At the other end of the level, two Luminatii were stationed at the stairwells leading to higher ground. But their eyes were fixed above, of course, waiting for their justicus and his men to return. Mia stole toward them, quiet enough to make both Mercurio and Mouser beam with pride. She was less than a whisper as she rose up behind them. More than a blur as her gravebone blade sliced one man ear to ear, pierced the other’s heart as he turned to watch his comrade fall.
The soldier staggered, collapsing backward against the stairwell, hand to his chest. Eyes searching the darkness for what had killed him. And she threw aside her cloak then, just so he could see. See the pale waif soaked all in black and red, the mask of drying gore, the eyes beyond. See the shadow of a dead boy in her pupils as she reached out and covered his mouth, slicing his throat as she whispered.
“Hear me, Niah. Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close.”
The not-cat at her feet swelled and rippled, drinking deep of the soldier’s final terror. And all around her, she could feel it. The Dark. Whispering. Urging her on.
It was pleased.
Mia opened her arms, willed the shadows to rise, wrap the bodies up and drag them off into the darkness. She almost wished she could stay and watch as their comrades returned, finding only bloodstains to mark their passing. Watch as the first seeds of fear took root, and these men realized just how far they were from home. That the Dark around them was not only angry. It was hungry.
She dashed up the stairs, met two more soldiers at the top, gifting them an end the same as the ones below. They seemed so small here in the Mountain’s belly. Without their sunblades and white mail and their cloaks like crimson rivers. Just tiny little men, their faith in the Everseeing not quite enough to protect them from his bride. From the one she’d marked. The one she’d chosen, in this, her house. Her altar. Her temple.
Mia was almost at the Hall of Eulogies when they spotted her. Quietly ending two legionaries, she failed to notice two more descending from above. She heard roars of alarm, turning in time to see the Luminatii rushing toward her. She slipped low and sliced one from knee to privates, severing his femoral artery and bleeding him out on the floor. The second cracked her across the temple with his club, and she staggered, wrapping his feet up in darkness and slipping behind him, burying her blade half a dozen times into his back. But she heard more shouts now, more running feet.
Half a dozen Luminatii were charging down the stairwell toward her, among them Alberius, head of the century himself. She could throw on her cloak of shadows, perhaps slip past them unnoticed. But the thought of Ashlinn’s betrayal, of what she’d done to Tric, of these bastards invading the place she’d come to think of as home—all of it burned in her chest with an intensity that almost frightened her.
No more running. No more hiding.
“All right, bastards,” she whispered. “Follow me.”
The legionaries saw her, shouted warning. She drew her gravebone dagger. Osrik’s blade in her off-hand. The dried blood at her lips cracking as she snarled, the shadows about her writhing as she charged up the stairs to meet them. Alberius and the legionary beside him were both as broad as houses, cudgels and shields raised. The centurion squinted at her in the dark, at the blade in her hand that had claimed his eye. Recognition at last dawning on his paling face.
“You …,” he breathed.
The centurion touched three fingers to his brow and held them out to Mia.
“Luminus Invicta!” he roared.
Mia screamed wordlessly, heart singing as she raised her blades. The Luminatii roared answer, barreling down the stairs toward the blood-streaked daemon, raising their clubs, eyes growing wide as the girl stepped into the shadow at her feet out of the shadows behind them and kept right on running.
The Luminatii skidded to a halt, the rearmost soldier watching her disappear up the stair. Alberius bellowed and the chase was on, out along the broader hallways and into the Mountain proper. Mia saw four more Luminatii ahead, sprinting toward her. She picked up her pace, blades gleaming. And just as they reached her, cudgels raised, teeth bared, again she skipped through the shadows
and out of the dark at their backs.
They turned, looked at her dumbfounded as she bent double, pausing to catch her breath. Alberius’s furious shouts ringing in the distance. And straightening, Mia raised the knuckles, blew them a kiss, and ran on.
There were thirty men chasing her by the time she arrived. More cries ringing through the Mountain, the sound of more approaching feet. Mia glanced over her shoulder and saw fury and murder in their eyes, skidding to a halt at a huge pair of double doors, slipping inside and sealing them behind her as she turned and ran.
Out into the dark of the athenaeum.
The Luminatii burst into the room, the doors swinging open and slamming into the small wooden trolley marked RETURNS that had been placed—rather carelessly, it might have appeared—directly in the door’s path.
The trolley upended, smashed to the stone, dozens of tomes sent sprawling, skittering, skidding. A red-faced Alberius stormed into the room and booted the trolley aside, more books sailing across the mezzanine as his soldiers fanned out around him. He scanned the dark, a black scowl on his brow.
And somewhere out in the forest of pages and shelves, came a rumbling,
chuddering
roar.
“… What in the Everseeing’s name was that?” one soldier asked.
“Fan out!” the centurion ordered. “Find that heretic bitch and gut her!”
Twenty-nine salutes thumped against twenty-nine chests. The Luminatii marched down the stairs and into the shelves, weapons raised. Splitting wordlessly into small columns of six men apiece, they spread out, scouring aisle after aisle. Alberius led a group of his finest, narrowed eyes searching every nook and corner. Six years he must have lived with the lie. Sleepless nevernights spent worrying if the morrow would be the turn Scaeva discovered Corvere’s daughter still lived. And now was his chance to not only avenge the loss of his eye, but put to rest any fear of his failure coming to light.
I wonder if he thought himself lucky for it.
Out in the black, another roar sounded.
Closer now.
“Centurion?” one of his men asked. “What is that?”
Alberius paused, scanning the dark. He raised his voice, called over the shelves.
“Graccus? Belcino? Report!”
“No sign, sir!”
“Nothing, sir!”
Another roar. The sound of something heavy approaching.
Closer.
The good centurion looked troubled now. Second thoughts perhaps overcoming his initial fervor. And just as he opened his mouth to speak, he heard soft footsteps, a rippling breeze, a roar of pain. He turned, saw one of his legionaries clutching a stab wound in his back, a small, dark-haired girl staring at him from a mask of drying blood.
“Good turn, centurion,” she said.
“She’s here!” Alberius roared.
The girl smiled, gently tossing something at his chest. “A gift for you.”
The centurion raised his shield, smashed the object from the air. He realized it was some old book; leather-bound and dusty, the binding popping and a dozen pages bursting loose. It skidded across the floor, shedding more of its guts as it went.
“… unwise …,” came a whisper.
“Kill that fucki—”
Something reared up over the top of the shelves. Something huge, many-headed, and monstrous, all blunt snouts and leathery skin and jaws full of O, too many teeth. The Luminatii cried out—to their credit, not in alarm, but warning—raising their little shields and toothpicks and roaring to the fellows in the other aisles. And then the Something struck, engulfing Centurion Alberius with those O, so many teeth and shaking him like a dog with a particularly sad and bloody little bone.
Soldiers came running. Soldiers ran screaming. More Somethings reared up over the shelves, huge and sightless, snapping and roaring and ripping the little men to pieces, all the while disturbing not a single page on a single shelf.
Back up on the mezzanine, Mia stepped from the shadows of the balustrade. Stood beside an old man, his back bent like a question mark, leaning against the railing and watching the show.
“A girl with a story to tell,” Aelius smiled.
“So they say.”
“Smoke?”
“Maybe later.”
And she was gone.