by Jay Kristoff
Bursting through the doors, out into the courtyard outside Aurelius’s palazzo. The cries of “Assassin!” echoed behind her, three guards rushing up the stairs to meet her, the twin suns in her eyes almost blinding.
“Shit . . .”
The guards each had a short, double-edged gladius and murder in their eyes. Her shoulder was bleeding freely, her gown soaked with blood. Mia was forced into defense; reaching out to the leader’s shadow and fixing his boots to the floor, rolling past their blades, kicking out at a pair of legs as she tumbled, scrambling to her feet. She dashed toward the horses and carriages parked around Aurelius’s front yard, spying one amid the crowd.
“Dove!” she roared.
A teenaged boy among the throng raised his head. He was dressed in a simple rectangular volto masque, servant’s finery, dark hair cropped short. A cigarillo hung from one corner of his mouth. Three bloody tears crawled down his masque’s right cheek. He didn’t much look the part of a Hand in the Church of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but at the sound of Mia’s second cry, he stood suddenly in the driver’s seat.
“All right?” he called.
“Do I look all-fucking-right?” Mia shouted, sprinting toward him.
Mia’s Hand took in the sight of his wounded Blade, the guards on her tail. Spitting out his cigarillo, the boy reached into his greatcoat and produced two small crossbows. Taking careful aim, he felled the guards closest to Mia with two swift shots.
“Run!” he called, beckoning.
“O, aye, you reckon?”
A whistling sound by Mia’s ear told her more guards had arrived with crossbows of their own, and as she barreled past the astonished coach drivers, a burst of white hot pain in her backside told her at least one of them was a halfway decent shot.
She stumbled, falling with a curse and grating her palms and knees like cheese on the flagstones. Hissing in pain, she scrambled back to her feet, clutching the crossbow bolt protruding from her backside.
“Maw’s teeth, did they just shoot you in th—”
“Just shoot them back, you fucking nonce!”
Dove fired again, dropping another guard with a quarrel in his throat. The boy ducked to reload, and a flurry of quarrels flew over Mia’s head, perforating two of the panicking drivers and one particularly annoyed stallion. Sadly, as Dove rose with his own bows reloaded, one of the bolts caught him in the chest, toppling him back into the carriage roof in a spray of blood. Mia watched her Hand try to rise, lips painted blood, but the boy finally collapsed with a bubbling moan.
“ . . . I DID WARN YOU HE WAS AN IDIOT . . .”
“ . . . for once, we are in complete agreement . . .”
Mia was on her feet, seeking cover amid the milling horses and panicked drivers. But with her arm cut to ribbons, there was no way she could steer a carriage and work the whip at the same time, and Aurelius’s guards were closing fast.
Her gravebone dagger flashed, severing leather straps and couplings about a tall white stallion. Wincing at the pain, she dragged herself onto the stallion’s back.
“ . . . have you forgotten how much horses hate you . . . ?”
“Apparently so.”
“ . . . RIDE . . . !”
Mia kicked the horse’s flanks, the stallion bolted, hooves kicking up the packed gravel of the senator’s yard as the guards roared at her to halt.1 Crossbow bolts flew past her head, grazing her horse’s flank, one bolt thudding into its hindquarters. The beast screamed, tried to throw her, but Mia clung on like a shadow to its owner’s feet. The stallion put on a burst of speed, dashing past the front gate and out into the broad thoroughfares of the city of Galante. Bells tolled in the distance, echoing from dozens of different cathedrals, domes and minarets. The streets were crowded for Firemass, revelers shouting curses as Mia galloped past on her bleeding stallion.
The Blade glanced behind, saw half a dozen guards riding in pursuit. The blood pouring from her shoulder was sticky across her back, her sodden dress clinging to her skin. She was starting to feel light-headed from the loss. With a colorful curse, she snapped off the crossbow bolt in her backside, head swimming with agony. She needed to get off the streets, somewhere dark, hide until the noise died down.
Galante’s streets were packed even here in the marrowborn district—too crowded to run a high-speed chase through much further. Her stallion’s burst of terrified speed was coming to an end, the horse now limping from the quarrel in its own hindparts. Mia slid off the hobbling beast, down into a crowd of drunken revelers, the cries of the pursuing guards ringing in her ears. She limped down an alley between one of the city’s countless cathedrals and a looming administratii building, twisting into the warren of the Galante back streets. Gasping for breath, vision swimming, blood loss making her hands shake. Her left arm was entirely numb, Mister Kindly’s voice in her ear urging her on. Finally, she found a wrought-iron fence, a crowded sea of headstones and tombs beyond it, run through with dark weeds and bright flowers.
Galante’s necropolis.
She limped through the gate, stumbled down the tightly packed rows of marble and mossy granite, looming mausoleums, packed with generations of marrowborn dead. Finally, she ducked beneath the eave of a tomb belonging to some rich bastard, long ago forgotten. And reaching out to the shadows, Mia plucked them with clever fingers, weaving them about her shoulders.
As it always did, all the world fell to black beneath Mia’s cloak. But she still heard Aurelius’s guards as they entered the necropolis, boots tromping on the flagstones. Their captain barked an order and the group split up, weaving into the overcrowded labyrinth of crypts and vaults and tombs, cries of “Assassin!” ringing on the pale stone.
But one guard remained.
Mia could only dimly see him through her veil of shadows, but she could tell from his vague silhouette the man was huge. His boots crunched on the gravel as he slowly prowled the mausoleums, muttering softly. Mia held her breath as he walked closer to her hiding place, head moving side to side. She felt a warm trickle down her back, her flash of dread swallowed by her shadows as she realized that, despite her shadowcloak, her blood would have left a trail, and would now be pooling at her feet.
The guard prowled toward Mia’s crypt. And rather than pray he’d pass her by, the girl simply threw aside her cloak and lunged, stiletto in hand.
The guard was wearing mail beneath his finery, but her gravebone blade pierced the steel rings as if they were butter. Her blow sank to the hilt, but striking blind, she’d landed shy of the fellow’s heart. The big man cried aloud as she struck again, this time slicing his jugular. A spray of red hit her face, warm and wet, the guard seizing her wrist and delivering a crushing hook to her jaw. Mia was flung back against the tomb wall, lashing out at the hand that held her, the pair of them going down in a tumble.
His windpipe was still intact, and the guard was bellowing, the girl snarling, stabbing again and again. They rolled about on the flagstones, Eclipse and Mister Kindly both whispering warning that the other guards were returning. But her foe was huge, and for all her training, Mia was wounded, bleeding, and anyone who believes there’s no advantage in being twice as big as your opponent has never fought a foe half their size.
She heard thundering boots, face twisted as the guard grabbed a fistful of her hair. Her blade finally found his neck again, sending him back onto the cobbles in a frothing red spray. Mia scrambled upright, saw another four guards approaching.
“ . . . run . . . !”
“How?” she gasped.
“ . . . HIDE . . . !”
“Where?”
“Halt!”
The guards fanned out around her, four clad in Senator Aurelius’s finery. She could hear whistles in the distant street, the tromp tromp of legionaries’ boots. Fearless, even staring into the eyes of death, she glared at the tallest guard and twirled her stiletto through her fingers. She thought of Consul Scaeva and Cardinal Duomo. Her familia unavenged. But regret came ultimately from fear,
and even there at the finish, she could find none inside her. Only rage that it could end like this.
“Who dies first?” she asked, glaring at the assembled men.
The most sensible of the guards aimed a loaded crossbow at her chest.
“That’d be you, bitch,” he spat.
A chill stole over her, dark and hollow. Goosebumps rippling on her bloodied skin. The suns burned high overhead, but here in the necropolis, the shadows were dark, almost black. A shape rose up behind the guards, hooded and cloaked, blades of what could only have been gravebone in its hands. It lashed out at the crossbow guard, hacked his head almost off his shoulders. The other guards cried out, raised their blades, but the figure moved like lightning, striking once, twice, three times. And almost faster than Mia could blink, all four guards were dead on the dirt.
“Maw’s teeth,” she whispered.
The shadows at her feet shivered, Eclipse coalescing with a growl. Mister Kindly was on her shoulder, puffed up and spitting. Mia felt the chill in her bones, her passengers swallowing her fear as her savior turned to face her.
Not human. That much was clear. O, it was shaped like a man beneath that cloak—tall and broad shouldered. But its hands . . .’byss and blood, the hands wrapped about its sword hilts were black. Tenebrous and semitranslucent, fingers coiled about the hilts like serpents. Mia couldn’t see its face, but small, black tentacles writhed and wriggled from within the hollows of its hood, pulling the cowl lower over its features. And though it was near summersdeep, two suns burning high in the sky, its breath hung in white clouds before its lips, Mia’s whole body shivering at the chill.
“ . . . Who are you?”
“ASK THAT OF YOURSELF,” the figure replied. Its voice was hollow, sibilant, tinged with a strange reverberation. “MIA CORVERE.”
The girl blinked.
“ . . . You know me?”
The figure moved closer, in a way Mia could only describe as . . . slithering. A rime of frost creeping across the tombs and crypts around them.
“I KNOW THAT YOU ARE MEANT FOR MORE THAN THIS,” it said. “YOUR TRUTH LIES BURIED IN THE GRAVE. AND YET YOU PAINT YOUR HANDS IN RED FOR THEM, WHEN YOU SHOULD BE PAINTING THE SKIES BLACK.”
“ . . . o, joys, a cryptic one . . .”
“YOUR VENGEANCE IS AS THE SUNS, MIA CORVERE. IT SERVES ONLY TO BLIND YOU.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Mia heard shouts, turning toward the sound of approaching boots.
“SEEK THE CROWN OF THE MOON.”
Turning back, she found the thing gone, as if it had never been. Her breath still hung white in the air, the chill receding slow from her bones, its voice ringing in the black behind her eyes. She looked about the graveyard, seeing only corpses and crypts and wondering if she were dreaming awake.
“ . . . mia, they are coming . . .”
“ . . . WE MUST GO . . .”
More whistles. Boots coming closer. Blood on her face and skin. Mia snatched up one of the guard’s cloaks—the least bloody of the lot. And pulling the cowl over her head, she limped through the necropolis, quick as she could, struggling over the wrought-iron fence and disappearing into the warrens of the Galante backstreets.
Only bodies in her wake.
The Hanging Gardens of Ashkah are a sight unlike any under the suns.
In Godsgrave, the vast rooftop gardens of Little Liis overflow with sunsbride and honeyrose, helping to smother the sewer reek of the Rose River in their wondrous perfume. In Whitekeep, the garden mazes that King Francisco III built to entertain his mistresses stretch for miles, and an army of slaves toils to keep them trim, even a century after the monarchy’s fall. The Thorn Towers of Elai stand seventy feet high, covered in vast tangles of razorvine. When the vines bloom just before summersdeep, the towers are covered in blossoms than can be seen across the city. But no garden in all the Republic can match the Hanging Gardens of Ashkah, gentlefriends.
Not for their grandeur, nor their horror.
The smell struck Mia first. It rose over the stench in her cage miles from the city. Blood and sweat and blackest misery. She stared at the metropolis rising out of the haze ahead, chewing her lip. Some of the children in her wagon began to cry, younger women alongside them. Mia felt her shadow surge as she looked to their destination.
Never fear.
The Hanging Gardens had been settled by Liisian explorers after the Ashkahi Empire’s fall. In the centuries since the collapse, the port had grown into the largest metropolis on the coast, and now served as the greatest hub in the south seas for the fuel that drove the Itreyan Republic’s heart.
Slavery.
The cityport was red stone, nestled on the edge of a natural bay. The architecture was a blend of old Ashkahi ruins and graceful spires and domes of Liisian design, built atop the old city’s remains. And all around the city walls hung thousands of iron gibbets, filled with thousands of human bodies.
Some were decades old, only tattered bones inside. Some were fresh dead. But from the piteous wails rising over the bustling metropolis beyond, Mia knew hundreds still lived. Left to hang in their cages ’til they perished.
The Hanging Gardens of Ashkah. Its flowers made of flesh and bone.2
And Mia was here at last.
The wagon train trundled through broad wooden gates, the stench rising with the heat. The streets were crowded, the harbor beyond filled with ships from all over the Republic, some offloading, some shipping out laden with stock for resale. This was market season, when the slaver crews returned from their runs up the Ashkahi coast and further east, their holds laden with fresh meat. Itreyan legionaries rubbed shoulders with Liisian merchants, and the din of coin and sorrow filled the air.
Mia felt someone push up beside her. Turning, she saw a thin woman staring out at the streets, her face pale.
“Everseeing help us . . .”
Mia squinted at the two suns above.
“I don’t think he’s listening,” she murmured.
The wagon pulled to a halt at the market square’s seething edge. Teardrinker hopped down from the driver’s seat, limping to the rear of the women’s wagon, pulling back the cover and pointing at Mia.
“All right, girl,” she said. “Off to the Pit we go.”
The captain unlocked the cage, stepped back with crossbow in hand. Merchants were already crowded around the wagon, prodding the stock inside and appraising their worth. Thugs in the market’s employ began offloading men from the rear wagon, shackles singing a rusted song as the captives hopped down on the hardpacked earth. Mia climbed out of the wagon, watching the crowd around them.
I’m here.
She hid her smile behind the matted locks of her hair.
One step closer.
The Pit was dug at the other end of the marketplace, and Mia could hear it well before she laid eyes on it. Ragged cheers and grunts of pain, the clink of coin and the crack of bone. As they made their way across the crowded square, Teardrinker was stopped at least a dozen times by merchants inquiring about Mia’s sale. It took all the girl’s will to keep her temper in check as she felt them pawing her curves, checking her teeth with dirty hands. But Teardrinker declined all offers for Mia’s purchase, indicating she’d be for sale in the Pit soon. The captain’s refusals were met with disbelief or dismay, one merchant declaring it a “waste of good tits.” But Teardrinker held firm, and the pair walked on.
The Pit was exactly that—a hole dug ten feet deep, fifty feet wide, hemmed with limestone walls. A broad stockyard was built beside it, rusted iron bars holding back a multitude of muscular slaves. It was encircled by limestone bleachers, packed with cheering gamblers and shouting bookmakers. And on the innermost ring, attended by the seconds and servants, she saw over a dozen sanguila.3
Mia stood with head bowed at the Pit’s iron gates. Itreyan legionaries in plumed helmets were inspecting another slaver’s stock before allowing him to pass. The girl whispered from beneath her tangled curtains o
f hair.
“Can you see Leonides?”
“Aye, there.” Teardrinker nodded across the stockyard. “The fat bastard.”
“ . . . They’re all fat bastards.”
“The fattest bastard, then.”
Mia squinted, finally spying an Itreyan man seated under a broad parasol. He was dressed in a long frock coat despite the heat, his cravat knotted tight, pierced with a pin in the shape of a lion’s head. His face was swarthy, his body pudgy from too many years of too much food and wine. Beside him sat another Itreyan, broad and muscular, watching the Pit with a keen eye.
“That’s Titus,” Teardrinker said. “He serves as executus, trains all of Leonides’s stock.”
“I know what an executus does,” Mia muttered.
“Are you certain? Because if was a betting woman, I’d wager my last beggar you had no fucking idea what you’re about.”
“I told you,” Mia replied. “Leonides has trained two of the last three champions of the Venatus Magni. He has qualifying berths in all the arenas. He bribes the right officials, owns the right people. If I’m to win my freedom, my best chance is training under him.”
“But why, girl?” Teardrinker demanded. “You could’ve walked away free in the desert! ’Byss, I’ll let you walk free now! You saved my hide from those raiders, and I pay my debts. Why in the Everseeing’s name do you want to be gladiatii?”
“I made a promise,” Mia said. “And I mean to keep it.”
“What kind of promise could be kept in a place like this?”
“A red promise.”
Teardrinker sighed and shook her head. “This is madness.”
“ . . . she is wiser than she looks . . .”
The whisper came from the shadow under Mia’s matted hair, too soft for the captain to notice. Teardrinker pulled off her tricorn and dragged her hand over her scalp. She looked at Mia sidelong and sighed.