“I was nowhere!” she roared.
Down again. And up. The question repeated, over and over. She screamed. Swore. Tried crying. Pleading. No avail. Every plea, every tear, every curse was met with the same response.
“Tell us where you were earlier this eve. Before you arrived in Godsgrave.”
But beneath the tears and cries, Mia’s mind was still racing. If they wanted her dead, she’d be dead. If they knew where she’d come from, they’d already be at the Porkery. And if the Confessionate was in league with the Luminatii, that meant each of these bastards was a lapdog of Scaeva and Remus. The men who’d hung her father. The men who’d set her feet on this path all those years ago. The Red Church was her best chance at vengeance against them. And these fools expected her to give it up for fear of a little drowning?
She retreated. Back into the dark inside her head. Watching her torture with a kind of semidetached fascination. Hours they worked her, until her voice was broken and her lungs screaming and every breath fire. Drowning and beating. Spitting and slapping. Hours.
And hours.
And then they stopped. Left her slumped in her chair, hands bound behind her. Hair reeking of bay water, draped across her face like a funeral shroud. Bruised. Bleeding. Almost drowned.
Almost dead.
“We have all turn, my lovely love,” Santino said. “And all nevernight, besides.”
“And if water will not loosen your tongue,” said Micheletto, “we’ve other remedies.”
The big man lifted an iron poker from the table of tools. Thrust it into the burning brazier and left it there to heat. He spat onto the coals, a sizzling hiss filling the room.
“When that iron glows red, we’ll return. Think long and hard about where your loyalties lie. You may think your precious flock of heretics worth dying for. But believe me, there are far worse fates than death. And we know them all.”
The confessors marched from the room, slamming a heavy iron door behind them. Mia heard a key rattle, a bolt slide home. Receding footsteps. Distant screams.
“… mia …”
The girl tossed her hair from her eyes. Still trying to catch her breath. Shivering. Coughing. Looking down at last to the shadow coalescing at her feet.
“I’m all right, Mister Kindly.”
“… for confessors, those two seem like lovely fellows …”
“How under the suns did they mark me?”
“… mercurio …?”
“Bullshit.”
“… the centurion? alberius …?”
“He’d no clue I was with the Church. This feels bigger. Deeper.”
Mister Kindly titled his head. Silent and thoughtful.
“… puzzles later. first you must get out of here …,” he finally said.
“I’m glad you’re here to tell me these things.”
Mia cast her eyes around the room. The poker heating in the brazier. The tools on the table. They’d stripped her of her boots, her weapons. The box of cigarillos Mercurio had given her. The manacles were cinched tight. Her feet chained to the chair. Feeling around the bindings, she realized the cuffs were closed with heavy iron bolts rather than an actual lock.
“Fuck …,” she breathed.
“… you must get loose …”
“I can’t,” she hissed, trying to reach the bolts in vain. “It’s a shitty set of manacles if you could just unlock yourself with your own two hands.”
“… do not use your hands, then …”
The not-cat glanced to the shadows about them.
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“… it can …”
“I’m not strong enough, Mister Kindly.”
“… you were …”
Mia swallowed. Flashes in her mind’s eye. Darkened hallways. Lightless stone.
Don’t look.
“… remember …?”
“No.”
“… they will kill you, mia. unless they break you. and then, they will kill you anyway …”
Mia grit her teeth. Stared at the not-cat, staring back with his not-eyes.
“… try …”
“Mister Kindly, I …”
“… try …”
She closed her eyes. Black and warm behind her lashes. Feeling the shadows in this dank little cell. Cold. Old. The suns never came here. The dark was deep. Cool and hungry. She could feel them around her, like living things. Flickering playfully in the brazier’s feeble light. Tumbling over each other and laughing soundlessly. They knew her. Some feeble pale little slip of a thing, who touched them the way the wind touches mountains. But she reached out, curled up her fists, and they fell still.
Waiting.
“… All right,” she whispered.
She twisted them. Sent them slithering along the floor to coil at her back. Snaking up around the iron at her wrists. At her command, they wrapped themselves tight around the iron bolts holding her bonds in place. They pulled.
And the bolts moved not an inch.
They were only shadows, after all.
Real as dreams.
Hard as smoke.
“It’s no good,” Mia sighed. “I can’t do it.”
“… you must …”
“I can’t!”
“… you have. and if you do not do so again, you will die here, mia …”
Her hands shook. Hateful tears trying to brim in her eyes.
“… do not command the darkness around you …”
The not-cat stepped closer, peering as hard as the eyeless can.
“… command the darkness inside yourself …”
Distant footsteps.
Muffled screaming.
“… All right.”
Closing her eyes again. Not reaching out this time. Stretching within. Places the suns had never touched. The shapeless black beneath her skin. Gritting her teeth. Sweat gleaming on her brow. The shadows shivered, rippled, sighed. Growing blacker. Harder. Sharper. Grasping at the bolts, her face twisted, heart pounding, breath quickening as if she were sprinting. But slowly, ever so slowly, the bolts began to shiver. To turn. Moment by moment. Inch by inch. Veins standing taut in her neck. Spit on her lips. Hissing. Begging. Until finally, she heard a soft plunk. Then another. The iron at her wrists falling on the stone.
And she was free.
Mia looked at Mister Kindly. And though he had no mouth, she could tell he smiled.
“… there it is …”
She fumbled with the irons at her ankles, pulling them loose. Standing, hair and clothes still drenched, she stole silently to the door. The window slit was shut, but she listened at the iron. Heard faint cries echoing on stone. A long corridor, by the sound of it. Metal and footsteps.
Coming closer.
She snatched a hammer off the table, pulled the shadows around her, wrapping herself in darkness and crouching low in the corner. The door bolt rattled, the lock clicked. Brother Santino walked inside, saw the empty chair, the empty manacles, eyes widening. Mia’s hammer crashed into his face, her knee collided with his groin. With a burbling whimper, the man collapsed. Brother Micheletto stood behind Santino, face aghast. Mia struck at him, but she was near blind in her darkness and her blow went wide, the confessor stepping back and blocking with the bracer on his forearm. He squinted, seeing only a shifting blur, charging it anyway. Catching her in a bearhug. Crying out as her hammer glanced off his brow. Falling hard and dragging her with him.