiletto upon the table, his eyes boring into hers.

‘I have never lied to you, daughter,’ he said. ‘Not once, throughout it all. When I ordered you drowned, you were worthless to me. Jonnen was young enough to claim as my own. You were too old. But now you’ve proved yourself my daughter true. Possessed of the same will as I: not only to survive, but to prosper. To carve your name with bloody fingernails into this earth. Darius sought to become a kingmaker? You can truly be one. The blade in my right hand. Whatever you desire will be yours. Wealth. Power. Pleasure. I can do away with those gold-grubbing whores in the Red Church and have you at my side instead. My daughter. My blood. As dark and beautiful and deadly as the night. And together, we can sculpt a dynasty that will live for a thousand years.’

On the wall, his shadow reached out farther towards her own.

‘You and your brother are my legacy to this world,’ he said. ‘When I am gone, all this can be yours. Our name will be eternal. Immortal. So aye. I ask you to join me.’

Scaeva’s words rang in the hollow spaces in her head, heavy with truth. Her shadow hung like a crooked portrait upon the wall. But though Mia herself remained perfectly still, slowly,

ever so slowly,

it raised one dark hand towards his.

All her life, she’d thought of her parents as flawless. Godlike. Her mother, sharp and wise and beautiful as the finest rapier of Liisian steel. Her father, brave and noble and bright as the suns. Even as she’d learned more about who they were from Sidonius in the cells beneath Crow’s Nest, it never seemed to dim their reflection in her mind’s eye. It hurt too much to admit they might be imperfect. Selfish. Driven by greed or lust or pride and willing to risk everything for the sake of it. And so she kept them unstained. Untarnished. Locked in a box forever inside her head.

Father is another name for God in a child’s eyes.

And Mother is the very earth beneath her feet.

But now, Mia remembered that turn in the forum – the turn Darius Corvere was hanged. A girl of ten, standing with her mother above the mob, looking down on that horrid scaffold, the line of nooses swinging in the wintersdeep wind. She could still feel the rain upon her face and Alinne’s arm across her breast, another hand at her neck, holding her pinned so she must look outward as they tied the noose around the Kingmaker’s neck. The words Alinne Corvere whispered ringing in Mia’s ears now as clear as the turn she’d first uttered them.

‘Never flinch. Never fear. And never, ever forget.’

Alinne must have known what she was making. Knew the seeds of hatred she was planting in her daughter. The vengeance that must grow from it. The blood that must flow. And all over the death of a man who – though he may well have loved her – wasn’t Mia’s father at all. And if she must be furious – and O, Goddess, she was – at Scaeva’s claim that he’d made her all she was, how could she be less angry at the woman who’d stood behind her there on that windblown parapet? Forcing her to watch? Speaking the words that had shaped her, ruled her, ruined her?

Could she still love a woman like that?

And if not, could she hate the man who’d killed her?

Why did she hate Julius Scaeva? When all she’d based her life on was a lie? Was he so different from Alinne and Darius Corvere, save in that he’d emerged the victor? He was a killer, remorseless and cold, that much was certain. A man who’d drenched himself in the blood of dozens, perhaps hundreds, to get his way.

But wasn’t that true of everyone who played this game?

Even me?

Eclipse’s hackles rippled as Scaeva’s serpent slithered closer. The shadowwolf’s growl dragged Mia out of the darkness within, back into the burning light in that study, glinting on the black pawn in Scaeva’s upturned palm.

‘… STAY BACK …’ Eclipse warned.

‘… Nothing to fear, pup …’ the serpent hissed in reply.

‘… STAY BACK …’

Eclipse took a swipe at the shadowviper with her paw, and Mia’s eyes widened as she saw a fine mist of black spatter on the floor, evaporate to nothingness. The serpent reared back, hissing in cold fury.

‘… You will regret that insult, little dog …’

‘… I DO NOT FEAR YOU, WORM …’

The shadowviper opened its black maw, hissing again.

‘Whisper,’ Scaeva said. ‘Enough.’

The serpent hissed again, but held still.

‘Mia means us no harm,’ Scaeva said, staring at his daughter. ‘She’s intelligent enough to know where she stands. And pragmatic enough to realize that, if anything unpleasant were to happen to us, her dear Old Mercurio would be treated to the most gruesome of tortures before he was sent to meet his dear dark Goddess.’

Mia’s stomach rolled at the threat against Mercurio, but she tried to keep her face like stone. The serpent turned to regard her darkin counterpart, swaying as if to music only it could hear.

‘… She fears, Julius …’

Scaeva gifted Mia a smile that never reached his eyes.

‘So. Itreya’s most infamous murderer is capable of love. How touching.’

Mia bristled at that. Felt a soft ripple in the air, glanced towards their shadows on the wall. Where once Scaeva’s had reached out as if to embrace her own, it was now poised, crook-backed and claw-fingered. Reaching towards her own shadow’s throat.

‘Where is your brother, Mia?’

‘Safe,’ she replied.

Scaeva stood slowly, hand drifting to the Trinity hidden at his throat.

‘You will bring him to me.’

‘I take no orders from you.’

‘You will bring him to me, or your mentor dies.’

Mia’s voice turned soft with menace. ‘If you hurt Mercurio, I swear by the Goddess you will never see your son again.’

She saw fury boiling in his eyes then. A fury born of fear. Even with all his control, his much-vaunted will, Scaeva still couldn’t quite keep it from her. She could sense it on him, sure as she could sense the suns above.

Her mind was working. Probing at the cracks in his façade, the tiny glimpses he’d given her behind his mask. He’d spoken of building a dynasty that would last a thousand years. And granted, that would be hard to do without his only son. But still, he was imperator now. He could cast off his barren wife, have any woman he wanted. Black Mother, he could take a dozen wives. Sire a hundred sons.

So why is he afraid?

Mia tossed her hair over her shoulder, glancing again at the silhouettes on the wall. Scaeva’s shadow was moving now, its motion violent and sudden. Her own was responding in kind, elongating, distorting, dark shapes unfurling at its back.

‘You seem awfully concerned about Jonnen, Father,’ she said. ‘And I can’t bring myself to believe it’s out of sentimentality. Could it be your dear wife Liviana isn’t the one who can’t have any more children?’

Dark eyes glanced below his waist.

‘Getting soft in your old age?’

Scaeva took a step towards her, hand snaking beneath his robes. In a flash, their shadows struck each other, tangled and twisting and curling like smoke. Twice as dark as they should have been alone. Scaeva’s serpent reared up as if to strike, and Eclipse bared her fangs with a black growl. Mia felt her clothes and hair moving, as if a breeze were blowing behind her. As if the world were moving beneath her feet.

‘You cannot know the stakes you toy with,’ Scaeva said. ‘Do not make yourself my enemy, Mia. Not when I offer you peace. All who have stood against me now rot in the ground. All of them. Bring me your brother, and take your place at my side.’

‘You are afraid,’ she realized.

‘Fear has its uses,’ he replied. ‘Fear is what keeps the dark from devouring you. Fear is what stops you joining a game you cannot hope to win.’

He tossed the pawn towards her, and she caught it in her fist.

‘If you start down this road, daughter mine, you are going to die.’

She knew she couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t even get close. Not with that Trinity about his throat. Not with Mercurio’s neck on the block. She could hear tromping feet, soft shouts in the distance – she guessed someone had found the bodies in her wake.

No more time to chat.

And so, she began to back away from him.

A single step. Then another. Farther and farther from the throat she’d sought for almost eight years. Their shadows were still entwined on the wall, strangling and seething, a knot of black rage. With effort, Mia dragged her shade back, Scaeva’s clinging on.

‘Bring me my son, Mia,’ he said, his voice soft and deadly.

She tore her shadow free, the dark about her shivering.

‘I’ll consider it,’ she said. ‘Father.’

A rippling in the darkness.

The whispered song of running feet.

And she was gone.

He stood there for long moments afterwards, still as stone and just as silent. The shadowserpent wove its way across the vast map of the Republic he now ruled, coiled in a black ribbon about his ankles.

‘… Do you think she will listen …?’ Whisper asked.

The imperator looked to the burning light outside.

‘I think she is as much her mother’s daughter as mine,’ he replied.

The serpent sighed. ‘… A pity …’

Scaeva walked to the chessboard. He stood above the frozen battleground, the pieces arrayed in fractured rows, looking down with those cool black eyes. In one swift motion, he sat, sweeping aside the pieces with his hand. Reaching to his throat, he grasped a leather thong, snapped it free. A silver phial hung upon it, stoppered with dark wax and engraved with runes in the tongue of Old Ashkah.

Scaeva broke the seal, pouring the contents upon the board, thick and ruby red.

And, using his fingertip like a brush, he began writing in the blood.

CHAPTER 8
SCOUNDREL

If the entry under ‘scoundrel’ in Don Fiorlini’s bestselling Itreyan Diction: The Definitive Guide had an illustration, it probably would have looked a lot like Cloud Corleone.[fn1] But Cloud himself preferred the term ‘entrepreneur’.

The Liisian was clad all in black: a leather vest over a finely cut shirt (unlaced perhaps a touch too far) and a pair of what could only be described as conspicuously tight pants. Emerald-green eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his feathered tricorn hat, and a perpetual three-turn growth of beard dusted a jaw you could break a shovel on. He was standing in the harbourmaster’s office in the Nethers docks. And he was haggling with a nun.

It had been a strange turn all told, really. It had begun eight hours earlier, when Cloud had placed a sizeable and very drunken wager on the outcome of the Venatus Magni. In hindsight, the bet proved a less-than-sound investment of his meagre funds.

O, he’d picked the winner, all right. Even the bookman who took the bet had told him he was thinking with his cock, but watching the gladiatii known as the Crow slice her former collegium mates to bloody chunks, Cloud had found himself admiring her form along with her legs. So confident had he been of the lass’s abilities, he’d wagered every coin he’d won over the previous five turns of bloodsport on her victory, along with a bunch more coin he truthfully couldn’t spare.

As the Crow had carved her way towards triumph in the final match, Cloud had been on his feet, hollering and howling with the rest of the mob. When she’d struck the final blow against the Unfallen, Cloud had danced a jig on the spot, grabbed the nearest comely lass and planted a kiss square on her lips (returned rather enthusiastically), which resulted in an all-in brawl with the lass’s sweetheart, a dozen of his friends, half of Cloud’s crew, and a hundred other punters who simply wanted a good dose of fisticuffs after a hard turn’s carnage. Truthfully, it’d been absolutely marvellous.

But then along came the first dose of the unexpected.

He’d watched it happen in slow motion. The Crow drawing her hidden blade on the victor’s plinth. Slicing the cardinal’s throat clean through. Stabbing the consul in the chest (or so he and half the crowd had imagined, anyway). Blood flowing like cheap plonk at a Liisian wedding. And even though the rest of the crowd fell to wailing, baying, panicking, watching that greasy fucker Duomo go down in a puddle of his own shit and blood, Cloud Corleone had found himself cheering at the top of his lungs.

The next dose of the unexpected had arrived in short order.

It’d taken Cloud almost an hour to shove his way to the bookman’s pits to collect his winnings, still riding high on the sight of the cardinal’s messy end. It was there that the scoundrel was informed by a scowling pack of Itreyan legionaries that because a slave had just topped the fanciest bastards in the whole bloody Republic, all bets were null and void. It wouldn’t do, you see, to profit from the death of the consul and grand cardinal at the hands of human property.

Cloud was tempted to inform the soldiers exactly what flavour of bastard the good cardinal actually was in life, but looking into their eyes, listening to the budding chaos in the city around him, he decided making a fuss would only make for further fuss. And so, with a flip of the knuckles towards the bookman’s shit-eating grin, the captain and his crew headed back to the harbour with tragically empty pockets.

With all the fistfights and fuckarsery and Scaeva’s announcement of his miraculous escape from the assassin’s blade in the forum (Cloud could’ve sworn she’d stabbed him clean), it took another three hours to make it back to the Bloody Maid. And now, in the office of one Attilius Persius, harbourmaster of Godsgrave[fn2], the final oddity in Cloud’s eventful turn had arrived in the form of the aforementioned Sister of Tsana.

Cloud had been putting the last touches on the Bloody Maid’s paperwork and giving Attilius a friendly heaping of shit (his wife had recently given birth to their sixth daughter, poor fucker) when the nun had marched into the office, shoved Cloud aside, and slapped a hefty bag of coin down on the countertop.

‘I need passage to Ashkah. Swift, if it please you.’

She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but she looked a few years harder. Dressed all in snow white, a coif of starched cloth and voluminous robes that flowed to the floor. Her cool blue eyes were fixed on the harbourmaster, her lips pressed thin. She was Vaanian, tall and fit, what appeared to be blonde hair dyed with henna peeking from the edge of her coif. Cloud idly wondered if her carpet matched her curtains.

In the doorway behind her stood a hulking fellow shrouded in dark cloth. A Trinity of Aa (of rather middling quality, Cloud thought) was strung around his neck, several suspiciously sword-shaped bulges were hidden under his robes.

Cloud shivered a little. The office seemed to have become cold all of a sudden.

The sister raised an expectant eyebrow at the harbourmaster.

‘Mi Don?’

Attilius simply stared, his stubbled jowls all awobble. ‘Apologies, Sister. I just … It’s not often one sees a Sister of the Sorority of Flame outside a convent, let alone in a district as rough as the Nethers.’[fn3]

‘Ashkah,’ she repeated, clanking her coin. ‘This eve, if possible.’

‘We’re headed that way,’ Cloud said, leaning against the counter. ‘Stormwatch first, then Whitekeep. But after that, through the Sea of Swords and on to Ashkah.’

The nun turned to regard him carefully. ‘Is your ship a swift one?’

‘Swifter than my heart beats looking into those pretty eyes of yours, Sister.’

The nun rolled the aforementioned eyes and drummed her fingers on the countertop. ‘You’re trying to be charming, I assume.’

‘Trying and failing, apparently.’

‘How much for our passage?’ she asked.

‘“Our” passage?’ Cloud glanced at her hulking companion. ‘I didn’t know it was habit for Sisters of the Virgin Flame to travel in the company of men?’

‘Not that it is any of your concern,’ the sister replied coolly, ‘but Brother Tric is here to ensure nothing ill befalls me on my travels. As the murder of our beloved Grand Cardinal Duomo illustrates, Aa bless and keep him, these are dangerous times.’

‘O, aye,’ Cloud nodded. ‘Terrible shame about good Duomo. Cleaves the heart, it does. But you’re safe aboard the Bloody Maid, Sister, you’ve no fear of that.’

‘No.’ She gave a meaningful glance to her thug. ‘I don’t.’

’Byss and blood it’s cold in here …

‘How much for passage, good sir?’ she asked again.

‘To Ashkah?’ Cloud asked. ‘Three hundred priests ought to suffice.’

In the background, the harbourmaster almost choked on his goldwine.

‘That seems … excessive,’ the sister said.

‘You seem … desperate,’ Cloud grinned in reply.

The nun glanced at the big fellow behind her. Pressed her lips thinner.

‘I can give you two hundred now. Two hundred more when we reach Ashkah.’

With a smile that had earned him four confirmed bastards and Daughters knew how many more besides, Cloud Corleone tipped his tricorn hat and extended his hand to the sister.

‘Done.’

A bigger hand engulfed his. It was stained black with what must’ve been ink, and it belonged to the large fellow. His grip was hard enough that Cloud could hear his knuckles grinding together. And it was cold as tombs.

‘DONE,’ the fellow said, in a strange, oceans-deep voice.

The captain pulled his hand free, flexed his fingers open and closed.

‘What name should I call you by, Sister?’

‘Ashlinn,’ she replied.

‘And you, Brother?’ He glanced at the big bastard. ‘Tric, I heard?’

The fellow simply nodded, features hidden in the shadows of his hood.

‘You have baggage?’ Cloud asked. ‘I’ll have my salts load—’

‘We have all we need, Captain, thank you,’ the sister replied.

‘Well,’ he said simply, snatching up the laden purse. ‘Best follow me, then.’

He led the pair out of Attilius’s office, down the crowded boardwalk, feeling the jitters in the air. He could see at least twenty other ships making ready to put out to the blue, the calls and cries of their crews echoing across the harbour. The whole city was of a mood after Scaeva’s announcement – overjoyed the new imperator had taken control of the situation, but dismayed at the cardinal’s murder. Cloud was glad to be leaving the city for a spell.

They arrived at the Bloody Maid, rocking at her berth, the deep waters of the Nethers harbour a muddy brown beneath the Everseeing’s three burning eyes. The ship was a swift-cut three-masted carrack, keeled oak but planked cedar, her skin stained a warm reddish brown. Her figurehead was a beautiful naked woman with long red hair artfully arranged to preserve her modesty – or cover the most interesting parts, depending how you looked at it. Her trim and sails were blood-red, hence her name, and though he’d owned her more than seven years, the sight of her always took Cloud’s breath away. Truth told, he’d lost count of the women he’d known in his life. But he’d never loved a one of them close to the way he loved his Maid.

‘Ahoy, mates,’ he said as he climbed the gangplank.

‘You’ve got a nun,’ BigJon said cheerfully.

‘Well spotted,’ Cloud told his first mate.

‘That’s a novelty.’

‘First time for everything,’ Cloud replied.

BigJon was a littleman. Everyone in Nethers Harbour knew it. He wasn’t a dwarf – he’d made that clear to the last fool who’d named him so by bashing the man’s skull in with a brick. He wasn’t a midget either, fuck no. He’d explained that to a taverna full of sailors as he took to some stupid bastard’s crotch with his knife. Nailing the man’s severed scrotum to the counter with his blade, BigJon had declared to the entire pub he preferred the term ‘littleman’ and asked if there was anyone present who objected.

Nobody did. And nobody had since.

‘Sister Ashlinn,’ Cloud said. ‘This is my first mate, BigJon.’

‘A pleasure.’ The littleman bowed, showing a row of silver teeth. ‘Do you leave the costume on during, or—’

‘She’s not a sweetgirl in a costume. She’s a real nun.’

‘… O.’ BigJon clawed at the collar of his sky-blue tunic. ‘I see.’

‘I’m taking her down to the cabins. Get us under way.’

‘Aye, aye, Cap’n!’ BigJon spun on his heel and roared in a voice that belied his small frame. ‘All right, you bobtailed dung-eaters, get moving! Toliver, pull your fist from your shithole and get those fucking barrels stowed! Kael, get your eyes off Andretti’s whore pipe and up into the nest before I make you wish your old man ploughed your mother’s earhole instead …’

… and so on.

‘Apologies, Sister,’ Cloud said. ‘He’s got a mouth like a sewer, but he’s the best mate this side of Old Ashkah.’

‘I’ve heard worse, Captain.’

He tilted his head. ‘Have you now?’

The sister simply stared, and the lump of beef behind her loomed a little larger, and so without further ado Cloud escorted them down the stairwell into the Maid’s belly. Leading the pair along the tight hallway to the portside stateroom, he opened the door with a flourish and stepped aside.

‘Hammocks only, I’m afraid, but there’s space aplenty. You can dine with me or alone, as it please you. I’ve a bath in my cabin also, if you’ve a need. Arkemical stove. Hot water. Your privacy will be golden, and though I’d not expect it, you get lip from any of my salts, inform myself or BigJon and we’ll see it put arights.’

‘Your “salts”?’

‘My crew,’ the man smiled. ‘Apologies, Sister, I’ve a sailor’s tongue. Regardless, the Bloody Maid is my home, and you’re my guests in it.’

‘My thanks, Captain,’ the sister said, easing herself into one of the hammocks.

Cloud Corleone considered the girl carefully. Her shapeless white robes were almost loose enough to hide another nun beneath – sadly designed to leave almost everything to the imagination. Her face was pretty, though, freckled cheeks, bright eyes the colour of a cloudless sky. Dragging off her coif, she released long red locks down over her shoulders, creased with a gentle curl. She looked three turns tired and in need of a good meal, but still, you’d not kick her out of bed for farting, holy virgin or no.

But something about her wasn’t right.

‘May I help you with something, Captain?’ she asked, eyebrow cocked.

The privateer stroked his stubble. ‘I’ve a bed in my cabin, too, should the hammock grow tiresome.’

‘Still trying to be charming, I see …’

‘Well.’ He gave a bashful schoolboy smile. ‘I’ve a thing for women in uniform.’

‘More out of them than in, I’d wager.’

The captain grinned. ‘We’ll be under way momentarily. North to Stormwatch, swift as sparrows, then back to Whitekeep. We’ll be there by weeksend, winds be kind.’

‘Let us pray, then, that they are.’

‘Any time you want me on my knees, Sister, just say the word.’

The big fellow in the corner stirred slightly, adjusting one of those suspiciously sword-shaped lumps, and the captain decided he’d learned enough for now. With a wink that could charm the paint right off the walls, Cloud Corleone tipped his tricorn hat.

‘Good nevernight, Sister.’

And he closed the cabin door.

Walking up the hallway a moment later, the captain muttered softly to himself.

‘Nun my arse.’

‘The balls on that slick bastard,’ Ashlinn whispered incredulously.

Mister Kindly coalesced above the cabin door.

‘… i wonder where he keeps his wheelbarrow …?’

‘I’m dressed as a nun,’ Ashlinn said, looking about the room in indignation. ‘He does realize I’m dressed as a fucking nun, aye?’

Throwing aside her cloak of shadows, Mia faded into view in the far corner. Jonnen stood with his wrists bound, one of his sister’s arms about him, her other hand clapped over his lips. He glared at the Vaanian girl as his sister removed her hand.

‘You have a filthy mouth, harlot.’

‘Quiet,’ Mia warned. ‘Or it’s the gag for you again.’

Jonnen pouted but fell silent, his eyes on his sister’s back as she crossed the cabin floor. Locking the door, Mia turned and met Ashlinn’s eyes.

‘I don’t trust him.’

In the other corner, Tric drew his hood back off his head, thin white plumes spilling from his lips as he spoke. ‘NOR I.’

‘Well, that makes three of us,’ Ash replied. ‘He might as well have the word “pirate” stencilled on the arse end of those ridiculous pants. It’s a good thing he only gets his second two hundred after our arrival in Ashkah.’

‘I didn’t think the funds Mercurio gave us were still so flush.’

‘They’re … not,’ Ash admitted. ‘But we can burn that bridge when we arrive at it. The Siren’s Song already left port. This ship is sailing in our direction, and we’ve got nothing left to barter passage with elsewhere. So we take our chances here, or start marching across the aqueduct on foot and praying for a miracle. And considering we stole this habit of mine off a clothesline at a convent, I’m not too sure any of the divinities will be in a mood to answer nicely.’

Mister Kindly began licking a translucent paw on his perch above the door.

‘… this whole endeavour would be made infinitely easier if, o, i don’t know, we could somehow make ourselves unseen for the rest of the journey …’

Mia scowled up at her passenger. ‘It’s truelight, Mister Kindly. I can barely manage to hide me and Jonnen with those accursed suns in the sky. But my thanks for making me feel shittier about our predicament than I already did.’

‘… you are most welcome …’ he purred.

Mia turned her eyes to the door the privateer had left by.

‘Our captain seems a clever one,’ she murmured.

‘PERHAPS TOO CLEVER,’ Tric said.

‘No such thing, in my experience.’

Mia eased herself into one of the hammocks with a groan and a wince. She sat and chewed her lip in thought for a while, fighting a losing battle with her leaden eyelids.

‘But Ash is right,’ she finally declared. ‘We don’t have much left in the way of choice. I say we take our chances on the Maid. As long as Jonnen and I stay out of sight, and you can put up with his flirting for a few weeks, I think we’re safe here.’

‘… i am sure dona järnheim will loathe every minute of the attention …’

Ashlinn ignored the shadowcat above the door, looking at Mia with concern. The girl was slouched in her hammock, head hung low, rocking softly with the shush and whisper of the water against the hull. Mia looked about to fall over from sheer exhaustion. They could hear the Maid’s crew overhead, BigJon’s rainbow-coloured bouts of profanity, the song of sails being unfurled, the smell of salt and sea strung in the air.

Jonnen was still standing in the corner, Eclipse in his shadow.

‘Did you hurt him, Kingmaker?’ he asked softly.

Mia met her brother’s dark eyes, the shadow of Julius Scaeva hanging in the air between them. It was long moments before she answered.

‘No.’

‘I want to go home,’ the boy said.

‘And I want a box of cigarillos and a bottle of goldwine big enough to drown in,’ Mia sighed. ‘We don’t always get what we want.’

‘I do,’ he scowled.

‘Not anymore.’ Mia ran her fingers across her eyes and stifled a yawn. ‘Welcome to the real world, little brother.’

Jonnen simply glared back at her. Eclipse uncoiled from the dark at his feet, the shadowwolf joining the boy’s silhouette on the wall, darkening it further. Without the daemon riding his shadow, he’d likely have been reduced to hysterics by now, but considering what he’d been through, the child was doing well.

Still, Ashlinn didn’t like the way the boy stared at his sister.

Angry.

Hungry.

‘… WHAT NOW …?’ Eclipse growled.

‘… a quick round of crumpets and strumpets …?’ Mister Kindly offered.

‘… MUST YOU, LITTLE MOGGY …?’

‘… always, dear mongrel …’

The shadowwolf turned its not-eyes to the rest of the room.

‘… AM I HONESTLY EXPECTED TO BELIEVE THIS BOORISH CUR AND ITS PREPUBESCENT HUMOUR IS THE FRAGMENT OF A SHATTERED DIVINITY …?’

‘Shut up, the pair of you,’ Ashlinn snapped.

‘The “what now” is simple,’ Mia said, stifling another yawn. ‘The Ministry have Mercurio. Until we have him back, Scaeva and I are at an impasse.’ She shrugged. ‘So we have to get him back.’

‘Mia, they’ll have Mercurio in the Quiet Mountain,’ Ashlinn said. ‘The heart of the Red Church’s power on this earth. Guarded by Blades of the Mother, the Ministry themselves, and ’byss knows what else.’

‘Aye,’ Mia nodded.

‘Further, I’m sure I don’t need to point out that they took Mercurio to get to you,’ Ashlinn continued, her voice rising. ‘They told you they have him because they want you to come looking for him. If this were any more obviously a fucking trap, they’d have a row of high-priced courtesans dancing in Liisian lingerie atop it, singing a rousing chorus of “this is obviously a fucking trap.”’

Mia smiled faintly. ‘I love that song.’

‘Mia …’ Ashlinn moaned, exasperated.

‘He took me in, Ashlinn,’ Mia said, her smile vanishing. ‘When everything else had been taken away. He gave me a home and he kept me safe when he had no reason under the suns to do it.’ Mia looked up at the girl, eyes shining. ‘He’s familia. More familia to me than almost anyone in this world. Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a.’

‘When all is blood …’

‘Blood is all,’ Mia nodded.

Ashlinn just shook her head.

‘MIA—’ Tric began.

‘The Quiet Mountain is in Ashkah, Tric,’ Mia interrupted. ‘We have to head that way, regardless. So ease off on the destiny talk for a while, neh?’

‘YOU HAVE ACCEPTED IT, THEN?’

‘My mind’s nothing close to made up,’ Mia said, stretching her legs out on the hammock with a soft groan. ‘But travelling in the right direction’s enough for now.’

‘The Ministry are going to know we’re coming,’ Ash pointed out, standing to help Mia off with her bloodstained boots. ‘The Quiet Mountain is a fortress.’

‘Aye,’ Mia said, wiggling her toes with a wince.

‘So how in the Mother’s name do you expect to get inside and rescue Mercurio?’ Ash demanded, pulling off the other boot. ‘Let alone out alive again?’

‘Front door,’ Mia said, sighing deep as she finally lay back in the hammock and gave in to her exhaustion.

‘The front fucking door?’ Ash hissed. ‘Of the Quiet Mountain? You’d need an army to get in there, Mia!’

Mia closed her eyes.

‘I know an army,’ she murmured. ‘A little one, anyway …’

‘What in the Mother’s holy name are you babbling about?’ Ash raged.

The hammock swayed and rolled with the weary girl atop it. The chaos and bloodshed of the last few turns, the epiphanies and prophecies, the promises broken and yet unfulfilled, all of them seemed to have finally caught up with her. As the lines of care in her face softened, the scar upon her cheek twisted her lip ever so slight, made it seem like she was smiling. Her breast rose and fell with the rhythm of the waves.

‘Mia?’ Ash asked.

But the girl already slept.

Jonnen spoke softly into the silence.

‘… What does “prepubescent” mean?’

CHAPTER 9
SLUMBER

She dreamed.

She was a child, beneath a sky as grey as goodbye. Walking on water so still it was like polished stone, like glass, like ice beneath her bare feet. It stretched as far as she could see, flawless and endless. A meniscus over the flood of forever.

Her mother walked to her left. In one hand, she held a lopsided scale. The other was wrapped in Mia’s own. She wore gloves of black silk, long and glimmering with a secret sheen, all the way up to her elbows. But when Mia looked closer, she saw they weren’t gloves at all, that they dripped

dripdrip

dripdrip

on the stone/glass/ice at their feet, like blood from an open wrist.

Her mother’s gown was black as sin as night as death, strung with a billion tiny points of light. They shone from within, out through the shroud of her gown, like pinpricks in a curtain drawn against the sun. She was beautiful. Terrible. Her eyes were as black as her dress, deeper than oceans. Her skin was pale and bright as stars.

She had Alinne Corvere’s face. But Mia knew, in that dreaming, knowing kind of way, that this wasn’t her real face. Because the Night had no face at all.

And across the infinite grey, he waited for them.

Her father.

He was clad all in white, so bright and sharp it hurt Mia’s eyes to look at him. But she looked all the same. He stared back as she and her mother approached, three eyes fixed on her, red and yellow and blue. He was handsome, she had to admit – almost painfully so. Black curls dusted with just the faintest hints of grey at his temples. Shoulders broad, bronze skin contrasting sharply with the snow white of his robes.

He had Julius Scaeva’s face. But Mia knew, in that dreaming, knowing kind of way, that this wasn’t his real face, either.

Four young women stood about him. One wreathed in flame and another shrouded in waves and the third wearing only the wind. The fourth was sleeping on the floor, clad in autumn leaves. The wakeful trio stared at Mia with bitter, unveiled malice.

‘Husband,’ her mother said.

‘Wife,’ her father replied.

They stood there in silence, the six of them, and Mia could have heard her heart thumping in her chest, if only she’d had one.

‘I missed you,’ her mother finally sighed.

The silence grew so complete, it was deafening.

‘This is he?’ her father asked.

‘You know it is,’ her mother replied.

And Mia wanted to speak then, to say she wasn’t a he but a she. But looking down, the child saw the strangest thing reflected in the mirrored stone/glass/ice at her feet.

She saw herself, as she saw herself – pale skin and long dark hair draped over thin shoulders and eyes of burning white. But looming at her back, she saw a figure cut from the darkness, black as her mother’s gown.

It peered at her with its not-eyes, its form shivering and shifting like lightless flame. Tongues of dark fire rippled from its shoulders, the top of its crown, as if it were a candle burning. On its forehead, a silver circle was scribed. And like a look ing glass, that circle caught the light from her father’s robes and reflected it back, the radiance as pale and bright as Mia’s eyes.

And looking into that single, perfect circle, Mia understood what moonlight was.

‘I will never forgive you for this,’ her father said.

‘I will never ask you to,’ her mother replied.

‘I will suffer no rival.’

‘And I no threats.’

‘I am greater.’

‘But I was first. And I trust your hollow victory will keep you warm in the night.’

Her father looked down at her, his smile dark as bruises.

‘Would you like to know what keeps me warm in the night, little one?’

Mia looked down at her reflection again. Watched the pale circle at her brow shatter into a thousand glittering shards. The shadow at her feet splintered, splayed in every direction, maddening patterns surging, seething, the night-thing shapes of cats and wolves and serpents and crows and the shapes of nothing at all. Ink-black tendrils sprouted from her back like wings, razors of darkness from every fingertip. She could hear screaming, growing louder and louder.

Realizing at last that the voice was her own.

‘The many were one,’ her mother said. ‘And will be again.’

But her father shook his head.

‘In every possible sense, you are my daughter.’

He held up a black pawn on his burning palm.

‘And you are going to die.’

BOOK 2

CHAPTER 10
INFIDELITY

Mia woke with a gasp, almost falling from her hammock.

The portholes were shuttered as they’d been for the past two turns. The cabin was shrouded in the same gloom that had filled it since they put out from the Nethers, rocking to the gentle motion of the open sea. Almost three turns after the magni, Mia was still aching in places she never knew she had, and still in need of about seven more nevernights’ worth of sleep.

Genuine sleep, that is.

Dreams. Dreams of blood and fire. Dreams of endless grey. Dreams of her mother and her father, or things wearing their faces. Dreams of Furian, dead at her hand. Dreams of her shadow, growing darker and darker at her feet until she slipped down into it and felt it flow up and over her lips and down into her lungs. Dreams of laying on her back and staring into a blinding sky, her ribs flayed apart, tiny people crawling through her entrails like maggots on a corpse.

‘MORE NIGHTMARES?’

The voice made her shiver, then feel guilty for doing so. She cast a furtive glance at Ashlinn, asleep in the hammock beside hers. Then back to the deadboy, sitting in that corner as he’d done since they put out to the Sea of Silence. Tric’s hood was drawn back and he sat with legs crossed, gravebone swords in his lap, black hands resting flat upon the blades.

Goddess, but he was still beautiful. Not the rugged, earthen beauty he’d been before, no. There was a dark beauty to him now. Carved of alabaster and ebony. Black eyes and pale skin and a voice so deep she could feel it between her legs when he spoke. A princely beauty, wrapped in a robe of night and serpents. A crown of darkling stars on his brow.

‘Apologies, did I wake you?’

‘I DON’T SLEEP, MIA.’

She blinked. ‘Ever?’

‘NEVER.’

Mia dragged her hair back from her face, swinging her legs off the side of her hammock quiet as she could. As she sat up straight, her wounds pulled and her bandages tugged at her scabs and she couldn’t help but wince with the pain of it all. Conscious of those pitch-black eyes following her every move.

She was dying for a cigarillo. For fresh air. For a fucking bath. They’d been stuck in here together for two turns straight now, and the strain was wearing on all of them.

Jonnen was a knot of fury and indignity, kept in check only by Eclipse’s constant presence in his shadow. He sat for hours, pouting and sullen, ripping up tendrils of his own shadow and throwing it at the far wall, just as he’d done at Mia’s eyes in the necropolis. Eclipse would pounce upon the ball of shadowstuff like a puppy and Jonnen would smile, but the smile would disappear as soon as he caught Mia looking at him.

She could feel his anger at her. His hate and his confusion.

She couldn’t blame him for any of it.

Ashlinn and Tric were another source of concern – the tension between them thick enough to slice up and serve with the alleged ‘stew’ they ate each evemeal. Mia could feel the storm clouds building to a thunderhead that would black out the suns. And truth told, she had no idea what to do. She might’ve spoken to Tric about it once, you see. But he wasn’t the same.

She hadn’t known what to feel when she’d first laid eyes on him. The joy and guilt, the bliss and sorrow. Yet after a few turns in his company, she could see he was drawn with the same outline, but not filled in with entirely the same colours. She could feel a darkness to him, now – the same darkness she felt inside her own skin. Beckoning. And aye, even with Mister Kindly in her shadow, perhaps frightening.

Mia bowed her head, rivers of long black hair draping either side of her face. Silence between them thick as fog.

‘I’m sorry,’ she finally murmured.

The deadboy tilted his head, saltlocks moving like dreaming snakes.

‘FOR WHAT?’

Mia sucked her lip, searching for the pale and feeble words that would somehow make this all right. But people were the puzzle she’d never managed to solve. She’d always been better at cutting things apart than putting them back together.

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘I TOLD YOU,’ he replied. ‘I AM.’

‘But … I thought I’d not see you again. I thought you were gone forever.’

‘NOT THE MOST FOOLISH OF ASSUMPTIONS. SHE STABBED ME THREE TIMES IN THE HEART AND PUSHED ME OFF THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN, AFTER ALL.’

Mia looked over her shoulder at Ashlinn. Freckled cheek resting upon her hands, knees curled up, long lashes fluttering as she dreamed.

Lover.

Liar.

Murderer.

‘I kept my promise to you,’ she told him. ‘Your grandfather died screaming.’

Tric inclined his head. ‘MY THANKS, PALE DAUGHTER.’

‘Don’t …’

She shook her head, her voice failing as the lump rose in her throat.

‘… Please don’t call me that.’

He turned his eyes to Ashlinn. Putting one black, night-stained hand to his chest and pawing there, as if remembering the feel of her blade.

‘WHAT HAPPENED TO OSRIK, BY THE BY?’

‘Adonai killed him,’ Mia replied. ‘Drowned him in the blood pool.’

‘DID HE SCREAM, TOO?’

Mia pictured Ashlinn’s brother as he disappeared beneath that flood of red the turn the Luminatii invaded the Mountain. Eyes wide with terror. Mouth filling with crimson.

‘He tried to,’ she finally said.

Tric nodded.

‘You must think me a heartless cunt,’ she sighed.

‘YOU’D ONLY CONSIDER IT A COMPLIMENT.’

Mia looked up at that, thinking him angry. But she found his lips curled in a thin, pale smile, the shadow of a dimple creasing his cheek. For a moment it reminded her so much of what he’d been. So much of what they’d had together. She looked into his bloodless face and ink-black eyes and saw the beautiful, broken boy he’d been beneath, and her heart was like lead in her chest.

‘DO YOU LOVE HER?’ he asked.

Mia looked to Ashlinn again. Remembering the feel of her, the smell of her, the taste of her. The face she showed the world, vicious and hard, the tenderness she showed only to Mia, alone in her arms. Melting in her mouth. Poetry on her tongue. Each a dark reflection of the other, both of them driven by vengeance to be and do and want things most wouldn’t dare dream.

Wonderful things.

Awful things.

‘It’s …’

‘… COMPLICATED?’

She nodded slow. ‘But life always is, neh?’

A mirthless chuckle slipped over his lips. ‘TRY DYING.’

‘I’d rather not, if I can help it.’

‘DEATH IS THE PROMISE WE ALL MUST KEEP. SOONER OR LATER.’

‘I’ll take later, if it please you.’

He met her eyes then. Black to black.

‘IT WOULD.’

The clanging of heavy bells cut their conversation off at the knees, and both Tric and Mia looked to the Maid’s decks above. She heard muffled shouts, running boots upon the timbers, notes of vague alarm. Ashlinn woke from her slumber with a jolt, sitting up and dragging her forearm across her face. ‘Wassat?’

Mia was standing now, narrowed eyes on the boards above their heads.

‘Doesn’t sound good, whatever it is.’

A second burst of bells. A rolling string of faint and shockingly imaginative curses. Mia stepped lightly over to the porthole and opened the wooden shutter, letting in a blinding shear of truelight. Jonnen lifted his head from his hammock, squinted around the cabin with bleary eyes. Mister Kindly cursed from his spot atop the door.

Mia blinked hard in the painful glare, joined by Ashlinn at the porthole once their eyes adjusted. Over the rolling waves beyond the glass, Mia could see sails on the distant horizon, stitched with golden thread.

‘That’s an Itreyan warship …’ Ashlinn muttered.

Mia glanced upwards. ‘Our hosts don’t seem too excited about seeing it.’

‘… ON THE CONTRARY, THEY SOUND VERY EXCITED TO ME …’

‘… o, bravo, been practising our banter, have we …?’

‘… SOME OF US HAVE NO NEED OF PRACTICE, MOGGY. WE ARE SERVED BY WIT INSTEAD …’

Ashlinn dunked her face in their barrel of washwater to clear away the sleep, tied her hair back in a loose braid.

‘I’ll head topside for a chat.’

‘You’d best go with her, Brother Tric,’ Mia said. ‘I’ll stay here with Jonnen.’

The deadboy stood slowly. Looking at Ashlinn with bottomless eyes as he sheathed his gravebone blades beneath his robes and drew his hood up over his face.

‘AFTER YOU, SISTER.’

Ash dragged on the boots she’d been wearing since infiltrating the Godsgrave Arena, strapped her shortsword to her leg. Hauling her sorority habit over her head and pulling on her coif, she headed for the door.

‘Be careful, neh?’ Mia warned.

Ash smiled lopsided, leaned over, and kissed Mia’s lips.

‘You know what they say. What doesn’t kill me had better fucking run.’

The Vaanian girl slipped out the cabin door in a flurry of white robes.

Mia avoided Tric’s eyes as he followed.

‘Well,’ Cloud Corleone sighed. ‘As my dear old tutor Dona Elyse said the year I turned sixteen, “Fuck me very gently, then fuck me very hard.”’

Kael Three Eyes leaned out from the Crow’s Nest. ‘They’re signalling, Cap’n!’

‘Aye, I can see that!’ he called, waving his spyglass. ‘Thank you!’

‘Arse-grubbing shit queens are gaining on us, too,’ BigJon grunted from the railing beside him.

The captain waved his spyglass in BigJon’s face. ‘This thing works, you know.’

‘Captain?’ came a voice.

Cloud glanced over his shoulder, saw Her Not-So-Holiness on the deck behind him, and her six-foot attack dog looming behind her. The truelight air felt a little colder, and an involuntary shiver tickled his skin.

‘Best get back down below, Sister,’ he said. ‘Safer there.’

‘Meaning it’s not safe up here?’

‘I wouldn’t—’

The sister reached out and snatched Cloud’s spyglass from his hand, pressed it to her eye and turned to the horizon.

‘That’s not regular Itreyan navy,’ she said. ‘It’s a Luminatii ship.’

‘Well spotted, Sister.’

‘And it looks like they’re armed with arkemical cannons.’

‘Again, aye, my spyglass works, thank you.’

The sister lowered the glass, met his eye. ‘What do they want?’

Cloud pointed to the red flare the ship had sent sizzling into the sky.

‘They want us to stop.’

‘WHY?’ the big bodyguard asked.

The good captain blinked. ‘… Look, how are you doing that with your voice?’

The sister handed back his glass. ‘Do the Luminatii usually stop random ships in the middle of the ocean for no apparent reason?’

‘Well.’ Cloud scuffed the deck with his bootheel. ‘Not usually, no.’

The sister and her bodyguard exchanged uneasy glances.

BigJon whispered from the side of his mouth, ‘Antolini tipped them off, maybe?’

‘He wouldn’t do that to me, would he?’ Cloud muttered.

‘You ploughed his wife, Cap’n.’

‘Only because she asked me nicely.’

‘That kidfiddler Flavius promised to kill you if he saw you again,’ the littleman mused, sucking on the stem of his drakebone pipe. ‘Maybe he got creative?’

‘So I owe him a little coin. That’s no reason to sing about me to the Luminatii.’

‘You owe him a little fortune. And you ploughed his wife, too.’

Cloud Corleone raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you not have things to do?’

The littleman looked around the hive of activity that were the main and foredecks, the masts above. He shrugged and showed his silvered grin.

‘Not particularly.’

‘Still gaining, Cap’n!’ Kael called above.

Cloud held his spyglass aloft. ‘Four Daughters, this thing fucking works!’

‘Captain,’ the sister began. ‘I’m afraid I have to insist—’

‘I’m sorry, Sister,’ the privateer sighed. ‘But we’re not stopping.’

‘… We aren’t?’

‘That’s a Luminatii warship, Cap’n,’ BigJon pointed out. ‘Not sure the Maid has it in her to outrun it.’

‘O, ye of little faith,’ Cloud said. ‘Give the order.’

‘Aye, aye,’ the littleman sighed.

BigJon turned from the rails, roared at the crew. ‘Right, you jizz-gargling fuckbuckets! We’re doing a runner! Hoist every inch of sail we’ve got! If you own a shitrag or a spunk-stained kerchief, I want it lashed to a mast somewhere, go, go!’

‘Captain …’ the sister began.

‘Rest easy, Sister,’ Cloud smiled. ‘I know my oceans, and I know my ship. We’re sitting in the swift stream, and the nevernight winds are about to start kissing our sails the way I kissed Don Antolini’s wife.’

The captain lifted his spyglass with a small smile.

‘These god-botherers won’t lay a damned finger on us.’

The first cannon shot skimmed across the water a hundred feet shy of their prow. The second one twenty feet short of their stern, close enough to scorch the paint. And the third flew past close enough that Cloud could have shaved with it.

The Luminatii warship was running parallel to the Maid, her gold-threaded sails gleaming. Cloud could see her name written in bold, flowing script down her prow.

Faithful.

Her cannons were ready to unleash another blast of arkemical fire – the three earlier bursts had been warning shots, and Cloud didn’t fancy his chances of a fourth. Besides, considering what the Maid had hidden in her belly, one good kiss from old Faithful here would be all they needed.

‘All stop,’ the captain spat. ‘Hoist the white flag.’

‘Stop, you useless shitwizards!’ BigJon roared from the quarterdeck. ‘All stop!’

‘O, aye,’ Sister Ashlinn muttered from the railing beside him. ‘You know the oceans and your ship all right, Captain …’

‘You know,’ Cloud replied, turning to look at her, ‘my first impressions of you were quite favourable, good Sister, but I have to say, the more I get to know you, the less fond of you I grow.’

Her bodyguard folded his arms and scoffed.

‘WE SHOULD HAVE A DRINK SOMETIME …’

The ocean was too deep for the Maid to drop anchor, so once the sails were stowed and their head turned to the wind, there was little for the crew to do except stand about and wait for the Faithful to make berth alongside. Cloud watched the massive warship cruise closer, his belly sinking lower all the while. Her flanks were bristling with arkemical cannons from the workshops of the Iron Collegium, and her decks packed with Itreyan marines.

The men were dressed in chain mail and leather armour, each embossed with the sigil of the three suns on his chest. They carried shortswords and light wooden shields, ideal for close-quarter fighting on the decks of enemy ships. And they outnumbered the Maid’s crew two to one.

Up on the aft deck, Cloud could see a half-dozen Luminatii in gravebone armour, their cloaks blood-red, feathered plumes of the same hue on their helms, fluttering in the sea breeze. Their leader was a tall centurion with a pointed beard, piercing grey eyes, and the expression of a fellow in desperate need of a professional wristjob.[fn1]

‘Damned god-botherers,’ the captain grumbled.

‘Aye,’ BigJon said, stepping up beside him. ‘Lady Trelene drown them all.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Cloud muttered, more to himself than his first mate. ‘It’s well hidden. They’d have to rip the hull apart to find it.’

‘Unless they know exactly where to look for it.’

Cloud looked at his first mate with widening eyes. ‘They wouldn’t have …?’

The littleman lit his drakebone pipe with a flintbox and puffed thoughtfully. ‘I told you not to plough Antolini’s wife, Cap’n.’

‘And I told you she asked nicely.’ Cloud lowered his voice. ‘Very nicely, in fact.’

‘You think these Luminatii boys are going to be as sweet?’ BigJon scoffed, watching them prepare to board. ‘Because they’re settling in to fuck us, sure and true.’

Cloud winced as the grapples were thrown, sinking into the Maid’s railing and splintering the wood. Faithful’s crew slung heavy hay-stuffed bags along her flanks to cushion the impact as the Maid was hauled closer by mekwerk winches, and the two ships finally came together with a heavy thump. Lines were lashed tight, and a gangplank extended from conqueror to conquered.

Centurion Wristjob glowered down from the Faithful’s aftercastle.

‘I am Centurion Ovidius Varinius Falco, second century, third cohort of the Luminatii Legion,’ he called. ‘By order of Imperator Scaeva, I am authorized to board your vessel in search of contraband. Your cooperation is—’

‘Aye, aye, come on over, mates.’ Cloud flashed his four-bastard smile, doffing his tricorn with a low bow. ‘Nothing to hide here! Just wipe your feet first, neh?’

The privateer muttered over his shoulder.

‘You’d best head below to your cabin, Sister. Things will …’

Cloud looked to BigJon, blinking hard at the empty space where the girl and her bodyguard had stood a few moments before.

‘… Where the ’byss did they go?’

CHAPTER 11
INCENDIARY

Luminatii crawled over the Maid like fleas in a Liisian grandmother’s chest hair.

The search was cordoned and meticulous, and Centurion Falco had obviously dealt with smugglers before – he found all three of Cloud’s dummy stash spots easily. Thankfully, and despite BigJon’s conspiracy theories, the boarders hadn’t come close to finding the real ones, and Cloud’s hidden cargo remained safe as houses. But accompanying Falco in his search and answering his questions as politely as he could, the privateer quickly came to a rather disturbing realization.

The god-botherers weren’t actually interested in contraband at all – what they were looking for was people. And, acutely aware the nun he was carrying was likely no more a nun than he was a priest, the privateer was worried his sinking belly might actually start leaking out through his boots.

‘And these are your only passengers?’ Falco asked.

‘Aye,’ Cloud replied, raising a fist to knock on the cabin door. ‘We’re not usually in the business of transporting livestock.’

‘They came aboard where and when?’

‘Godsgrave. A few turns back. Booked passage all the way to Ashkah.’

The centurion gave a curt nod, and Cloud knocked loudly.

‘Sister?’ he sang. ‘Are you decent? There’s a few fellow servants of the Blessed Light here who’d like to ask you some questions.’

‘Enter,’ came the reply.

Cloud opened the door and found the Vaanian girl already standing politely to one side, back against the bulkhead, hands before her like a penitent.

‘Forgiveness, Sister—’ Cloud began.

‘Step aside, plebian,’ Falco said, forcing his way into the cabin.

The centurion dragged off his plumed helmet, smoothed down his sweaty mop of hair, and gave the sister a respectful bow. His steel-grey eyes flitted to the bodyguard in the corner, the muscles in his jaw tensing. The big fellow made no sound.

‘Forgive me, good Sister,’ he said to the nun. ‘I am Centurion Ovidius Varinius Falco, commander of the warship Faithful. By order of our imperator, Julius Scaeva, I must conduct a search of this ship, and thus, your cabin.’

The girl kept her eyes to the floor in a convincing show of modesty, nodding once. ‘No apologies are necessary, Centurion. Please, conduct your search.’

The centurion nodded to his four marines. They stepped into the room, eyes to the floor out of deference, each obviously about as comfortable in the nun’s cabin as a real nun would’ve been in a dockside fightpit. Careful not to impinge too much on the good sister’s personal space, they began searching the chests, the barrels, knocking on the floors and walls in search of hollows. For his part, Falco kept his eyes on the big fellow in the corner of the room, but the figure remained motionless.

Cloud stood and watched, butterflies beating about in his belly. He could hear marines going through the other cabins farther down the ship, and none too gently by the sound. He wrapped his arms around himself, jaw clenched tight.

Colder than a real nun’s nethers in here …

‘Forgive me, Sister,’ Falco said suddenly. ‘I confess no end of strangeness in finding you in such … colourful company.’

‘I can find no fault in that, brave Centurion,’ the sister said, eyes still downturned.

‘Might I enquire what you are doing aboard this vessel?’

‘You may enquire, noble Centurion.’ The lass smoothed down her voluminous robes, which were blowing in the breeze from the open porthole. ‘But as I informed the good captain here, my task requires utmost discretion. My Mother Superior bid me speak of it to none, not even our brethren in the Light. Upon my honour, I must humbly beg your forgiveness and maintain my sworn silence.’

Falco nodded, grey eyes glittering. ‘Of course, good Sister.’

The marines finished their search, turned to the centurion.

‘The boy’s not here,’ one reported, rather needlessly.

The centurion glowered once more about the room. But seemingly satisfied, if still more than a little curious, he bowed to the sister.

‘Forgive our intrusion, good daughter. Tsana guide your hand.’

The sister raised three fingers with a patient smile.

‘Aa bless and keep you, Centurion.’

‘See?’ Cloud grinned ear to ear, relief melting his insides. ‘All shipshape and aboveboard, aye, mates? Let me show you lovely gentles out.’

Falco turned on his heel, ready to leave, his men close behind. But Cloud’s belly did a small flip as the man came to a sudden stop. A slight frown appeared on the centurion’s brow as he stared at the girl’s feet.

Grey eyes glinted in the cabin’s dim light.

‘My sister married a shoemaker,’ he declared.

The Vaanian lass tilted her head. ‘I beg pardon?’

‘Aye,’ the man nodded. ‘A shoemaker. Four years back.’

‘I …’ The girl blinked, looking bewildered. ‘I am … very happy for her.’

‘I’m not,’ Falco scowled. ‘He’s thicker than pig droppings, my brother-in-law. He knows a great deal about boots, however. Has a contract with the Godsgrave editorii, in fact. Every guard who works the arena wears a pair of his.’

The centurion pointed to the bloodstained leather toes peeking out from beneath the girl’s holy vestments.

‘Just like those.’

Several things happened in quick succession here, each slightly more surprising than the last. First, the lass shouted ‘MIA!’ at the top of her lungs towards the open porthole. Which, all things considered, Cloud thought rather odd.

Second, she moved, flinging a knife from inside her sleeve and drawing a shortsword she’d hidden fuck-knows-where. The knife sailed into the throat of the closest marine, and as the man fell back in a spray of red, the lass lashed out at the centurion with her blade, face twisted in a snarl.

Third, the big fellow in the corner threw back his hood, revealing a corpse-pale face, eyes like a daemon and saltlocks like … well, Cloud had no fucking idea, but they were moving by themselves. The fellow drew out his two suspiciously sword-shaped lumps from beneath his robe, which indeed turned out to be swords.

Gravebone swords.

And lastly, and probably strangest of all, as the girl aimed a scything blow at Centurion Ovidius Varinius Falco, second century, third cohort’s cocky neck, a shadow shaped like a cat lunged out from beneath her voluminous robes with an unearthly yowl, followed by a rather alarmed nine-year-old boy, gagged and bound at his wrists.

For his part Falco was ready for the blow at least, drawing the sunsteel blade at his belt and speaking a prayer to Aa. The sword ignited with a shear of bright flame and he met the girl’s strike, his sunsteel scoring her blade. The lass yelled ‘MIA!’ again, the three remaining marines cried out and drew their shortblades, Cloud spat a black curse, and before he knew it, the cabin was in chaos.

The marines were well trained, obviously used to fighting in tight spaces. But as they stepped up to cut the lass down, the big lad struck, his gravebone blade cutting through chain mail like a razor through silk and slicing one man’s arm off at the shoulder. Blood sprayed across the cabin and the man went down howling.

The big fellow wasn’t all that spry, though – he seemed unholy strong but stumbling slow. The third marine struck back, slicing his arm deep. And with a prayer to Aa, the fourth stepped forward and skewered him straight through the belly.

The big fellow didn’t fall. Didn’t even flinch. With one black hand, he grabbed the marine’s wrist, pulled the blade farther into his gut and the wide-eyed soldier ever closer. His other hand closed about the man’s throat. And with the snap of damp twigs, he twisted the fellow’s neck to breaking.

Good Sister Ashlinn and Falco were locked up, blade to blade, the bigger man pushing the lass back with his blazing sunsteel. But as he raised his sword, the sound of a thunderous explosion tore through the air from somewhere outside, shattering the other portholes and spraying glass and the bitter black stench of arkemical fire into the room. Falco realized the blast had come from the Faithful about the same time Cloud did, turning his head momentarily in the direction of his ship. And that moment was all the good sister needed.

Her blade tip connected with the man’s throat, slicing his windpipe clean through. The centurion fell back, fountaining blood, the boy on the floor staring in wide-eyed horror as the man’s not-quite-dead-yet body hit the deck. The cat shadow thing was tearing about the room yowling and spitting, the walking corpse had slammed the last marine against the wall and was choking him out barehanded, and Cloud Corleone could smell the most terrifying thing a captain aboard his own ship can imagine.

Fire.

So he did what any sensible man would have done in his boots.

‘Fuck this,’ he said.

And he ran.

Barrelling down the corridor and up onto the deck, he was momentarily overcome by the sunslight glare and the stench of smoke. The Maid’s deck was covered with crewmen, running to and fro at BigJon’s bellowed commands.

‘Cut those bloody lines! Get those grapples out, you limp-pizzled lackwits! Wet down the damned sails! Push us away, you slack-jawed nonna-fuckers! Away!’

Cloud could see the Faithful was on fire – both her sails and her hull. Black smoke was spewing out of her arse end, which had been somehow blown apart. She was listing hard, taking water fast. Burning sailors and marines were diving into the sea, regular and arkemical flames were eating the wood, and her decks were in absolute chaos. And as he watched, trying to make sense of exactly what was going on aboard the stricken warship, Cloud Corleone found his jaw slackening in wonder.

‘Four Daughters …’

He thought it a trick of the light or smoke at first. But squinting harder, he realized that among the flames and embers, he could see …

A girl?

She moved like a song. Weaving and spinning, all pale skin and narrowed eyes and long hair, black as crow’s feathers. She held a gravebone longsword in her hand, a stolen shield in the other, drenched to the armpits in gore. As he watched, she skipped up to the aft deck towards one of the Luminatii. The man cursed and raised his sunsteel blade. A wolf made of what looked like shadowstuff flew up the stairs, mouth open and roaring. Cloud blanched as he realized he could understand what it was saying.

‘… RUN …!’ it roared, with a voice like winter. ‘… RUN, YOU FOOLS …!’

The girl raised her hand, and the Luminatii cried out, reeling back and clutching his eyes as if blinded. The lass cut the terrified man down, striking his hand off at the wrist as he fell, tossing aside her shield and snatching up his flaming sword from the deck. And as she wove among the rest of the terrified mob, that shadowwolf howling for blood, twin blades flashing in her hands, something about her form struck him as familiar. Something that put him in mind of the smell of blood and sand, the taste of a comely lass’s lips, a bookman calling him a cockeyed fool as he’d placed all his winnings down on …

‘’Byss and blood,’ he breathed.

Another explosion rocked the Faithful, her timbers cracking, her masts shattering. Cloud realized her arkemical ammunition stores must’ve been set ablaze, that she was tearing herself apart from the inside. Soldiers and sailors tumbled into the sea or made desperate leaps across to the Maid, only to be helped down into the waves by his own salts on BigJon’s order. Cloud watched, gobsmacked, as the girl cut the backstays securing the mizzenmast, her gravebone blade slicing through the thick, tar-soaked ropes as if they were spidersilk. She ducked low as the wind sent the mast falling with a splintering crack towards the Maid. And climbing up onto the fallen timber, she dashed along it like a cat, face twisted as she took a flying leap across the widening gap between the Faithful and the Maid.

She didn’t quite make it. Her gravebone blade flew from her hand and clattered across the deck at Cloud’s feet as she hit the stern rail, her stolen sunsteel falling into the ocean below. She almost followed it down into the burning water, but somehow clung on, nails clawing the timber, knuckles white as she seized hold of a heavy block. Hauling herself up the pulley, her grip slippery with blood, she managed to swing one leg onto the railing and pull herself over, collapsing on the deck. Chest heaving. Coughing and sputtering.

‘Fuck me very gently,’ Cloud murmured. ‘Then fuck me very hard.’

Dragging a stray lock of blood-soaked hair from her lips, the lass looked up into Cloud’s eyes. The captain now held her gravebone blade in his hands, its hilt sticky with red. Her shadow twisted, shifted, and the wolf that had struck such terror into the Luminatii and their men materialized on the deck between them, hackles raised, its growl seeming to come from beneath the floorboards.

‘… STAY BACK …’

Its voice chilled his belly, the girl’s stare, even more so. It was like the fear was a living thing, leaking out of the dark at her feet and into his own. Cloud heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. Felt a now familiar chill at his back. He could hear his crew forming up below, cudgels and blades at the ready, a little drunk on the carnage and maybe spoiling for a touch more. BigJon was holding them in check, but one word would be all it took for it to start again.

‘Mia?’ he heard a voice ask behind.

‘It’s all right, Ash,’ the lass replied, watching Cloud.

‘You’re the Crow,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Falcon of the Remus Collegium. The Bloody Beauty. Saviour of Stormwatch.’

Cloud licked his lips. Forced his voice to steady.

‘You’re the lass who murdered Grand Cardinal Francesco Duomo.’

She looked at him. Her face scarred and slave-marked and smudged with blood and smoke. Eyes black as truedark, circled with shadows.

‘Aye,’ was all she said.

Careful so as not to spook anyone, Cloud Corleone placed the gravebone sword onto the deck, gentle as if it were a newborn babe. And leaning down to the lass, he offered her his four-bastard smile along with his shaking hand.

‘Welcome aboard the Bloody Maid.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.