“My name is Mia,” she said softly.
Hand slipping to the gravebone blade at her wrist.
“Mia Corvere.”
Duomo’s eyes widened. Scaeva’s brow creased. The blade whistled as it came, slicing through the cardinal’s throat, ear to bloody ear. He staggered back, dark blood fountaining from the wound, fingers to his severed carotid and jugular. The spray hit her face, thick and red, warm on her lips as she moved, as the Luminatii moved, as everything around her moved. The crowd roaring in horror. The cardinal collapsing to the stone. The Luminatii crying out, raising their blades. And the girl. The Blade. The gladiatii. The daughter of a murdered house, child of a failed rebellion, victor of the greatest bloodsport the Republic had ever seen … she charged.
Right at Julius Scaeva.
Fear bleached his handsome features, his dark eyes wide with horror. The Luminatii moved to intercept her, but she was quick as shadows, sharp as razors, hard as steel. Scaeva cried out, lifting the boy off his shoulders, the child’s eyes wide with fear. And as Mia’s belly rolled, the consul held his son out like a shield, and coward among cowards, he threw the boy at Mia’s face.
She cried out, hand outstretched, the child’s arms pinwheeling as he flew. The world slowed to a crawl, the suns pounding at her back, the heat of sunsteel flame rippling on her skin. She caught the boy, clutching him tight in her free arm, pulling him close. And rising up on her toes, she spun like a dancer, long dark hair streaming, arm outstretched in a glittering arc.
Perfection.
Her blade sank into Scaeva’s chest, buried all the way to the hilt. The consul gasped, eyes open wide. Mia’s face twisted, scar tissue pulling at her cheek, hatred like acid in her veins. All the miles, all the years, all the pain, coalescing in the muscles of her arm, corded and pulled tight as she dragged her blade sideways, splitting his ribs and cutting his heart in two. She left the gravebone blade quivering in his chest, the crow on the hilt smiling with its amber eyes, dark blood fountaining from the wound. And with the boy clutched tight to her chest, still spinning like poetry, like a picture, she twisted backward, over the edge of the battlements.
And she fell.
In turns to come, the next few moments would be the topic of countless taverna tales, dinner table debates, and barroom brawls across the city of Godsgrave.
The confusion arose for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was around this moment when Magistrae, Leonides, Tacitus, Phillipi, and virtually every other sanguila and executus in the ringside boxes began vomiting blood from the poisoned goldwine they’d drunk, which proved more than a little distracting. The central plinth was a fair distance from even ringside seats, so it was difficult for many in the audience to see. And last, and most important, the grand cardinal and the consul had just been brutally murdered by the champion of the magni, which left everyone in the crowd a little shocked.
Some said the girl fell, the boy in her arms, right into the mouth of a hungry stormdrake. Some said she hit the water, but avoided the drakes, making her escape through the pipes that had vented the ocean out onto the arena floor. And then there were those—discounted as madmen and drunks, for the most part—who swore by the Everseeing and all four of his Holy Daughters that this little slip of a girl, this daemon wrapped in leather and steel who’d just murdered the two highest officials in the Republic, simply disappeared. One moment falling toward the water in the long shadow of the battlements, the next, completely vanished.
The arena was in an uproar, fury, dismay, terror. The blood masters collapsed in their seats, or fell to the stone, Leonides and Magistrae dead among them, every gladiatii stable in the Republic beheaded with a single stroke. Duomo lay on the battlements, his face bled white, throat cut to the bone. And beside the grand cardinal, his purple robe drenched with dark heart’s blood, lay the savior of the Republic.
Julius Scaeva, the People’s Senator, the man who had bested the Kingmakers and rescued Itreya from calamity, had been assassinated.
CHAPTER 36
GODSGRAVE
Ashlinn stole through the City of Bridges and Bones like a knife through a consul’s chest. The sounds of panic were swelling in the arena behind them, the girl’s heart singing as cathedrals all over the city began ringing a death knell.
“Black Mother, she did it.”
She chewed her lip, stifling a fierce grin.
“She did it.”
Ash moved quicker, over canals and through the twisting thoroughfares of the marrowborn district. The three suns blazed above, the heat relentless, sweat soaking her through. She would have stopped for a breather, but truth was, she had no time to breathe. From the sounds of chaos rising from the distant arena, word of Scaeva’s death was spreading across the city like a brush fire. Soon the Red Church would know their beloved patrons were dead, and all the fury of the acolytes of Our Lady of Blessed Murder would be raining down on their heads.
She had to meet Mercurio at the necropolis, then Mia in the harbor. From there, they could slip out into the blue where no Blade or member of the Ministry could find them. Then she could rest. Breathe. Sink into Mia’s arms and never, ever let go again.
Ashlinn made her way in the shadow of the Ribs, over a broad marble span to the Sword Arm. The air was slowly filling with the song of tolling bells, panicked shouts ringing through the city behind her. A boy ran past, eyes wide, waving his cap and yelling in a shrill voice.
“The consul and cardinal slain!”
“Assassin!” came another distant shout. “Assassin!”
She reached the wrought-iron fences surrounding the houses of Godsgrave’s dead. Slipping through the tall gates, Ashlinn made her way to a door carved with a relief of human skulls, and down into the dank shadows of the necropolis. Swift and silent, she stole through the twisted tunnels of femurs and ribs, to the tomb of some long-forgotten senator. Pulling a small lever to reveal a hidden door in a stack of dusty bones, and finally, slipping into the corridors of the Red Church chapel.
Dark.
Quiet.
Safe at last.
She dashed to Mia’s sparse bedchamber, snatched up a small leather pack and Mia’s precious gravebone longsword. The crow’s eyes on the hilt glittered red in the low light, Ash sparing a glance for the empty bed, the empty walls, the empty dark. And turning on her heel, she dashed back down the corridor to Mercurio’s office.
“Are you ready t—”
Ashlinn’s heart stilled in her chest. Sitting behind Mercurio’s desk, fingers steepled at her chin, was an elderly woman with curling gray hair. She seemed a kindly old thing, eyes twinkling as she looked Ashlinn up and down. Though she sat in the bishop’s chair, she wouldn’t have seemed out of place beside a happy hearth, grandchildren on her knee and a cup of tea by her elbow.