As she and Furian had been marched through the crowded marrowborn district and into the belly of Godsgrave Arena yesterturn, she’d been awed at the sheer size of the structure. She’d seen it as a younger girl, of course, but never this close. The arena’s great oblong was carved directly out of the Spine itself, stretching a thousand feet, concentric rings of bleachers reaching four tiers high. Graceful arches and fluted buttresses, solid marble and gravebone throughout, statuary of the Everseeing and his Four Daughters encircling the outer ring. It was a marvel of engineering, testament to the ingenuity of the folk who’d designed it, the suffering of the slaves who’d built it, a monument to the awesome power, vision, and, above all, cruelty of the Itreyan Republic.*
The venatus was done for the turn, the crowd pouring out into the street with bright smiles and wide eyes. Cathedral bells tolled all over the city, calling the faithful to mass. With all three of the Everseeing’s eyes open in the sky, the more devout citizens of the Republic were preparing for a nevernight of prayer and public piety, and the less religious sorts, an eve of private debauchery.
The excitement was arkemical, anticipation for the magni at a dizzying high. Mia could hear the thrum of the great mekwerks beneath her, as the priests of the Iron Collegium tested all would be ready for the morrow. This was the greatest event in the Itreyan calendar, a celebration of the Republic, and the God of Light. Tomorrow, the grandest spectacle beneath the suns would play out before the crowd’s wondering eyes, the consul himself would crown Itreya’s mightiest warrior with a laurel of gold, as the Hand of God himself granted that warrior their freedom.
It was the stuff legends were made of.
Drip.
Mia stared at nothing.
Drip.
Saying nothing.
Drip.
Listening instead to the echoes of the retiring crowd, the legionaries patrolling the arena’s bowels, the swish of a broom as a slave made his way up the corridor outside. And most of all, to the thoughts inside her head.
This is not where I die.
She shook her head, clenched her fists.
I’ve far too much killing to do.
The broom stopped outside her door. She heard a whisper of cloth, the soft tune of metal on metal, the gentle click of the mekwerk lock at her door. A man entered, sweeping as he came, his back bent with age, gray hair standing in an unruly shock above a pair of piercing, familiar eyes.
“Well,” the old man said, closing the door. “The accommodations are nothing to write home about, but the residents in this place are downright deplorable.”
“Mercurio!”
Mia rose from the floor and crashed into his arms. The bishop of Godsgrave grinned wide, wrapped her up in a fierce embrace. She almost sobbed, feeling all the sorrow and pain of the last few turns suddenly weigh a little lighter. The tension bleeding out through her feet into the uncaring stone beneath her. She held on to him so tight he struggled to breathe, and he patted her on the back until she eased her grip, dragged her knuckles across her eyes.
“’Byss and blood, it’s good to see you,” she breathed.
“And you, little Crow,” her old mentor smiled.
“You look good,” she said.
“You’ve looked better,” he replied, touching the scar at her cheek. “How you faring in here?”
“Well enough,” she shrugged. “Truelight is making it hard to werk the shadows. The food is shite. And I’m dying for a smoke.”
“Well, the first two, I’ve no remedy for,” the bishop said. “But the third…”
Mercurio reached into his threadbare tunic, pulled out a thin silver case. Mia’s face lit up as he pulled out two cigarillos, lit them with a small flintbox. She practically snatched the offering out of the old man’s hand, dragging the smoke into her lungs as if her life depended on it. Groaning, she leaned against the wall and tilted her head back, breathing a plume of clove-scented gray into the air and licking the sugar from her lips.
“Black Dorian’s,” she sighed.
“Best cigarillos in the ’Grave,” Mercurio smiled.
“Maw’s teeth, I could kiss you…”
“Save your gratitude for the morrow,” he said. “You can thank me by not getting your fool self killed.”
“That’s the trick of it,” she replied.
“Our young Dona J?rnheim has filled me in on the particulars of your adventures while you’ve been absent the ’Grave,” Mercurio said. “Thank the Black Mother she wasn’t sending me regular updates or I’d have had a fucking heart attack.”
“I’ll admit the plan went slightly … awry…”
“Awry? It’s all over the shop like a madman’s shit, Mia. Solis has been on me like cheap silk on a two-beggar sweetboy. I’ve fended him off well enough ’til now, but his patience is worn thin.” Mercurio grimaced, dragging on his cigarillo. “You’re traveling in northern Vaan as we speak, just so you know. You missed catching the map bearer in Carrion Hall by a single turn.”
“That was sloppy of me,” Mia murmured.
“Aye, well, you were never my brightest student.”
Mia smirked, inhaling another lungful of warm, sweet gray.
“I received a visit a few turns after you left, by the by,” Mercurio said. “A friend of yours came poking around the necropolis.”
“… I don’t have friends, Mercurio, you know that.”
“A girl named Belle? She said to say you sent her.”
Mia blinked, a slow remembering creeping up on her like a thief. She recalled the fourteen-year-old girl in the braavi pleasure house, with the bruise on her lip and too much hurt in her eyes.
“She came looking for you?” Mia smiled. “Good for her.”
“I’m not in the business of taking in every stray that walks in off the street, Mia,” he growled. “I’m a bishop of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, not a fucking charity worker.”
Mia folded her arms, fixed Mercurio with her dark stare.
“I recall a stray who walked into the parlor of Mercurio’s Curios not so long ago,” she said. “A girl without a friend in the world, and a whole Republic arrayed against her. You took her in. You gave her a place to belong. You gave her love in a world where she’d thought there was nothing left but shit. And thinking on it now, I don’t ever think she said thank you.”
Mia placed a gentle kiss on the old man’s cheek.
“So, thank you. For everything.”
“Get off,” he muttered, pushing her away.
“I know what it’s cost you to help me,” she said. “I know what you’ve risked to get me here. Scaeva and Duomo took my familia away, but I found another in you.”
The old man cleared his throat, scowling.
“You’re not going soft on me, are you, little Crow?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The old man blinked furiously, wiped his face.
“Fucking dusty in these cells.”
“Aye,” she smiled, pawing at her eyes. “It is at that. Is Ashlinn ready?”
“All’s prepared. Do you still trust her?”
“With my life.”
“I think she’s got a soft spot for you.”
Mia grinned around her cigarillo. “She always had bad taste.”
Mercurio sighed, looked her deep in the eye.
“Are you certain you know what you’re doing?”
“If I’m not, it’s a little late to switch the song now,” she shrugged. “I’ll just dance until the music stops, and see where the steps take me.”
“It’s not too late, Mia. You can still change your mind.”
“But that’s the thing, Mercurio,” she said. “I don’t want to. Even if Mister Kindly and Eclipse weren’t with me, I wouldn’t be afraid. Every turn of the last seven years has been leading to this moment. I’ll play the role that fate has given me. And amorrow, when the curtain falls on the final act, Scaeva and Duomo fall with it.”