“O, lovely,” the girl muttered, wringing out her long bangs.
“Master Bacon and his sons are Hands of the Church,” Aalea said. “The coin they make from the local braavi assists with Godsgrave operations. And I must confess, the irony is delicious. I wonder if this city’s marrowborn would be as fond of Bacon’s Fynest Cuts if they knew exactly what went into the pigs they were cut from.”4
“Juuuust lovely,” Carlotta deadpanned, wringing harder at her hair.
“Blood is blood, love,” the Shahiid smiled. “Pigs. Paupers. Cattle. Kings. It makes no difference to Our Lady. It all stains alike. And it all washes out the same.”
Mia looked into the woman’s eyes. Beyond the kohl and the paint. Beyond that dark beauty. It would’ve been easy to think that callousness made her talk so. The mark of dozens of murders draining her of all empathy, like Naev had warned. But Mia realized it was something different that drove the Shahiid of Masks in her service to the Lady of Blessed Murder. Something altogether more frightening, simply because Mia didn’t quite share it.
Devotion.
The truth was, she didn’t know if she truly believed. Light gods in the sky watching her? Mothers of Night counting her sins? If the waves drowned a sailor, was it because the Lady of Oceans hadn’t been given proper sacrifice, or the Lady of Storms was in a mood? Or was it all chance? Fate? And was it folly to think otherwise?
Her faith hadn’t always been so shaky. Once she’d been as devout as a priest. Praying to mighty Aa, to the Four Daughters, to anyone who’d listen. Pricking her fingers with needles, or burning tiny locks of her hair in sacrifice. Closing her eyes and begging Him to bring her mother home. Keep her brother safe. That one turn—one bright, wonderful turn—they’d all be together again. Praying every nevernight before she crawled into bed above Mercurio’s store.
Every nevernight until the truedark of her fourteenth year.
And since then?
Don’t look.
“Go, loves,” Aalea said. “Bring me secrets. Lovely secrets. Return here before the nevernight ends, your pockets full of whispers. And while you venture out into Aa’s sight, may our Blessed Lady watch over you, and shield you from his accursed light.”
“Lady, watch over us,” Ash repeated.
“Lady, watch over us,” the other novices said.
Mia closed her eyes. Bowed her head. Pretending she was that fourteen-year-old girl again. The girl who believed prayers could make a difference, who believed the divinities actually cared, who believed somehow, someway, everything would be all right in the end.
“Lady,” she whispered. “Watch over us.”
Each acolyte knew she’d be judged on the merits of the secrets she brought back, and there was no prize for collaboration. So, although Ash was grand company and Mia was growing to enjoy Carlotta’s gallows humor and quick mind, the acolytes split up as soon as they were able. Mia knew the harbor district like a thirteen-year-old boy knows his own right hand, and she slunk back and forth through the dogleg alleys and squeezeways until she was certain no other followed.
It was strange being out in the sunslight after months of constant darkness. The glare was painful, and though the shadow she cast was sharp and black and deep, she felt her kinship to it as indistinct, rather than the easy control she knew inside the Quiet Mountain. She fished about inside her cloak, slipped on a pair of wire spectacles with azurite lenses she’d lifted from the armory.5
“… where do we go …?” asked a whisper at her feet.
“If it’s secrets Aalea wants,” Mia smiled, “it’s secrets she’ll get.”
Off through the sprawl, over bridge and under stair, the stink of the bay receding. Nevernight had been chimed to the tune of howling winds, and the streets were mostly empty. Patrols of Luminatii in their red cloaks clomped up and down the blustering thoroughfares, and bellboys stood on corners ringing in the hour over the squall, but mostly, the citizenry had retired for the eve. With only Saan in the sky, the weather was turning chill, the winds off the bay were bitterly cold. Mia trod down the twisting canals, shoulders hunched, finally arriving at the squalid stretch of dirt she’d bloomed in. The alleys encircling the marketplace of Little Liis.
Saan hung low, and the shadows were long. She wrapped herself in darkness, stole past the beggars and urchins squabbling over stolen spoils or games of dice. A small shrine to the Lady of Fire was set in one wall, Tsana’s statue surrounded by guttering candles. A goddess of warriors and war, her temples were scattered all over Godsgrave; even in peacetime, there was no shortage of petty grievance or conflict in which Tsana was asked to choose a side. But this particular shrine was unattended.
Mia cast aside her shadowcloak, looked about to check all was clear. Satisfied, she reached up and turned the statue to face northeast. Dipping her fingers in the ashes, she knelt at the shrine’s base and wrote the number “3” and the word “queen” in charcoal between the statue’s feet. Then she pulled the shadows back around herself, and flitted away from the market.
Mia stalked through the Hips, past busking minstrels and overflowing bawdy houses, nodding politely to the Luminatii patrols she passed along the way. She crossed the Bridge of Broken Promises;6 an old man punted along the canal below in a pretty gondola, singing the chorus of “Mi Aami” in a deep, mournful voice.
“… where do we go now …?”
“The Shield Arm.”
“… i hate the shield arm …”
“Your objection is duly noted.”
“… you expect to find secrets there …?”
“A friend.”
Shield Arm sits on the upper east side of the Godsgrave archipelago, comprising five main islands. Like many regions of the metropolis—Heart, Nethers, Spine—it is so named for a simple reason; if you were gifted with wings, gentlefriend, or simply turned to the map at the front of this tome, you might notice that the contours of the City of Bridges and Bones bear a remarkable similarity to those of a headless figure lying on its back.
Shield Arm is home to judiciary buildings and an astonishing number of cathedrals, and is the ingress point of Godsgrave’s vast aqueduct. The islands also house the headquarters of the Luminatii—the White Palazzo—along with two of Godsgrave’s ten War Walkers. The iron giants loomed over the surrounding buildings, fingers curled into titanic fists.
Mia made her way to the great square at the Shield Arm’s heart, Piazza d’Vitrium. With a polite nod to the watchmen outside, she passed the White Palazzo, with its fluted granite columns and magnificent archways, a great statue of Aa looming out front. The Everseeing One was arrayed in battle garb, sword and shield raised. Remembering her encounter in the Hall of Pockets, Mia found herself averting her eyes from the Trinity emblazoned on his breastplate.
The girl stepped up to a neat taverna on the square’s edge. The sign above the door read “The Queen’s Bed.”7 After a slow reconnoiter around the building’s alleys, she stepped inside and found a booth in a shady corner. She ordered whiskey when a weary barmaid came by to ask her pleasure. And as she took a seat, the cathedrals all around began to strike twelve.
“… here we go …”
“Shhh.”
“… i told you i hate this place …”
Mia found the tolling pretty, truth be told. The notes weaving and crashing together, sleeping pigeons bursting from the bell towers and out into the winds. She watched the guard change outside the White Palazzo as the hour rang in, patrols of Luminatii in their white armor and red cloaks rolling in and out like waves. She thought of her father, arrayed in the same colors, standing handsome and tall as the sky. The men who smiled as he died. Downing her whiskey and ordering another.