“Bravo,” he said. “I’ve not seen anyone resist the Discord so well since Lord Cassius.”
As the man stepped forward, the others about him broke as if on cue. They began unloading the caravan, unhitching the exhausted camels. Four of them lifted Naev into a sling, carrying her toward the cliff. Mia could see no rope. Could see no— “What is your name?”
“Mia, master. Mia Corvere.”
“And who is your Shahiid?”
“Mercurio of Godsgrave.”
“Ah, Mercurio at last musters the courage to send another lamb to the Church of Slaughter?” The man held out his hand. “Interesting.”
She took the offered hand, and he pulled her up from the dust. Her mouth was dry, heart thudding. Echoes of murder and desire thrumming in her veins.
“You are Tric.” The man turned to the boy with a smile. “Who carries the blood and not the name of the Threedrake clan. Adiira’s student.”
Tric nodded slow, dragged his locks from his eyes. “Aye.”
“My name is Mouser, servant of Our Lady of Blessed Murder and Shahiid of Pockets in her Red Church.” A small bow. “I believe you have something for us.”
The question hung like a sword above Mia’s head. A thousand turns. Sleepless nevernights and bloody fingers and poison dripping from her hands. Broken bones and burning tears and lies upon lies. Everything she’d done, everything she’d lost—all of it came to this.
Mia reached for the pouch of teeth at her belt.
Her belly turned to ice.
“…No,” she breathed.
Feeling about her waist, her tunic, eyes widening in a panic as she realized— “My tithe! It’s gone!”
“O, dear,” said Mouser.
“But I just had it!”
Mia searched the sands about her, fearing she’d lost it in the struggle with Tric. Scrabbling in the dust, tears in her eyes. Mister Kindly swelled and rolled inside her shadow’s dark, but even he couldn’t keep her terror completely at bay—the thought that everything had been for nothing … Crawling in the dirt, hair tangled across her eyes, chewing her lip and— Clink, clink.
She looked up. Saw a familiar sheepskin purse held in supple fingers.
Mouser’s smile.
“You should be more careful, little lamb. Shahiid of Pockets, as I said.”
Mia stood and snatched the purse with a snarl. Opening the bag, she counted the teeth therein, clutched it in a bloodless fist. She looked the man over, rage engulfing her terror for a moment. She had to resist the urge to add his teeth to her collection.
“That was heartless,” she said.
The man smiled wider, sadness lingering at the corners of those old eyes.
“Welcome to the Red Church,” he said.
CHAPTER 8
SALVATION
“Two irons and twelve coppers,” the boy crowed. “Tonight we eat like kings. Or queens. As the case may be.”
“What,” scoffed the grubby girl beside him. “You mean crucified in Tyrant’s Row? I’d rather eat like a consul if it’s all the same to you.”
“Girls can’t be consuls, sis.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t eat like one.”
Three urchins were crouched in an alley not too far off the market’s crush, a basket of stale pastries beside them. The first, the quick-fingered lad who’d bumped into Mia in the marketplace. The second, a girl with grubby blond hair and bare feet. The third was a slightly older boy, gutter-thin and mean. They were dressed in threadbare clothes, though the bigger boy wore a fine belt of knives at his waist. The proceeds of their morning’s work were laid before them; a handful of coins and a silver crow with amber eyes.
“That’s mine,” Mia said from behind them.
The trio stood quickly, turned to face their accuser. Mia stood at the alley mouth, fists on hips. The bigger boy pulled a knife from his belt.
“You give that back right now,” said Mia.
“Or what?” the boy said, raising his blade.
“Or I yell for the Luminatii. They’ll cut off your hands and dump you in the Choir if you’re lucky. Throw you in the Philosopher’s Stone if not.”
The trio gifted her a round of mocking laughter.
The black at Mia’s feet rippled. The fear inside her became nothing at all. And folding her arms, she puffed out her chest, narrowed her eyes, and spoke with a voice she didn’t quite recognize as her own.
“Give. It. Back.”
“Fuck off, you little whore,” the big one said.
A scowl darkened Mia’s brow. “… Whore?”
“Cut her, Shivs,” the younger boy said. “Cut her a new hole.”
Cheeks reddening, Mia peered at the first boy.
“Your name is Shivs? O, because you carry knives, aye?” She glanced at the younger boy. “You’d be Fleas then?” To the girl. “Let me guess, Worms?”1
“Clever,” said the blonde. And stepping lightly to Mia’s side, she drew back a fist and buried it in Mia’s stomach.
The breath left her lungs with a wet cough as she fell to her knees. Blinking and blinded, Mia clutched her belly, trying not to retch. Astonishment inside her. Astonishment and rage.
Nobody had hit her before.
Nobody had dared.
She’d seen her mother fence wits countless times in the Spine. She’d seen men reduced to stuttering lumps by the Dona Corvere, women driven to tears. And Mia had studied well. But the rules said the aggrieved was supposed to riposte with some barb of their own, not haul off and punch her like some lowborn thug in an alley scra—
“O …,” Mia wheezed. “Right.”
Shivs strode across the alley and slammed a boot into her ribs. The blonde (who in Mia’s mind would ever after be thought of as Worms) smiled cheerfully as Mia vomited on an empty stomach. Turning to the younger boy, Shivs pointed at their loot.
“Pick that up and let’s be off. I’ve got—”
Shivs felt something sharp and deathly cold dig into his britches. He glanced down to the stiletto poking his privates, the little fist clutching it tight. Mia had wrapped herself around his waist, pressing her mother’s dagger into the boy’s crotch, the crow on the pommel glaring at Shivs with two amber eyes. Her whisper was soft and deadly.
“Whore, am I?”
Now, if this were a storybook tale, gentlefriend, and Mia the hero within it, Shivs would’ve seen some shadow of the killer she’d become and backed away all a-tremble. But the truth is, the boy stood two feet taller than Mia, and outweighed her by eighty pounds. And looking down at the girl around his waist, he didn’t see the most feared assassin in all the Republic—just a sprat with no real idea how to hold a knife, her face so close to his elbow one good twitch would send her sprawling.
So Shivs twitched. And Mia wasn’t sent sprawling so much as flying.
She fell into the mud, clutching a broken nose, blinded by agonized tears. The younger boy (ever after thought of as Fleas) picked up Dona Corvere’s fallen dagger, eyes wide.
“Daughters, lookit this!”
“Toss it here.”
The boy flipped it hilt first. Shivs snatched the knife from the air, admired the craftsmanship with greedy eyes.
“Aa’s cock, this is real gravebone …”
Fleas kicked Mia hard in the ribs. “Where did a trollop like you get—”
A wrinkled hand landed on the lad’s shoulder, slamming him against the wall. A knee said hello to his groin, a gnarled walking stick invited his jaw to dance.2 A double-handed strike to the back of his head left him bleeding in the dirt.
Old Mercurio stood above him, clad in a long greatcoat of beaten leather, a walking stick in one bony hand. His ice-blue eyes were narrowed, taking in the scene, the girl sprawled bloody on the ground. He looked at Shivs, lips peeled back in a sneer.
“That’s your game is it? Kickball?” He aimed a savage boot into the ribs of young Fleas, rewarded with a sickening crack. “Mind if I join?”