Jessamine shook her head, her voice hard and cold.
“There’s still blood between you and me. But the turn I come for you, you won’t be naked in a tub with soap in your eyes. You’ll be wide awake, blade in hand. I promise you that.” Jessamine smiled, ear to ear. “So never fear, Corvere.”
Mia looked to the steaming baths. Down to the shadow at her feet. And then she smiled back.
“I never do.”
*
An hour later, Mia was standing outside the chambers of the bishop of the Godsgrave Chapel. She was dressed in knee-high boots and black leathers, a doublet of crushed black velvet, hair neatly combed. Her father’s gravebone longsword hung at her side, her mother’s stiletto sheathed inside her ruffled sleeve.
The bishop’s chambers were hidden away in a twist of bone tunnels—the chapel’s innards were a labyrinth, and Mia had lost her bearings quickly. If not for Jessamine, she doubted she’d be able to find her way back to the blood pool again, which made her all the warier about being in the girl’s presence.
The chamber door opened silently, and a slender young man stepped out into the shadows of the hall, dressed in dark velvet. His face had been woven since last Mia saw him, but he was still too thin, and Mia would recognize those piercing blue eyes anywhere. Dark hair, ghost-pale, lips slightly pursed against his toothless gums.
“Hush,” Mia smiled.
The boy stopped, looked Mia up and down as if surprised to see her. A small smile curled his lips as he signed to her in Tongueless.
hello
She signed back, hands moving quickly.
you serve here? in godsgrave?
Hush nodded.
eight months
it’s good to see you
is it
we should have a drink
The boy looked at Jessamine, then gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Listen, I hate to break up this heartwarming reunion,” Jess said. “But honestly, I’m about to start weeping at the emotion, and the bishop is waiting.”
Hush nodded, looked to Mia.
mother watch over you
With a small bow, the boy pressed his fingertips together and walked away down the hall, silent as a shadow. Mia watched him go, a touch saddened. She’d been an acolyte with Hush. He’d helped her in her final trials, and in turn, she’d saved his life during the Luminatii attack. But as ever, the strange boy held himself distant.
A killer first, and always.
Jess knocked on the door three times.
“Fucksakes, what?” demanded a haggard voice from within.
Jessamine opened the door, motioned Mia inside. The girl entered the bishop’s chamber, looked about the room. Bone walls were lined with bookshelves, laden with haphazardly stacked paperwork. Sheaves of vellum and scrolls in boxes or simply piled atop one another, hundreds of books stacked without care or scattered across the floor—it looked like a globe of wyrdglass had exploded inside a drunkard’s library. Along one wall was a row of weaponry from all corners of the Republic: a Luminatii sunsteel blade; a Vaanian battleaxe; a double-edged gladius from some gladiatii arena; a rapier of Liisian steel. All gleaming in the low arkemical light.
Seated at a broad wooden desk, almost hidden behind a tottering pile of paperwork, Mia saw the bishop of Godsgrave, a quill held between his liver-spotted fingers.
“Maw’s teeth,” she breathed. “… Mercurio?”
The old man looked up from his paperwork, pushed his spectacles up his nose. His shock of thick gray hair seemed to have gotten unrulier since she last saw him, ice-blue eyes framed by his perpetual scowl. He obviously hadn’t slept well in months.
“Well, well,” Mercurio smirked. “I thought you were the Quiet One, come back to complain some more. How do, little Crow?”
Mia looked at her former mentor with astonishment.
“What the ’byss are you doing here?”
“What’s it bloody look like?”
“They made you bishop of Godsgrave?”
Mercurio shrugged. “Bishop Thalles got ventilated when the Luminatii purged the city. Fuckers never hit the Curio Shop for some reason, but I couldn’t ever risk going back there. So, once the chapel got rebuilt, Lady Drusilla lured me out of retirement. Without the shop, I had bugger all else to do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were in Galante. And in case your bloody eyes have stopped working, I’ve been a trifle busy. So, without further foreplay, Adonai sent missive you’d be arriving. You got the particulars?”
Mia was a little taken aback. Mercurio had never quite gotten over the fact that she’d failed her final trial. Though he’d always be fond of her, he still seemed … disappointed somehow. Like everyone else in the Ministry, her old master could carry a grudge. It saddened her, no doubt—the old man had taken her in, looked after her for six long years. Though she’d admit it to no one, she loved the old bastard.
But still, she was a Blade and he was now her bishop, and his tone reminded her sharply where she was. Mia produced the scroll case Solis had given her. It was leather, so it could cross the blood walk—nothing that hadn’t once known the pulse of life could travel via Adonai’s magiks. Mia watched Mercurio unroll the parchment, pore over it with narrowed eyes.
“The Dona,” he murmured.
“Leader of the Toffs,” Mia replied. “They run down by the Bay of Butchers.”
The bishop nodded, picked up the character sketch of Mia’s mark. It showed a woman with a dark scowl, darker eyes. She wore a frock coat of a fine cut, hair styled into artful ringlets, as was the fashion among marrowborn ladies in recent seasons. A monocle was propped (rather ridiculously, Mia thought) on her right eye.
Mercurio dropped the parchment on his desk.
“Shame to bury a knife that sharp.” The old man took a long sip of his tea. This close, Mia could smell the goldwine in it. “Right. The particulars are detailed, you know where to start looking. You’ve got eight turns to end her and snaffle this map, and the hourglass is running. What do you need from me?”
“A place to sleep. Wyrdglass. Weapons. A Hand who knows the ’Grave as well as me and can move as fast as I do.”
“You’ve got your Hand, she’s standing right behind you.”
Mia turned to look at Jessamine. Back to Old Mercurio. The bishop was obviously unaware of the enmity that lay between the girls, and to bring it up seemed on the south side of petty. But Mia trusted Jessamine like she trusted the suns not to shine, and enjoyed her company the way eunuchs enjoy looking at naughty lithographs.
How best to broach this …
“Perhaps there’s someone with more … experience?”