Nevernight

“I still can’t fathom it,” Tric sighed. “Of any of us, she had the best reason for being here.”

  “Almost.”

  “Never thought she’d stumble at the final hurdle.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a stumble,” Ash shrugged. “Maybe she just chose not to jump. I’m glad she’s not going to be here for initiation. Deciding not to murder an innocent makes her better than this place.”

  Tric looked at her sideways. “You passed the trial. You murdered an innocent.”

  “Because I have a better reason for being here than Mia did, Tricky.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Familia,” she said.

  “Mia was here for her familia too.”

  “Aye,” Ash nodded. “Difference is, my da is still alive. You’d be surprised how motivating a grumpy ex-murderer with no testicles can be.”

  Tric smirked, turned his eyes to the dark again. Ash spoke softly.

  “Mia said to tell you goodbye.”

  “She’ll be back,” Tric said. “I’ll see her again.”

  “… I’m not so sure.”

  “Hand’s robes might suit her. And what’s she going to do, fold up? Her? No way.”

  “O, she might decide to join the Hands. But still, I don’t think you’ll see her again.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Ash sighed from the depths of her toes. “Like I said before, it’s quite a nose you’ve got there, Tricky. And I can’t have you sniffing around the entrée this eve.”

  “What do y—hrrk.”

  Tric blinked at the dagger in Ash’s hand. The blade gleaming red and dripping. He looked down at the stain spreading across his shirt as she buried the knife in his chest again. And again. And again. He gasped, reached out toward her throat, eyes wide. But quick as lies, she shoved him hard and sent him backward over the railing. Tumbling down, down into the everblack wastes below.

  Without a sound.

  Without a whimper.

  Gone.

  Ash looked down into the darkness. Whispered soft.

  “Sorry, Tricky.”

  The girl knelt with a kerchief, soaked up the blood that had fallen on the stone. Cleaning her blade and slipping it back into her sleeve. Checking over her shoulder. The altar was still deserted, Hands bustling about the kitchen in preparation for the coming feast. Nine places set at table. One for each of the three acolytes who would be initiated at feast’s end. Five for the Ministry; Drusilla, Mouser, Solis, Aalea and Spiderkiller. And the last, at the table’s head, for the Lord of Blades. The Black Prince. The head of the Red Church congregation himself.

  “Cassius,” she whispered.

  “It’s done?”

  Ashlinn turned and saw a figure in stolen Hands’ robes.

  “It’s done.” Ash straightened, looked out over the wastes. “Little Tricky won’t be around to smell a thing. Presuming there’s something to smell, of course.”

  “I’ll carry my end,” her brother replied.

  “Don’t fuck it up, Oz,” Ash warned. “You set our last chance on fire. We could’ve had Cassius in a bag months ago. He was just sitting here in the open.”

  “I told you, that idiot Floodcaller saw me on the sneak. What was I supposed to do?”

  “O, let me think. How about murdering him and leaving his body out in plain sight? Make it ten times harder for us to get a second shot?”

  “Jumping Cassius like a pair of alleythugs was a stupid plan, I told you that at the time. Floodcaller getting in the way was a blessing. We’ve had months to prepare this. Poisoning the feast will net us the whole bag of vipers with one stroke. The acolyte who crafted the toxin for me is dead. And the only acolyte who had a chance of sniffing us out is dead. Stop your fucking whining and just be ready.”

  “I’m ready,” Ash hissed.

  Osrik checked over his shoulder again, dropping his voice lower.

  “You met with them yestereve all right?”

  “Aye.” Ash nodded. “After they gave me the gossip to top Masks and then some. Like I said, Luminatii boys get all the juice.”

  “Are they ready?”

  “No doubt. Our noble justicus has his First and Second Centuries on standby. Two hundred men hit the Porkery at sevenbells. You just make sure Adonai is motivated.”

  “That freak loves his sister more than life. With my knife to her throat, he’ll dance the fucking Balinna if I tell him to.”

  “Be careful when you take Marielle. You saw what she did to—”

  “I’m not a child, Ashlinn,” Osrik snarled. “I’ll handle the weaver and speaker. You just deal with your end. Have Cassius and the rest of the Ministry bound and gagged when Remus and his thugs arrive. The confessors will want to speak to the lot, so we’ll need to Walk all of them. No manacles.”

  “No fear.” The girl smiled grim. “Shahiid Aalea taught me a few rope tricks.”

  “In a few hours.” Osrik nodded. “These walls come tumbling down.”

  The pair stared out over the wastes. The endless black above, a billion points of light. The face of the goddess they’d been raised to worship, and were now betraying.

  “For da,” Ashlinn said.

  “For da,” Osrik replied.

  The girl kissed her brother on the cheek, and stalked off into the dark.

  CHAPTER 32

  BLOOD

  They’d washed off the gore in the Porkery baths, but Mia could still smell it on her skin.

  She’d trudged through Godsgrave’s streets, Mercurio limping beside her, neither speaking. She took some solace that the old man had come to fetch her, that he’d spoken to Drusilla on her behalf. A few turns away from the Church would clear her head, he’d said. Do her good. Let her think about the choice before her.

  Life as a Hand. The life of a servant.

  She caught herself in the thought, scowling dark. There was no shame in it. Naev was a Hand and she held her head high. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Trekking the Whisperwastes, down through southern Ashkah. Finding beauty in parts of the world she’d never seen.1

  But what about Scaeva? Duomo? Remus?

  Could she live her whole life knowing her familia would go unavenged?

  Clawing winds roared in off the bay, chill and screaming. Winter had come to the ’Grave in force, storms ever brewing on the horizon, shrouding Saan’s light and smothering Saai’s blue glow as it rose back up from the edge of the world. But still … it was so bright out here. Near blinding after months of almost constant dark. The choir’s song had been replaced by the churn and bustle of city streets, the calls of criers, the crash of cathedral bells. This didn’t feel right.

  This doesn’t feel like home anymore.

  The girl and the old man returned to the curio store, bell chiming above the door. Mia was reminded of the first time she’d come here. The turn after her father had died swinging. Mercurio taking her under his wing. The last apprentice he’d ever train, most like. Six years he’d given her. And what had she given in return?

  Failure.

  The old man was limping toward the kitchen, cane clacking on the boards.

  “I’m sorry, Mercurio.”

  He turned toward her. Saw the tears brimming in her eyes.

  “I let you down,” she said. “I let us both down. I’m so sorry.”

  The old man shook his head. But he didn’t tell her she was wrong.

  “You want some tea?” he finally offered. “I’ll bring it up to your room.”

  “No. My thanks.”

  He sloughed off his greatcoat. Lit a smoke and wandered into the kitchen.

  Upstairs in her room, she could still hear him thumping about. His anger ringing in the tune of crashing pots, rattling pans. She tossed her oilskin pack at her old bed, thumped down atop it. She’d never really noticed before, but it was a touch too small for her now. Like this room.

  Like this life.

  “… what do we do now…?”

  She looked to the slip of darkness, perched atop a cr
ooked pile of histories.

  If I could see his eyes, would I see disappointment in them too?

  “Sleep,” she sighed. “Sleep for a hundred years.”

  She loosened the ties on the oilskin bag, dragging out her old beaten copy of Theories of the Maw. Running a loving hand over the cover of Arkemical Truths. Then she slumped down with Lotti’s notebook. Thinking of Hush, wondering how he was faring. Ash. Tric. They’d be getting ready for the initiation ceremony, she’d supposed. Evemeal at the Sky Altar, then down to the Hall of Eulogies, there to be anointed with Cassius’s blood and inducted into the ranks of the Blades.

  That was one reason to join the Hands, she supposed. At least inside the Mountain, she’d have access to the athenaeum. Maybe even to Cassius himself on occasion. She still had no real answers about darkin, or any real idea what she was …

  Mia flipped through the pages of Lotti’s work. Smiling at the thought of her friend’s dry wit and deadpan stare. But her smile faded when she reached the pages Carlotta been working on as she was murdered. There was a spray of dried blood across the notes, soaking through to those beyond.

  Blood.

  Soaking through …

  “Explain what, Revered Mother?”

  “This.”

  Drusilla gathered up the sheet, held it in front of Mia’s face. There, soaked through the fabric’s weave, Mia saw a tiny smudge of dried scarlet.

  Mia blinked at the bloodstain on the page.

  “You cannot account for your whereabouts yestereve, and the victim’s blood is found on your sheets—a fact which you yourself cannot explain. Has Carlotta ever visited your room?”

  “No, but—”

  No, but someone else had visited that morn …

  “It couldn’t have been,” she breathed.

  “… couldn’t have been what…?”

  Mia looked to the not-cat. Struggling with the words. With the thought behind them. Rising off the bed, Mia flipped to the end of Lotti’s notebook. Back to the missing pages. Rummaging around her desk, she found a charstick, rubbed it lightly across the blank page following the missing section. There in the dusting of black, she could see the faintest of impressions. Lotti’s handwriting, her homebrew cypher, arkemical symbols.

  “… what are you—”

  “Hush. Give me a moment.”

  She scowled over the pages, squinting at the faint handwriting. The marks were barely legible. She couldn’t be sure, but …

  “This looks like a modified recipe for Swoon…”

  “… the sedative…?”

  She nodded. “But these measurements are enough for a dozen men at least. Why would Lotti be…”

  Carlotta rose and padded over to Osrik, spoke to him quietly, sodden notebook in hand. Oz smiled his handsome smile, fingertips brushing Lotti’s own.

  Mia waggled her eyebrows at Ash. “They’ve been getting cozy. I saw them working together on some concoction a few turns back. And they seem to get paired up in Truths an awful lot.”

  “This makes no sense,” she whispered.

  “… a feeling i am growing rapidly familiar with…”

  Mia rose from her stool, Lotti’s notebook in hand. About to head downstairs to Mercurio, she heard more commotion in the kitchen. A blacker curse than she’d ever heard the old man use. It didn’t seem like a good time to be bothering him with insane theories. He’d likely bite her head off.

  She bound the notebook in her oilskin again. Scowling so hard her head ached.

  But if she was right …

  I can’t be right.

  “I need to go back to the Church.”

  “… so soon…?”

  “I need to talk to the Revered Mother.”

  “… she will be busy with the initiation ceremony, surely…?”

  Mia was already perched on the windowsill, wind howling through the open glass.

  “On my side or in my way?”

  The not-cat sighed.

  “… as it please you…”

  Mia hurried back through the Little Liis market, the churning streets of the Nethers, shoving and pushing down to the Bay of Butchers. The storm was almost on Godsgrave now, thunder and lightning racing each other across the sky. The smell of offal and sewage rolled in with the salt of the deeper ocean, Mia’s shoulders hunched, a black tangle billowing about her face as she pulled up her hood against the chill.

  The harbor was busy.

  Busier than it should have been, with weather this grim.

  As Mia approached the Porkery, she noticed groups of conspicuously large men lurking near the entrance. Not joking or jawing like sailor-folk or tradesmen might. They scowled at her approach, but she smiled sweetly, walking right on past them. Studying from the corners of her eyes.

  They were big, all of them. Dressed like commoners, but well-built to a man. And with her gaze downcast, she saw they all wore soldiers’ boots.

  What the ’byss is going on here?

  She rounded the corner, mind racing. Dragging her cloak of shadows about her shoulders, she latched onto a downspout, scaled the Porkery’s flank, deft as a monkey. On the roof, she worked at the tiles, jamming her gravebone stiletto between a pair and prying them loose. Dropping down into the gap, she crawled across the rafters, throwing aside her shadowcloak so she could see the slaughterhouse below.

  There was no sign of Bacon or his sons. No sign of the regular butchers who worked the pork. But there were more of those burly gents at every exit, as well as on the mezzanine leading down to the blood pool.

  And there among them, heart seizing, breath stilling, she saw him.

  It’d been two years since she’d fought him on the steps of the Basilica Grande. Six years since she’d truly seen him up close, the turn he took her father’s title, stole her familia’s lands. But still, she’d recognize him anywhere. The biggest man she’d ever seen. A trimmed beard framing wolfish features, animal cunning twinkling in his gaze. The scar of what could only have been cat’s claws trailing down his cheek. He was dressed as a pleb like the rest of them. No white armor or red cloak or sunsteel blade in sight. But she knew him. Hate dripping from her tongue as she whispered.

  “Justicus Marcus Remus…”

  She looked around the Porkery. At the men with their swordgrip hands and their soldiers’ boots. And she knew them for exactly what they were.

  “… luminatii…”

  “They’re here for the blood pool.” She breathed deep, scarcely believing her eyes. “They’re gearing up to invade the Church.”

  “… adonai would never walk them across…”

  “Unless he’s in league with them?” Mia whispered. “Or someone forces him?”

  “… walking blithely into a den of the deadliest assassins in the republic? this eve of all eves? lord cassius himself will be there…”

  “… Maybe that’s the idea.”

  Justicus Remus spoke to one of his centurions, narrowed eyes on his troops.

  “All is prepared?”

  “Aye, Justicus.” The tall, iron-hard man saluted, fist to chest. “The abattoir was taken without incident. The heretics who dwelled below are in custody or slain.”

  The justicus nodded, turned to another man beside him. A grizzled-looking veteran that Mia recognized, a leather patch over one eye.

  “Centurion Alberius, Second Century will enter the portal first and secure the staging area. Prepare your men. Assault begins in five minutes.”

  The puppy-killer thumped his chest. “Luminus Invicta, Justicus.”

  The man turned to his men and bellowed.

  “Second Century, form up!”

  One hundred Luminatii arranged themselves with military precision, grim faced and silent. They bore wooden cudgels and shields, a few gravebone blades. Mia was at least grateful none of them would be able to bring their sunsteel with them—no metal could make the Blood Walk, and facing down a few hundred Luminatii armed with burning blades was a little more daunting than facing down a few hu
ndred armed with big sticks.

  But only a little.

  Remus turned on his secondus, spoke in measured tones.

  “Centurion Maxxis. Third Century will hold ground here until we return with the heretics and their master in chains. First Century marches with me on the Sky Altar.”

  Mia’s belly churned at the mention of the Altar. Remus knew the Mountain. Which meant he knew its layout, its workings. How else could the Luminatii know all this, unless there was a traitor amid the Church’s number?

  But Drusilla had tested them all! Every acolyte in the crop had chosen to die rather than give up the Porkery’s location. Who’d suffer torture at the hands of Lord Cassius’s confessors, only to sell the Church to the Luminatii afterward?

  Someone who knew Cassius’s confessional was only a test …

  Realization danced a sickening jig through Mia’s belly.

  Ashlinn shrugged, scoffed another mouthful. “Wuh vwat wunugd mufuh.”

  “… What?”

  The girl swallowed, licked her lips. “I said, well, that’s what you’ve got me for. Da told me and my brother everything about this place. Everything he knew, anyway.”

  “Ash and Oz’s father…”

  “… what of him…?”

  “Ash told me he’d raised his children to replace him.”

  She looked to the shadow lurking beside her.

  “What if he raised them to avenge him?”

  “… to attack the darkin lord of the world’s finest assassins in a place of perpetual darkness? with a few hundred men? best of luck, dear justicus…”

  “He won’t need luck,” Mia whispered. “The Swoon, don’t you see? The measurements in Carlotta’s notes were enough to knock dozens dreaming. If Ashlinn or Oz slip it into the initiation feast, Cassius will drop like anyone else, darkin or no.”

  “… but tric will be at the feast. he would smell the poison, surely…?”

  Mia’s heart surged. Her belly tuning cold.

  “’Byss and blood…”

  She was down off the rafters before Mister Kindly could utter another whisper. Dropping to the mezzanine, shrouded once more in her cloak of shadows; just a dark blur against the Porkery walls. Second Century were marching up to the mezzanine, followed by Remus and his primus. The men tromped down the stair to the blood pool, two abreast.