“Sleep,” she sighed. “Sleep for a hundred years.”
She loosened the ties on the oilskin bag, dragging out her old beaten copy of Theories of the Maw. Running a loving hand over the cover of Arkemical Truths. Then she slumped down with Lotti’s notebook. Thinking of Hush, wondering how he was faring. Ash. Tric. They’d be getting ready for the initiation ceremony, she supposed. Evemeal at the Sky Altar, then down to the Hall of Eulogies, there to be anointed with Cassius’s blood and inducted into the ranks of the Blades.
That was one reason to join the Hands, she supposed. At least inside the Mountain, she’d have access to the athenaeum. Maybe even to Cassius himself on occasion. She still had no real answers about darkin, or any real idea what she was …
Mia flipped through the pages of Lotti’s work. Smiling at the thought of her friend’s dry wit and deadpan stare. But her smile faded when she reached the pages Carlotta had been working on as she was murdered. There was a spray of dried blood across the notes, soaking through to those beyond.
Blood.
Soaking through …
“Explain what, Revered Mother?”
“This.”
Drusilla gathered up the sheet, held it in front of Mia’s face. There, soaked through the fabric’s weave, Mia saw a tiny smudge of dried scarlet.
Mia blinked at the bloodstains on the pages.
“You cannot account for your whereabouts yestereve, and the victim’s blood is found on your sheets—a fact which you yourself cannot explain. Has Carlotta ever visited your room?”
“No, but—”
No, but someone else had visited that morn …
“It couldn’t have been,” she breathed.
“… couldn’t have been what …?”
Mia looked to the not-cat. Struggling with the words. With the thought behind them. Rising off the bed, Mia flipped to the end of Lotti’s notebook. Back to the missing pages. Rummaging around her desk, she found a charstick, rubbed it lightly across the blank page following the missing section. There in the dusting of black, she could see the faintest of impressions. Lotti’s handwriting, her homebrew cypher, arkemical symbols.
“… what are you—”
“Hush. Give me a moment.”
She scowled over the pages, squinting at the faint handwriting. The marks were barely legible. She couldn’t be sure, but …
“This looks like a modified recipe for Swoon …”
“… the sedative …?”
She nodded. “But these measurements are enough for a dozen men at least. Why would Lotti be …”
Carlotta rose and padded over to Osrik, spoke to him quietly, sodden notebook in hand. Oz smiled his handsome smile, fingertips brushing Lotti’s own.
Mia waggled her eyebrows at Ash. “They’ve been getting cozy. I saw them working together on some concoction a few turns back. And they seem to get paired up in Truths an awful lot.”
“This makes no sense,” she whispered.
“… a feeling i am growing rapidly familiar with …”
Mia rose from her stool, Lotti’s notebook in hand. About to head downstairs to Mercurio, she heard more commotion in the kitchen. A blacker curse than she’d ever heard the old man use. It didn’t seem like a good time to be bothering him with insane theories. He’d likely bite her head off.
She bound the notebook in her oilskin again. Scowling so hard her head ached.
But if she was right …
I can’t be right.
“I need to go back to the Church.”
“… so soon …?”
“I need to talk to the Revered Mother.”
“… she will be busy with the initiation ceremony, surely …?”
Mia was already perched on the windowsill, wind howling through the open glass.
“On my side or in my way?”
The not-cat sighed.
“… as it please you …”
Mia hurried back through the Little Liis market, the churning streets of the Nethers, shoving and pushing down to the Bay of Butchers. The storm was almost on Godsgrave now, thunder and lightning racing each other across the sky. The smell of offal and sewage rolled in with the salt of the deeper ocean, Mia’s shoulders hunched, a black tangle billowing about her face as she pulled up her hood against the chill.
The harbor was busy.
Busier than it should have been, with weather this grim.
As Mia approached the Porkery, she noticed groups of conspicuously large men lurking near the entrance. Not joking or jawing like sailor-folk or tradesmen might. They scowled at her approach, but she smiled sweetly, walking right on past them. Studying from the corners of her eyes.
They were big, all of them. Dressed like commoners, but well-built to a man. And with her gaze downcast, she saw they all wore soldiers’ boots.
What the ’byss is going on here?
She rounded the corner, mind racing. Dragging her cloak of shadows about her shoulders, she latched onto a downspout, scaled the Porkery’s flank, deft as a monkey. On the roof, she worked at the tiles, jamming her gravebone stiletto between a pair and prying them loose. Dropping down into the gap, she crawled across the rafters, throwing aside her shadowcloak so she could see the slaughterhouse below.
There was no sign of Bacon or his sons. No sign of the regular butchers who worked the pork. But there were more of those burly gents at every exit, as well as on the mezzanine leading down to the blood pool.
And there among them, heart seizing, breath stilling, she saw him.
It’d been two years since she’d fought him on the steps of the Basilica Grande. Six years since she’d truly seen him up close, the turn he took her father’s title, stole her familia’s lands. But still, she’d recognize him anywhere. The biggest man she’d ever seen. A trimmed beard framing wolfish features, animal cunning twinkling in his gaze. The scar of what could only have been cat’s claws trailing down his cheek. He was dressed as a pleb like the rest of them. No white armor or red cloak or sunsteel blade in sight. But she knew him. Hate dripping from her tongue as she whispered.
“Justicus Marcus Remus …”
She looked around the Porkery. At the men with their swordgrip hands and their soldiers’ boots. And she knew them for exactly what they were.
“… luminatii …”
“They’re here for the blood pool.” She breathed deep, scarcely believing her eyes. “They’re gearing up to invade the Church.”
“… adonai would never walk them across …”
“Unless he’s in league with them?” Mia whispered. “Or someone forces him?”
“… walking blithely into a den of the deadliest assassins in the republic? this eve of all eves? lord cassius himself will be there …”
“… Maybe that’s the idea.”
Justicus Remus spoke to one of his centurions, narrowed eyes on his troops.
“All is prepared?”
“Aye, Justicus.” The tall, iron-hard man saluted, fist to chest. “The abattoir was taken without incident. The heretics who dwelled below are in custody or slain.”
The justicus nodded, turned to another man beside him. A grizzled-looking veteran that Mia recognized, a leather patch over one eye.
“Centurion Alberius, Second Century will enter the portal first and secure the staging area. Prepare your men. Assault begins in five minutes.”
The puppy-killer thumped his chest. “Luminus Invicta, Justicus.”
The man turned to his men and bellowed.
“Second Century, form up!”
One hundred Luminatii arranged themselves with military precision, grim-faced and silent. They bore wooden cudgels and shields, a few gravebone blades. Mia was at least grateful none of them would be able to bring their sunsteel with them—no metal could make the Blood Walk, and facing down a few hundred Luminatii armed with burning blades was a little more daunting than facing down a few hundred armed with big sticks.
But only a little.
Remus turned on his secondus, spoke in measured tones.
“Centurion Maxxis. Third Century will hold ground here until we return with the heretics and their master in chains. First Century marches with me on the Sky Altar.”