And they’re drowning me in it.
Black spots swimming in her eyes. Lungs burning. The hand hauled her up out of the water and she dragged in a desperate, sputtering lungful.
“Tell us where you were earlier this eve. Before you arrived in Godsgrave.”
“Please, sto—”
Down beneath the water again. The pain and the dark. Her shadow seethed around her feet, helpless and desperate. But there was no cloak of darkness that could hide her here. No sense pinning her captors’ feet to the floor. Chosen of the Mother? Fat lot of good it was doing her. Why couldn’t the goddess have let her breathe underwater?
Lungs almost bursting, she was dragged up into the light again. Chest heaving. Legs trembling. Coughing. Gasping. The fear was breaking loose now, Mister Kindly unable to drink it all. But still, she stamped it down. Kicked it in the teeth and spat on it.
“Tell us where you were earlier this eve. Before you arrived in Godsgrave.”
“I was nowhere!” she roared.
Down again. And up. The question repeated, over and over. She screamed. Swore. Tried crying. Pleading. No avail. Every plea, every tear, every curse was met with the same response.
“Tell us where you were earlier this eve. Before you arrived in Godsgrave.”
But beneath the tears and cries, Mia’s mind was still racing. If they wanted her dead, she’d be dead. If they knew where she’d come from, they’d already be at the Porkery. And if the Confessionate was in league with the Luminatii, that meant each of these bastards was a lapdog of Scaeva and Remus. The men who’d hung her father. The men who’d set her feet on this path all those years ago. The Red Church was her best chance at vengeance against them. And these fools expected her to give it up for fear of a little drowning?
She retreated. Back into the dark inside her head. Watching her torture with a kind of semidetached fascination. Hours they worked her, until her voice was broken and her lungs screaming and every breath fire. Drowning and beating. Spitting and slapping. Hours.
And hours.
And then they stopped. Left her slumped in her chair, hands bound behind her. Hair reeking of bay water, draped across her face like a funeral shroud. Bruised. Bleeding. Almost drowned.
Almost dead.
“We have all turn, my lovely love,” Santino said. “And all nevernight, besides.”
“And if water will not loosen your tongue,” said Micheletto, “we’ve other remedies.”
The big man lifted an iron poker from the table of tools. Thrust it into the burning brazier and left it there to heat. He spat onto the coals, a sizzling hiss filling the room.
“When that iron glows red, we’ll return. Think long and hard about where your loyalties lie. You may think your precious flock of heretics worth dying for. But believe me, there are far worse fates than death. And we know them all.”
The confessors marched from the room, slamming a heavy iron door behind them. Mia heard a key rattle, a bolt slide home. Receding footsteps. Distant screams.
“…
mia
…”
The girl tossed her hair from her eyes. Still trying to catch her breath. Shivering. Coughing. Looking down at last to the shadow coalescing at her feet.
“I’m all right, Mister Kindly.”
“…
for confessors, those two seem like lovely fellows
…”
“How under the suns did they mark me?”
“…
mercurio
…?”
“Bullshit.”
“…
the centurion? alberius
…?”
“He’d no clue I was with the Church. This feels bigger. Deeper.”
Mister Kindly titled his head. Silent and thoughtful.
“…
puzzles later. first you must get out of here
…,” he finally said.
“I’m glad you’re here to tell me these things.”
Mia cast her eyes around the room. The poker heating in the brazier. The tools on the table. They’d stripped her of her boots, her weapons. The box of cigarillos Mercurio had given her. The manacles were cinched tight. Her feet chained to the chair. Feeling around the bindings, she realized the cuffs were closed with heavy iron bolts rather than an actual lock.
“Fuck…,” she breathed.
“…
you must get loose
…”
“I can’t,” she hissed, trying to reach the bolts in vain. “It’s a shitty set of manacles if you could just unlock yourself with your own two hands.”
“…
do not use your hands, then
…”
The not-cat glanced to the shadows about them.
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“…
it can
…”
“I’m not strong enough, Mister Kindly.”
“…
you were
…”
Mia swallowed. Flashes in her mind’s eye. Darkened hallways. Lightless stone.
Don’t look.
“…
remember
…?”
“No.”
“…
they will kill you, mia. unless they break you. and then, they will kill you anyway
…”
Mia grit her teeth. Stared at the not-cat, staring back with his not-eyes.
“…
try
…”
“Mister Kindly, I…”
“…
try
…”
She closed her eyes. Black and warm behind her lashes. Feeling the shadows in this dank little cell. Cold. Old. The Suns never came here. The dark was deep. Cool and hungry. She could feel them around her, like living things. Flickering playfully in the brazier’s feeble light. Tumbling over each other and laughing soundlessly. They knew her. Some feeble pale little slip of a thing, who touched them the way the wind touches mountains. But she reached out, curled up her fists, and they fell still.
Waiting.
“… All right,” she whispered.
She twisted them. Sent them slithering along the floor to coil at her back. Snaking up around the iron at her wrists. At her command, they wrapped themselves tight around the iron bolts holding her bonds in place. They
pulled
.
And the bolts moved not an inch.
They were only shadows, after all.
Real as dreams.
Hard as smoke.
“It’s no good,” Mia sighed. “I can’t do it.”
“…
you must
…”
“I can’t!”
“…
you have. and if you do not do so again, you will die here, mia
…”
Her hands shook. Hateful tears trying to brim in her eyes.
“…
do not command the darkness around you
…”
The not-cat stepped closer, peering as hard as the eyeless can.
“…
command the darkness inside yourself
…”
Distant footsteps.
Muffled screaming.
“… All right.”
Closing her eyes again. Not reaching out this time. Stretching within. Places the suns had
never
touched. The shapeless black beneath her skin. Gritting her teeth. Sweat gleaming on her brow. The shadows shivered, rippled, sighed. Growing blacker. Harder. Sharper. Grasping at the bolts, her face twisted, heart pounding, breath quickening as if she were sprinting. But slowly, ever so slowly, the bolts began to shiver. To turn. Moment by moment. Inch by inch. Veins standing taut in her neck. Spit on her lips. Hissing. Begging. Until finally, she heard a soft plunk. Then another. The iron at her wrists falling on the stone.
And she was free.
Mia looked at Mister Kindly. And though he had no mouth, she could tell he smiled.
“…
there it is
…”
She fumbled with the irons at her ankles, pulling them loose. Standing, hair and clothes still drenched, she stole silently to the door. The window slit was shut, but she listened at the iron. Heard faint cries echoing on stone. A long corridor, by the sound of it. Metal and footsteps.
Coming closer.
She snatched a hammer off the table, pulled the shadows around her, wrapping herself in darkness and crouching low in the corner. The door bolt rattled, the lock clicked. Brother Santino walked inside, saw the empty chair, the empty manacles, eyes widening. Mia’s hammer crashed into his face, her knee collided with his groin. With a burbling whimper, the man collapsed. Brother Micheletto stood behind Santino, face aghast. Mia struck at him, but she was near blind in her darkness and her blow went wide, the confessor stepping back and blocking with the bracer on his forearm. He squinted, seeing only a shifting blur, charging it anyway. Catching her in a bearhug. Crying out as her hammer glanced off his brow. Falling hard and dragging her with him.
The pair rolled about on the stone, punching and flailing. Micheletto trying to grasp the girl he couldn’t quite see, Mia trying to land a decent blow without quite being able to tell what she was swinging at. In the end, she threw her shadowcloak aside, settled for sheer ferocity over useless stealth. Her elbow crushed his nose to pulp, her fist danced on his jaw.
A vicious hook landed on the side of her head, knocked her senseless. Another blow landed, sending her tumbling. She realized Santino was on his feet again, behind her, his face a dripping, bloody ruin. Mia struggled to stand, but the brother seized her in a crushing headlock. The shadows snapped and writhed, but the headshots had dizzied her and she couldn’t hold them tight. She threw a savage kick backward, felt it connect somewhere soft, heard a grunt of pain. But then she was slammed back into her chair, spitting and cursing, hair tangled in her eyes. Santino held her down while Micheletto bound her wrists again. The tools on the table trembled, the shadows in the room whipping like serpents. Something heavy crashed into her temple and she slumped, bleeding and gasping, head lolling on her shoulders.
“Little fucking bitch,” Micheletto hissed.
He limped to the brazier, nose pissing blood, dragged the poker from the coals. Its tip was blazing an angry, luminous orange. Mia thrashed in the chair but Santino held her down, the other confessor raising the poker close to her face. She froze. Felt the blistering heat, just an inch or two from her skin. A stray wisp of hair touched the red-hot iron, smoking as it crisped.
“My lovely love,” Santino cooed. “You’ll be less lovely in a moment, I fear.”
Hands on the side of her head, holding her still. Breath hissing through her teeth. Nothing but rage inside now. If this was to be her end, she’d not go begging.
Never flinch. Never fear. And never,
ever
forget.
“Tell us where you were earlier this eve,” Micheletto growled. “Before you arrived in Godsgrave.”
“Fuck you.”
“Where were you before you arrived in Godsgrave?” Micheletto shouted.
The iron was a breath from her skin now. Already beginning to burn. She felt sick to her stomach, sweat stinging her eyes. Mia looked up at the confessor. Lips peeling back from her teeth. Whispering fierce.
“Fuck.
You
.”
The brother shook his head.
And with a hollow smile, he raised the poker to her eye.
“Enough.”
The smile dropped from the brother’s face. The grip on the sides of Mia’s head eased. Both confessors straightened, as if standing to attention. Brother Micheletto stepped aside to reveal a cloaked figure in the doorway.
Mia glimpsed long black hair. Bottomless black eyes. Twin blades at his waist.
Perfectly plain.
Perfectly deadly.
A greasy illness swelled in her belly, Mister Kindly shivering as the dark around them surged. And from the shadows, she heard a low, rumbling growl.
A wolf growl.
“Leave us,” Cassius commanded.
“Yes, Lord,” Micheletto and Santino replied.
The men bowed deep, and with quiet nods to Mia, marched quickly from the room. Her belly thrilled with sudden fear as Lord Cassius stepped into the cell, Mister Kindly shrinking down into the black at her feet. The Lord of Blades stood before Mia with hands clasped, long dark locks moving as if in some invisible breeze. His skin was purest alabaster. His voice, honey and blood.
“Bravo, Acolyte. My compliments.”
“… Lord Cassius?”
Mia looked about her. Beyond the sickness in her gut, beyond the surge of terror and excitement she felt in his presence, realization was flooding over her.
Relief. Anger. Chagrin.
“A test,” she breathed.
“A necessity,” Cassius replied. “Now that you know of the Blood Walk. Beyond your skill with steel or venom or flesh, there is one virtue we must ensure each and every disciple of the Red Church possesses in abundance.”
Mia looked the Black Prince in the eye. Her hands trembling.
“Loyalty,” she whispered.
Cassius inclined his head. “The Red Church prides itself in its reputation. No contract ever undertaken by this congregation has remained unfulfilled. No disciple has ever revealed a secret to those who hunt us. Every year, we bring new faces into the flock, sharpen you to the keenest edge. But as honed as they may appear, some blades are simply made of glass.”
“Glass?”
“A shard of glass can slice a man’s throat. Pierce his heart clean. Open his wrists to the bone. But press it in the wrong place, glass with shatter. Iron will not.”
A faint smile curled pale lips, Cassius’s hand drifting to a blade at his waist.
“Since the failed attempt on Consul Scaeva’s life, Cardinal Duomo has declared the destruction of the Red Church a divine mandate. Justicus Remus and his Luminatii hunt us in every corner of the Republic. We have the power of Ashkahi sorcery at our fingertips. Chapels in every metropolis. If one of our disciples were to fall into the hands of our enemies, we must be certain they will not shatter. And so…”
Cassius motioned to the cells around them, his cloak whispering as he moved. Mister Kindly’s fear was eating into Mia’s belly, the shadows writhing across the floor. She glanced up as another scream echoed down the corridor. Swallowing hard and searching for her voice.
“So Shahiid Aalea’s trial was just a ruse?”
“O, no. The acolyte who gifts her the finest secret will still finish top of Masks. And all of you will be sent to this city time and again in search of them, have no doubt. We simply take this opportunity to test the waters, so to speak.”
“The other acolytes who came to Godsgrave? You’re testing them, too?”