by Jay Kristoff
“How can I touch you if you’re dead?”
“Mother, I’m not dead.” She took the woman’s other hand, pressed to her face. “See? I live. Same as you. I live.”
Dona Corvere squeezed her wrist so tight it hurt.
“O, god,” she breathed. “O, never. No flowers…”
“Hush, now. We’re getting you out of here.”
“My baby boy,” she keened. “My sweet little Jonnen. Gone. Gone.”
Tears spilling down filthy cheeks. Whispering, soft as snow.
“My Mia is dead too.”
“No, I’m here.” Mia kissed those bleeding, torn fingers. “It’s me, Mother.”
“… mia, the way is clear, we must hurry…”
Mister Kindly materialized on the floor beside her, his whisper cutting in the gloom. The Dona Corvere took one look at the shadowcat and hissed like she’d been scalded. Shrinking back from the bars, into the far corner, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Mother, it’s all right! This is my friend.”
“Black eyes. White hands, O, god, no…”
“… mia, we must go…”
“He’s in you,” the Dona whispered. “O, Daughters, he’s in you.”
Mia’s hands were shaking. The lock wouldn’t budge. Rusted and clogged with grime. Dona Corvere was in the corner, three fingers held up to Mister Kindly; Aa’s warding sign against evil. Mia could hear the chaos above, the screams of the dying, blood thick in the air. Rage filled her then, to see the suffering her mother had been subjected to, the ruin it had made of her. The suns were far below the horizon now, the power of truedark outside swelling in her bones. Unthinking, she raised both hands, face twisted as the shadows trembled. Liquid darkness snaked around the bars, pulling tight. Iron shrieked as it was torn loose from its moorings, the cell peeling open, bars snapping like dry twigs. Mia stepped through the hole she’d made, held out her hand.
“You’re his,” her mother hissed. “You’re his.”
“… mia, we have to go…”
“Mother, come with me.”
Dona Corvere shook her head. Eyes full of horror. “You’re not my baby.”
Mia grabbed her mother’s hand. The woman screamed, trying to pull loose, but Mia held on tight. Binding her in ribbons of darkness, Mia dragged her mother to her feet and out of the cell. Alinne Corvere no longer seemed to recognize her daughter, writhing in Mia’s grip. But Mia clung on, dragging her down the corridors and up the stairs toward the battlements above. The smell of carnage grew thicker, the song of murder rose higher. And when they began to stumble past the bodies, the dona’s moans became screams. Bloodshot eyes squinting in the burning light. Mouth open.
Screaming.
“… she must be quiet…!”
“Mother, stop it, they’ll hear us!”
“Let me go! LET ME GO!”
“… mia…!”
A man loomed out of the darkness ahead, a set of bloody manacles clutched in his fist. Spotting them, he roared and charged down the corridor. Mia turned toward him, flicked her wrist. The shadows unfurled, picking the man up and slamming him into the wall. He dropped to his knees, bleeding and dazed as two more inmates rounded a corner—a pair of boys barely more than teenagers, faces daubed with blood. The darkness roiled at Mia’s command, slapping them about as if they were made of straw. But in dealing with the boys, she’d loosened her grip on her mother, and the Dona Corvere broke free, dashed away down the corridor.
“Mother!”
The man she’d slammed into the wall rose on trembling legs, lurched toward her. Mia threw him into the bricks again, harder than before, and with a wet sigh he collapsed and stayed down. Mia charged after her mother, screaming for her to stop.
All the shadows in the hall whipped forward, streaming ribbons of darkness set to snatch her mother up. But more inmates were coming now, Alinne’s screams drawing them like drakes to bloody water. Mia smashed them aside, stonework buckling.
“Mother, stop! Please!”
Alinne ran on, up a stone stairwell toward the courtyard beyond. One hand shielding her eyes from the torches on the walls, blinding after years of utter blackness. Looking over her shoulder, she moaned as she saw her daughter behind her, the shadows whipping about her like living things. A daemon beside her. Inside her.
“Mother, stop!”
“Away from me!”
The boy appeared from the darkness ahead; some half-starved waif with a sliver of jagged steel in his hand. More afraid than Alinne, most like. But still, he lashed out in that fear, that panic, the blade gleaming red. The Dona stumbled. Clutched her breast. And behind her, her daughter screamed.
“NO!”
The shadows reached out as if of their own accord, seizing the boy and his bloody knife and mashing him into the wall, again and again. Mia skidded to a halt at her mother’s side, the woman slumped against the stone, her chest wet and red.
“Mother, no, no, no!”
The girl pressed her hand to the wound, trying to stifle the flow. Scarlet pulsing through her fingertips, almost as dark as the shadows around them. The Dona Corvere looked up into her daughter’s eyes. Light dying in her own.
“Not my … daughter…”
She squeezed Mia’s hand in a sticky, red grip.
Pushed it aside.
“Just … her shadow…”
Alinne’s chest rattled, the light in her eyes slowly dying. The girl knelt there on the stone, the shadows around her twisting and warping. The very structure about her trembling. Masonry cracking. Ceiling rumbling. Blood on her hands. The murder going on about her echoing in her mind, their blood leaking into the darkness nestled between each and every flagstone.
DON’T LOOK.
The girl stood, raven hair flowing about her as if in some invisible wind. Hands in fists. A hundred shadows snaking in the air about her. The walls split and cracked. The ceiling began to sag, to crumble. And just as the brickwork split asunder, as hundreds of tons of masonry collapsed, obliterating the stairwell and all within, the girl stepped inside one of those writhing tendrils of darkness and stepped out from a shadow
five
floors
above.
On the upper levels now. The Descent in full swing. Murderers and murdered. Chaos and blood. Men smeared in the leavings of their butchery, crude weapons or severed limbs clutched in their hands. One saw her, stepping toward her with a death’s head grin. She looked toward him, and the darkness simply tore him apart. Flinging the pieces of him about like an angry child with a broken toy. The walls about her split and buckled. Bricks shattering to dust. More folk came, men and women drenched in murder, only to be ripped apart like rotten rags. The girl stalked the Stone’s battlements, brickwork falling away behind her, tumbling in showers of pulverized mortar and shattered stonework, down, down into the sea.
The Philosopher’s Stone began to list, entire sections of the keep crumbling to dust as the shadows between each brick and stone tore themselves loose, adding to the storm of darkness whirling around the weeping girl. Tears spilling down her cheeks. Face twisted in grief. Her eyes jet black. Too much to hold inside. Too much to bear.
“… mia…!”
A cat made of shadows materialized beside her, shouting over the din of the tortured stone, the dying men, the wailing darkness. The keep split along its outer wall, ramparts collapsing into the ocean below. The thieves and thugs ceased their bloody struggles and cowered in corners or fled back to the cells they’d escaped from. The stones beneath her feet fell away, left her suspended in a web of writhing darkness.
“… mia, stop this…!”
The girl’s whole body was shrouded in shadow now. Ink-black tendrils sprouting from her back like wings, ribbons of razor-sharp darkness springing from every fingertip. Black eyes were affixed across the bay, to the Ribs rising above the City of Bridges and Bones. Home to the Senate of Itreya and all its marrowborn nobility, lorded over by the gloating consul who’d torn her fam
ilia apart. Killed her father. Her baby brother. And now her mother, too.
The girl shook her head. Snarled.
“This stops when he does.”
And curling her fingers into trembling fists, she disappeared.
Step.
She was at the bottom of the Stone, among the shadows of the jagged rocks.
Step.
She was across the bay, in the shifting black of the shoreline.
Step.
She stood on the boulevard, looking at the Carnivalé crowd in their smiling masks. Mister Kindly was no longer with her, but rage walked beside her instead, boiled away the place fear tried to take root. She stepped from one shadow to the next, like a child hopping stones across a flooded drain. Folk shivered as she passed. The city around her was blurred and indistinct; just dim silhouettes against a deeper dark. But the night skies above were bright as sunslight. Stars strewn like diamonds across a funeral shroud. The shadows sang to her. Held her tight and wiped away her tears. An aching in their bellies. A wanting on their tongues.
Hungry, she realized.
The dark was hungry.
Mia searched the skyline, found the Ribs jutting above distant rooftops. Step. And step. And step. Until she found herself outside the Basilica Grande. She knew they’d be there for the truedark mass. All in a row. Consul Scaeva. Cardinal Duomo. Justicus Remus. False piety and pretty robes. Blood-soaked hands pressed together, eyes upturned to the sky and praying for the suns they’d never see again.
She stepped from the shadows of a triumphal arch, beheld the basilica before her. A vast circular courtyard, hemmed on all sides by marble pillars. A statue of almighty Aa looming in the center, fifty feet tall, sword drawn, three great arkemical globes in one upturned palm. The towering structure beyond, all stained glass and grand, sweeping domes. Archways and spires lit by a thousand globes, trying in vain to banish the hungry dark.
The courtyard was filled with folk not wealthy or well-born enough to be permitted entry on nights this black. But at each column stood men in gleaming white platemail, crimson cloaks and plumes on their helms. Luminatii legionaries, gathered in force to protect the senators and praetors and pro-consuls and cardinals within the basilica’s hallowed halls. The sight of them made her remember her father in the turns before he died. Carrying her on his shoulders through the city streets. His stubble tickling her cheek as he kissed her.
Face purpling.
Legs kicking.
Guh. Guh. Guh.
She looked up at Aa’s statue. Spitting hatred.
“I prayed to you. Begged you to bring them home. Were you not everseeing enough to notice them suffering? Or did you just not care?”
The Everseeing made no reply. She reached out toward the Light God and his globes, wrapping them up in ribbons of blackness. And as the crowd around cried out in terror, she clenched her fists. Muscles cording. Veins taut in her neck. With the shriek of tortured stone, the statue tottered on its plinth. The faithful cried out in terror, scattering in screaming droves as it finally toppled forward and smashed onto the cobbles with a deafening boom.
The shadows reached out to the nearest Luminatii, snaking around head and hips and tearing him apart. Blood spattered on polished marble. People screamed. Legionaries roared in alarm, drew their blades. Even here in the gathering night, their swords gleamed as if truelight danced on their edges. Mia stepped into the shadows at her feet, out from the shadow behind the biggest and strongest legionary she could see. The darkness wrapped around his neck seemingly of its own accord, his spine cracking like damp fireworks. Dropping him already dead on the stone.
“Daemon!” came the cry. “Darkin! Assassin!”
Alarm rang through the vast courtyard. Folk fleeing the ruins of their shattered god in a faithful stampede. Soldiers charging from all around. The darkness was singing to her now, filling her head. Driving conscious thought into the cold and hollow places, leaving only the rage. The hunger. Black tendrils whipping in the dark. Bone and blood. Light scalding her eyes. So many swords now. So many men. Wading through them, skipping from shadow to shadow. Throwing them like toys, the black as sharp as blades, opening up the shiny white steel and showing the red parts inside.
Stepping column to column. To the ruins of Aa’s statue and the triple suns smashed in his outstretched palm. She skipped away from a blow that would’ve taken her head from her shoulders. Another man falling to pieces. On the stairs now. The great double doors, bedecked in graven gold, reflecting the fire of the hundred swords behind her. Mia lifted her hands, flung the doors wide and roared his name.
“SCAEVA!”
Men awaited her just inside the door, her roar becoming a scream as they raised their staves. Cardinal Duomo and his ministers, arrayed in finest trim. The years since her father’s execution had changed the cardinal little; he still looked more like a thug who’d robbed a priest of his robes than a man who belonged in them. But he stepped forward, his ministers about him. Black beard bristling, mouth open in a shout.
“In the name of the Light, abomination, begone!”
The Trinity at the end of his staff flared brighter than all three suns. Mia shrieked, staggered back. The light was so fierce, so hot. Hands to her eyes, she squinted through the shocking glare. And there, at the end of the nave, surrounded by two dozen legionaries in polished white and bloody red, she saw him. The beautiful consul with his black eyes and his purple robes and a golden wreath upon his brow. The one who’d smiled as her father died. Consigned her mother to madness. Killed her baby brother.
“SCAEVA!”
“This is Aa’s holy house!” Duomo roared. “You have no power here, daemon!”
Mia clenched her fists, blinded by the light before her. Wind roaring in her ears. The heat beating on her like all three suns. Sickness in her belly, vomit in her mouth. No shadows in front of her to seize hold of. It was too much. Too bright. She saw a huge man in white plate, a wolfish face red with rage, one cheek scarred by a cat’s claws.
Remus …
“Bring her down!” roared the justicus. “Luminus Invicta!”
Mia whirled as the Luminatii charged up the steps toward her. The light behind her was so fierce, the shadow she threw on the stone was as long as sunsset. Something sharp and burning cracked across the back of her skull and she staggered. Dozens of legionaries approaching now. Justicus Remus charging, his sword ablaze. The rage burning bright. The dark inside her roiling. All it wanted was to consume. Open itself wide and drown in the blood it spilled. She could feel it. All around her. Seeping through Godsgrave’s cracks. The agony. The fury. The pure and blinding hatred nestled in this city’s bones.
It hates us.
But in the cold and hollow places, some tiny part of her remained. Some tiny part that was not rage or hate or hunger. Just a fourteen-year-old girl who didn’t want to die.
The justicus barged through the ranks of holy men, swung his sunsteel with all his might. The Trinity on the pommel of his sword burned brighter than the blade itself. Mia staggered back, the sword clipped her arm, blood boiling as it sprayed. Remus swung again, again, the Luminatii surrounding her now, blinding and bright. And with a ragged cry she fell, down into the shadow at her feet and out of the same shadow a hundred feet away.
Crossbows sang. Flame rippled on polished steel. Remus roared. People screamed. But she was away. Stepping between the shadows; the little girl again, skipping from stone to stone. Blood on the back of her neck, burned near blind by the cardinal’s light. And deep down below the hurt and the rage, coiled in the cold and hollow places, the hollowest feeling of all.
Failure.
She found herself on the battlements above the forum. Above the place her father died. The square lit by ruddy arkemical light. Revelers and drunkards dancing along the flagstones. She could hear the cries echoing across the city. Assassin! Daemon! Abomination!
Slumped against the cool gravebone. Shaking hands daubed in blood. The darkness around her whisperi
ng, pleading, begging. Just like the darkness inside her. And she, just a child in the midst of it. One little girl in a world so cold and empty, the shadows around her bringing no comfort at all.
She’d no idea how long she sat there. The blood drying to a crust on her hands. The city in chaos. Crowds gathered on the eastern shoreline, looking at the listing ruin of the Philosopher’s Stone, ramparts cracking loose and tumbling into the sea. Luminatii patrols tromping through the streets, trying to bring order amid the swelling panic, the rising, drunken chaos. Fistfights and broken glass.
A shiver in her shadow.
“… mia…”
A soft tread on the stone beside her.
“It said I’d find you here.”
Old Mercurio knelt beside her, his bones creaking. Mia didn’t look at him, eyes fixed on the skyline. The Ribs towering up above them. The War Walkers standing silent vigil. The blazing glow of the Basilica Grande beyond.
“Rough night, little Crow?” he asked.
Tears rolled down Mia’s cheeks. The sob clawed at her throat, demanding to be let out. She bit her lip lest it escape and compound her failure. Tasting blood.
Mercurio took a thin silver case from inside his greatcoat. The girl winced as he struck a flintbox, the momentary flare reminding her of the light in Duomo’s hands, burning on Remus’s sword. The scent of burning cloves stained the night.
“Here,” Mercurio said.
She looked at the old man. He was holding out the cigarillo.
“Settles the nerves,” he explained.
Mia blinked in the dark. Reached out with bloody hands. She put the smoke to her lips, tasted sugar. Warmth to banish the chill. The smoke she inhaled suffocated the sobs, stilling her shakes. She coughed. Sputtered gray. Winced.
“This tastes horrible.”
“It’ll taste better tomorrow.”
She turned her eyes to the twinkling city lights. The burning heart of Godsgrave laid out before her. Wincing at the memory of the men she’d murdered, the men she’d fought. So many of them, and she all alone. Suns burning in their hands. On their steel. In their eyes.