“Captain Puddles isn’t filthy,” Mia had said, almost to herself.1
A boy in his middling teens entered the room, red-faced from his dash up the stairs. Heraldry of the Familia Corvere was embroidered on his doublet; a black crow in flight against a red sky, crossed swords below.
“Mi Dona, forgive me. Consul Scaeva has demanded—”
Heavy footfalls stilled his tongue. The doors swept aside and the room filled with men in snow-white armor, crimson plumes on their helms; Luminatii they were called, you may recall. They reminded little Mia of her father. The biggest man she’d ever seen led them, a trimmed beard framing wolfish features, animal cunning twinkling in his gaze.
Among the Luminatii stood the beautiful consul with his black eyes and purple robes—the man who’d spoken “… Death” and smiled as the floor fell away beneath her father’s feet. Servants faded into the background, leaving Mia’s mother as a solitary figure amid that sea of snow and blood. Tall and beautiful and utterly alone.
Mia climbed off the bed, slipped to her mother’s side, and took her hand.
“Dona Corvere.” The consul covered his heart with ring-studded fingers. “I offer condolences in this time of trial. May the Everseeing keep you always in the Light.”
“Your generosity humbles me, Consul Scaeva. Aa bless you for your kindness.”
“I am truly grieved, Mi Dona. Your Darius served the Republic with distinction before his fall from grace. A public execution is always a tawdry affair. But what else is to be done with a general who marches against his own capital? Or the justicus who’d have placed a crown upon that general’s head?”
The consul looked around the room, took in the servants, the luggage, the disarray.
“You are leaving us?”
“I take my husband’s body to be buried at Crow’s Nest, in the crypt of his familia.”
“Have you asked permission of Justicus Remus?”
“I congratulate our new justicus on his promotion.” A glance at the wolfish one. “My husband’s cloak fits him well. But why would I need him to grant my passage?”
“Not permission to leave the city, Mi Dona. Permission to bury your Darius. I am unsure if Justicus Remus wishes a traitor’s corpse rotting in his basement.”
Realization dawned in the Dona’s face. “You would not dare …”
“I?” The consul raised one sculpted eyebrow. “This is the will of the Senate, Dona Corvere. Justicus Remus has been rewarded your late husband’s estates for uncovering his heinous plot against the Republic. Any loyal citizen would see it fitting tithe.”
Murder gleamed in the Dona’s eyes. She glanced at the loitering servants.
“Leave us.”
The girls scuttled from the room. Glancing at the Luminatii, Dona Corvere aimed a pointed stare at the consul. It seemed to Mia the man wavered in his certainty, yet finally, he nodded to the wolfish one.
“Await me outside, Justicus.”
The hulking Luminatii glanced at her mother. Down to the girl. Hands large enough to envelop her entire head twitched. The girl stared back.
Never flinch. Never fear.
“Luminus Invicta, Consul.” Remus nodded to his men, and amid the synchronized tromp tromp of heavy boots, the room found itself emptied of all but three people.2
The Dona Corvere’s voice was a fresh-sharpened knife into overripe fruit.
“What do you want, Julius?”
“You know it full well, Alinne. I want what is mine.”
“You have what is yours. Your hollow victory. Your precious Republic. I trust it keeps you warm at night.”
Consul Julius looked down at Mia, his smile dark as bruises. “Would you like to know what keeps me warm at night, little one?”
“Do not look at her. Do not speak to—”
His slap whipped her head to one side, dark hair flowing like tattered ribbons. And before Mia could blink, her mother had drawn a long, gravebone blade from her sleeve, its hilt crafted like a crow with red amber eyes. Quick as silver, she pressed it to the consul’s throat, his handprint on her face twisting as she snarled.
“Touch me again and I’ll cut your fucking throat, whoreson.”
Scaeva didn’t flinch.
“You can drag the girl from the gutter, but never the gutter from the girl.” He smiled with perfect teeth, glanced at Mia. “But you know the price your loved ones would pay if you pressed that blade any deeper. Your political allies have abandoned you. Romero. Juliannus. Gracius. Even Florenti himself has fled Godsgrave. You are alone, my beauty.”
“I am not your—”
Scaeva slapped the stiletto away, sent it skittering across the floor to the shadow beneath the curtain. Stepping closer, his eyes narrowed.
“You should envy your dear Darius, Alinne. I showed him a mercy. There will be no hangman’s gift for you. Just an oubliette in the Philosopher’s Stone, and dark a lifetime long. And as you go blind in the black, sweet Mother Time will lay claim your beauty, and your will, and your thin conviction you were anything more than Liisian shit wrapped in Itreyan silk.”
Their lips were so close they almost touched. Eyes searching hers.
“But I will spare your family, Alinne. I will spare them if you plead me for it.”
“She’s ten years old, Julius. You wouldn’t—”
“Would I not? Know me so well, do you?”
Mia looked up at her mother. Tears welling in her eyes.
“What is it you told me, Alinne? ‘Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a’?”
“… Mother?” Mia said.
“One word and your daughter will be safe. I swear it.”
“Mother?”
“Julius …”
“Yes?”
“I …”
There is a breed of arachnid in Vaan known as the wellspring spider.
The females are black as truedark, and possessed of the most astonishing maternal instinct in the animal republic. Once impregnated, a female builds a larder, stocks it with corpses, then seals herself inside. If the nest is set ablaze, she’ll burn to death rather than abandon it. If beset by a predator, she’ll die defending her clutch. But so fierce is her refusal to leave her young, once her eggs are laid, she won’t move, even to hunt. And herein lies the wellspring’s claim to the title of fiercest mother in the Republic. For once she’s devoured all the stores within her larder, the female begins devouring herself.
One leg at a time.
Plucking her limbs from her thorax. Eating only enough to sustain her vigil. Ripping and chewing until only one leg remains, clinging to the silken treasure trove swelling beneath her. And when her babies hatch, spilling from the strands she so lovingly wrapped them inside, they partake, there and then, of their very first meal.
The mother who bore them.
I tell you now, gentlefriend, and I vow it true, the fiercest wellspring spider in all the Republic had nothing—I say nothing—on Alinne Corvere.
There in that O, so tiny room, Mia felt her mother’s fists clench.
Pride tightening her jaw.
Agony brightening her eyes.
“Please,” the Dona finally hissed, as if the very word burned her. “Spare her, Julius.”
A victorious smile, bright as all three suns. The beautiful consul backed away, black eyes never leaving her mother’s. He called as he reached the doorway, robes flowing about him like smoke. And without a word, the Luminatii marched back into the room. The wolfish one tore Mia from her mother’s skirts. Captain Puddles mreowled protest. Mia clutched the tom tightly, tears burning her eyes.
“Stop it! Don’t touch my mother!”
“Dona Corvere, I bind you by book and chain for crimes of conspiracy and treason against the Itreyan Republic. You will accompany us to the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Irons were slapped around the dona’s wrists, screwed tight enough to make her wince. The wolfish one turned to the consul, glanced at Mia with a question in his eyes.
“The children?”
The consul glanced to little Jonnen, still wrapped in his swaddling on the bed.
“The babe is still at the breast. He can accompany his mother to the Stone.”
“And the girl?”