“Revered Mother Drusilla,” Ashlinn breathed.
“O, no, young Dona J?rnheim,” the old woman said. “I’ve not been Revered Mother since your treachery saw Lord Cassius murdered. Now, I am Lady of Blades.”
Ashlinn looked about the room. Four other figures, swathed in gloom—the entire Red Church Ministry, waiting for her. Aalea with her death-black stare and blood-red lips. Spiderkiller, glowering in a gown of emerald green. Mouser with his old man’s eyes and his young man’s smile. And finally, Solis, blind gaze upturned to the ceiling, glowering at her nonetheless.
Ashlinn’s grip tightened on Mia’s gravebone sword.
“… Where’s Mercurio?” she demanded.
“The bishop of Godsgrave is already back at the Quiet Mountain,” Solis said.
“He put up some resistance,” Mouser said. “We had to hurt him, I’m afraid.”
Spiderkiller looked at Ashlinn with black, glittering eyes. “There are some among us who are dearly hoping the same can be said of you, child.”
“Please,” Drusilla waved to the chair in front of her. “Sit.”
“Or what?” Ashlinn said, her anger rising. “You can’t kill me like you killed my da, you old bitch. The map’s branded on my skin. If I die, it’s lost forever.”
“Please sit, Dona J?rnheim,” said a voice.
A man stepped out from Mercurio’s bedchamber, and Ashlinn’s belly filled with cold ice. He was tall, painfully handsome, dark hair shot through with the faintest streaks of gray. He wore a long toga of rich purple, a golden laurel at his brow.
“No…,” Ashlinn breathed.
“If we wanted you dead, you’d have been so long ago,” Consul Scaeva said. “So please, sit before we are forced to resort to … unpleasantness.”
“You’re dead,” Ashlinn whispered. “I saw you die…”
“No,” Scaeva said. “Although I admit the likeness was uncanny.”
Ashlinn’s eyes grew wide as realization sank home …
“The Weaver,” Ash whispered. “Marielle. She gave someone else your face…”
“You always were a clever one, Ashlinn,” Aalea smiled.
“You’ll forgive the appertaining drama, I hope,” Consul Scaeva said. “But such subterfuge is necessary for a man with as many enemies as I.”
Ashlinn searched their faces, mind awhirl.
They’d known.
They’d known this whole fucking time …
But why would they let us …
… Unless they wanted us …
Like a puzzle box with no more missing pieces.
All of them falling into place.
“You wanted Cardinal Duomo dead,” she whispered. “But you couldn’t just have the Church kill him. He was protected by the Red Promise. Only a Blade would be good enough to end him … but it had to be a Blade willing to betray the Ministry. That way, the Church’s reputation stays intact, and you still see your enemy dead.”
“And once I reveal myself miraculously alive to Godsgrave’s adoring citizens…”
“… They’ll adore you all the more.”
“And be left with no doubt of the continuing danger our Republic faces.”
“Buying you a fourth term as consul…”
“O, no,” Scaeva said, smiling wide. “That laurel is already bought. But the brutal assassination of a grand cardinal in front of the entire capital on Aa’s most holy feast? Say it with me, young Dona J?rnheim. Perpetual. Emergency. Powers.”
Ashlinn’s lips curled in derision.
The ego on this tosser …
The girl tossed her pack away with an almost casual contempt, plopped herself into the offered chair, and put her feet on Mercurio’s desk, right in Drusilla’s face. The old woman glowered, but Mia’s gravebone blade was still in Ash’s hand, her fingers drumming on the hilt.
“Foresaw everything, neh?” she asked the consul.
“I foresaw enough.”
“Except the part where Mia stole your son?”
The smile slowly faded from Scaeva’s lips.
“That was … unfortunate,” the consul said, a muscle twitching at his jaw. “The boy should never have been allowed to accompany my doppelg?nger to the presentation. My wife … she cannot have children, you see. So she indulges, perhaps too much.” Scaeva’s lips curled in a smile again, small and deadly. “But no matter. I have the beloved teacher. And now I have the beloved. And cold as she is, I think not even my daughter would harm her own brother.”
The floor dropped away from beneath Ashlinn’s feet.
“… Daughter?”
Ashlinn felt movement behind her. A quick glance showed a thin, pale boy with stunning blue eyes in the chamber doorway, dressed in a dark velvet doublet. He was mute as always, but the knife in his hands looked sharp enough to cut the sunslight in six. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been trussed up in Luminatii chains, thanks to her betrayal. She’d wager he was the type to bear a grudge.
“All right, Hush?” Ashlinn asked.
She saw other figures behind him, scowling, glowering—Blades, all, no doubt.
“Time to go, Ashlinn,” Drusilla said.
“O, no,” Ashlinn mewled. “Can’t I stay a little longer and listen to the consul gloat? I do so enjoy hearing the wanker tell me how he’s thought of everything.”
“You disagree, Dona J?rmheim?” Scaeva smiled.
“I fear I must, Consul Scaeva,” Ashlinn smiled in reply. “Because a person who’d thought of everything might have thought to look in my pack before I dropped it. And a person not so fond of his own fucking voice might have heard the fuse on the tombstone bomb inside.”
Drusilla’s eyes widened. Ashlinn threw herself aside as her pack exploded with an earsplitting boom. Solis was blasted across the room, smashing into the wall. The Ministry were caught in the arkemical fireball. Hush was smashed out through the chamber doors, his doublet aflame, the rest of the Blades tossed about like straw.
Ashlinn was up and running, ears bleeding, clothes smoking, head swimming from the blast. Mia’s gravebone sword in hand, she dashed through the necropolis, at least three Church Blades on her heels. Sprinting through the twisting labyrinth, she made it to the upper levels, bursting out into the graveyard, suns beating down on her back. She had to make it to the harbor, had to— The dagger took her in the back of her thigh, scraping the bone. She screamed and stumbled, mincing her palms and knees on the flagstones as she hit the ground. Teeth gritted, she rolled over, tore the dagger loose. Staggering to her feet, she saw four Church Blades bearing down on her. Silent and grim, dark eyes hardened to flint. Killers one, killers all. Each a storm, with no pity for the one they were to drown.
Ashlinn raised Mia’s gravebone sword.
Looking among the killers and smiling dark.
“I’m guessing you’re supposed to take me alive,” she grinned. “Apologies in advance…”
“Aye,” said the woman leading them. “We’re sorry too.”
Ashlinn blinked. Vision swimming. World spinning. Looking at the blood on her shaking fingers, spilling over her wounded thigh, down to the dagger that had struck her, and finally noticing the discoloration on the steel.
Poison.