Fat Daniio fell silent. An almost thoughtful expression crossed his face. He leaned in close, wreathed in the stench of rotten fish, tears springing unbidden to Mia’s eyes.
“’Scuse me then, lass. But what am I s’posed to do with some dead tosser’s teeth?”
The door creaked open, and the Wolfeater ducked below the frame, stepping into the Old Imperial as if he owned a part share in it.8 A dozen crewmen followed, cramming into dingy booths and leaning against the creaking bar. With an apologetic shrug, Fat Daniio set to serving the Dweymeri sailors. Mia caught his sleeve as he headed toward the booths.
“Do you have rooms here, sir?”
“Aye, we do. One beggar a week, mornmeal extra.”
Mia pushed an iron coin into Fat Daniio’s paw.
“Please let me know when that runs out.”
A week with no sign, no word, no whisper save the winds off the wastes.
The crew of Trelene’s Beau stayed aboard their ship while they resupplied, availing themselves of the town’s amenities frequently. A typical nevernight would commence with grub at the Old Imperial, a sally forth into the arms of Dona Amile and her “dancers” at the appropriately named Seven Flavors,9 before returning to the Imperial for a session of liquor, song, and the occasional friendly knife fight. Only one finger was removed during the entirety of their stay. Its owner took its loss with good humor.
Mia sat in a gloomy corner with the hangman’s teeth pouched up on the wood before her. Eyes on the door every time it creaked. Eating the occasional bowl of astonishingly hot (and she had to admit, delicious) bowls of Fat Daniio’s “widowmaker” chili, her frown growing darker as the turning of the Beau’s departure drew ever closer.
Could Mercurio have been wrong? It’d been years since he’d sent an apprentice to the Red Church. Maybe the place had been swallowed by the wastes? Maybe the Luminatii had finally laid them to rest, as Justicus Remus had vowed to do after the Truedark Massacre?
And maybe this is all a test. To see if you’ll run like a frightened child …
She’d poke around the town at the turn of each nevernight, listening in doorways, almost invisible beneath her cloak of shadows. She came to know Last Hope’s residents all too well. The seer who augured for the town’s womenfolk, interpreting signs from a withered tome of Ashkahi script she couldn’t actually read. The slave boy from Seven Flavors, plotting to murder his madam and flee into the wastes.
The Luminatii legionaries stationed in the garrison tower were the most miserable soldiers Mia had ever come across. Two dozen men at civilization’s end, a few sunsteel blades between them and the horrors of the Ashkahi Whisperwastes. The winds blowing off the old empire’s ruins were said to drive men mad, but Mia was sure boredom would do for the legionaries long before the whisperwinds did. They spoke constantly of home, of women, of whatever sins they’d committed to be stationed in the Republic’s arse-end.10 After a week, Mia was sick of all of them. And not a single one spoke a word of the Red Church.
Seven turns after she’d arrived in Last Hope, Mia sat watching the Beau’s crew seal their holds, their calls rough with grog. Part of her wanted little more than to skulk aboard as they put out to the blue. Run back home to Mercurio. But truth was, she’d come too far to give up now. If the Church expected her to tuck tail at the first obstacle, they knew her not at all.
Sitting atop the Old Imperial’s roof, she watched the Beau sail from the bay, a clove cigarillo at her lips. The whisperwinds rolled off the wastes behind her, shapeless as dreams. She glanced at the cat who wasn’t a cat, sitting in the long shadow the suns cast for her. Its voice was the kiss of velvet on a baby’s skin.
“… you fear …”
“That should please you.”
“… mercurio would not have sent you here needlessly …”
“The Luminatii have been trying to take down the Church for years. The Truedark Massacre changed the game.”
“… if ill befell them, there would still be traces …”
“You suggest we go out into the Whisperwastes and look?”
“… that, wait here, or return home …”
“None of those options hold much appeal.”
“… fat daniio’s job offer still stands, i am sure …”
Her smile was thin and pale. She turned back to the sea, watching the sunslight glint and catch upon the gnashing waves. Dragging deep on her smoke and exhaling plumes of gray.
“… mia …?”
“Yes?”
“… there is no need to be afraid …”
“I’m not.”
A pause, filled with whispering wind.
“… no need to lie, either …”
Mia ended up stealing most of her supplies.
Waterskins, rations, and a tent from Last Hope General Supplies and Fine Undertakers. Blankets, whiskey, and candles from the Old Imperial. She’d already marked the finest stallion in the garrison stable for stealing, despite being as much at home in the saddle as a nun in a brothel.
She told herself the thievery would keep her sharp, and sneaking back into the robbed stores to deposit compensation on the countertops afterward struck her as good sport.11 Seated at the Imperial’s hearth, she enjoyed a final bowl of widowmaker chili and waited for the nevernight winds to begin, bringing blessed cool after a turn of red heat.
Mia glanced up as the front door creaked open, admitting curling fingers of dust.
The boy who entered looked Dweymeri—leviathan ink facial tattoos (of terrible quality), salt-kissed locks bound in matted knots. But his skin was olive rather than brown, and he was too short to be an islander; barely a head taller than Mia, truth told. Dressed in dark leathers, carrying a scimitar in a battered scabbard, smelling of horse and a long road. When he prowled into the room, he checked every corner with hazel eyes. As his stare roamed the alcoves, Mia pulled the shadows about herself, and faded like a watermark into the gloom.
The boy turned to Fat Daniio, polishing that same grubby cup with the same grubby cloth. Eyeing the man over, the boy spoke with a voice soft as velvet.
“Blessings to you, sir.”
“A’right,” Fat Daniio replied. “What’ll you ’ave?”
“I have this.”
The boy placed a small wooden box upon the counter. Mia’s eyes narrowed as it rattled. The boy looked around the room again, then spoke in a tight whisper.
“My tithe. For the Maw.”12
CHAPTER 4
KINDNESS
Captain Puddles had loved his Mia.
He’d known her since he was a kitten, after all. Before he’d forgotten the warm press of his siblings around him, she’d cradled him in her arms and kissed him on his little pink nose and he’d known she’d always be the center of his world.
And so when Justicus Remus had stooped to seize the girl’s wrist at his consul’s command, Captain Puddles spat a yellow-tooth hiss, reached out with a paw full of claws, and tore the justicus’s face from eyehole to lip. Roaring, the big man seized the brave captain’s head with one hand, his shoulders with the other, and with an almost practiced ease, he twisted.
The sound was like wet sticks snapping, too loud to be drowned by Mia’s scream. And at the end of those dreadful damp pops, a black shape hung limp in the justicus’s hand; a warm, soft, purring shape Mia had fallen asleep beside every nevernight, now purring no more.
She lost herself then. Howling, clawing, scratching. Dimly aware of being seized by another Luminatii and slung over his shoulder. The justicus clutched his bleeding face and drew his sword, fire uncurling down its length, the steel glowing with painful, blinding light.
“Not here, Remus,” Scaeva said. “Your hands must be clean.”