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?”
“… i will search the other halls. swifter that way …”
“Don’t go far.”
“… never fear …”
Mia felt a chill as Mister Kindly went bounding down the corridor. The gloom closed in, and she wrenched a guttering torch from the wall, shadows dancing. A cold fear crept into her gut, but she grit her teeth, beating it back. Breath quickening. Heart pounding as she roamed corridor to corridor, calling loud as she dared.
“Mother?”
Down deeper into the Stone.
“Mother!”
And finally, she found her way into the deepest pit. The darkest hole.
A place the light had never touched.
Don’t look.
“Pretty flower.”
The girl squinted in the dark. Heart seizing tight at the sound of her voice.
“… Mother?”
“Pretty flower,” came the whisper. “Pretty, pretty.”
Mia stepped forward in the guttering torchlight, peered between the bars of a filthy cell. Damp stone. Rotten straw. The reek of flies and shit and rot. And there, curled in the corner, stick-thin and wrapped in rags and sodden drifts of her own tangled hair, she saw her.
“Mother!”
Though she held her hand up to the light, wincing, the Dona Corvere’s smile was yellow and brittle and far, far too wide.
“Pretty thing,” she whispered. “Pretty thing. But no flowers here, no. Nothing grows. What is she?” Wide eyes searched the dark, falling anywhere but Mia’s face. “What is she?”
“Mother?” Mia approached the bars with halting steps.
“No flowers, no.”
Dona Corvere rocked back and forth, closing her eyes against the light.
“All gone.”
The girl set down the torch, knelt by the bars. Looking at the shivering skeleton beyond, her heart shattering into a million glittering shards. Too long.
She’d waited too long.
“Mother, don’t you know me?”
“No me,” she whispered. “No she. No. No.”
The woman clawed the walls with bloody fingers. Mia saw scores of marks on the stone, rendered in dried scarlet and broken fingernails. A pattern of madness, carved with the Dona Corvere’s bare hands. A tally of the endless time she’d spent rotting here.
It had been four long years since Mia had seen her, but not so long she couldn’t remember the beauty her mother had been. A wit sharper than a duelist’s blade. A temper that shook the ground where she walked. Where was that woman now? The woman who’d held Mia against her skirts so she couldn’t look away? Forcing her to stare as her father flopped and twisted at the end of his rope? As the sky itself cried?
Mia could hear Scaeva’s voice in her head, an echo of the turn her father died.
“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.”
Dona Corvere shook her head, chewing at matted strands of her hair. Jewels and gold had once sparkled in that raven black, now rife with fleas and flecked with rotten straw. Mia stretched her hand through the bars. Reaching out as far as she could.
“Mother, it’s Mia.”
Eyes filling with tears. Bottom lip trembling.
“Please, Mother, I love you.”
The Dona Corvere flinched at that. Peering through bloody fingers. Recognition flaring in the shattered depths of her pupils. Some remnant of the woman she’d been, clawing to surface. The woman every senator once feared. Her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re dead,” she breathed. “I am dead with you?”
“Mother, no, it’s me.”
“They drowned you. My beautiful girl. My baby.”
“Mother, please,” Mia begged. “I’ve come to save you.”
“O, yes,” she whispered. “Take me to the Hearth. Sit me down and let me sleep. I’ve earned my rest, Daughters know it.”
Mia sighed. Heart breaking. Tears in her eyes. But no. No seconds to waste. Time enough to tend her mother’s hurts when they were far from here. Time enough when they were …
… they …
Mia blinked in the gloom. Eyes searching the cell beyond.
“Mother, where’s Jonnen?”
“No,” she whispered. “No flowers. Nothing grows here. Nothing.”
“Where is my brother?”
The woman mouthed shapeless words. Lips flapping. She clawed her skin, dug her hands into her matted hair. Gritting her teeth and closing her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Gone,” she breathed. “With his father. Gone.”
“No.” Mia shook her head, pawed at her aching chest. “O, no.”
“O, Daughters, forgive me.”
It took all she had. Every ounce of herself. But Mia pushed the grief aside. Stamped it under heel. Blinked back the burning tears. Trying not to remember the nevernights she’d held her baby brother in her arms, singing to shush his little cries. Ignoring her mother’s fevered moans, she studied the heavy lock on the cell door. Drawing a pick from her belt, she set to work as Mercurio had taught her. Focusing on the task. The comfort of the rote. The darkness around her shivering. The cries of distant murder growing louder. Closer?
Don’t look.
Her mother’s hand snaked out of the shadows. Wrapped around Mia’s wrist. The girl flinched, but the Dona Corvere held her daughter tight. Rotten breath hissing.
“How can I touch you if you’re dead?”
“Mother, I’m not dead.” She took the woman’s other hand, pressed it to her face. “See? I live. Same as you. I live.”
Dona Corvere squeezed her wrist so tight it hurt.
“O, god,” she breathed. “O, never. No flowers …”
“Hush, now. We’re getting you out of here.”
“My baby boy,” she keened. “My sweet little Jonnen. Gone. Gone.”
Tears spilling down filthy cheeks. Whispering, soft as snow.
“My Mia is dead too.”
“No, I’m here.” Mia kissed those bleeding, torn fingers. “It’s me, Mother.”
“… mia, the way is clear, we must hurry …”
Mister Kindly materialized on the floor beside her, his whisper cutting in the gloom. The Dona Corvere took one look at the shadowcat and hissed like she’d been scalded. Shrinking back from the bars, into the far corner, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Mother, it’s all right! This is my friend.”
“Black eyes. White hands, O, god, no …”
“… mia, we must go …”