The old man straightened her nose out as best he could, wiped the blood from her face with a rag soaked in something that smelled sharp and metallic. And sitting her down at a little table in the back of his shop, he’d made her tea.
The room was somewhere between a kitchen and a library. All was swathed in shadow, the shutters drawn against the sunslight outside.1 A single arkemical lamp illuminated stacks of dirty crockery and great, wobbling piles of books. Mia’s pain slipped away as she sipped Mercurio’s brew, the throbbing mess in the middle of her face rendered mercifully numb. He gave her honeyseed cake and watched her wolf down three slices, like a spider watches a fly. And when she pushed the plate aside, he finally spoke.
“How’s the beak?”
“Doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Good tea, neh?” He smiled. “How’d it get broken?”
“The big boy. Shivs. I put my knife to his privates and he hit me for it.”
“Who told you to go for a boy’s cods in a scrap?”
“My father. He said the quickest way to beat a boy is to make him wish he was a girl.”
Mercurio chuckled. “Duum’a.”
“What does that mean?” Mia blinked.
“… You don’t speak Liisian?”
“Why would I?”
“I thought your ma would’ve taught you. She was from these parts.”
Mia blinked. “She was?”
The old man nodded. “Long time back, now. Before she got hitched and became a dona.”
“She … never spoke of it.”
“Not much reason to, I s’pose. I imagine she thought she’d left these streets behind forever.” He shrugged. “Anyways, closest translation of ‘duum’a’ would be ‘is wise.’ You say it when you hear agreeable words. As you might say ‘hear, hear’ or suchlike.”
“What does ‘Neh diis …’” Mia frowned, struggling with the pronunciation. “‘Neh diis lus’a … lus diis’a’? What does that mean?”
Mercurio raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Consul Scaeva said it to my mother. When he told her to beg for my life.”
Mercurio stroked his stubble. “It’s an old Liisian saying.”
“What does it mean?”
“When all is blood, blood is all.”
Mia nodded, thinking perhaps she understood. They sat in silence for a time, the old man lighting one of his clove-scented cigarillos and drawing deep. Finally, Mia spoke again.
“You said my mother was from here? Little Liis?”
“Aye. Long time past.”
“Did she have familia here? Someone I could …”
Mercurio shook his head. “They’re gone, child. Or dead. Both, mostly.”
“Like Father.”
Mercurio cleared his throat, sucked on his cigarillo.
“… It was a shame. What they did to him.”
“They said he was a traitor.”
A shrug. “A traitor’s just a patriot on the wrong side of winning.”
Mia brushed her fringe from her eyes, looked hopeful. “He was a patriot, then?”
“No, little Crow,” the old man said. “He lost.”
“And they killed him.” Hate rose up in her belly, curled her hands to fists. “The consul. That fat priest. The new justicus. They killed him.”
Mercurio exhaled a thin gray ring, watching her closely. “He and General Antonius wanted to overthrow the Senate, girl. They’d mustered a bloody army and were set to march against their own capital. Think of all the death that would’ve unfolded if they’d not been captured before the war began in truth. Maybe they should’ve hung your da. Maybe he deserved it.”
Mia’s eyes widened and she kicked back her chair, reaching for the knife that wasn’t there. The rage resurfaced then, all the pain and anger of the last twenty-four hours flaring inside her, the anger flooding so thick it made her arms and legs tremble.
And the shadows in the room began trembling too.
The black writhed. At her feet. Behind her eyes. She clenched her fists. Spat through gritted teeth. “My father was a good man. And he didn’t deserve to die like that.”
The teapot slipped off the counter with a crash. Cupboard doors shook on their hinges, cups danced on their saucers. Towers of books toppled and sprawled across the floor. Mia’s shadow stretched out toward the old man’s, clawing across the splintering boards, the nails popping free as it drew ever closer. Mister Kindly coalesced at her feet, translucent hackles raised, hissing and spitting. Mercurio backed across the room quicker than she’d imagine an old fellow might have stepped, hands raised in supplication, cigarillo hanging from bone-dry lips.
“Peace, peace, little Crow,” he said. “A test is all, a test. No offense meant.”
As the crockery stopped trembling and the cupboards fell silent, Mia sagged in place, tears fighting with the anger. It was all crashing down on her. The sight of her father swinging, her mother’s screams, sleeping in alleys, robbed and beaten … all of it. Too much.
Too much.
Mister Kindly circled her feet, purring and prowling just like a real cat might. Her shadow slipped back across the floor, puddling into its regular shape, just a shade too dark for one. Mercurio pointed to it.
“How long has it listened?”
“… What?”
“The Dark. How long has it listened when you call?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She curled up on her haunches, trying to hold it inside. Screw it up and push it all the way down into her shoes. Her shoulders shook. Her belly ached. And softly, she began to sob.
O, Daughters, how she hated herself, then …
The old man reached into his greatcoat. Pulled out a mostly clean handkerchief and held it out to her. Watching as she snatched it away, dabbed as best she could at her broken nose, the hateful tears in her lashes. And finally he knelt on the boards in front of her, looked at her with eyes as sharp and blue as raw sapphires.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” she whispered.
The old man’s eyes twinkled as he smiled. With a glance toward the cat made of shadows, Mercurio drew out her mother’s stiletto from his coat, stabbed it into the floorboards between them. The polished gravebone gleamed in the lantern light.
“Would you like to learn?” he asked.
Mia eyed the knife, nodded slow. “Yes, I would, sir.”
“There’s no sirs ’round here, little Crow. No donas or dons. Just you and me.”
Mia chewed her lip, tempted to just grab the blade and run for it.
But where would she go? What would she do?
“What should I call you, then?” she finally asked.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“If you want to take back what’s yours from them what took it. If you’re the kind who doesn’t forget, and doesn’t forgive. Who wants to understand why the Mother has marked you.”
Mia stared back. Unblinking. Her shadow rippled at her feet.
“And if I am?”
“Then you call me ‘Shahiid.’ Until the turn I call you ‘Mia.’”
“What’s ‘Shahiid’ mean?”
“It’s an old Ashkahi word. It means ‘Honored Master.’”
“What will you call me in the meantime?”
A thin ring of smoke spilled from the old man’s lips as he spoke. “Guess.”
“… Apprentice?”
“Smarter than you look, girl. One of the few things I like about you.”
Mia looked at the shadow beneath her feet. Up at the sunslight glare waiting just beyond the shutters. The Godsgrave. The City of Bridges and Bones, slowly filling with the bones of those she loved. There was no one out there who could help her, she knew it. And if she was going to free her mother and brother from the Philosopher’s Stone, if she wanted to save them from a tomb beside her father’s—presuming they buried him at all―if she was going to bring justice to the people who’d destroyed her familia …
Well. She’d need help, wouldn’t she?
“All right, then. Shahiid.”
Mia reached for her knife. Mercurio snatched it away, silver-quick, held it up between them. Tiny amber eyes twinkled at her in the gloom.
“Not until you earn it,” he said.
“But it’s mine,” Mia protested.
“Forget the girl who had everything. She died when her father did.”
“But I—”
“Nothing is where you start. Own nothing. Know nothing. Be nothing.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
The old man crushed out his cigarillo on the boards between them.
His smile made her smile in return.