“If it was perfect, it’d end with me getting cake.”
“It’s not ninebells yet.” Mia offered her arm. “Kitchen is still open?”
“See, I knew I liked you for a reason, Corvere.”
Arm in arm, the girls strolled into the dark.
CHAPTER 24
FRICTION
The turns wore on.
Unsurprisingly, Ashlinn was still leading the pack in Mouser’s contest, though Hush was closing the gap from second. In light of the heightened competition, Mia was grateful her friend had taken the time to help her steal something that wouldn’t count toward the official tally. Acolytes were growing bolder, and trickier items off the list were being filched now, rather than simple trinkets. Still, if Mia were a gambler, she’d have staked her fortune that Ash would finish the year top of Pockets.
Though if Mia actually had a fortune, Ash would’ve likely stolen it by now, friends or no …
Mouser’s lessons were becoming as eclectic and eccentric as the Shahiid himself. He devoted several hours a week to teaching what he called Tongueless,1 and insisted all conversations in his hall be conducted in the language thereafter. In another lesson, Mouser wheeled a wooden tank into the Hall of Pockets. It was filled with dirty water, a handful of lockpicks scattered on the bottom. He proceeded to bind the acolytes’ hands and feet with leaden manacles and push them in one by one.
To his credit, the Shahiid seemed rather pleased nobody drowned.
Lessons in the Hall of Masks were more subtle, and in truth, far more enjoyable. The acolytes were still sent out regularly into Godsgrave, and Mia spent a dozen nevernights lurking in various taverna, working on her wordcraft and plying folk with drink and pretty smiles. She had two young and rather handsome members of the Administratii on a string, and overheard some juicy gossip in a portside brothel about a violent coup among the local braavi. Aalea accepted Mia’s new secrets with a smile and a kiss to each cheek. And if she noticed a change in Mia after the eve she spent in Tric’s bed, the Shahiid politely refused to comment.
In the turns after that night, Mia had resisted the impulse to smile at the boy over mornmeal or stare overlong during lessons. In the interests of keeping her distance, she’d told him she needed no more lessons in bladework. Mia knew letting anything more grow between them would be stupid, and for his part, Tric at least pretended to understand. Still, sometimes she’d catch him staring from the corner of her eye. At night, alone in her room, she’d slip her hand between her legs and try not to picture his face. She succeeded, some of the time.
As time wore on and initiation loomed, testing intensified. Mia had her vendetta against Scaeva and his dogs to keep her focused on her lessons, but every acolyte knew what was at stake. Another of their number had been killed since the Great Tithe masquerade; a boy named Leonis, who had his throat crushed by a stray swing in the Hall of Songs and suffocated before Marielle could be summoned.
Of the twenty-nine acolytes who’d started training, only fifteen remained. And then came the incident ever after referred to as “the Blue Morning.”
It began as crises usually did; with Mister Kindly’s now familiar whisper.
“… beware …”
Opening her eyes, Mia drew her stiletto, instantly awake. She could hear a faint hissing noise. Looking up, she noticed one of the stones in the ceiling above her bed had slid away, and a thin vapor was seeping into her chamber. It danced in the air like cigarillo smoke, slow and vaguely blue.
Crouching low, Mia scrambled to her door and twisted the key, only to find the lock held fast. Ever wary of needletraps since Mouser and Spiderkiller’s earlier lessons, she slipped on a heavy leather glove, rattled the handle. It refused to budge.
“Well, shit.”
“… mia …”
She glanced over her shoulder, saw more of the bluish vapor trickling in. The flow was thickening, the air growing hazy. Mia could taste something acrid on the back of her tongue. Her eyes starting to burn. The symptoms, at least, she knew by rote.
“Aspira …,” she breathed.
“… another test …”
“And I was planning on sleeping in.”
She grabbed a shirt off the floor, doused it in water from her nightstand, and wrapped it about her face. Aspira induced paralysis and death by slow suffocation. It was heavier than air, and nonflammable in gaseous form. Mia knew the antidote well, though she had none of the materials to make it. But a damp rag over her mouth would hold the vapor at bay for a few minutes at least; long enough to ponder an escape.
Her eyes scanned the room, mind racing.
The key wouldn’t budge, and slamming her shoulder against her door only resulted in a bruise. The hinges were affixed with iron nails; she could pry them out, but that would take time, and more than a few minutes’ exposure to aspira would end with a quiet service in the Hall of Eulogies and an unmarked tomb.
Pressing her cheek to the floor, she peered under her door. She could hear coughing. The sounds of heavy objects being slammed against wood. Faint cries. Cool, fresh air seeped in through the crack, along with the sounds of growing panic. If the acolytes failed to escape their rooms, every single one of them was going to die.
“Maw’s teeth, they’re not playing about anymore,” she hissed.
“… the pressure will only increase between now and initiation …”
Mia caught her breath.
Looking at the crack beneath her door. The hole in the ceiling.
“Pressure,” she whispered.
She grabbed a bottle of whiskey off her nightstand, poured it onto the plush gray fur covering her bed. Snatching up her cigarillos and striking her flintbox, she touched it to the bed and stepped back. With a dull whump, the goldwine burst into flame. Mia crouched near the door, watching the fire catch, her bed soon burning merrily.
“… there may be a metaphor in here somewhere …”
The temperature rose, hot air and smoke and aspira vapor all warming in the blaze, sucked back up through the hole in the ceiling. Mia snatched up one of the dozen knives littering the room, and dug it into the first nail securing the hinges to her door.
The bed was a bright, crackling ball of flame now. Smoke was being drawn up into the ceiling along with the aspira, but Mia’s eyes were still watering, her throat burning. One by one, she pried the nails free, dropping them to the floor with dull metallic plunks. Finally, enough were loose that the door was barely secured, and a few running kicks saw it burst its remaining anchors and sail into the corridor.
Mia stumbled free, coughing, blinking tears from her eyes. Spiderkiller and Mouser were standing at the end of the hall. The Shahiid of Pockets was marking off names in a leather-bound ledger. The dour Shahiid of Truths favored Mia with a smile.
“Mornmeal will be served in the Sky Altar in fifteen minutes, Acolyte,” she said.
Mia caught her breath, stepping aside as two Hands entered her room to douse her bed. She saw Carlotta’s room was open, the lock shattered like glass. Osrik’s door was a charred ruin. A long tube of rolled-up parchment protruded from under Hush’s door, the sound of steady breathing spilling from its mouth. As she watched, the apparently jammed lock on Ashlinn’s door still somehow clicked open, and the girl sauntered out into the corridor, pocketing her picks with a wink.
“Morning, Corvere,” she grinned.