by Jay Kristoff
“Right,” Mia said. “Once we get inside, we stay quiet as long as we’re able. If the alarm is raised, we’ll have every Blade and Hand in the place on us like flies on shite. But if we walk it right, these bastards won’t even know we’re there ’til it’s half over.”
She took a piece of charcoal, began drawing a complex map on the wagon floor.
“Tric, Ashlinn, and Naev all know their way around the Mountain, so the rest of you will follow their lead. The inside of this place is like a damned maze, so watch your step. It’s easy to get turned around in the dark. Tric, you, Sid, and Bladesinger head to the speaker’s chambers. Protect Adonai and cut off the blood pool. Scaeva cannot be allowed to escape the Mountain. Ash, you and Naev head to the Athenaeum and secure Mercurio. If you can’t find him there, he’ll likely be in his chambers. Guard him with your life and get him to the speaker. Butcher, you and Eclipse stay in the stables and protect Jonnen. If all goes well, I’ll fetch you when it’s done. If all goes to shit, you ride back to Last Hope hard as you can, get out by sea.”
A stupider man might’ve grumbled at being left behind to babysit, but Butcher was obviously aware of the import of his task of protecting her kin, and how deeply Mia was trusting him by giving it to him.
“Aye, Crow.” He thumped a fist on his chest. “I’ll guard him with my life.”
“And what about you?” Sidonius asked, clearly concerned.
“I’m going after the Ministry,” Mia said.
“Alone?” Ashlinn asked.
Mia nodded. “Best way to do it. It’ll be early morn by the time we arrive. Drusilla will probably be with Scaeva and Marielle, so I’ll save them for once we’re all ready. But as far as Solis and the Ministry go, I can have the head off the snake before it knows I’m there.”
“… SOLIS ALMOST KILLED YOU THE LAST TIME YOU FOUGHT, MIA…,” Eclipse murmured.
“Aye,” Mia nodded, smiling at Naev. “But there’s not much that goes on in the Mountain that Chronicler Aelius doesn’t know about. And he’s given me a gift to even the scales.”
She looked about the group, met each stare in turn.
“Any questions?”
Though she had no doubt every one of them was burning with them, Mia’s companions kept their silence. She nodded to each, acutely aware of how much they risked for her, how deeply grateful she was to all of them. She squeezed Sidonius’s hand, gave Bladesinger a fierce hug, kissed Butcher’s cheek. Each donned a Hand’s stolen garb as the train trundled nearer to the Mountain, hunkering down in their wagons with blades beneath their robes. The train drew closer to a blank cliff face in the Quiet Mountain’s flank, and Naev rose up in the front wagon, arms spread. She spoke ancient words, humming with power.
Mia heard the sound of stone, cracking and rumbling. Felt the greasy tang of arkemical magik in the air. Bladesinger muttered beneath her breath, Jonnen gasping in wonder as a great flat stretch of stone cracked open. A faint rush of wind kissed Mia’s face, a shower of fine dust and pebbles fell from above as the Mountain’s flank gaped wide.
The familiar sight of the Red Church stables awaited them—a broad straw-lined oblong, set on all sides with pens for sleek horses and spitting camels, wagons and farrier’s tools and bales of feed and great stacks of supply crates. The song of a ghostly choir hung in the air like smoke as Ugly, Stupid, Smelly, Cockeye, Dunghead, Tosser, Bucktooth, and Julius pulled the wagon inside. Hands in black robes walked out to guide the beasts farther in. The illumination spilling through the open door was the only sunslight the belly of the Mountain ever saw.
Mia felt her shadow surge toward the dark beyond.
She squeezed Jonnen’s hand, saw the boy felt the same thrill at the dark as she did. Sidonius was tense as steel in the wagon ahead. Bladesinger still as stone. Mia could hear Ashlinn’s quickened breath at her side. And finally, as a cadre of Hands stepped out of the gloom to help unload the wagon’s wares, Mia and her comrades broke into savage motion.
The crisp ring of blades. The glint of arkemical light on polished steel. Mia heard several soft pops as globes of wyrdglass flew from Naev’s fingertips, catching a knot of Hands in a cloud of Swoon and sending them all to the floor, senseless. The Falcons moved swift, lashing out with pommels or the flats of their blades. Hands and stable staff were sent sprawling, bleeding. Mia
Stepped
from the wagon’s belly
to the stairs above,
cutting off a fleeing Hand
and catching him up in his own shadow before knocking him witless. Brief struggles. A splash of bright red. Within moments, the stables were under their control.
All was in readiness. Each of them knew their task. Eyes hard. Blades sharp. Mia nodded to each in turn. Kissed Ashlinn swift on the lips.
“Be careful, love,” she whispered.
“You too,” Ash replied.
She felt a dark stare on her back. Turned and met Tric’s gaze.
“MOTHER GO WITH YOU, MIA,” he said.
“And you,” she replied.
She looked into her brother’s glittering eyes. Saw the pain and uncertainty in him.
“I’ll give our father your regards,” she said.
And with that, Mia was gone.
Spiderkiller stalked into her Hall, wrapped in emerald green. The gold about her throat glittered in the stained-glass light, reflected in the bottles and phials and jars lining the walls. Her eyes were black, lips and fingers blacker still—stained from a lifetime of the poisoncraft she so adored. There were none in all Itreya who could match her in it. She’d forgotten more about the art of Truth than most would ever know.
The Shahiid sat at her oaken desk at the head of the Hall, pestle in hand, grinding a compound of bluespider venom and driftroot into a stone bowl. She’d been concocting a number of new poisons of late, dreaming of her vengeance against Mia Corvere. Solis’s words in the last Ministry meeting had stung her more than she’d admit. It had been her who granted Mia her favor, allowed the girl to become a Blade. Spiderkiller would never forgive her former pupil for that. And though it couldn’t be said the woman had honor to besmirch, she did have patience. And she knew, sooner or later, Mia would give her the chance to …
The Shahiid blinked. There upon the desk, she saw a shadow, leaking across the polished oak, like ink spilled from a bottle. It puddled beneath a ream of parchment, moving like black smoke and forming itself into letters. Two words that sent Spiderkiller’s heart racing.
Behind you.
A gravebone longblade flashed out of the dark at her back. Spiderkiller’s throat opened, ear to ear. Gasping, blood gushing from severed jugular and carotid, the woman pushed back her chair, staggered to her feet. Whirling on the spot, clutching the awful wound, she saw a girl where none had stood a moment before.
“M-muh,” she gargled.
Mia stepped back swiftly as Spiderkiller drew one of the curved blades at her belt. The steel was discolored, damp with venom. But the Shahiid’s face was already bleeding pale, her footsteps tottering. She sagged back against the desk, eyes wide with fear. Blood pumped rhythmically from Spiderkiller’s sundered throat, covered her hands, her dress, the gold wrapped around he
r fingers and neck. So much.
Too much.
“I thought long and hard about how to end you, Spiderkiller,” Mia said. “I thought it might be poetic to finish each Shahiid with their own mastery. Steel for Solis. Poison for you. In the end I decided you’re just too dangerous to fuck about with. But I wanted you to know I killed you first because I respected you most. I thought you might draw some solace from that, neh?”
Spiderkiller toppled forward onto the stone, her eyes cold and lifeless.
“No,” Mia sighed. “On second thought, I don’t suppose you would.”
Mouser heard a door slam somewhere out in his Hall.
He looked up from the needletrap he was loading, a frown on his handsome brow. His workshop was hidden behind one of the many doors in the Hall of Pockets, a quiet place where he puzzled with locks or played at dress-up. He was wearing women’s underthings beneath his robes now, as it happened—he’d always found them more comfortable, truth be told.
Mouser rose from his desk, took up his walking stick, and limped out into his Hall. The walls were lined with dozens of other doors, leading off into his wardrobes or storerooms, or sometimes nowhere at all. Long tables ran the room’s length, littered with curios and oddities, padlocks and picks. Blue stained-glass light puddled upon the granite floor, reflected in the dark eyes of the girl waiting for him.
“Mia…,” he said, belly running cold.
“You helped take my familia away from me, Mouser,” she said. “And years later, you actually had the stomach to look me in the eye. To offer me counsel. To pretend like you were my friend. Where do stones like that come from, I wonder?”
Mouser’s hand drifted to the Ashkahi blacksteel blade he always wore at his waist.
“Blacksteel can cut through gravebone, you realize.”
“It’s a fine sword, Shahiid,” the girl agreed. “Did you win or steal it?”
As ever, Mouser’s smile loitered on his lips like it was planning on pinching the silverware. “A little bit of both.”
Mia smiled too. “Best not to risk it, then.”
He wasn’t sure where the crossbow came from—one moment the girl’s hands were empty, the next, she was drawing a bead on his chest. But even with his crippled legs, the Mouser could still move quick as cats, and as Mia fired, he let go his walking stick, grasped his sword, and drew it forth with a crisp ring, sidestepping the bolt speeding toward his chest.
Or at least, that’s how it played out in his head.
But as Mouser made to step aside, he found his boots affixed firmly to the floor. Too late, he brought up the blade to ward off the blow, but the bolt struck home, punching through his gray robes, the corset beneath, and into the chest beyond.
A bubble of blood popped on his lips as he stared stupidly at the fourteen inches of wood and steel now lodged in his left lung. He looked up as Mia reloaded, grunted as a second bolt thudded into his chest, wobbling him on his trapped feet and finally toppling him backward onto the stone. He hurled a fistful of throwing knives as he fell, but the girl was gone, Stepping into the shadows and reappearing a few feet to his left.
She brought her boot down on his hand as he reached for another blade, leveling the reloaded crossbow at his crotch.
“Say farewell to your stones, little mouse.”
Solis opened his eyes to the sound of the choir.
Rising from his bed, the Revered Father washed his face, blinked his blinded eyes. And just as he did every morn, he picked up a wooden sword and ran himself through his practice drills. After thirty minutes, his body was dripping with sweat and he was breathing hard. Smiling at the song of his blade in the air.
Satisfied, he slipped on his robe, his scabbard. Pale eyes open and seeing nothing at all. And yet, seeing everything and more.
Imperator Scaeva and the Lady of Blades would be arriving shortly, and he knew he’d best get himself presentable. Stalking down long, dark hallways, he nodded to the Hand outside the bathhouse door, stepped silently into the empty room. Unbuckling his belt, he took a deep breath as he always did. Reaching down to run his fingers over his precious scabbard. The leather embossed with concentric circles, much like a pattern of eyes.
Slowly, he removed it from his waist, feeling all the world around him fall away into darkness. Once again blind as he’d been the turn he was born. He folded his robe neatly and placed it by the edge of the broad, sunken bath, coiling his belt and scabbard carefully on top. There were only a few in the entire Church who knew its true purpose, the magiks that coursed through it. Old Ashkahi sorcery engraved into the leather, lifting the veil on a world that would otherwise be utterly hidden to him.
Stepping down into the warm bath, Solis closed his eyes and tilted his head back beneath the water, allowing himself to float for a handful of minutes.
Deaf, dumb, and blind.
It was a habit, and the Revered Father didn’t like habits—they made a man easier to ambush. But he always allowed himself this tiny moment of peace and quiet. This was the Red Church, after all. The bastion of Niah’s might upon this earth.
Who could touch him here?
Solis rose to the surface, blinked the water from milk-white eyes. He smelled soap’s perfume, maple burning low in the braziers, candle scent. His ears were keener than his beak, but all he heard were crackling flames, the ghostly choir out in the Church’s dark. And though his own eyes were almost sightless, sensing only the absence of light, he noticed nothing odd as he sat up in the bath, save perhaps the chamber was a touch darker than usual.
Darker …
“… GOOD EVE, SHAHIID…”
To his credit, Solis didn’t flinch. Didn’t even deign to look in the shadowwolf’s direction. He heard a featherlight scuff of a boot on stone, caught the faint smell of sweat above the smell of maple, and … Spiderkiller’s perfume? He knew who stood there, off to one side of the pool. Watching him with her dark, shaded eyes.
“You.”
“Me,” Mia replied.
A cold trickle of dread cooled Solis’s belly. His hand flashed toward his robe at the bath’s edge. But though his fingers found the cloth, he realized his scabbard was …
Gone.
“I was actually disappointed when I found out,” Mia said, now speaking from farther away. “There’s something quite romantic in the notion of the blind swordmaster, isn’t there? But it was all lies, wasn’t it, Solis? All bullshit. Just like the rest of this fucking place.”
Fear turned his insides greasy cold. He reached into his robe for the dagger he kept hidden there. Not really surprised to find that gone, too. Solis rose from the bath in a cloud of steam, crouched naked at the edge. He was drawing breath to shout when—
“Your Hand is sleeping, by the by,” came the girl’s voice from across the room. “If you were thinking of screaming for help, that is.”
“Scream?” Solis sneered. “You always did think too much of yourself, girl.”
“And you too little,” she replied. “Is that why you let me train here? Knowing how badly it could bite you in the arse? Did you really think I’d never find out what you all did?”
He tilted his head to better hear, straining for the sound of her footfalls. Retreating along the edge of the bath, he tried putting his back to the wall. But he heard a soft whisper of cloth over the crackling wood in the braziers, realized she was
Behind me.
He struck, hands outstretched, finding nothing but air.
“A fine lunge, Revered Father,” the girl said. “But your aim. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
She was to his right, drifting away. He could feel her. Years in the dark before he’d found his Belt of Eyes, the years he’d spent locked in the Philosopher’s Stone, all came rushing back in a flood now. He’d murdered a hundred men to win his freedom from that pit, all while blind as a newborn pup. He didn’t need eyes to kill then. He’d not need them now.
But she’s good. Quiet as death when she moves.
“It’s all lie
s,” she whispered. “The murders. The offerings. Hear me, Mother. Hear me now. All that bollocks. This place wasn’t a church, Solis. It was a brothel. You were never a holy Blade in service to the Mother of Night. You were a whore.”
Keep her talking.
“And you expected something greater, is that it?” he asked. “Did you swallow the nonsense Drusilla and your Mercurio told you? ‘Chosen of the Mother,’ is that it?”
A soft scuff of her boot.
Left…?
“I told them when you arrived we should have just ended you,” he said. “I warned them this turn would come. When you learned the truth of it, and the spoiled, squalling brat you truly are showed herself. Always you thought yourself better than this place. Always.”
“So why didn’t you kill me?” she asked.
Behind again now …
“Cassius wouldn’t hear of it,” Solis replied. “‘Little sister,’ he called you. Supposing some kinship in the dark between you, though he knew nothing of what he was. ‘The Black Prince,’ he called himself.” The Shahiid scoffed. “Prince of what?”
“Why did you hate me, Solis?” she asked. “It wasn’t just that scar I gifted you.”
And then he saw it. The way to make her stumble. To hold her still long enough to get his fingers around her throat.
“I never hated you,” he said. “I just knew it would always end this way. I knew you’d eventually discover it was the Red Church who captured Darius Corvere and handed him over to his killers. I knew Scaeva’s shit would end up on our boots.”
He tilted his head and smiled.
“But did you never wonder, Mia?”