One of the Luminatii saw movement above, yelled warning. But by then, Mia was raining wyrdglass down from her perch, thick clouds of Swoon bursting around the room. At least a dozen men dropped after inhaling a lungful, others running from their nooks and crannies to seek better shelter.
As the Luminatii broke cover, Naev, Jessamine, and the other Hands charged into the room, black and swift and deadly silent. The soldiers didn’t even know they were facing more than one assailant until five more of their number were dead. The disciples fell on the invaders with a fury that staggered them, Jessamine’s blades a blur, Naev fighting like a daemon despite her broken ribs. Perhaps it was rage at the invasion of their home. Perhaps it was the presence of the goddess, sword and scales poised above them, cold stone eyes following the butchery. But within moments, the Luminatii ambush had turned into a slaughter, and the black ran red with the blood of Aa’s faithful.
Mia stood upon her perch, crossbow in hand, picking off runners and cutting down anyone who thought to strike at a disciple’s back. Ten quarrels later, she drew her blades and stepped out of the statue’s shadow forty feet below, burying a dagger in some poor fool’s back, cutting down another with a fistful of throwing knives. Fighting back to back with Naev, throwing up a wall of bloody steel, the song of their blades filling the empty space left behind by the Mother’s choir, the cries of the slaughtered echoing in the dark after the last man had fallen.
Naev staggered, clutching her ribs and gasping. Jessamine was bloodied and breathless. Two other Hands—a boy named Pietro, not much older than Mia, and an older man named Neraius—had fallen under the Luminatii’s blows.
“… mia …”
The girl stood over Pietro’s body, head hung low.
Staring into his sightless eyes.
“… mia they are at the stables …”
She hung there in the quiet gloom. Trying not to remember.
Trying and failing.
“He was just a boy, Mister Kindly.”
She shook her head.
“Just a boy.”
“… now is not the time to mourn, mia. this boy or any other …”
The girl looked at him then, grief shining in her eyes.
“… avenge them instead …”
Mia nodded slow.
Wiped the blood from her blades.
And she ran on.
The stables were a milling sea of men, animals, dust. The stink of sweat and blood and shit, the barks of centurions, the warbling murmurs of agitated camels, and, above them all, Justicus Remus. Roaring.
Mia had only ever hidden one other person beneath her cloak, but Tric had been a giant, and Naev and Jessamine were each half his size. So, leaving the other wounded Hands behind, the trio had stolen down the stairs and out into the stables. Looking through the scrum, Jessamine sighed.
“’Byss and blood, we’re too late.”
The Luminatii had already managed to open the Mountain’s walls, blinding light and fingers of grit blowing in from the Whisperwastes outside. Soldiers had hitched up two wagon trains to camel teams and were leading them into the foothills outside; other Luminatii were saddling individual beasts and dragging them out by the reins. Most of the soldiers had never laid eyes on a camel before, and the process was taking longer than it should have—hence the roars from the aforementioned justicus. But still, the Luminatii were moments from escape.
Mia could see seven bound figures with bags over their heads being loaded into the foremost wagon. Even with their faces hidden, she recognized them immediately. The Ministry, a slender boy who must be Hush, and finally, a figure bound in a cocoon of rope and manacles, being carried by one of the biggest Luminatii Mia had ever seen.
“Lord Cassius,” she breathed.
“Black Mother,” Jessamine hissed. “They killed the other camels.”
Mia looked into the pens, saw Jessamine was right; any beast not currently hitched to a train or being saddled by a soldier had been slaughtered. She cursed softly, staring out into the rocky foothills at the Mountain’s feet.
“Naev, when we first arrived here, there was some kind of magik on the Mountain. A confusion, and kind of …”
“The Discord,” Naev said.
“Aye, that’s it. Will it effe—”
“No,” the woman sighed. “It only wears upon those who seek to enter the Mountain uninvited. These men seek to leave it. The Discord will not sway them.”
“Shit,” Mia hissed. “How do we give chase?”
“Just smuggle us aboard the trains with your shadow-werking,” Jessamine said.
“They’re already outside. My power runs deep in the Mountain because no sunslight has ever touched these halls. But out there … I don’t think I’m strong enough to hide us all. If we get seen, we’re as dead as those unwanted camels. Besides, the wagons are full. It’s not like there’s room for us to hide in them anyway.”
Mia spoke true—even thinning their numbers in the library and Hall of Eulogies, there were still over a hundred Luminatii left standing and only six wagons. Between their fellows and the supplies necessary to survive a weeks-long trek back to Last Hope, Remus’s men were squashed together like strips of salt pork in a barrel.
“Fuck,” Jessamine sighed.
“Aye,” Mia agreed. “Fuck is right.”
The Luminatii were dragging the last few living camels out into the foothills, clambering up on their backs. Remus was already aboard the first train, and through the rising dust, Mia saw Ashlinn, red-eyed and furious, standing atop the wagon and watching the Mountain’s entrance. The half-dozen soldiers Mia had left hamstrung in Adonai’s chamber would have told the girl what happened to her brother. Ashlinn knew Osrik was dead. And more, she knew Mia was responsible.
The girl snarled something at Remus, only to be roared at in response. However much she’d helped in taking down the Church, it seemed the justicus of the Luminatii was in no mood to take lip from a seventeen-year-old heretic.
Glad to be the thorn in your side, bitch …
The last camels were outside. The wagon covers were being drawn, the tackle checked. Naev muttered a prayer, readying to charge, but Mia grabbed her arm.
“You can’t go out there.”
“We cannot let them escape,” the woman hissed.
“There’s too many, Naev. They’ll butcher us before we get ten feet.”
“We can’t just sit here!” Jessamine spat.
Mia chewed her lip. Stared at the hundred-yard dash to the rearmost wagon.
“I can make it,” Mia said. “They won’t see me. I can get aboard.”
“And do what? Take out a hundred Luminatii alone?”
Mia’s shadow rippled. A chill shivered the air.
“… she is never alone …”
Mia looked down at the not-cat, tail switching side to side. And there in the shadows, crouched amid the dust and the dark, the puzzle came together in Mia’s mind. The final piece, the final thought, the final answer falling into place.
Click.
“I know how to stop them,” she breathed. “Are you with me?”
Mister Kindly titled his head quizzically.
“… always …”
Before Naev or Jessamine could speak, Mia was off, tearing up the shadows and throwing them about her shoulders, dashing through the stables and into the open air. The trains were already moving, dirt and grit in her mouth and eyes, and she ran almost blind, just a shifting blur against the rising dust. Stumbling through the gloom, the blur of Luminatii riders to the rearmost wagon, overflowing with grumbling, blood-caked soldiers. Moving by feel, she slipped beneath the tray, crawled forward, and slung herself up onto the fore-axel to lay in wait.
The wagon crunched and bounced down the crumbling slope, the drivers whipping the camels hard. Remus obviously wanted to get as far from the Mountain as he could with his prize; the justicus might be a courageous sort when murdering kittens and throwing children into canals, but it seemed when plans went astray, so did his desire for confrontation.