“We test you all.”
“… Did any break?”
“Someone always breaks.”
The man searched Mia’s eyes. Waiting, perhaps, for some kind of rebuke.
Mia remained mute, meeting that bottomless stare, fighting the illness in her gut. The greasy tang of bile hung in the back of her throat, her hands shaking so badly she was forced to grip the chair to still them. What was it about this man that affected her so? Was it because he was of her kind? The dark in him, calling to the dark in her?
She heard soft, padded footsteps behind her. That low wolf growl.
Eclipse …
“You’re the first darkin I’ve ever met,” she finally said. “Ever spoken to.”
“Perhaps the last,” he replied. “You stand many a nevernight from initiation. And if you think our kinship will buy you favor in the Mother’s halls, you are sorely mistaken.”
The Black Prince’s eyes were deathly cold. His beauty colder still. Mia could feel the shadowwolf behind her, prowling closer. Mister Kindly puffed up in her shadow and hissed, and a low chuckling resounded from the stones at her feet. The question clawed at her tongue until she gave it voice; a thin whisper hanging in the air like smoke.
“What are we?”
“What do you suppose we are?”
“Mercurio, Drusilla…” Mia swallowed. “They say we’re the Mother’s chosen.”
The hair on back of her neck stood on end as the Lord of Blades laughed.
“Is that what you believe yourself to be, little darkin? Chosen?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” she hissed. “I was hoping you could teach me.”
“What to believe?”
“What I
am
.”
“It matters not what you are,” Cassius said. “Only
that
you are. And if you seek an answer to some greater riddle of yourself, seek it not from me until you’ve earned it. In one measure, and one measure alone, you should be content. For in this, if nothing else, we are the same.”
Mia’s stomach surged as the Lord of Blades leaned in closer, drawing a dagger from his sleeve. And reaching down, he sliced through the rope at her wrists.
“We are killers, you and I,” he said. “Killers one, killers all. And each death we bring is a prayer. An offering to Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Death as a mercy. Death as a warning. Death as an end unto itself. All of these, ours to know and gift unto the world. The wolf does not pity the lamb. The storm begs no forgiveness of the drowned.”
He searched her eyes again, his voice thrumming in her breast as he spoke.
“But first and foremost, we are servants. Disciples. Surrounded by foes. Loyal unto the death. We do not bend and we do not break. Ever.
This
is the truth you learn in this cell.
This
is the first answer to any question of self you might ask. And if it does not sit well with you, Acolyte, if you think perhaps you have made a mistake in coming to us, now is the time to speak.”
So. No answers. Just more riddles. If Cassius held some greater truth about darkin, he wasn’t about to share it here. Perhaps ever. Or perhaps, as he said, not until she
earned
it.
And so, with a wince, Mia rose slowly from the chair. Her legs were shaking. Sick to her bones. She was cold. Damp. Reeking of bay water and blood. Cheek swollen, eye bruised, lip split. Dragging sodden hair from her cheek, she met Cassius’s stare.
Held out her hand.
“Can I have my cigarillos back?”
It took the best of her, but she held it inside.
Escorted from the basement cell. Down the bright boardwalk and back to the hidden tunnels beneath the Porkery. A wooden box sealed with tallow clutched in her hands. A gravebone dagger up her sleeve. Not a whisper on her lips.
The Blood Walk back to the Mountain was no easier the second time through. Mia stripped away her clothes, stepped naked into the scarlet pool beneath the abattoir. She fell beneath the flood, tempted for a moment to simply stay there forever with her questions and her fears. But she pushed back against the weight of it, hands wrapped tight around the box Mercurio had gifted her, the gravebone blade in her fist.
Three baths later she was escorted by a silent Hand up the winding stairs to the Sky Altar, there to eat her mornmeal as if nothing were amiss. The male acolytes were nowhere to be seen—probably already in Godsgrave, being rounded up for their own round of beatings and torture. She saw Ashlinn seated at table, her lip fat and cheek split. Mia wouldn’t meet her eyes. Collecting her food, she took a seat, eating without speaking a word. Noting the other female acolytes who filtered slowly up the stairs, the smiles and jokes from past meals just a memory.
By meal’s end, only Ashlinn, Jessamine, Carlotta and Mia sat at that long, lonely table. All of them beaten. Bruised. Bloodied. But alive, at least. Of the nine girls who’d gathered in Aalea’s chambers yestereve, only four had returned.
Four of iron.
The rest, glass.
They looked among each other. Carlotta, ever stoic. Jessamine triumphant. A thin line of worry between Ash’s brows—probably at the thought of what might be happening to her brother. But not one of them spoke. Mia stared at her plate, chewed her food, one ashen mouthful at a time. Forcing herself to finish every crumb. Mop up the gravy like blood on rough stone. And when she was done, she stood quietly, trod back to her room and closed the door behind her.
She looked at her face in the mirror. Dark, bruised eyes. Thin, trembling lips.
“…
i am sorry, mia
…”
Mia looked at the not-cat, curled on the edge of the bed. Cassius and Eclipse had rattled Mister Kindly worse than she. But her questions about darkin, about the Lord of Blades and his passenger, all of them simply died on her lips.
“It’s all right, Mister Kindly,” she sighed.
“… never flinch…,”
he offered. “…
never fear
…”
Mia nodded. “And never, ever forget.”
She sat before the looking glass and stared at the girl staring back at her. The killer Cassius had described. The monster. Wondering, for one tiny moment, what her life might have been before Scaeva tore it to ribbons. Trying to remember her father’s face. Trying to forget her mother’s. Feeling the burn of tears in her eyes. Willing them gone until nothing remained. Just Mia and the dry-eyed girl staring back at her.
Mercurio must have known the test of loyalty was coming. Knew what the Cassius and the Ministry had planned. And though another might’ve felt betrayed their master had given no warning, instead Mia felt only pride. The old man had known what was in store for her, and still he’d not breathed a word. Not because he didn’t care.
Because he knew.
Cassius and the Ministry had no clue. No idea at all what she was made of. But
he
knew.
Iron or glass?
they’d asked.
Mia clenched her jaw. Shook her head.
She was neither.
She was steel.
1. A branch of Aa’s church almost as old as the religion itself, the Confessionate is, as you may suspect, charged with rooting out heresy within the Republic. Chiefly concerning themselves with those who worship the Mother of Night, confessors are recruited from among the most zealous—or imbalanced—of Aa’s ministers. The current head of the Confessionate, Attia Fiorlini, went so far as to crucify her own husband on suspicion of heresy early in her career. Her superiors were duly impressed with her devotion, and her star rose quickly thereafter.
In actual fact, Attia trumped up charges against her beau after discovering he was diddling one of the maidservants.
Still, two birds with one stone …
CHAPTER 18
S
COURGE
The final tally to survive Lord Cassius’s test was seventeen. Four female. Thirteen male. All of them various shades of bloodied, battered and bruised. Hush’s eyes were so blackened, the boy could barely see for three turns. Marcellus walked with a limp for weeks. Pip’s jaw had almost been broken, and he ate only soups for almost a month.
1
Mia knew she shouldn’t have cared whether or not Tric survived. But when he’d walked up the stairs and sat quietly down to his evemeal, she’d found herself smiling at him. When he’d glanced up and caught her in it, she decided not to try and hide it.
And Tric had smiled back.
Her swordarm still wasn’t fully healed, but Mercurio’s scolding had sunk home. When the flock were deemed recovered enough for lessons to begin again, Mia decided to attend the Hall of Songs. She’d already missed dozens of lessons; any longer, she’d risk falling too far behind to stand a chance in Solis’s trial. She didn’t favor her odds anyway; her best hope of finishing top of hall was crafting Spiderkiller’s antidote. But making a mistake in Spiderkiller’s contest meant
dying
, and besides, if she graduated to fully fledged Blade, she’d need all the swordcraft she could muster. Sitting on her arse reading all turn wasn’t going to cut it.
As she walked into the Hall of Songs, Jessamine looked up from beating the stuffing out of a training dummy and shot her a
fuck you
smile. As Mia took her place at circle, Solis raised one eyebrow, staring with those awful, blind eyes. The cut she’d given him still hadn’t been healed by Weaver Marielle—a tiny new scar, which the Last One had obviously decided to keep, graced one weathered cheek.
The Shahiid didn’t deign to welcome her back, nor make mention of the acolytes who’d not returned from Godsgrave.
“We begin with a refresher on Montoya’s dual-hand forms,” Solis said. “I trust you have been practicing. Acolyte Jessamine, perhaps you would be kind enough to show Acolyte Mia some of what she has missed in her absence?”
Another smile. “With pleasure, Shahiid.”
The acolytes paired off, began running through their drills. Jessamine strode to the weapon racks, took a pair of curved daggers and tossed another pair to Mia. The girl hefted the blades, her elbow quietly complaining.
“We practice with real steel, Shahiid?” Mia asked.
The Last One’s face was stone as he replied. “Consider it an incentive.”
Jessamine raised her knives without a word and struck at Mia’s throat. The girl drew back, barely managed to muster a guard against the redhead’s strikes. It seemed the class had moved forward in leaps and bounds in her absence, and between her lack of training and her still-weakened arm, Mia found herself hopelessly outmatched. Jessamine was fierce and skilled, and it was all Mia could do to keep her insides where they were supposed to be. She wore a few shallow cuts on her forearm, another gash across her chest, blood spattering on the stone as she cursed.
Jessamine smiled. “You want a break, Corvere?”
“My thanks, love. Your jaw would do nicely.”
Jessamine simply laughed, flipping her daggers back and forth. Knowing better than to look to Solis for intervention, Mia staunched her wounds and went back to sparring. Studying the forms of the others around her as best she could in between dodging Jessamine’s blades. After an hour of knives they swapped to shortswords, and Jessamine was no less merciless. Mia spent the rest of the morning having her arse kicked up and down the hall, and she ended the lesson flat on her back, bleeding and bruised. Jessamine’s blade was pressed to her throat, right on her jugular. And though the redhead held herself in check, Mia could tell she’d give almost anything to flick her wrist and turn the stone red.
Jessamine bowed to Solis, sneered at Mia and returned her weapons to the rack. Mia climbed to her feet, clutching her aching elbow, frustration boiling inside her. The time she’d lost to her injury had cost her dear, and she’d fallen behind further than she feared. She’d have to work twice as hard to make up the lost ground, and Jessamine might just “accidentally” gut her in the meantime.
The shame of it was, she and Jess were really one and the same. Both orphans of the Kingmaker Rebellion. Both robbed of their familia, driven by the same thirst. If Jess hadn’t been so blinded by her rage, they might have been fast friends. Held together by the kind of bond only hate can forge. And though Julius Scaeva, not Darius Corvere, was to blame for the death of Jessamine’s father, Mia could still understand why the sight of her blood made the other girl smile.
If you can’t hurt the ones who hurt you, sometimes hurting anyone will do.
All this was small comfort after the absolute thrashing she’d received, of course. And if Jess actually decided to act on her bloodlust away from a Shahiid’s gaze? To really try for her life? Mia would likely end up as nothing but a stain on the floor.
No, this won’t do.
Mia shook her head, limped from the hall.
This won’t do at all.
“How do, Don Tric?”
She’d found him in the Hall of Eulogies after lessons, staring up at the statue of Niah. He shot her a dimpled smile as she spoke. Looked her up and down.
“Maw’s teeth, Jessamine gave you a kicking.”
“Better than a stabbing.”
“Looks like you had a few of those, too.”
“I suppose I should go the weaver. Get seen to.”
Tric scowled at the mention of Marielle, turned his eyes back to the statue above. He ran one hand over his face absentmindedly, fingertips tracing those awful tattoos. Not for the first time, Mia found herself studying his profile and chiding herself for a fool almost in the same heartbeat. He’d be a ladykiller without that ink, no mistake. And she was glad he’d made it back from Drusilla’s testing. But still …
Eyes on the prize, Corvere.
“I’ve a notion,” she said.
“O, dear,” Tric mumbled.
Mia raised the knuckles. Marielle’s shadow fell from the boy’s face, and he gifted her a grin. He turned away from Niah’s statue, facing Mia with arms folded.
“Out with it, then.”
“As you were kind enough to notice, I’ve fallen a little behind in Songs.”
“A little?” Tric snorted. “There’s training dummies up there who could mop the floor with you, Pale Daughter.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Mia scowled. “If you’d like to go somewhere and quietly fuck yourself, I’ll be waiting here patiently for your return.”