The redhead flew back off her chair, a look of almost comic shock on her face. Lotti fell atop her, flailing and spitting, her usually stoic facade shattered to pieces. She grabbed Jessamine’s throat, slammed her head back against the stone, and proceeded to try and feed the girl her sodden notes. The pair tumbled about in a flurry of curses and sopping pages. Jessamine landed a hook on Carlotta’s jaw, Lotti smashed her notes into the redhead’s nose, the wet crunch making Mia wince.
There were no Shahiid present—nobody to break up the brawl. Diamo seemed to arrive at the same conclusion Mia and Ash did, stepping into the fray and pulling Carlotta and Jessamine apart. Lotti was thrashing and bucking, cursing hard enough to make the most hardened sailor give up the game and become an Ironpriest. But Jessamine was insane with rage, face twisted, nose gushing, slicking her lips and chin with blood. She clawed at the air, bucking in Diamo’s grip, eyes locked on Carlotta.
“You’re dead, bitch,” she spat. “You hear me? Dead!”
“Let her go!” Carlotta roared at Diamo. “Let her go!”
“I’m going to feed you your fucking heart! I’m going to g—”
“ENOUGH!”
The bellow brought stillness to the seething mass of acolytes, and all eyes turned. Mia saw Ash’s brother Osrik standing on the bench, cheeks blotched with rage.
“What in the Maw’s name is wrong with you two? We’re disciples of Niah, not fucking braavi. We stand in the house of a goddess. Show some damned respect!”
Osrik’s tirade seemed to knock the worst of the heat from Carlotta. Mia and Ash were hanging on to an arm each, slowly loosing their grips. Diamo eased off Jessamine, and with a final, poisonous glance, the girl wiped the blood from her chin and sat back at table, eating as if nothing had happened. Cold and hard as a barrel of ice.
Mia and Ash helped Carlotta gather her scattered notes. The trio were crouched over the wreckage, Carlotta trying to arrange the pages into some sort of order. Her work was a shambles, soaked to ruin in places. Her shoulders were slumped, her usually stoic facade in tatters. Weeks of labor undone in a moment. Mia found herself feeling sorry for the girl. Lotti was sharp as a razor, and good company to boot. Next to Ash, the girl was as close to a friend as any she really had in these halls.
“Don’t trouble yourself about what that bitch said,” Ash whispered, glancing at Carlotta’s flawless cheek. “That’s not who you are anymore.”
“It was never who I was.”
Carlotta’s hands fell still. Her stare growing clouded.
“It was just who they made me.”
Mia threw Ash a warning glance, thinking it best to leave the sore spot alone. Gathering more pages, she handed them to Lotti along with a change of subject.
“I keep my notes in my room,” she said. “I’m perhaps not as far along as you, but you can borrow them if you like.”
Carlotta blinked. Seeming to return from whatever memory she was lost in, her mask locking back into place. She spared Mia a small smile.
“I’ll be all right. I’ve memorized much of it. I’ll ask Spiderkiller for permission to work late in the hall. Should be able to catch the rest up if I miss a little sleep. So my thanks for the offer, but I’m still going to kick your arse, Corvere.”
“Be careful,” Ash warned. “There’s someone who wants to kick yours worse.”
Carlotta glanced at Jessamine. The girl was calmly eating her meal, acting as if she had her nose punched bloody all the time. Showing no pain. No weakness. Jess was an insufferable cow, but Mia had to admit it: the girl had stones.
“Let her try,” Carlotta said.
Lotti glanced over her shoulder, looking Osrik up and down. The boy had resumed his place at table after his tirade, scowling at the post-brawl mess. “You know, your brother’s a bit of all right when he gets all shouty, Ashlinn.”
“O, Black Mother, shut your mouth before I spew.”
Carlotta rose and padded over to Osrik, spoke to him quietly, sodden notebook in hand. Oz smiled his handsome smile, fingertips brushing Lotti’s own.
Mia waggled her eyebrows at Ash. “They’ve been getting cozy. I saw them working together on some concoction a few turns back. And they seem to get paired up in Truths an awful lot.”
Ash ballooned her cheeks, pretended to vomit under the table.
Mia smirked, but inside, she found herself more than a little uneasy. Initiation was creeping closer. Friction was rising. Knives were out. The knowledge that not everyone would become a Blade hung between every breath, the idea that fellow acolytes were competition coloring every moment. It’d become easy to think that way. Seeing their fellows drop by the wayside, one by one. Every death turning them a little colder. The Church’s tests were becoming more dangerous, the Ministry’s regard for the acolytes’ lives ever more cavalier. Mia knew it was idiocy to worry about anyone but herself.
That was the point, she supposed. What was it Naev had said?
This place gives much. But it takes much more.
Stripping away the empathy. The pity. Piece by piece. Death by death.
And what will be left in the end?
Mia looked about the Sky Altar. The faces. The bloodstains. The shadows.
Blades, she realized.
Blades.
CHAPTER 25
SKIN
Two weeks later, everything began to change.
The flock was gathered for mornmeal as usual. Mia’s head was fuzzy after hours working on Spiderkiller’s formula. Carlotta spent the entire meal working in her salvaged notebook on the Shahiid’s quandary, barely speaking a word. She’d been pulling late hours in the Hall of Truths to make up for the destruction of her work, her eyes bloodshot and bruised. And though Lotti didn’t speak of it, her feud with Jessamine hung in the air like poison. Ashlinn filled the gaps with talk about some new beau she’d found last trip to Godsgrave; a senator’s son who apparently talked about his father’s business in his sleep.
As the acolytes were shuffling from the Sky Altar, Mia saw Shahiid Aalea take Tric aside, speak to him in hushed tones. Beneath the ink, Mia saw the boy’s face visibly pale. He seemed set to argue, but Aalea cut his protests off at the knees with a smile as sharp as gravebone.
The turn’s lesson was in the Hall of Songs, and Solis had been focusing on the art of ranged weaponry over the last few lessons. A series of strawman targets were suspended from the ceiling by oiled iron chains. Standing an acolyte in the sparring circle, Solis equipped them with crossbows or throwing knives, and instructed their fellows to swing the targets at their backs and heads. The strawmen were heavy enough to knock you flying if they struck home, and not getting clobbered by one proved solid motivation indeed. Mia was just grateful that a switch from sparring matches meant a break from serving as Jessamine’s training dummy, but in this particular game, she discovered she had an advantage her fellows didn’t.
The realization came as she took her place in the circle, throwing knives held in her teeth. As Mia tied her long hair back in a braid, Diamo seized the opportunity to catch her unawares, sent his strawman sailing soundlessly at her exposed back. But though she couldn’t see the target rushing toward her spine, somehow, she could still sense it incoming. Stepping aside, she perforated the strawman with three knives, turned on Diamo with a withering scowl.
The boy blew her a kiss.
As more targets had come sailing toward her from the other acolytes, Mia managed to dodge each and every one. Perhaps it was because the dark here had never known sunslight. But Mia realized that even without seeing them, she could feel them.
She could feel their shadows.
Mia managed to avoid every target during her time in the circle. Moving like a breeze among the strawmen, knives singing, grateful she’d finally found something in Solis’s hall she excelled at. She’d heard no word from Chronicler Aelius about his search for a tome that unlocked the mysteries of the darkin. There’d been no sign of Lord Cassius since her torture session in Godsgrave. But slowly, surely, she was discovering more about her gift. A smile curled her lips, and remained there until about halfway through the lesson, when Tric took his place in the circle and Marcellus hit him square in the back with a flying strawman.
Marco flashed a smile (much improved by the weaver, Mia thought) and bowed.
“You’ll have to be quicker than that, Tricky.”