“Are you … here for me?”
Mia looked her over—the low neckline, the tightly cinched corsetry, the golden masque. A woman twice her age might find herself comfortable in such an outfit. Might revel in the power it gave. But this one was barely more than a child.
… Barely more than a child?
Daughters, what am I?
She should be away about her business, she knew it. The Dona was upstairs, the map was on its way, and Mia needed to end one and steal the other by the morrow. But there was something about this girl. Just one of dozens working inside these walls. Could she have ended in a place like this if Mercurio hadn’t found her? If her life had been just a little different?
This was softness, she knew it. She should be steel. But still …
“How old are you?” she found herself asking.
“Fourteen,” the girl replied.
Mia shook her head. “Is this what you want?”
A blink. “What?”
“Is this what you dreamed of being?” Mia asked. “When you were younger?”
“I…” The girl’s eyes were locked on the sword at Mia’s belt. Her voice turned cold with self-mockery. “I used to pray Aa would make me a princess.”
Mia smiled. “None of us get to be princesses, love.”
“No,” the girl said simply. “No, we don’t.”
Silence hung in the room like morning fog. Mia only stared, as she often did, letting the quiet ask her questions for her.
“Horses,” the girl finally said, tugging her dress higher. “I used to dream of working with horses. A little merchant’s wagon, perhaps. Something simple.”
“That sounds nice.”
“I’d have a black stallion named Onyx,” the girl said. “And a white mare named Pearl. And we’d ride wherever the wind blew, nobody to stop us.”
“So why don’t you do that?”
The lass looked around the room, the bordello beyond it. The light dying in her eyes as she shrugged helplessly. “No choice.”
“You could choose the purses at their waists.” Mia pointed at the trio of marrowborn on the four-poster. “The jewels at their throats. I know a man called Mercurio who lives in the necropolis. If you told him Mia sent you, he could help set you up. Someplace with horses, maybe. Someplace you want to be.”
A glance upstairs. Fear in shadowed eyes. “They’d catch me.”
“Not if you’re quick. Not if you’re clever.”
Thunder rolled beyond the window.
“I’m not,” the girl said.
“That’s Fear talking. Never listen to him. Fear is a coward.”
The girl looked Mia up and down, shaking her head. “I’m not like you.”
Mia could see her reflection in the serving girl’s stare as lightning arced across the skies outside. Death pale skin. Gravebone at her side. Shadows in her eyes.
“I’m not sure you want to be like me,” she said. “I just doubt this”—she reached out and untied the golden masque—“is anything like you.”
The face behind the gold was thin. An old bruise at her lip. Tired, pretty eyes.
“But it’s your choice. Always yours.”
The girl looked to the inkfiends. Back to Mia’s eyes.
“Are there many of them upstairs?” Mia asked.
The girl nodded. Licked the bruise at her mouth. “The worst of them.”
“There’s a package being delivered here this eve. Do you know anything of it?”
The girl shook her head. “They don’t tell me much.”
Mia looked down at the crystalware goblets, the decanter and the silver tray. Up at the girl and her tired eyes. The girl was staring at a purse among the inkfiend’s scattered clothes. A golden ring on another’s finger.
“What’s your name?” Mia asked.
The girl blinked. Looked back at Mia. “Belle.”
“Could you do me a favor, Belle?”
Sudden wariness dawned in the girl’s eyes. “What kind of favor?”
Mia walked a slow circle around her. Nodded once.
“Can I borrow that dress?”
*
Mia and Matteo were escorted from their sparring session by two guards wearing tabards of the Familia Remus. Staring at that falcon sigil on their chests, Mia felt that sinking feeling in her belly growing worse. Sidonius limped out from an infirmary at the keep’s rear. The big man’s nose had been set with a wooden splint after Mia’s beating, fresh stitches at his brow. The girl called Maggot followed him, wandering over to the big mastiff and letting him lick the man’s blood from her fingers. She looked at Mia, again gifting her that small, shy smile.
Not knowing quite what to make of the girl, and despite the bitter sting of her defeat at the hands of the executus, Mia smiled back.
The guards collected Sidonius, and the new recruits were marched up to the great double doors at the keep’s rear. There, they were met by a slender woman with long gray hair and three circles branded into her cheek. She was in her late forties, and carried herself with an almost regal air. A flowing dress of fine red silk hugged her body, and her neck was encircled with a silver torc, similar to Furian’s.
“I am Anthea, majordomo of this house,” she said. “I manage the domina’s affairs in these walls. You will refer to me as Magistrae. You are to be bathed and fed before being locked down for the nevernight. If you have questions, you may speak.”
Sidonius rubbed a hand across his bloody chin, looked the woman up and down.
“Will you wash my back for me, Dona?”
The magistrae glanced at the guards. The men drew wooden truncheons and proceeded to beat the bleeding shit out of Sidonius right there in the foyer. Mia rolled her eyes, wondering how the Itreyan could be so dense. After a hard drubbing—his second of the turn—Sidonius lay on the tiled floor in a spatter of his own blood.
“That’s a n-no … I take it…?”
“Mistake me not for some simple servant, cur,” Magistrae said, her dark eyes roaming the COWARD burned into his chest. “I have known our domina since she was a child, and when she is absent, I am her voice in this house. Now cease your bleeding upon my tiles and follow.”
Sidonius wobbled to his feet, brow and lips dripping red. Mia watched the magistrae from the corner of her eye. The woman reminded her of her father’s majordomo—a Liisian named Andriano—who was head of this household back when the Corvere colors still flew upon the walls. He too lived in bondage, but carried himself like a freeman. Anthea seemed cut from the same cloth.
The more things change …
“May I ask a question, Magistrae?” Mia asked.
Anthea looked her over with a careful eye before replying. “Speak.”
“I see falcons hanging on the courtyard walls.” Mia winced, massaging her bruised ribs. “But is our domina not of the Familia Leonides?”
“The falcon is the sigil of Marcus Remus,” the woman nodded. “Aa bless and keep him. This was his house, awarded for his service to the Republic after the Kingmaker Rebellion. Now he is gone to his eternal rest by the Hearth, the estate passes to his widow, your new domina.”
The sinking feeling in Mia’s belly reached all the way down to her toes.