“Then it shall make the Walk.” The speaker inclined his head. “It is bone. Life once flowed through it, ages past. Though if ye wish to leave it in my keeping, fear not. No thief alive hath courage enough to plunder this spider’s larder.”
Looking at the scarlet sigils scrawled on Adonai’s face, the pool of blood churning and splashing like an angry red sea, Mia had no difficulty believing him. But still, she kept the blade sheathed at her wrist, stowed the rest of her possessions in granite nooks set aside for the task. Stripping down to the silk slip beneath her leathers, she felt goosebumps rising on her skin.
Adonai knelt at the apex of the triangular pool, palms upturned. Nodded to Aalea. The Shahiid slipped her robe off her shoulders, revealing naked skin beneath. Mia found herself staring, struck by the woman’s complete lack of self-consciousness. Long hair flowed down Aalea’s back, like a river of night against milk-white curves. She stepped bare into the red, out into the center. The pool seemed only a few inches deep at first, but soon she was wading up to her waist, hair trailing through the blood behind.
Adonai spoke beneath his breath, eyes rolling back in his head. The warmth in the room grew deeper, the smell of copper and iron heavier. And as Mia watched, the blood began to swirl. Sloshing around the pool’s edge, it rolled in a clockwise circle; a vortex spinning faster and faster as Adonai’s whispers became a gentle, pleading song. His eyes had turned blood red. His lips were curled in an ecstatic smile. Mia’s own eyes were wide, her tongue tingling with the taste of magik.
Aalea held her hands at her sides, palm up. Eyes closed, face serene. And then, without warning, the Shahiid disappeared; dragged down into the whirlpool without a struggle. Without a sound.
The vortex calmed. The blood grew directionless again, washing in small frothing waves. Silence hung in the room like a traitor’s corpse.
“Next,” Adonai said.
Mia looked at Ashlinn. Carlotta. Jessamine. Belle. Obvious hesitation on their faces. None of them would’ve seen this kind of sorcery before—Daughters, nobody outside these walls would’ve witnessed it for a thousand years. But as ever, there was no fear in Mia’s belly, even when there should’ve been. Her shadow breathed a contented sigh.
She stepped into the pool without a word, the blood thick and warm between her toes. The tile was smooth, and she had to walk slowly lest she slip, out waist-deep into the center of the red. Adonai began whispering again, the flow turning once more, faster and faster, with her at the heart. Mia felt dizzy, eyes closed against the arkemical glow, arms outspread for balance. Blood-stink filled her nostrils. The room about her swaying. And just as she was about to speak, she found she was falling, sucked down, down, down into some colossal undertow.
Red waves crashed over her head, the whole world spinning, turning, churning. No breath in her lungs. Blood in her mouth. Amniotic darkness all about, the thudding pulse of some enormous, distant heart, muted by the blood-warm black engulfing her. A tiny babe in a lightless womb. Swimming ever upward, toward a light she couldn’t be sure was there. Until at last …
At last …
Surfacing.
Mia burst into the light. Gagging. Gasping. Gentle hands held her, soft voices assured her all was well. Pawing something thick and sticky from her eyes, she found herself standing in a waist-deep pool of gore. Two men with slavemarks stood beside her, holding her up lest she fall. They helped her climb out of the pool, holding her steady as she slipped and swayed. She was covered head to foot in blood, dripping on the tile, hair and slip plastered to her skin. Her eyelashes clung together as she blinked.
“Maw’s teeth,” she croaked.
She was wrapped in soft cloth, escorted by one of the Hands to a large antechamber. There, she found Shahiid Aalea, washing herself down in the second of three triangular baths. The woman was rinsing her hair with ladles of warm, scented water. The perfume of flowers hung in the steaming air, but beneath it, Mia could smell death. Blood. Offal and shit.
“Wash yourself in the first,” Aalea said, pointing to a bath filled with bloodstained water. “Soap yourself in the second. Rinse in the third.”
Mia nodded mutely, stripped off her sodden shift and stepped into the first bath. Aalea was soaking in the third and Mia climbing into the second when Ashlinn staggered into the room, painted head to foot, bright blue eyes blinking in a mask of sticky red.
“Well, that was different,” she said.
Aalea laughed, rising from the steam and slipping on a silk robe. She pointed to a painted red door. “When you are ready, you will find clothes through here, loves.”
Smiling, the woman padded away on bare feet. Ashlinn stripped off her slip and jumped into the bath, plunging below the surface and turning the waters a deeper red. She reappeared after a spell, pawing crimson water from her eyes.
“So that’s the Blood Walk,” she explained.
“That’s what they call it?” Mia asked.
“Aye.” The girl tilted her head to knock the water from her ears. “Da said it’s how Blades move about the Republic. A chapel in every major city, devoted to the Mother. Provided there’s a bloodbath there, Adonai can Walk us to any of them. All of them.”
“You mean my master made me trek across the Whisperwastes for nothing?”
Ash shrugged. “They don’t let just anyone Walk, Corvere. Adonai needs to permit you to pass the threshold. The Red Church isn’t about to let every would-be novice know they’ve got access to an Ashkahi blood speaker. If the Senate found out, they’d stop at nothing to get their hands on Adonai. Imagine if the Republic could move its armies about the world at will?”
“But they trust us to know? We’ve only been acolytes for a month or two.”
Ash simply shrugged.
“Maw’s teeth, where do they get it all?” Mia breathed. “There must be gallons.”
Ashlinn wiggled her eyebrows. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“… I’m not going to like it, am I?”
Ashlinn simply laughed and sank below the bloodstained water.
The Porkery,” Mia breathed. “Of course.”
Looking out over an oinking sea, Mia felt the unpleasant pieces falling into place.
From her childhood spent below the Hips, she knew four abattoirs skirted Godsgrave’s Bay of Butchers—four mountains of offal and stench, spitting fresh meat onto the plates of the wealthy, and shitting their leavings into the bay. Two dealt with cattle, the third in exotic meats, and the fourth only with pigs. Known as “the Porkery,” it was comparatively small, and better appointed than its counterparts. Run by a man known only as “Bacon” and his three sons, “Ham,” “Trotter,” and “Piglet,” it was famous among Godsgrave’s marrowborn for having the finest cuts in all Itreya, and among more questionable folk as an excellent place to dispose of a body, should one happen to create a body the Luminatii might be interested in.3
The female acolytes had dressed in simple leathers and cloaks, armed themselves with plain but functional blades from the large armory off the bathhouse, and been led up a spiraling staircase. The stench of offal and excrement had grown stronger, until finally they’d emerged on a wooden mezzanine. The hour was late and the butchers had gone home for nevernight, but a seething mass of pigs was milling about in a large pen below. On the bloodstained stone of the killing floor, Mia saw drains in the rock, no doubt leading down to the pool beneath. Putting two and two together, the girl discovered she was beginning to hate mathematics.
“We just bathed in pig’s blood,” Carlotta said flatly.
“Probably people blood, too,” Mia said.
“… Tell me you’re jesting.”
Mia shook her head. “A lot of the Godsgrave braavi get rid of their messes down here when they don’t want questions asked.”
Carlotta stared. Mia shrugged.
“Hungry pig will eat just about anything.”