Could she still love a woman like that?
And if not, could she hate the man who’d killed her?
Why did she hate Julius Scaeva? When all she’d based her life on was a lie? Was he so different from Alinne and Darius Corvere, save in that he’d emerged the victor? He was a killer, remorseless and cold, that much was certain. A man who’d drenched himself in the blood of dozens, perhaps hundreds, to get his way.
But wasn’t that true of everyone who played this game?
Even me?
Eclipse’s hackles rippled as Scaeva’s serpent slithered closer. The shadowwolf’s growl dragged Mia out of the darkness within, back into the burning light in that study, glinting on the black pawn in Scaeva’s upturned palm.
“… STAY BACK…,” Eclipse warned.
“… Nothing to fear, pup…,” the serpent hissed in reply.
“… STAY BACK…”
Eclipse took a swipe at the shadowviper with her paw, and Mia’s eyes widened as she saw a fine mist of black spatter on the floor, evaporate to nothingness. The serpent reared back, hissing in cold fury.
“… You will regret that insult, little dog…”
“… I DO NOT FEAR YOU, WORM…”
The shadowviper opened its black maw, hissing again.
“Whisper,” Scaeva said. “Enough.”
The serpent hissed again, but held still.
“Mia means us no harm,” Scaeva said, staring at his daughter. “She’s intelligent enough to know where she stands. And pragmatic enough to realize that, if anything unpleasant were to happen to us, her dear Old Mercurio would be treated to the most gruesome of tortures before he was sent to meet his dear dark Goddess.”
Mia’s stomach rolled at the threat against Mercurio, but she tried to keep her face like stone. The serpent turned to regard her darkin counterpart, swaying as if to music only it could hear.
“… She fears, Julius…”
Scaeva gifted Mia a smile that never reached his eyes.
“So. Itreya’s most infamous murderer is capable of love. How touching.”
Mia bristled at that. Felt a soft ripple in the air, glanced toward their shadows on the wall. Where once Scaeva’s had reached out as if to embrace her own, it was now poised, crook-backed and claw-fingered. Reaching toward her own shadow’s throat.
“Where is your brother, Mia?”
“Safe,” she replied.
Scaeva stood slowly, hand drifting to the Trinity hidden at his throat.
“You will bring him to me.”
“I take no orders from you.”
“You will bring him to me, or your mentor dies.”
Mia’s voice turned soft with menace. “If you hurt Mercurio, I swear by the Goddess you will never see your son again.”
She saw fury boiling in his eyes then. A fury born of fear. Even with all his control, his much-vaunted will, Scaeva still couldn’t quite keep it from her. She could sense it on him, sure as she could sense the suns above.
Her mind was working. Probing at the cracks in his facade, the tiny glimpses he’d given her behind his mask. He’d spoken of building a dynasty that would last a thousand years. And granted, that would be hard to do without his only son. But still, he was imperator now. He could cast off his barren wife, have any woman he wanted. Black Mother, he could take a dozen wives. Sire a hundred sons.
So why is he afraid?
Mia tossed her hair over her shoulder, glancing again at the silhouettes on the wall. Scaeva’s shadow was moving now, its motion violent and sudden. Her own was responding in kind, elongating, distorting, dark shapes unfurling at its back.
“You seem awfully concerned about Jonnen, Father,” she said. “And I can’t bring myself to believe it’s out of sentimentality. Could it be your dear wife Liviana isn’t the one who can’t have any more children?”
Dark eyes glanced below his waist.
“Getting soft in your old age?”
Scaeva took a step toward her, hand snaking beneath his robes. In a flash, their shadows struck each other, tangled and twisting and curling like smoke. Twice as dark as they should have been alone. Scaeva’s serpent reared up as if to strike, and Eclipse bared her fangs with a black growl. Mia felt her clothes and hair moving, as if a breeze were blowing behind her. As if the world were moving beneath her feet.
“You cannot know the stakes you toy with,” Scaeva said. “Do not make yourself my enemy, Mia. Not when I offer you peace. All who have stood against me now rot in the ground. All of them. Bring me your brother, and take your place at my side.”
“You are afraid,” she realized.
“Fear has its uses,” he replied. “Fear is what keeps the dark from devouring you. Fear is what stops you joining a game you cannot hope to win.”
He tossed the pawn toward her, and she caught it in her fist.
“If you start down this road, daughter mine, you are going to die.”
She knew she couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t even get close. Not with that Trinity about his throat. Not with Mercurio’s neck on the block. She could hear tromping feet, soft shouts in the distance—she guessed someone had found the bodies in her wake.
No more time to chat.
And so, she began to back away from him.
A single step. Then another. Farther and farther from the throat she’d sought for almost eight years. Their shadows were still entwined on the wall, strangling and seething, a knot of black rage. With effort, Mia dragged her shade back, Scaeva’s clinging on.
“Bring me my son, Mia,” he said, his voice soft and deadly.
She tore her shadow free, the dark about her shivering.
“I’ll consider it,” she said. “Father.”
A rippling in the darkness.
The whispered song of running feet.
And she was gone.
* * *
He stood there for long moments afterward, still as stone and just as silent. The shadowserpent wove its way across the vast map of the Republic he now ruled, coiled in a black ribbon about his ankles.
“… Do you think she will listen…?” Whisper asked.
The imperator looked to the burning light outside.
“I think she is as much her mother’s daughter as mine,” he replied.
The serpent sighed. “… A pity…”
Scaeva walked to the chessboard. He stood above the frozen battleground, the pieces arrayed in fractured rows, looking down with those cool black eyes. In one swift motion, he sat, sweeping aside the pieces with his hand. Reaching to his throat, he grasped a leather thong, snapped it free. A silver phial hung upon it, stoppered with dark wax and engraved with runes in the tongue of Old Ashkah.
Scaeva broke the seal, pouring the contents upon the board, thick and ruby red.
And, using his fingertip like a brush, he began writing in the blood.
CHAPTER 8
SCOUNDREL
If the entry under “scoundrel” in Don Fiorlini’s bestselling Itreyan Diction: The Definitive Guide had an illustration, it probably would have looked a lot like Cloud Corleone.* But Cloud himself preferred the term “entrepreneur.”
The Liisian was clad all in black: a leather vest over a finely cut shirt (unlaced perhaps a touch too far) and a pair of what could only be described as conspicuously tight pants. Emerald-green eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his feathered tricorn hat, and a perpetual three-turn growth of beard dusted a jaw you could break a shovel on. He was stood in the harbormaster’s office in the Nethers docks. And he was haggling with a nun.
It had been a strange turn all told, really. It had begun eight hours earlier, when Cloud had placed a sizable and very drunken wager on the outcome of the Venatus Magni. In hindsight, the bet proved a less-than-sound investment of his meager funds.
O, he’d picked the winner, all right. Even the bookman who took the bet had told him he was thinking with his cock, but watching the gladiatii known as the Crow slice her former collegium mates to bloody chunks, Cloud
had found himself admiring her form along with her legs. So confident had he been of the lass’s abilities, he’d wagered every coin he’d won over the previous five turns of bloodsport on her victory, along with a bunch more coin he truthfully couldn’t spare.
As the Crow had carved her way toward triumph in the final match, Cloud had been on his feet, hollering and howling with the rest of the mob. When she’d struck the final blow against the Unfallen, Cloud had danced a jig on the spot, grabbed the nearest comely lass and planted a kiss square on her lips (returned rather enthusiastically), which resulted in an all-in brawl with the lass’s sweetheart, a dozen of his friends, half of Cloud’s crew, and a hundred other punters who simply wanted a good dose of fisticuffs after a hard turn’s carnage. Truthfully, it’d been absolutely marvelous.
But then along came the first dose of the unexpected.
He’d watched it happen in slow motion. The Crow drawing her hidden blade on the victor’s plinth. Slicing the cardinal’s throat clean through. Stabbing the consul in the chest (or so he and half the crowd had imagined, anyway). Blood flowing like cheap plonk at a Liisian wedding. And even though the rest of the crowd fell to wailing, baying, panicking, watching that greasy fucker Duomo go down in a puddle of his own shit and blood, Cloud Corleone had found himself cheering at the top of his lungs.
The next dose of the unexpected had arrived in short order.
It’d taken Cloud almost an hour to shove his way to the bookman’s pits to collect his winnings, still riding high on the sight of the cardinal’s messy end. It was there that the scoundrel was informed by a scowling pack of Itreyan legionaries that because a slave had just topped the fanciest bastards in the whole bloody Republic, all bets were null and void. It wouldn’t do, you see, to profit from the death of the consul and grand cardinal at the hands of human property.
Cloud was tempted to inform the soldiers exactly what flavor of bastard the good cardinal actually was in life, but looking into their eyes, listening to the budding chaos in the city around him, he decided making a fuss would only make for further fuss. And so, with a flip of the knuckles toward the bookman’s shit-eating grin, the captain and his crew headed back to the harbor with tragically empty pockets.
With all the fistfights and fuckarsery and Scaeva’s announcement of his miraculous escape from the assassin’s blade in the forum (Cloud could’ve sworn she’d stabbed him clean), it took another three hours to make it back to the Bloody Maid. And now, in the office of one Attilius Persius, harbormaster of Godsgrave*, the final oddity in Cloud’s eventful turn had arrived in the form of the aforementioned Sister of Tsana.
Cloud had been putting the last touches on the Bloody Maid’s paperwork and giving Attilius a friendly heaping of shit (his wife had recently given birth to their sixth daughter, poor fucker) when the nun had marched into the office, shoved Cloud aside, and slapped a hefty bag of coin down on the countertop.
“I need passage to Ashkah. Swift, if it please you.”
She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but she looked a few years harder. Dressed all in snow white, a coif of starched cloth and voluminous robes that flowed to the floor. Her cool blue eyes were fixed on the harbormaster, her lips pressed thin. She was Vaanian, tall and fit, what appeared to be blond hair dyed with henna peeking from the edge of her coif. Cloud idly wondered if her carpet matched her curtains.
In the doorway behind her stood a hulking fellow shrouded in dark cloth. A Trinity of Aa (of rather middling quality, Cloud thought) was strung around his neck, several suspiciously sword-shaped bulges were hidden under his robes.
Cloud shivered a little. The office seemed to have gotten cold all of a sudden.
The sister raised an expectant eyebrow at the harbormaster.
“Mi Don?”
Attilius simply stared, his stubbled jowls all awobble. “Apologies, Sister. I just … It’s not often one sees a Sister of the Sorority of Flame outside a convent, let alone in a district as rough as the Nethers.”*
“Ashkah,” she repeated, clanking her coin. “This eve, if possible.”
“We’re headed that way,” Cloud said, leaning against the counter. “Stormwatch first, then Whitekeep. But after that, through the Sea of Swords and on to Ashkah.”
The nun turned to regard him carefully. “Is your ship a swift one?”
“Swifter than my heart beats looking into those pretty eyes of yours, Sister.”
The nun rolled the aforementioned eyes and drummed her fingers on the countertop. “You’re trying to be charming, I assume.”
“Trying and failing, apparently.”
“How much for our passage?” she asked.
“‘Our’ passage?” Cloud glanced at her hulking companion. “I didn’t know it was habit for Sisters of the Virgin Flame to travel in the company of men?”
“Not that it is any of your concern,” the sister replied coolly, “but Brother Tric is here to ensure nothing ill befalls me on my travels. As the murder of our beloved Grand Cardinal Duomo illustrates, Aa bless and keep him, these are dangerous times.”
“O, aye,” Cloud nodded. “Terrible shame about good Duomo. Cleaves the heart, it does. But you’re safe aboard the Bloody Maid, Sister, you’ve no fear of that.”
“No.” She gave a meaningful glance to her thug. “I don’t.”
’Byss and blood it’s cold in here …
“How much for passage, good sir?” she asked again.
“To Ashkah?” Cloud asked. “Three hundred priests ought to suffice.”
In the background, the harbormaster almost choked on his goldwine.
“That seems … excessive,” the sister said.
“You seem … desperate,” Cloud grinned in reply.
The nun glanced at the big fellow behind her. Pressed her lips thinner.
“I can give you two hundred now. Two hundred more when we reach Ashkah.”
With a smile that had earned him four confirmed bastards and Daughters knew how many more besides, Cloud Corleone tipped his tricorn hat and extended his hand to the sister.
“Done.”
A bigger hand engulfed his. It was stained black with what must’ve been ink, and it belonged to the large fellow. His grip was hard enough that Cloud could hear his knuckles grinding together. And it was cold as tombs.
“DONE,” the fellow said, in a strange, oceans-deep voice.
The captain pulled his hand free, flexed his fingers open and closed.
“What name should I call you by, Sister?”
“Ashlinn,” she replied.
“And you, Brother?” He glanced at the big bastard. “Tric, I heard?”
The fellow simply nodded, features hidden in the shadows of his hood.
“You have baggage?” Cloud asked. “I’ll have my salts load—”
“We have all we need, Captain, thank you,” the sister replied.
“Well,” he said simply, snatching up the laden purse. “Best follow me, then.”
He led the pair out of Attilius’s office, down the crowded boardwalk, feeling the jitters in the air. He could see at least twenty other ships making ready to put out to the blue, the calls and cries of their crews echoing across the harbor. The whole city was of a mood after Scaeva’s announcement—overjoyed the new imperator had taken control of the situation, but dismayed at the cardinal’s murder. Cloud was glad to be leaving the city for a spell.
They arrived at the Bloody Maid, rocking at her berth, the deep waters of the Nethers harbor a muddy brown beneath the Everseeing’s three burning eyes. The ship was a swift-cut three-masted carrack, keeled oak but planked cedar, her skin stained a warm reddish brown. Her figurehead was a beautiful naked woman with long red hair artfully arranged to preserve her modesty—or cover the most interesting parts, depending how you looked at it. Her trim and sails were blood-red, hence her name, and though he’d owned her more than seven years, the sight of her always took Cloud’s breath away. Truth told, he’d lost count of the women he’d known
in his life. But he’d never loved a one of them close to the way he loved his Maid.
“Ahoy, mates,” he said as he climbed the gangplank.
“You’ve got a nun,” BigJon said cheerfully.
“Well spotted,” Cloud told his first mate.
“That’s a novelty.”
“First time for everything,” Cloud replied.
BigJon was a littleman. Everyone in Nethers Harbor knew it. He wasn’t a dwarf—he’d made that clear to the last fool who’d named him so by bashing the man’s skull in with a brick. He wasn’t a midget either, fuck no. He’d explained that to a taverna full of sailors as he took to some stupid bastard’s crotch with his knife. Nailing the man’s severed scrotum to the counter with his blade, BigJon had declared to the entire pub he preferred the term “littleman” and asked if there was anyone present who objected.
Nobody did. And nobody had since.
“Sister Ashlinn,” Cloud said. “This is my first mate, BigJon.”
“A pleasure.” The littleman bowed, showing a row of silver teeth. “Do you leave the costume on during, or—”
“She’s not a sweetgirl in a costume. She’s a real nun.”
“… O.” BigJon clawed at the collar of his sky-blue tunic. “I see.”
“I’m taking her down to the cabins. Get us under way.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” BigJon spun on his heel and roared in a voice that belied his small frame. “All right, you bobtailed dung-eaters, get moving! Toliver, pull your fist from your shithole and get those fucking barrels stowed! Kael, get your eyes off Andretti’s whore pipe and up into the nest before I make you wish your old man plowed your mother’s earhole instead…”
… and so on.
“Apologies, Sister,” Cloud said. “He’s got a mouth like a sewer, but he’s the best mate this side of Old Ashkah.”
Darkdawn Page 11