And then, the truedark Carnivalé begins.
Mia woke to the sound of revelry. The constant popopopop of fireworks from the Iron Collegium, meant to frighten the Maw back below the horizon. She stretched out her hand, watched the shadows play. Feeling the power that had been growing inside her these last few turns finally blooming. With a wave of her hand, a tendril of shadow flipped an entire stack of books into the air, scattering the tomes across the room. At her whim, more shadows reached out, putting each book back in its proper place. She opened her bedroom door with a glance. Dressed without lifting a finger.
“… bravo …,” Mister Kindly had said. “… if only i had hands to applaud …”
Mia smacked her backside. “I’d settle for lips to kiss my sweet behind.”
“… i would have to find it first …”
“Arses are like wine, Mister Kindly. Better too little than too much.”
“… a beauty and a philosopher. be still, my beating heart …”
The not-cat looked down at its translucent chest.
“… o, wait …”
The girl checked the knives at her belt, in her boots, tucked up her sleeve. She was a scrap of a thing, crooked fringe and hollow cheeks, full of all the confidence fourteen years in the world brings. Listening downstairs, she heard Old Mercurio’s familiar murmur, swapping gossip with one of his frequent not-customers. The old man wasn’t one for revelry. Unlike every other resident of Godsgrave, her master would be staying off the streets tonights. He had eyes aplenty out there already.
“… you insist on doing this, then …?”
She looked to her friend. All trace of jest draining from her face, leaving it hard and pale.
“This is my best chance. I’ve never felt as strong as I have in truedark. If I’m ever going to get in there, it’s tonights.”
“… you should tell the old man …”
“He’d try to talk me out of it.”
“… do you not ask yourself why …?”
“There’s no guards in there during truedark, Mister Kindly.”
“… because the descent will begin soon. hundreds of prisoners slaughtering each other for the right to leave the philosopher’s stone. do you really wish to be in there with them …?”
“Four years, Mister Kindly. Four years they’ve been locked in that hole. My brother learned to walk in a prison cell. I don’t know the last time my mother saw the suns. What have I been training for all these years, if not this? I have to get them out of there.”
“… you are a fourteen-year-old girl, mia …”
“And is it the fourteen-year-old part, or the girl part that troubles you?”
“… mia—”
“No,” she snapped. “This ends tonights. On my side or in my way?”
The not-cat sighed.
“… you know where I stand. always …”
“Then let’s stop talking about it, shall we?”
Out the window. Onto the street. The crush and revelry. Everyone in their Carnivalé masks; beautiful dominos and fearsome voltos and laughing punchinellos. The girl slipped through the throng, a harlequin’s face over her own, cloak over her head. Past the sighing lovers on the Bridge of Vows, the hucksters on the Bridge of Coin, down to the broken shore. Slinging the canvas off her stolen gondola, she stretched her arms and closed her eyes. Darkness slithered from the nooks and crannies, wrapping the girl and boat in a shroud of night.
Hidden in the darkness, she punted across the Bay of Butchers, under a walkway on the Bridge of Follies, shifting and rolling on the rising tide.1 Slinging her cloak aside as she made for the open sea, hours turning by, aiming for the foreboding spike of stone thrust up from the ocean’s face. The hole in which her mother and brother had languished for four long years at Julius Scaeva’s command, hopeless and helpless.
Not anymore.
She made berth on the jagged rocks, the shadows bringing her safely into harbor. The darkness dragged the gondola onto the shore, spared it the jagged kiss of the rocks surrounding the Stone. Mia licked her lips, inhaled salt air. Listening to the distant hymn of the gulls. The violence already echoing through the Stone’s innards. Mister Kindly drinking in her fear and leaving her fierce and unafraid.
She held out her arms. Willing herself upward. The power thrummed in her veins, like nothing she’d ever felt before. A black kinship, flowing like the growing dark. Long black tendrils wrapped her up, slipped from her fingers, digging into the brickwork at the Stone’s base. Like the translucent limbs of some vast spider, they pulled her upward. And one black handhold at a time, the girl began to climb.
Up the towering wall, hair billowing in the rising wind. Over the battlements and twisted tangles of razorweed atop the walls. The shadows wrapped her up like a babe in swaddling and carried her down into the copper-thick stench of death.
Mia stole through the hallways of bloody stone, wrapped in a darkness so deep she could barely see. Bodies. Everywhere. Men choked and stabbed. Beaten to death with their own chains and bludgeoned to death with their own limbs. The sound of murder ringing all around, the stink of offal thick in the air. Vague shapes running past her, tangling and screaming on the floor. The cries ringing somewhere far away, somewhere the dark wouldn’t let her hear.
She slipped inside the Philosopher’s Stone like a knife between ribs. This prison. This abattoir. Down past the open cells to the quieter places, where the doors were still sealed, where the prisoners who didn’t wish to try their luck in the Descent were still locked, thin and starving. She threw the shadowcloak aside so she could see better, peering through the bars at the stick-thin scarecrows, the hollow-eyed ghosts. She could see why folks would try their luck in the Senate’s horrid gambit. Better to die fighting than linger here in the dark and starve. Better to stand and fall than kneel and live.
Unless, of course, you had a four-year-old son locked in here with you …
The scarecrows cried out to her, thinking her some Hearthless wraith come to torment them. She ran the length and breadth of the cell block, eyes wide. Desperation now. Fear, despite the cat in her shadow. They must be here somewhere? Surely the Dona Corvere wouldn’t have dragged her son out into the butchery above for the chance to escape this nightmare?
Would she?
“Mother!” Mia called, tears in her eyes. “Mother, it’s Mia!”
Endless hallways. Lightless black. Deeper and deeper into the shadow.
“Mother?”
“Mother!”
Mia clawed her way upright, wisps of hair stuck to the sweat on her skin. Her heart was thrashing against her ribs, eyes wide, chest heaving. Blinking in the dark, drenched in panic, finally recognizing her room in the Quiet Mountain, the sourceless luminance shrouding all in its gentle glow.
“Just a dream,” she whispered.
Not a dream. A nightmare. The kind she’d not had in years. Whenever the nevernight terrors came creeping to her bed above Mercurio’s shop, whenever the phantoms of her past stole inside her skull as she slept, Mister Kindly had been there. Tearing them to ribbons. But now she was alone. At the mercy of her dreams.
Her memories.
Daughters, where could he be?
Mia dragged herself upright, shivering. Head bowed. Arms wrapped around herself. Fear throbbing in her chest in time with her pulse. The shadows twisted along the wall as she clenched her fist. Remembering the way they’d flocked to her command the last time the suns fell from the sky. The last time she— Don’t look.
She’d thought she might be all right. Tric had escorted her to her bedchamber after the library visit, assured her Mister Kindly would come back. As ninebells had struck, she’d crawled into bed, tried to convince herself all would be well. But without her friend there to protect her, there was nothing to stop the dreams. The memories of that lightless, blood-soaked pit. What she’d found within.
Don’t look.
She screwed her eyes shut tight.