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The chronicler frowned, crushed his cigarillo out against the wall.
“Poets are wankers.”
Aelius dropped the murdered butt of his smoke into his waistcoat. He looked down at the book in Mia’s hand. Back up into her eyes.
“You can keep that. Nobody else can read it anyways.”
With a small nod, he took hold of his RETURNS trolley.
“What, that’s all the explanation I get?” Mia asked.
Aelius shrugged. “Too many books. Too few centuries.”
The old man wheeled his trolley off into the dark. Watching him fade into the shadows, the girl took a savage drag of her cigarillo, jaw clenched.
“… well, that was enlightening …”
“… AELIUS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY. BEING CRYPTIC MAKES HIM FEEL IMPORTANT …”
Mia scowled at the shadowwolf materializing beside her.
“Are you sure Lord Cassius never learned anything of this, Eclipse? He was head of the entire congregation. You’re telling me he knew nothing about what it was to be darkin? Cleo? The Moon? Any of it?”
“… I TOLD YOU, WE NEVER LOOKED. CASSIUS FOUND ENOUGH MEANING IN LIFE BY ENDING THE LIVES OF OTHERS. HE NEEDED NO MORE THAN THAT …”
Mister Kindly snorted. “… small things and small minds …”
“… HAVE A CARE, LITTLE GRIMALKIN. HE WAS MY FRIEND WHEN YOU WERE STILL SHAPELESS. HE WAS AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE DARK AND AS SHARP AS THE MOTHER’S TEETH. SPEAK NO ILL OF HIM …”
Mia sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t understand how Cassius had never sought the truth of himself. She’d wondered on it since she was a child. Old Mercurio and Mother Drusilla had said she was chosen of the Goddess.
But chosen for what?
She remembered fighting in the streets of Last Hope with Ashlinn. Her attack on the Basilica Grande when she was fourteen. On both occasions, simply looking at the trinity—the holy symbol of Aa—had caused her agony. The Light God hated her. She’d felt it. Sure as the ground beneath her feet. But why? And what the ’byss did this “Moon” have to do with any of it?
And Remus.
Fucking Remus.
He was dead by her hand on a dusty Last Hope thoroughfare. His attack on the Mountain failed. His men slaughtered on the sands all around him. But before she’ d plunged her gravebone blade into his throat, the justicus had uttered words that turned her entire world upside down.
“I will give your brother your regards.”
Mia shook her head.
But Jonnen is dead. Mother told me so.
So many questions. Mia could taste frustration mixed with the smoke on her tongue. But her answers were in Godsgrave. And Black Mother be praised, that was exactly where this mysterious patron of hers was sending her.
Time to stop moaning and start moving.
Mia limped out from the athenaeum. Down the winding stair toward the Church’s belly. Through the puddles of stained-glass light, Mister Kindly on her shoulder and Eclipse prowling before her. The Church choir rang as they trod the winding stairs, the long and twisting halls, until finally, they reached Weaver Marielle’s chambers.
She took a breath, rapped on the heavy door. It opened after a moment, and Mia found herself looking into scarlet eyes, down to a beautiful, bloodless smile.
“Blade Mia,” Adonai said.
The Blood Speaker was clad in his indecent britches and red silk robe, open as ever at his chest. The room beyond was lit by a single arkemical lamp, the walls adorned with hundreds of different masks, all shapes and sizes. Death masks and children’s masks and Carnivalé masks. Glass and ceramic and papier-mâché. A room of faces, without a single mirror in sight.
“Thou art here for a weaving,” Adonai said.
“Aye,” Mia nodded, meeting those blood-red eyes without fear. “Wounds heal in time, but I’ ll not have much of it where I’m headed.”
“The City of Bridges and Bones,” the speaker mused. “No place more dangerous in all the Republic.”
“You’ve not seen my laundry basket,” Mia replied.
Adonai smirked, glanced over his shoulder.
“Sister love, sister mine? Thou hast company.”
Mia saw a misshapen form shuffle into the arkemical glow. The woman was albino pale like her brother, but what little Mia could see of her skin was swollen and cracked, blood and pus leaking through the bandages about her hands and face. She was clad in a black velvet robe, her lips splitting as she looked at Mia and smiled.
“Blade Mia,” Marielle whispered.
“Weaver Marielle,” Mia said, bowing.
“To the ’Grave she goes. At Father Solis’s word, to a new patron’s arms. And though stitched, still she bleeds.” Adonai shivered slightly. “I smell it on her.”
“All thy hurts shall be mended, little darkin,” Marielle lisped. “Sure and true.”
The weaver nodded to the dreaded stone slab that dominated her room. It was set with leather straps and buckles of polished steel—though Marielle could weave flesh like clay and mend almost any wound, the process itself was agony. Mia hated the thought of being bound for the process, truth told. Trussed up like some hog at the spit, britches around her ankles. But, resigning herself to the pain, feeling the shadows within her shadow drink down her fear, Mia limped into the chamber.
As he closed the door behind her, Speaker Adonai caught her arm.
Mia looked up into his glittering eyes, snow-pale lashes. He leaned close, closer, and for a terrible, thrilling moment, she thought he might kiss her. But instead, Adonai spoke with lowered voice, lips brushing her ear, barely a whisper.
“Two lives ye saved, the turn the Luminatii pressed their sunsteel to the Mountain’s throat. Mine, and my sister love’s. Marielle’s debt to thee was repaid the turn she gave Naev back her face. But my debt, little Blade, is still owed. Know this, in nevernights to come. As deep and dark as the waters ye swim might turn, on matters of blood, count upon a speaker’s vow, ye may.”
Adonai fixed her in his scarlet stare, voice as sharp as the gravebone at her wrist.
“Blood is owed thee, little Crow,” he whispered. “And blood shall be repaid.”
Mia glanced to Marielle. Back up into Adonai’s glittering red eyes. Her mind swimming with thoughts of Godsgrave. Braavi. Stolen maps and hidden patrons and a Ministry that seemed to feel nothing but ire toward her.
“… Do you know something that I don’t, Speaker?”
A beautiful, bloodless smile was her only reply. With a swish of his scarlet robe, Speaker Adonai motioned to his sister. Mia turned to the Room of Faces and its mistress, looming above that awful slab. Marielle beckoned her with twisted fingers.
No matter what was to come, it was too late to turn back now.
And heaving a sigh, Mia lay down on the stone.
She almost wept when she saw it.
It rose from the clifftops and pierced the sky, ochre stone bleeding through to gold in the light of two burning suns. A keep carved out of the cliffs themselves, once home to one of the twelve finest familia of the Republic.
Crow’s Nest.
Mia knelt on the deck of the Gloryhound and stared, overcome with memories. Walking in the bustling port, hand in hand with her mother. The shopkeeps calling her “little dona” and bringing her sweets. Her father striding the battlements above the ocean, sea breeze playing in his hair as he stares across the waves. Dreaming, perhaps, of the rebellion that would be his undoing.
She’d been too young to understand, too small to—
Crack!
The whip snapped across her shoulder blades, bright red pain tearing her from her reverie.
“I gave no permission for you to stop! Chin to the boards!”
Mia risked a hateful glance at the executus, looming over her with a long stock whip in hand. Sweat was dripping down her face, hair clinging to her skin. A second strike across her back was her reward for her hesitation. Arms burning with fatigue, she dropped into another push-up and rose again. Black spots swum in her eyes. The two men beside her did the same, grunting with exertion.
The journey from the Hanging Gardens had taken almost three weeks. Every turn, she and the two other slaves Leona had purchased at market were taken up on deck and run through exercises, and the sound of the executus’s stock whip was starting to haunt her dreams.
Her first comrade in captivity was a hard Liisian boy named Matteo. He looked a few years older than Mia, with softly curling hair, strong arms and a pretty smile. Despite his impressive physique, Matteo had been sick as a dog for the first week they’d been at sea—Mia guessed he’d never set foot on a ship in his life.
Her second bedfellow was a burly Itreyan named Sidonius. He was in his late twenties and looked hard as a coffin nail. Bright blue eyes and a shaven head. He seemed the meaner of the pair, and looked at Mia like he wanted to fuck and/or kill her. She wasn’t quite sure in which order. She wasn’t sure Sidonius was either. Strangest of all, the man had a rough brand that looked to have been burned into his skin with a red-hot blade. A single word, carved right across his chest.
COWARD.
He offered no explanation for it, and Mia didn’t like him enough to ask.
After another thirty-two push-ups, the executus signaled the three to stop, and Mia collapsed face-first onto the deck, arms trembling.
“Your upper body strength is a jest,” the big man growled at her. “And yet, my lips are absent laughter.”
“Enough for the turn, Executus,” called Dona Leona from her seat on the foredeck. “They’ll need to be able to walk when they meet their new familia.”
“On your feet.”
Mia stood slowly, staring out at the ocean. The welts on her back tickled with the sting of her sweat. The executus’s salt-and-pepper hair whipped about in the ocean breeze, his beard bristling as he glared. Long minutes ticked by in silence, only the calls of gulls and the sounds of the distant port for company.
“Drink,” the executus finally grunted.
Mia turned and practically dashed for the water barrel lashed to the main mast. The big Itreyan, Sidonius, shoved her aside with a curse, snatching up the ladle and drinking his fill. Mia seethed, half-tempted to knock the thug on his arse as she waited her turn, but the sensible part of her brain counseled patience. When Sidonius finished drinking, Matteo flashed her his pretty smile, waved to the barrel.
“After you, Mi Dona.”
Crack!
The boy winced as the executus’s whip found his back.
“I gave no permission for you to speak!”
The boy grit his teeth, bowed apology. Mia nodded thanks, turned to the water barrel, gulping down mouthful after sweet mouthful.
It chafed her almost to screaming, bowing down to these people. Told when to eat, when to drink, when to shit. The executus’s contempt for them was matched only by Dona Leona’s ambivalence. On the one hand, the woman treated them with a sort of affection, and spoke of the glory to come on the sands of the venatus. But on the other, she had them whipped for the smallest slight. They weren’t allowed to look her in the eye. They spoke only when spoken to. Performing on command.
Like favored dogs, Mia realized.
Mia’s parents had slaves when she was a little girl—every noble familia in the Republic did. But Mia’s nanny, Caprice, was practically treated like blood, and her father’s majordomo, a Liisian named Andriano Varnese, stayed on to serve the justicus even after he’d purchased his freedom.
Even on the run for her life as a child, even sworn into the service of the Black Mother, Mia had never really understood what it was to not belong to herself. The thought of it burned her, like the memory of that needle being hammered into her skin. Again and again. The indignity. The shame.
But you cannot win if you do not play.
The Gloryhound dropped anchor in the harbor, and a short row later, Mia stood with her fellow captives on the bustling docks of the cityport beneath Crow’s Nest, known as Crow’s Rest. Her wrists were manacled and chafed, her clothes filthy, her hair a matted mess. Mister Kindly’s absence was a knife wound in her belly, bleeding all the warmth right out of her. She looked down to her shadow, once dark enough for two, even three. Now, no different than any other around her. Fear hovered about her on black wings, and for the first time in a long time, she had to face it alone.
What if she failed?
What if she wasn’t strong enough?
What if this gambit was just as foolish as Mister Kindly had warned?
“Move!” came the cry, punctuated by the sting of knotted leather on her back.
Gritting her teeth, as was now the custom, Mia did as she was told.
A wagon ride later, she was trundling into the courtyard of Crow’s Nest, heart aching inside her chest. The keep seemed so familiar, the sights, the sounds, Black Mother, even the smells were unchanged. But decorating the ochre stone of the courtyard walls where the Crow of Corvere once flew, she saw the familia crest of Marcus Remus—a red falcon on a crossed blackand-white field.
I have a decidedly sinking feeling about this …
Memories of her childhood were awash in her head, mingled with images of her parents’ end. Her father executed along with General Antonius before a howling mob. Her mother and brother dead in the Philosopher’s Stone. Some part of her had always known this castle was no longer hers, that her home was not her home. But to see that bastard Remus’s colors still on the walls, even after she’d buried him … she felt as if the whole world were shifting beneath her feet. A sickness swelled in her belly, greasy and rolling. And still, she had no time to muse on the end of her old familia.
Her new one was waiting for her.
They stood in a row, like legionaries awaiting inspection. Thirteen men and two women, dressed in loincloths and piecemeal leather armor—spaulders, padded shin guards, and the like. Sweat-soaked skin gleamed in the light of two burning suns, giving them the look of statues cast in bronze. Men and women who fought on the sands of the venatus, who lived and died to the cheers of a blood-drunk crowd.
Gladiatii.
As Dona Leona climbed down from the wagon, each of them slammed a fist to their chest and roared as one.
“Domina!”
Leona pressed her fingers to her lips, blew them kisses.
“My Falcons.” She smiled. “You look magnificent.”
The executus cracked his whip, barked at Mia and her fellows to get out of the wagon. Sidonius pushed his way out first as usual. Matteo again smiled, motioned she should go before him. Mia climbed down onto the dirt, felt fifteen sets of eyes appraising her every inch. She saw lips curl, eyes narrow in derision. But the gladiatii were as disciplined as any soldier, and none breathed a word in the presence of their mistress.
