“Shahiid,” Mia said, bowing low.
“You return.” Dark eyes flitted over Mia’s face. “Absent victory, by the look.”
“I needed a nevernight back in my own bed,” Mia said. “But the Dona is dead. And the map is almost within my grasp.”
“You’d rather the boy there instead, I’ll wager?”
Aalea nodded to Tric’s empty tomb. Mia stared too, saying nothing. The Shahiid ran fingertips over Tric’s name, carved in the stone.
“You miss him?” she asked.
Mia saw no sense in denying it.
“Not like a piece of me is gone.” She shrugged. “But aye. I do.”
Aalea pursed her lips, as if uncertain to speak.
“I loved someone once,” she finally said. “Thinking this place, this life I chose, could not sully what I knew to be so pure.” The Shahiid ran her fingers across her lips. “I loved that man as the Night loved the Day. I promised him we’d be together forever.”
“What happened?” Mia asked.
“He died,” Aalea sighed. “Death is the only promise we all keep. This life we live … there is room in it for love, Mia. But a love like autumn leaves. Beautiful one turn. A bonfire the next. Only ashes the remainder.”
Mia was quietened by the picture Aalea conjured. Eyes to the tombs. She’d no wish to raise suspicion, but the last thing in the world she wanted was to stand here talking about love and loss with a mass murderer. Not if what Ashlinn had told her was anything close to true …
“Did you think one turn you might find yourself beside a happy hearth?” Aalea asked. “With a beau at your side and grandchildren on your knee?”
“… I’m not sure what I supposed anymore.”
“Such is not the lot of a Blade,” Aalea took Mia’s hand, pressing it to her lips. “But there is beauty in knowing all things end, Mia. The brightest flames burn out the fastest. But in them, there is warmth that can last a lifetime. Even from a love that only lasts the nevernight. For people like us, there are no promises of forever.”
Mia looked to the statue above. Those eyes that followed wherever she walked. “My father used to say the art of telling a good story lies in knowing when to stop. Keep talking long enough, you’ll find there’s no such thing as a happy ending.”
Aalea smiled. “A wise man.”
Mia shook her head. Remembering the way he died. What he died for.
“Not that wise.”
Ashlinn’s words ringing in her ears. Her jaw clenched.
Aalea looked again to Tric’s empty tomb.
“He would have made a fine Blade,” she sighed. “And he was a beauty. But he is gone. Do not allow your sorrows to stray you from your path, Mia.”
Mia looked Aalea deep in the eye. Her voice was iron.
“I know my path, Shahiid. Sometimes, sorrow is all that keeps me on it.”
Aalea smiled, sweet and dark as chocolate.
“Forgive me. An old teacher’s habits die hard, I suppose. You are a Blade, for now. And a woman. And a beauty at that.” Aalea leaned closer, eyes locked on Mia’s, lips just a breath from her own. “I have been ever fond of you. Know if ever you seek counsel, it is yours. And if ever you wish to build a bonfire to keep you warm one nevernight, I am here.”
Mia’s pulse ran quicker, skin prickling. This close, she could smell the rose and honey of the Shahiid’s perfume. Staring into those dark, kohl-smudged eyes, she wondered again if there was some arkemy at work in Aalea’s scent, or if …
Eyes on the prize, Corvere.
Mia slipped her hand free of Aalea’s. Licked at suddenly dry lips.
“My thanks, Shahiid,” she murmured. “I’ll think on it.”
“I am certain you will, love,” Aalea said, her smile deepening. “But now, I will leave you to your memories. Do not let the Revered Father find you here absent quarry, unless you actually enjoy hearing him bluster.”
The Shahiid of Masks inclined her head and drifted out of the room, leaving her perfume hanging in the air. Mia watched her go, the pull of the woman almost dragging her off-balance. But knowledge of why she was here tempered all, crushing the butterflies in her belly. She felt her shadow ripple, the dark swelling at her feet.
“… dangerous, that one…”
“The same could be said of every woman I know.”
“… where to begin…?”
“You start at this end and head inward. I’ll begin at the Mother’s feet. Keep an ear out for company. We’ve need of none.”
“… you do not honestly expect this search to bear fruit…”
“I don’t know what to expect anymore. Let’s be about it.”
Mia crouched at the foot of Niah’s statue, and in the light of that bloody stained glass, she began searching the names carved into the stone. One by one. Thousands of them. A spiral, coiling out from the goddess’s feet. The names of kings, senators, legates, lords. Priests and sugargirls, beggars and bastards. The names of every life taken in the service of the Black Mother.
The choir and Mister Kindly were her only company, and she worked in silence. Wondering what she would do if all Ashlinn had told her was true. Once or twice she was forced to hide herself beneath her cloak of shadows as a Hand or new acolytes wandered through the hall. But for the most part, she was uninterrupted, on her knees in the dark as the names of the dead blurred together inside her head.
She remembered the turn he died. Her father. Standing before the noose and the baying mob. Cardinal Duomo on the scaffold, hedgerow beard and broad shoulders. Julius Scaeva standing above, with his jet-black hair and his deep, dark eyes and his consul’s robes dipped in purple and blood. There to watch the leaders of the rebellion executed for their crimes against the great Itreyan Republic. Justicus Darius Corvere and General Gaius Antonius had gathered an army, set to march it upon their own capital. But on the eve of the invasion had come salvation, the rebel leaders delivered into the Republic’s hands.
Mia had been too young to ask. And then, too blinded to wonder.
But how?
How had the leaders of the rebellion fallen into the Senate’s clutches, when they were safely ensconced within an armed camp? Antonius was no fool. Mia’s father, neither. It would have taken God himself to breach their defenses and steal them away.
God. Or perhaps someone in service to a goddess …
“… mia…”
She looked up at the tone in Mister Kindly’s voice, pupils dilating in the dark.
“… o, mia…”
She scuttled across the floor to where the shadowcat stood. Searching the names carved in the granite. Her father and Antonius had been hanged before the Godsgrave mob—even if the Red Church had something to do with their capture, they hadn’t actually killed them. But if others fell during their capture, then perhaps …
Mia’s belly turned to greasy ice.
“’Byss and blood,” she whispered.