Old Mercurio knelt beside her, his bones creaking. Mia didn’t look at him, eyes fixed on the skyline. The Ribs towering up above them. The War Walkers standing silent vigil. The blazing glow of the Basilica Grande beyond.
“Rough night, little Crow?” he asked.
Tears rolled down Mia’s cheeks. The sob clawed at her throat, demanding to be let out. She bit her lip lest it escape and compound her failure. Tasting blood.
Mercurio took a thin silver case from inside his greatcoat. The girl winced as he struck a flintbox, the momentary flare reminding her of the light in Duomo’s hands, burning on Remus’s sword. The scent of burning cloves stained the night.
“Here,” Mercurio said.
She looked at the old man. He was holding out the cigarillo.
“Settles the nerves,” he explained.
Mia blinked in the dark. Reached out with bloody hands. She put the smoke to her lips, tasted sugar. Warmth to banish the chill. The smoke she inhaled suffocated the sobs, stilling her shakes. She coughed. Sputtered gray. Winced.
“This tastes horrible.”
“It’ll taste better tomorrow.”
She turned her eyes to the twinkling city lights. The burning heart of Godsgrave laid out before her. Wincing at the memory of the men she’d murdered, the men she’d fought. So many of them, and she all alone. Suns burning in their hands. On their steel. In their eyes.
“It was so bright,” she whispered. “Too bright.”
“Never fear, little Crow.”
The old man smiled. Patted her hand.
“The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.”
BOOK 3
BLACK RUNS RED
CHAPTER 28
VENOM
Mia woke in the dark hours later. Phantom pain across her back where the weaver’s blows had fallen. Bones still echoing with the ache. Looking up to where a pair of eyes should have been. Mister Kindly on the bedhead, watching while she slept.
“… are you well …?”
“Well enough.”
“… you asked me to mind the boy. i could not keep the nightmare away …”
“It’s always been there.” She sighed. “Always.”
Mia sat up in bed, hair draped about her face as she bowed her head. Her muscles ached from the weaver’s touch, her mouth dry at the memories she’d kept locked away. Refused to look at. Her mother. The power of the nights, flowing in her veins. It was she who’d destroyed the Philosopher’s Stone. She who’d perpetrated the Truedark Massacre. Killed dozens of men on the steps of the Basilica Grande. Dozens more in the Stone itself. Fathers. Brothers. Sons.
She’d tried to murder Scaeva.
Tried and failed.
So much blood on her hands. So much power at her fingertips.
And she’d not even come close.
“We have work to do.”
So it began.
Time passed under the evernight sky, initiation drawing ever closer. Routine and ritual. Meals and grueling training and sleep.
To have endured fifty lashes at the weaver’s hand was no small feat, and most of her fellow acolytes treated Mia with a newfound respect after the scourging. But Tric had managed to suffer through the entire ordeal without even whimpering, and he was viewed with a kind of awe among the other novices now. Even Shahiid Solis found some praise for his ever-improving form in the Hall of Songs. In the private moments they managed to snatch before ninebells (no acolyte dared set foot outside their room now), Tric whispered to Mia it was ridiculous—that she’d been the brave one, not him. But Mia was content to let him steal the glory. Better to be underestimated.
Easier to hide in the dark than the limelight.
As for Mia, Solis still showed little mercy. She still struck weakly with her swordarm, and her guard broke when hard-pressed. Though he’d caused the injury himself, the Shahiid sent Mia running laps of the stairs for the slightest failing. She endured the abuse silently, and managed to avoid getting her chest perforated when paired with Jessamine or Diamo, which seemed to happen more than the laws of chance would dictate.
She often found herself reporting to the weaver to mend her hurts after Songs was finished. For her part, Marielle said nothing about the blood scourging, and treated Mia no differently. But Mia didn’t forget. Didn’t forgive.1
Adonai showed even less concern for Mia than his sister. Ever aloof, he presided over the regular Blood Walks that sent the acolytes to Godsgrave in search of secrets for Aalea. Mia found herself lurking in tavernas, sweet-talking soldier boys, swimming in rumor. A minor uproar had been caused when Consul Scaeva inducted his seven-year-old son Lucius into the Luminatii legion.2 She heard whispers about Justicus Remus siring a bastard on some senator’s daughter. Talk that Scaeva was quietly agitating to be named imperator—a title that would give him leadership of the Senate until death. All these and more, Mia reported to Shahiid Aalea, hoping to gain her favor. The woman would simply smile, kiss Mia’s cheek, and give no indication of her standing in the contest whatsoever.
It was maddening.
More maddening was Spiderkiller’s quandary. Mia spent every spare moment working on it, the antidote still out of reach. Scribbling and cursing. Watching the arkemical symbols collide in her mind’s eye until she saw them when she slept.
She and Tric orbited each other slowly, drifting closer to another collision. But the agony they’d endured at the weaver’s hands still screamed louder than the ache of not being together. There was no time between lessons, no place after ninebells, no satisfaction in some darkened corner, fucking like thieves. She felt it was worth more than that. And so they waited for the moment the other would break. Dreaming of it alone in her bed, her hands roaming ever lower, silently screaming his name.
And in the quiet minutes, in the shadows, she met with Naev.
Sweating just as much.
Screaming not at all.
Black Mother, this is going to be the end of me.”
Mia was hunched over her notes at the mornmeal table, watching out of the corner of her eye for flying drinks trays. Osrik and Ashlinn were sat opposite, Tric beside her. Chatter rippled among the acolytes amid the clink and scrape of cutlery, Pip as ever muttering to his knife, pausing between queries as if the blade answered back.3
A fork was tapped against a glass for attention, and all eyes turned to the head table. Revered Mother Drusilla was standing, her customary smile in place. She looked about the assembled faces, nodded to herself as if satisfied.
“Acolytes. This is the last turn of official lessons you will attend as novices of the Red Church. From this eve, until initiation two weeks hence, your time is your own to do with as you see fit. Shahiid Mouser and Shahiid Aalea shall accept purloined items and secrets ’til weeksend. Shahiid Spiderkiller will also welcome solutions to her quandary. I should note there have been no entrants to date, and I will stress that no acolyte is under any compunction to solve the Shahiid’s riddle. I would hope Spiderkiller has made the penalty for failure plain enough.”
The dour woman inclined her head, black lips quirked in a small smile.
“Shahiid Solis’s contest in the Hall of Songs begins on the morrow. Preliminary bouts shall be fought in the morn, finals after midmeal. Speaker Adonai and Weaver Marielle will be on hand to attend your hurts.
“Once acolytes are placed at top of hall, the Ministry will conduct a series of final trials. Those of the four who perform to satisfaction will be initiated by the Right Hand of Niah, and anointed with the blood of Lord Cassius himself.”
Mia swallowed hard. Everything she’d worked for. Everything she wanted.
“I would suggest you all get a good eve’s rest after lessons,” Drusilla said. “Tomorrow, final trials begin.”