Something was coming.
A low growl rumbled along the corridor. A shape moved in the gloom ahead, utterly black, picked out by the window’s dull luminance. Mia squinted into the dark, longing to ask Mister Kindly what was wrong. Daughters, it was almost unthinkable, but for the first time Mia could ever remember, the not-cat seemed … afraid.
“Shit,” Ashlinn whispered. “It’s Eclipse.”
Mia frowned. “What’s—”
The question died in her throat as a dark shape prowled into view. Four feet tall, sleek and utterly silent. Long fangs and sharp claws and no eyes at all. It was a wolf.
A wolf made of shadows.
The creature stopped in its tracks, staring down the hallway toward the girls. They were both pressed against the plinth, holding their breath, sweat gleaming on Ash’s brow. Mia could feel Mister Kindly at her feet, positively trembling now. His fear was infectious, rising into her chest and making her hands shake. For as long as they’d been together, he’d allowed her to conquer her fears. Making her harder, stronger, braver than she could ever have been alone. The things they’d seen. The places they’d been. But now, he seemed more terrified than she.
The not-wolf growled again, the sound reverberating through the floor.
“Eclipse,” said a deep, musical voice. “Be silent.”
Though she didn’t dare breathe, let alone peer out to look, Mia recognized the speaker at once: Lord Cassius. She heard the lightest whisper of cloth, the soft scuff of leather on rock. The Lord of Blades was there; she was sure of it. The head of the entire Red Church. Staring down the corridor right at them—just a few feet of polished stone between them and discovery.
Long moments passed.
Heart thumping in her chest.
Mister Kindly shivering as the shadow wolf growled long and low.
Four Daughters, Cassius is darkin.
“Eclipse,” he said. “Adonai awaits. Come.”
A hollow, graveled voice spoke in reply. Tinged with the feminine. Seeming to come from somewhere below the ground.
“…AS IT PLEASE YOU …”
One last, low growl. Then footsteps. Whisper-soft. Receding. Mia found her breath, pressed her hand to her breast, felt her heart hammering beneath. Mister Kindly slowly stopped his shivering, and the fear began to fade. Ash grinned, laughing beneath her breath, almost manic.
“Well, that was exciting.”
“What in the Mother’s name was that?”
“Eclipse. Lord Cassius’s passenger.” Ashlinn glanced at her shadow, the shapeless shape therein. “Cassius is darkin, you know about them, right?”
Mia nodded. “I’ve a notion.”
“Want to follow him?”
“Follow him? Are you mad?”
Ash grinned wider. “A little.”
The girl crept off into the dark, her feet making almost no sound on the stone. Mia reached out to touch her shadow, felt the chill in that liquid black.
“Are you well?” she whispered.
“… trick question …?”
“What was that? I’ve never felt you afraid before …”
“… i could feel him. in my mind. he was … hungry …”
“Hungry for—”
“Mia!” Ashlinn hissed from the dark ahead. “Come on!”
“… it is not safe here, mia …”
Mia sighed. Frowned into the dark at her feet.
“To be continued …”
She stole along behind the girl, regretting her decision to leave her room more and more with every step. But Cassius was darkin. All these years, all these miles, and she’d never met another like herself. Goddess, what secrets might he teach her …
Sadly, the Lord of Blades proved as elusive to chase as the dark itself, and somewhere down near Weaver Marielle’s chambers, Cassius had disappeared entirely. At a four-way junction in the labyrinthine dark, Ashlinn sucked her lip, cursed in Vaanian, and finally shrugged.
“Slippery as a greased-up sweetboy, that one,” Ash whispered.
“Well, he is a master assassin,” Mia hissed.
Ash sighed. “He’s probably leaving the Church. Da said he never stays in one place for long.”
“I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ash grinned. “Scared of him?”
“Black Mother, aren’t you?”
“O, aye. But you better get over it. If you graduate, it’s him that’ll anoint you at the initiation ceremony.” Ashlinn looked about them, passageways stretching off into the darkness. “Ah, well. He’ll keep. Come on, I’m hungry.”
The pair stole off into the shadows, leaving the Lord of Blades and his business behind. They found the Hall of Songs, the smell of blood still hanging in the air. Mia’s elbow ached as if remembering, and she felt a surge of familiar anger. Recalling Solis’s face as he raised his sword. The agony of her maiming. With a whispered curse, she slipped back down the twisting stairs. Deep in the Mountain’s belly, they found the doors to the athenaeum, though neither girl thought it would be a good idea to have Chronicler Aelius discover them wandering about after ninebells. And after what seemed an age, a delicious smell drifting down one of the stairwells led them up to the kitchens.
Hot bread was baking in long, coal-fire ovens. The coolrooms were filled with cheeses and fresh fruit. The remnants of last eve’s supper were laid out on long platters. There were no Hands anywhere that Mia could see, so she and Ashlinn each stole a plateful, snuck out onto the now empty Sky Altar. Mia was again struck by the enormity of the blackness beyond the platform. The long drop to the wasteland below. The desert that perfectly mirrored the Ashkahi badlands she and Tric had traveled, somehow dwelling in perpetual night.
She was again overcome with the sense of sanctity about this place. The otherworldliness. She could almost feel the black stare of that statue in the Hall of Eulogies. The goddess, to whom this Church was dedicated.
Marked by the Mother, Drusilla had said.
But why? For what purpose?
… Maybe Lord Cassius knows?
Ash sat on the railing overlooking the drop, cross-legged, dragging stray blond from her eyes and wolfing down a chunk of bread and cheese. Mia tore at a chicken leg, idly wondering where the Church got the flour to bake bread and where they kept their livestock. The wagon train from Last Hope had contained only arkemical powders and tools and suchlike. Nothing perishable. Nothing alive.
“How do they feed us? Where do they get the stores?”
Ashlinn spoke around her mouthful. “Didn’t your Shahiid teach you about this place?”
“A little,” Mia shrugged. “But he seemed to hold most of the workings as secret. To be earned, not given freely.”
Ashlinn shrugged, scoffed another mouthful. “Wuh vwat wunugd mufuh.”
“… What?”
The girl swallowed, licked her lips. “I said, well, that’s what you’ve got me for. Da told me and my brother everything about this place. Everything he knew, anyway.”
“He’s a Blade?”
“Was. Worked on retainer for the king of Vaan for years.1 But he got captured on an offering in Liis. Tortured for three weeks in the Thorn Towers of Elai. He escaped, but not before they’d taken his sword hand, one of his eyes, and both his bollocks. So the Church retired him.”
“Maw’s teeth,” Mia breathed. “Marielle couldn’t fix his hurts?”
Ash shook her head. “The Leper Priests fed the bits they cut off to the scabdogs. Nothing left to reattach. So Da set to training me and Osrik to replace him.” A shrug. “Couldn’t give the goddess his own life, so he settled for his kin.”
Mia nodded, somehow unsurprised. A lesser man might vow vengeance against the master who had sent him to such a fate. But looking out into the dark waste below the altar, it was easy to understand how this place bred fanatics. She couldn’t help but remember the goddess’s stare in the Hall of Eulogies. The power in it. The majesty.
She glanced down to the shadow at her feet.
Marked for what?