“… Not half as much as I’d like.”
Aelius shrugged. “You asked me to look for books on darkin, and so I did. Didn’t promise you’d be any more enlightened when you were done.”
“No need to rub it in, good Chronicler.”
Aelius smirked. “I’m always on the lookout for more. If I find anything else of interest down here, I’ll send it to your chambers. But I’d not hold my breath.”
Mia nodded, dragging on her smoke. Niah’s athenaeum was actually a library of the dead. It contained a copy of every book that had ever been destroyed in the history of the written language. Moreover, it also held other tomes that had never been written in the first place. Memoirs of murdered tyrants. Theorems of crucified heretics. Masterpieces of geniuses who ended before their time.
Chronicler Aelius had told her new books were appearing constantly, that the shelves were always shifting. And though Niah’s athenaeum was a wondrous place as a result, the downside was plain: finding a particular book in here was like trying to find a particular louse in a dockside sweetboy’s crotch.
“Chronicler, have you heard of the Moon? Or any crowns said Moon might be partial to?”
Aelius’s stare turned wary.
“Why?”
“You answer questions with questions an awful lot,” Mia sighed. “Why is that?”
“Do you remember what I said that turn you first came down here?”
“See, there you go again.”
“Do you remember?”
“You said I was a girl with a story to tell.”
“And what else?”
Smoke drifted from the girl’s lips as the old man stared her down.
“You said maybe here’s not where I’m supposed to be,” she finally replied. “Which stank like horseshit at the time, and smells even worse now. I proved myself. The Ministry would all be nailed to crosses in the ’Grave if not for me. And I’m sick and bloody tired of everybody around here seeming to forget that.”
“You don’t find any irony in earning your place in a cult of assassins by saving half a dozen lives?”
“I killed almost a hundred men in the process, Aelius.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“What are you, my nursemaid?” Mia snapped. “A killer is what I am. The wolf doesn’t pity the lamb. And the—”
“Aye, aye, I know the tune.”
“And you know why I’m here. My father was executed as a traitor to entertain a mob. My mother died in a prison, and my baby brother beside her. And the men responsible need a fucking killing. That’s how I feel about it.”
The old man hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat. “Problem with being a librarian is there’s some lessons you just can’t learn from books. And the problem with being an assassin is there’s some mysteries you just can’t solve by stabbing fuck out of them.”
“Always riddles with you,” Mia growled. “Do you know about this Moon or no?”
The old man sucked on his cigarillo, looked her up and down. “I know this much. Some answers are learned. But the important ones are earned.”
“O, Black Goddess, now you’re a poet, too?”
The chronicler frowned, crushed his cigarillo out against the wall.
“Poets are wankers.”
Aelius dropped the murdered butt of his smoke into his waistcoat. He looked down at the book in Mia’s hand. Back up into her eyes.
“You can keep that. Nobody else can read it anyways.”
With a small nod, he took hold of his RETURNS trolley.
“What, that’s all the explanation I get?” Mia asked.
Aelius shrugged. “Too many books. Too few centuries.”
The old man wheeled his trolley off into the dark. Watching him fade into the shadows, the girl took a savage drag of her cigarillo, jaw clenched.
“… well, that was enlightening…”
“… AELIUS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY. BEING CRYPTIC MAKES HIM FEEL IMPORTANT…”
Mia scowled at the shadowwolf materializing beside her.
“Are you sure Lord Cassius never learned anything of this, Eclipse? He was head of the entire congregation. You’re telling me he knew nothing about what it was to be darkin? Cleo? The Moon? Any of it?”
“… I TOLD YOU, WE NEVER LOOKED. CASSIUS FOUND ENOUGH MEANING IN LIFE BY ENDING THE LIVES OF OTHERS. HE NEEDED NO MORE THAN THAT…”
Mister Kindly snorted. “… small things and small minds…”
“… HAVE A CARE, LITTLE GRIMALKIN. HE WAS MY FRIEND WHEN YOU WERE STILL SHAPELESS. HE WAS AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE DARK AND AS SHARP AS THE MOTHER’S TEETH. SPEAK NO ILL OF HIM…”
Mia sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t understand how Cassius had never sought the truth of himself. She’d wondered on it since she was a child. Old Mercurio and Mother Drusilla had said she was chosen of the Goddess.
But chosen for what?
She remembered fighting in the streets of Last Hope with Ashlinn. Her attack on the Basilica Grande when she was fourteen. On both occasions, simply looking at the trinity—the holy symbol of Aa—had caused her agony. The Light God hated her. She’d felt it. Sure as the ground beneath her feet. But why? And what the ’byss did this “Moon” have to do with any of it?
And Remus.
Fucking Remus.
He was dead by her hand on a dusty Last Hope thoroughfare. His attack on the Mountain failed. His men slaughtered on the sands all around him. But before she’d plunged her gravebone blade into his throat, the justicus had uttered words that turned her entire world upside down.
“I will give your brother your regards.”
Mia shook her head.
But Jonnen is dead. Mother told me so.
So many questions. Mia could taste frustration mixed with the smoke on her tongue. But her answers were in Godsgrave. And Black Mother be praised, that was exactly where this mysterious patron of hers was sending her.
Time to stop moaning and start moving.
Mia limped out from the athenaeum. Down the winding stair toward the Church’s belly. Through the puddles of stained-glass light, Mister Kindly on her shoulder and Eclipse prowling before her. The Church choir rang as they trod the winding stairs, the long and twisting halls, until finally, they reached Weaver Marielle’s chambers.
She took a breath, rapped on the heavy door. It opened after a moment, and Mia found herself looking into scarlet eyes, down to a beautiful, bloodless smile.
“Blade Mia,” Adonai said.
The Blood Speaker was clad in his indecent britches and red silk robe, open as ever at his chest. The room beyond was lit by a single arkemical lamp, the walls adorned with hundreds of different masks, all shapes and sizes. Death masks and children’s masks and Carnivalé masks. Glass and ceramic and papier-maché. A room of faces, without a single mirror in sight.
“Thou art here for a weaving,” Adonai said.
“Aye,” Mia nodded, meeting those blood-red eyes without fear. “Wounds heal in time, but I’ll not have much of it where I’m headed.”
“The City of Bridges and Bones,” the speaker mused. “No place more dangerous in all the Republic.”
“You’ve not seen my laundry basket,” Mia replied.
Adonai smirked, glanced over his shoulder.