Mia breezed past,* noting the rapier and stiletto sheathed at the thug’s belt. The room beyond was a grand boudoir, three other braavi thugs waiting around the periphery. Though all were dressed like marrowborn dandies, each carried a small armory. Fine art hung on the walls and red silk was draped on every surface. A large bed dominated the setting, and a pretty young man lay sleeping upon it.
“Set it over there, Belle. And be quick about it, there’s a love.”
A figure in the shadows spoke, a low and dusky voice Mia finally identified as female. As the speaker stepped into the light, Mia saw dark hair, dagger-sharp cheekbones. She wore a monocle on a silver chain about her neck, and was slipping a fine-cut silk shirt over her head. Mia recognized her from the sketch in Solis’s scroll case immediately—the Dona, leader of the Toffs.
“Don’t mind him, he’s down for a while.” The Dona smiled, nodding to the snoozing figure on the bed. “Lads today. No stamina at all.”
Mia offered what she hoped was a polite laugh, set the tray down where she was bid. The guards were barely paying attention to her—two were close enough to get caught in a wyrdglass blast, and her shadow could hold at least one other in place. The sweetboy on the bed would be no drama. Five short steps and she could have the Dona’s throat open. It would all depend on who the map seller brought wi—
“… SHE COMES…,” came a whisper in her ear.
“Dona,” called one of the door guards. “Company.”
The braavi leader nodded, motioning Mia toward the corner.
“Plant yourself over there and look mysterious, love. But plants don’t talk, aye?”
Mia nodded, slinking back into the shadows. She heard brief murmurs at the boudoir door, thunder cracking outside the window. A figure walked past the guards—short, decidedly feminine—clad in a loose outfit of mortar gray, slightly damp from the storm outside. Her face was cowled, covered, a pair of sparkling blue eyes visible between the folds. An assortment of blades was strapped to her body, and Mia’s heart beat quicker as she spied a wooden map case slung over her shoulder.
“Well, well,” the figure said. “This is nice and dramatic, isn’t it?”
“You came alone,” the Dona mused.
“That’s the way I work,” the newcomer replied, strolling into the room. Her words were muffled under her cowl, but there was something …
Those eyes.
That voice …
It couldn’t be …
The newcomer glanced at the naked young man on the bed, Mia with her too-tight corset. “Nice view. But it’s a touch crowded, don’t you think?”
“That’s the way I work,” the Dona replied. “And I’ve two golden rules in this life, little one—never trust a man who speaks of his mother without kindness, and never trust a woman who wears a masque without cause.”
The newcomer rolled her eyes, but nevertheless pulled her cowl down, releasing long warbraids of golden blond. And as Mia’s belly flipped sideways and all the way around, the newcomer pulled away the fabric, revealing a face Mia knew almost as well as her own.
Lightning crashed, Mia’s fingernails biting her palm.
Black fucking Mother …
It was Ashlinn J?rnheim.
When last they’d seen each other, they’d been facing down across a dusty thoroughfare in Last Hope. The Luminatii invasion had failed, the justicus was slain. But a trinity around Ashlinn’s neck had held Mia at bay long enough for Ash to escape.
And now she was here in Godsgrave.
Carrying the very item Mia had been sent to steal …
What the ’byss is going on here?
“You have the map?” the Dona asked.
“You have the money?” Ashlinn replied.
The Dona nodded to a guard, who tossed a clinking pouch in the girl’s direction. Ashlinn snatched it from the air, opened the drawstring and took out a single coin. Not a copper beggar, not an iron priest, but …
Gold.
Mia shook her head.
Goddess, a fortune …
“Now,” the Dona said. “Your half of the bargain, if it please you.”
Ashlinn slung the map case off her shoulder, tossed it to the Dona. The woman opened one end with a soft click, pulling a rolled piece of vellum a little ways out of the case. Mia caught a glimpse of strange writing, a sickle-shaped symbol in the corner.
“Well,” Ashlinn sighed. “Pleasant as this is, I spied a pretty redhead downstairs so I’ll just be…”
Ashlinn’s sentence trailed off as the guards at the entrance pushed the door closed with all due drama. Mia shook her head, calculating whether she should reach for her wyrdglass or longsword first. Deciding on the arkemy, she cursed Ashlinn for a fool—marching into a braavi den and mouthing off like she owned it. Did she honestly think this was going to end another way?
The fool in question glanced over her shoulder, blue eyes narrowed.
“Could you ask your fancylads to step out of my way, please, Dona?”
“I’m afraid not,” the braavi leader replied. “The grand cardinal was rather specific about what we were to do with you after coin changed hands.”
Mia’s heart surged at the Dona’s words.
Cardinal Duomo? How is he mixed up in all this?
Thunder crashed outside the window again, lighting flickering through the curtain cracks. The Dona leaned against her desk and smiled.
“I confess, I’m surprised you made this so easy, little one. Duomo warned me you and your father were as sharp as razors.”
“I’d heard the same about you,” Ashlinn said, eyes on the braavi thugs now slowly fanning out around her. “Imagine my disappointment.”
“Fear not, it shan’t last long,” the Dona smiled.
Ashlinn nodded to the map case in the Dona’s hands.
“Do you even know where that leads?”
“No. I don’t stick my nose into what doesn’t concern me.”
“You might want to work on that,” Ashlinn smiled. “Because a nosy person might have spied the false bottom in the case they’d been handed. And a person not so fond of her own voice might have heard the flint that sparked the fuse on the tombstone bomb inside.”
The Dona’s eyes widened. Ashlinn threw herself aside, Mia barely having the presence of mind to hurl herself behind the bed before the map case exploded with an earsplitting boom. The Dona was blasted across the room, dead before she hit the floor. Three guards were caught in the arkemical fireball, the Dweymeri smashed through the doors, his waistcoat aflame, the other thugs tossed about like burning straw.
The room was filled with choking smoke, Mia’s skull pounding from the blast.
“Maw’s teeth,” she spat, trying to rise.
“… MIA…!”
“… are you well…?”
Ashlinn uncovered her ears, picked herself off the ground. She snatched up her sack of gold, and drawing a short blade from her belt, plunged it into the braavi groaning on the floor beside her. Satisfied that the Dona was already dead, she quickly perished any guard who was still moving, then turned toward the serving girl in her smoking chiffon lying beside the bed.
“Apologies, Mi Dona, but I…”
Mia rolled over onto her back. Her masque had been knocked clear in the blast, her ears ringing, her vision blurred. Mister Kindly coalesced on her shoulder, Eclipse at her feet, translucent fangs bared in a snarl that could be felt through the floor.
“’Byss and blood,” Ashlinn breathed.
Eyes as blue as empty skies were fixed on the shadowcat on Mia’s shoulder. Focusing now on his mistress herself.
“… Mia?”