“Yes, damn you, say your piece. You weren’t shy about it in the fucking bathhouse. We’re alone and all of a sudden the cat has your tongue?”
“And what would we speak of? You’ve made feelings clear enough.”
“You’ve been following me like a fucking bloodhawk since you found out who I was. And you’ve never asked me of it, not once. Yet at the first whisper of…”—Mia glanced about, lowered her voice—“… of rebellion, your tongue is all aflutter.”
“The action we take about my impending sale concerns me direct, Crow. But as far as your parentage goes, it’s not my place to speak. And if you were wondering, all you needed do was ask. I follow you out of respect for your father. He’d have wanted me to look after you.”
“And what do you know of what my father would have wanted?”
Sidonius laughed softly. “More than you realize, little Crow.”
“You were a soldier. Branded for cowardice and kicked out of the legion. You weren’t in his counsel. You didn’t know him.”
Sidonius shook his head, hurt shining in his eyes.
“I know he’d be ashamed of what this house has become.”
Mia fell quiet at that. Took a deep, shivering breath and looked to the walls around her. The iron bars and the human misery. She’d scrubbed herself hard in the bath, but she could smell the smoke from Maggot’s funeral pyre in her hair.
“Your name is Mia, aye?”
She looked up sharply, eyes narrowed.
“It took me a while to remember it,” Sid said. “The justicus spoke of you sometimes, but he kept talk of his familia mostly to himself. I think he felt closer to you all that way. Not sharing you with others. Not staining thoughts of you with all the blood and shit we saw on campaign.”
“Aye,” she finally answered. “Mia.”
“Your little brother was Jonnen.”
“… Aye.”
Sid nodded, sucking his lip, saying nothing.
“Daughters, spit it out,” Mia sighed.
“Spit what out?”
“The rebuke so obviously churning behind your fucking teeth. ‘You can leave these walls anytime you like, Crow, you’ve no right to stop us trying the same. Even if we fail, the administratii will never catch you. No cell can ever hold you.’”
“Is that what I was thinking?” Sid asked. “Or what you were thinking?”
“Fuck you, Sid.”
“It took me a while,” the big man said. “To ponder it. Why you were here, why you’d want to fight in the magni. And then I remembered who’d be standing on the sand with you when you were declared the victor. The same men who stood in judgment over him, aye? The same men who smiled as he hanged.”
Mia said nothing. Simply stared.
“I wasn’t there when it happened,” Sid said. “I was already in chains by then. But I heard about it, afterward. Heard the Dona Corvere stood on the forum walls, above the howling mob. A little girl in her arms. Must have been you, aye? Quite a thing to make your daughter watch.”
“She wanted me to see,” Mia said. “She wanted me to remember.”
“Your mother.”
“Aye,” Mia spat. “What was it you called her? The stupid fucking whore?”
“Aye, that was unkind of me,” Sid sighed. “But it’s hard for me to find too many kind words for your ma, Mia. Knowing what I know of her.”
“And what is it you think you know?”
“Just that Alinne Corvere had more ambition than Justicus Darius and General Antonius put together. Half your father’s centurions were in love with her. She had a third of the Senate wrapped around her finger.” Sid steepled his hands at his chin. “How do you suppose she did that? She wasn’t quite the swordswoman her daughter grew up to be. She was a politician. You think a woman like that could almost bring a Republic to its knees without dropping once or twice to her own?”
Mia glowered at Sidonius. “Don’t you dare.”
“I know you’re trying to avenge them,” Sidonius said. “I know you think it righteous. I just wonder if you’d think the same if you knew the kind of woman your mother was. Or, the kind of man your father was.”
“I know what kind of man he was. He was a hero.”
“We all think that of our parents,” Sid said. “They give us life, after all. It’s easy to mistake them for gods.”
“You speak one ill word of my father,” Mia whispered, “and I swear by the Black Mother I will fucking end you right here in this cell. He was doing what he thought was best for the Republic and its people. He was a man who followed his heart.”
“I loved your father, Mia. And I served him as well as I could. He had that way about him. The loyalty he inspired in his men … I think all of us loved him in our own way.” Sid fixed Mia in his stare. “And aye, he was a man who followed his heart. Just not in the way you think he did.”
“… What are you talking about?”
Sid sighed.
“Your father and General Antonius were lovers, Mia.”
Mia flinched as if she’d been slapped in the face.
Breath trembling.
The whole world shifting under her feet.
“… What?”
“Everyone knew it,” Sid said. “All their men, anyways. Nobody cared. Not even your mother, so long as they kept it quiet. She’d married the position, not the man. Their marriage was one of friendship. Perhaps even a strange kind of love. But first and foremost, it was one of ambition. Your father commanded loyalty among the Luminatii. It didn’t bother us that the would-be king and the Kingmaker occasionally slipped into each other’s beds. Some even found it romantic.” Sidonius leaned closer, his voice heavy and hard. “But don’t tell me the rebellion was about Darius Corvere’s love of liberty or the people, Mia. It was about his love for Antonius. The general wanted to be a king. And your father wanted to be the man who placed that crown upon his head. Plain and simple.”
Mia remembered the nights in Crow’s Nest when the general would visit. She’d always called him “Uncle Antonius.” Her mother and father and he all dining together, the wine flowing, their laughter echoing down halls of long red stone.
And afterward …
Perhaps under this very roof …
“Lies,” Mia whispered. “You’re speaking lies.”
“No, Mia,” Sid said. “I’m just speaking difficult truths.”
Mia sat still, silent, heart pounding in her chest. Blinking hard.
She couldn’t rightly remember the last time she cried …
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Sid sighed. “When you find out the ones who gave you life are just as mortal and frail as the rest of us? That the world isn’t what you thought it was?”
Mia wiped at her tears with shaking hands. Remembering the way her father kissed her mother. First on one eyelid, then the other, then finally upon her smooth, olive brow.
But never on the lips.
Could it be true?
… Did it matter if it was?
If there was no deceit between them, why did she care who her parents lay with? Though they may not have loved each other, they’d both loved her; she knew that if nothing else. They’d taught her to rely on her wits, to be strong, to never be afraid. And she missed them both, even now, like a hole had been carved in her chest the turn they were taken away.