“Come on!” he hissed.
Mia looked over her shoulder, saw four Luminatii dashing toward her, sunsteel blades drawn and blazing. But evening gowns, it seemed, weren’t the best attire for a desperate foot chase, let alone vaulting ten-foot-high wrought-iron fences. Mia slashed at the gown with her stiletto, tearing it loose at the thigh. She flung herself at the fence, scrambling over just as a burning longsword whistled through the air, slicing wrought iron into molten globules. Tric’s arm flashed through the gaps, his blade gleaming red. She heard the boy cry out in pain. Dropping to the cobbles beside him, they were off, bolting into the freezing wind.
“Where to?” Tric panted.
“Aalea,” she gasped.
Tric nodded and dashed down the pier, kicking some poor servant into the drink as he requisitioned his gondola. Mia dropped in beside him as he punted out into the canal, smashing at the water furiously as half a dozen Luminatii jumped into watercraft behind them and gave chase. Tric steered their gondola toward the palazzo where they’d met the Shahiid. There were no Hands out front, no lights in the windows. Barreling through the front doors, they found the entry hall and room they’d dressed in empty. The air dusty. Cold. As if no one had set foot in the house for years.
Heavy boots. The front door bursting open. Mia cursed, grabbed Tric’s hand and dashed for the back door, crashing out into a thin alleyway that ran the rear of the building. They heard shouts behind, the ring of steel. Whistles blowing in the waterway beyond, calls for more troops, tromping feet. Tric kicked through the kitchen entrance of another palazzo, servants shrieking as he and Mia barged past, out into the foyer, shouldering through the front door and onto a cobbled thoroughfare.
Mia’s arm was gushing blood. Tric was gasping, clutching his side. Mia saw a scorch mark on his jacket, smelled burned flesh. He’d tasted sunsteel somewhere in the struggle at the fence, his waistcoat soaked with blood.
“Are you all right?” she gasped.
“Keep running!”
“Fuck running,” she snapped. “I’m in a bloody corset!”
The girl swung herself up onto the step of a passing carriage, plopped onto the seat beside an astonished-looking driver wearing the livery of some minor house.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hel—”
Her elbow caught the man in the belly, her hook toppled him out of his seat and onto the cobbles below. She pulled the horses to a whinnying halt, tore her volto loose and turned to look at Tric with eyebrow raised.
“Your carriage awaits, Mi Don.”
Tric leaped onto the rear step and Mia snapped the reins against the horses’ backs as a quartet of breathless Luminatii barreled onto the street behind them. The carriage tore down the street, bouncing and juddering over bridges and flagstones, Mia cursing as she almost flew from her seat. The marrowborn legate to whom the carriage belonged stuck his head out the window to see what all the fuss was, found a girl in a shredded evening gown where his driver should’ve been. As he opened his mouth to protest, she turned and looked at him, bloodstained skin and narrowed eyes, a cat made of what might have been shadows perched on her shoulder.
The man pulled his head back into the carriage without a word.
“… well this is bracing, isn’t it …?”
“That’s one word for it.”
“… you seem to have lost half your dress …”
“Kind of you to notice.”
“… though given the way you danced with that boy, i imagine losing only half is a disappointment …”
Mia rolled her eyes, whipped the horses harder.
They abandoned the carriage south of the Hips, Mia hopping down onto the cobbles and tipping her tricorn at the bemused owner. Up on the driver’s seat, the wind had been bitterly cold, and Mia’s lips were turning blue. She was on the verge of lamenting her choice of attire again when Tric pulled off his frock coat and, without a word, slipped it around her shoulders. Still warm from the press of his skin.
They dashed through back alleys and over little bridges, wending their way south toward the Bay of Butchers. Arriving at the Porkery, they stole inside, creeping up the stairs to the mezzanine above the now-silent killing floor.
Mia was dizzy from blood loss, her arm dripping, the sleeve of Tric’s coat soaked through. Tric’s waistcoat and britches were drenched too, his hand pressed to an awful gash in his side. Their faces pale and pained, the memories of the music, the dance, the whiskey, and the smiles already a tattered memory. They’d barely made it out with their lives. Creeping down the twisted stairwell, the stench of copper and salt rising in their nostrils, down, down into the blood-drenched chamber below.
Shahiid Aalea was waiting for them.
Gone was the elegant gown, the drakebone corset, the pretty domino. She was dressed in black, rivers of raven hair framing that pale, heart-shaped face. The only color was her smile. Red as the blood dripping down Mia’s arm.
“Did you have fun playing at being people, my loves?” she asked.
“You …” Tric winced, still breathless. “You …”
The Shahiid walked across the tile toward them. Lifted Tric’s hand away from his wound and tutted. Kissed Mia’s bloody fingertips.
“Our gift to you,” she said. “A reminder. Walk among them. Play among them. Live and laugh and love among them. But never forget, not for one moment, what you are.”
Aalea released Mia’s hand.
“And never forget what it is to serve.”
The Shahiid waved to the pool beyond.
“Happy Great Tithe, children.”
CHAPTER 20
FACES
Only one of them never made it back alive from Godsgrave. A boy with dark hair and a dimpled smile named Tovo. A quiet mass was held for him in the Hall of Eulogies.
An unmarked stone.
An empty tomb.
As the choir sang and the Revered Mother spoke words of supplication to the stone goddess overhead, Mia tried to find it in herself to feel bad. To wonder who this boy was, and why this was where he died. But looking among the other acolytes, cold eyes and thin lips, she knew what each of them was thinking.
Better him than me.
Mia never heard Tovo’s name mentioned again.
Weeks wore on, Great Tithe unmarked, no more thanks given. The masquerade seemed to have beaten the last breath of levity from within the walls. The weaver continued her work, sculpting the others into works of art, but gone were the smiles and winks, the flirting and touches. If never before, they all knew this was no longer a game.
The turn after Diamo had undergone his weaving, Mia noticed Tric had missed Pockets. After a painstaking lesson from Mouser on the art of powdertraps and the avoidance thereof, she’d climbed a twisting stair and found the Dweymeri boy in the Hall of Songs. Shirt off. Gleaming with sweat. A pair of wooden swords in hand, pounding a training dummy so hard the varnish was practically screaming.
“Tric. You missed Mouser’s lesson.”
The boy ignored her. Great sweeping strikes smashing against the wooden figure, the crack, crack, crack echoing in the empty hall. His naked torso gleamed, his saltlocks hung damp about his face. Half a dozen broken training swords lay on the ground beside him. He must have been up here all turn …
“Tric?”
Mia touched his arm, pulled him to a halt. He rounded on her, almost snarling, tore his arm from her grip. “Don’t touch me.”
The girl blinked, taken aback by the rage in his eyes. Remembering those same eyes watching her as they danced, his fingers entwined with hers …
“Are you all right?”
“… Aye.” Tric wiped his eyes, breathed deep. “Sorry. Let’s be about it.”