Nevernight

  Mia stole down behind them, hidden beneath her shadowcloak, the world about her dim and black. Arkemical lamps dotted the stairwell, and she followed their light down to the Porkery’s belly, the slick tang of blood hanging in the air. She heard sloshing, churning, burbling. Moving quiet, pawing her way along the wall past the rows of waiting soldiers into the blood pool. The glyphs on the stone were humming faintly, power singing in the air as Centurion Alberius barked his orders. Not a one of them would’ve seen Ashkahi bloodwerking before, but to their credit, each Luminatii waded out into Adonai’s pool as commanded. Closing their eyes and muttering their prayers and with a surge of Ashkahi magik, disappearing, one by one.

  All eyes were on the swirling vortex. The glyphs scrawled in gore across the walls. Mia contemplated waiting until the Second Century had all crossed; surely there’d be a chance to take Remus down in all this. But she thought of Tric. The poison. The feast. If Ashlinn and Osrik had betrayed the Church, they had every reason to kill him, and that thought filled her with a fear that even Mister Kindly couldn’t quite devour.

  Black Mother, I’ve been so blind …

  The blood swirled and surged. Soldiers dragged down into the flow. Despite his arrogance, Mia couldn’t imagine Adonai would turn on the Church; he had to have been coerced. Regardless, she needed to know what was going on. Revenge could wait.

  The people she cared about were more important.

  She couldn’t help but admire the irony. If she’d become the monster the Church intended, if she’d killed that nameless boy and been accepted for initiation, she’d be none the wiser about Ashlinn and Osrik’s plot. She’d be seated at the feast right now, being poisoned with the acolytes and the rest of the Ministry.

  Instead, she was the only one who could save them.

  Mia stole along the blood chamber’s wall, slipped down into the pool, waist-deep in sickening warmth. She’d no idea if two people could make the Walk simultaneously. But she knew Adonai’s blood was mixed into this pool, that the speaker would be able to sense her along with the soldier who now waded in beside her.

  Would the speaker know her for a friend? Would he even be able to—

  The red surged. The floor fell away from Mia’s feet. She found herself sucked down, down into the flow, spinning and twisting, blood in her mouth. That awful undertow, threatening to drag her down into forever. Swimming up toward the light. Chest bursting. Heart pounding. Until finally …

  She felt stone beneath her feet. Pushing herself up slowly, head breaking the surface, blood dripping in her eyes. A Luminatii legionary burst of out the flow beside her, sputtering and coughing, his fellows dragging him up and setting him on his feet. The men in the chamber were painted head to toe in scarlet, quiet horror on every face. Adonai’s blood-drenched chamber could only be confirming every gruesome story they’d ever heard about Niah’s worshippers. It was easy to see how they’d think the Church a heresy. Easy to see how Scaeva and Duomo could sell them as an enemy.

  From the outside, I’d think the same of us.

  Mia blinked, wiped the blood from her eyes.

  … Us.

  Cloak of shadows still wrapped about her shoulders, she kept herself submerged, only lifting her head high enough to breathe. As always, Adonai was knelt at the head of the pool. Beside him stood a dozen gore-soaked Luminatii, ironwood cudgels in hand. Mia’s pulse quickened as she sensed a familiar shadow at the speaker’s back.

  Osrik …

  The boy was crouched on the stone, a long, serrated blade in his hand. At his feet, Mia saw another figure, stripped of her traditional black robes. Twisted and piteous, skin split and rotten, trussed up like a hog ready for slaughter. Her hands were bound, her fingers all broken, pink eyes closed. But the steady rise and fall of her shadow’s breast told Mia that the weaver wasn’t dead—and it was the threat of Osrik’s blade at Marielle’s throat that was driving Adonai to this madness.

  The speaker’s with us. That’s something, at least …

  The girl’s mind was awhirl, the puzzle playing out in her head.

  Though it wracked her with guilt, there was no sense rushing upstairs—whatever was unfolding at the Sky Altar had already happened. At least the poison Ash and Osrik were using was only Swoon; nobody would be killed outright. The Luminatii obviously wanted captives. Torture. Interrogation. Public crucifixion. All this awaited the Red Church hierarchy down the road. But at this moment, Lord Cassius and the Ministry were a long way from dead. That meant Tric might be too …

  She looked at Adonai, singing over the churning pool. She could kill him, she realized. Just slit his throat right here, cut off the troops already within the Mountain, seal the others outside. But that would end the most valuable asset the Red Church had in its arsenal. Without the Blood Walk, the Church would be gutted, its chapels isolated.

  But still, should she care?

  Wasn’t saving Tric and Naev worth that loss?

  Beneath the blood, she reached into her sleeve, drew out her gravebone dagger. Watching as Adonai stiffened, glanced in her direction.

  He knows I’m here.

  Continuing his song, bringing more and more of the sputtering, horrified Luminatii across, Adonai turned his eyes back to the pool. But Mia swore she saw him shake his head. And with a faint hand gesture she recognized as Tongueless, the speaker made his thoughts plain.

  Don’t try, he signed.

  That settled that. She’d no chance of stealthing the kill, and if Adonai was intent on fighting her, he could give her away the second she moved against him. True to form, the speaker valued his own skin above anyone else inside these walls.

  Right, then. Nothing for it.

  Mia hunkered down in the blood, watching as dozens more legionaries made the Walk. When the group was assembled, a hundred men in total, Centurion Alberius ordered them to fan out across the level. Securing stairs, doorways, passages. With his men on the move, the centurion turned to one his younger recruits.

  “Report to the justicus all is secure.”

  Beneath the drying scarlet, Mia saw the boy blanch at the thought of stepping back into that awful pool. But he waded back into the red, disappeared down into the flow. Mia watched him go, turning her eyes back to Adonai. This was her last chance to cut off the beachhead. If the speaker died before the First Century came across—

  The blood surged about her, undertow sucking at her heels. She staggered, grasped the pool’s edge, slicking the marble with red. Adonai shook his head again, ever so slight, hands fluttering.

  Don’t even think it.

  Mia grit her teeth. Watching as the First Century began making the Walk. Man after man, minute after minute, dragged from the blood by their fellows. And finally, rising from the red, Mia saw the man she’d dreamed of killing for six long years. Waving aside the soldiers who sought to help him up, stepping from the pool, dripping great floods of gore onto the stone. Dark red, clotted thick in his beard, cascading down his back. Shoulders broad as the Mountain itself.

  The justicus of the Luminatii Legions loomed over Speaker Adonai, mouth curled in disgust.

  “Godlessness,” he growled. “Godlessness and heresy.”

  Adonai said nothing, meeting the justicus’s gaze without flinching. A faint smile at his pretty lips. Remus wiped the blood from his face, turned to his second as an aide began strapping him into a beautiful suit of gravebone armor.

  “Centurion, report.”

  “The level is ours, Justicus. First and Second Centuries accounted for.”

  “Excellent.” He motioned to Adonai. “Bind this apostate bastard good and tight.”

  Soldiers marched forward, blood-soaked lengths of rope clutched in their hands. They shoved Adonai to the floor, lashed hands and feet behind his back like a calf awaiting slaughter. A rag was stuffed in his mouth, another tied about his eyes. One of the soldiers put a boot in for good measure, but Remus stopped him with a raised hand.

  The justicus looked to Osrik, his tone cur
t.

  “What of the Ministry?”

  “Ashlinn knew her job,” Osrik said. “They’ll be trussed up like Great Tithe hogs when you arrive at the Sky Altar. Fear not.”

  “Wait here until we return with the vaunted Lord of Blades and his godless flock.” He motioned to Adonai. “Should this heretic even twitch in a manner that displeases you, begin cutting off pieces of his sister until his behavior improves.”

  Osrik nodded. Adonai tensed at the threat, but otherwise remained motionless.

  Now fully armored, Remus looked around at his men, grim and blood-soaked. He reached to his belt, drew a long, beautifully carved gravebone longsword, crows in flight along the pommel and hilt. Mia’s eyes narrowed as she recognized it—it had hung on the walls of her father’s study beside his collection of maps.

  Just how much more can this man take from me?

  “Righteous brothers,” Remus began. “This eve, we strike a blow against a blasphemy that has blackened our glorious Republic for decades. The ministers of this godless church are to be brought back alive to Godsgrave for interrogation. But any other night-worshipping bastard you cross within these walls is to be shown no mercy. We are the right hand of Aa, and this eve, we bring this house of heresy to its knees.”

  The justicus held his stolen blade to his brow, lowered his head. The legionaries around the room did the same, lips moving in unison.

  “Hear me, Aa. Hear me, Father. Your flame, my heart. Your light, my soul. For your name, and your glory, and your justice, I march. Shine upon me.”

  Remus raised his head. Nodded at his men.

  “Luminus Invicta.”

  1. Though much of its heartland is now more a wasteland, the coastal regions of Ashkah are still some of the most beautiful in the world. Leaving aside the natural splendor of sites such as the Thousand Towers, the Dust Falls of Nuuvash, or the Great Salt, there is still something about watching the sunsrise over a magikally polluted hellscape that simply takes the breath away.

  Of course, the sand kraken, dust wraiths, and other monstrosities of the Whisperwastes are liable too do that too, hence Ashkah’s lack of any real tourism industry.

  CHAPTER 33

  STEPS

  She waited.

  Though her mind swam with images of what might be happening up those stairs, though her blood boiled at the thought of Ashlinn’s betrayal, her revenge against Remus within her grasp and yet untasted, she waited. If the Luminatii got Cassius and the Revered Mother in their clutches, every Red Church disciple was at risk. Her friends. Mercurio, too. Her first step had to be cutting off Remus’s escape. Cassius and Drusilla couldn’t be allowed to fall into the Confessionate’s hands.

  And so she lurked in the blood. Cursing herself a fool. She knew it for certain now. Ash had killed Lotti. Tried to frame her for the murder. Every moment, every word she’d spoken had been a lie. Hush had warned her, too, that eve in the Hall of Truth.

  you have one friend inside these walls

  not carlotta

  not tric or ashlinn

  and not me

  That friend lurked in the shadows of the room, watching with his not-eyes. Remus and his troops had marched out. But there were still a dozen Luminatii in the speaker’s chamber, clad now in ornate leather, embossed with the sigil of Aa. The armor was thick, the buckles made of wood, not a rivet or screw anywhere—specially crafted for the assault, no doubt. A half-dozen men stood watch over Adonai and Marielle. Six more at the threshold, watching the corridor beyond. The weaver was still unconscious, Osrik crouched beside her, his blade lingering at her throat.

  Start at the beginning …

  Mia couldn’t see much beneath her cloak anyway, and so she closed her eyes. Reached out to the shadows in the room. Just like she had among the strawmen in the Hall of Songs, she could feel those shadows like she could feel herself. She remembered what it was to be that fourteen-year-old girl again. Tearing Aa’s statue to pieces outside the Basilica Grande. Stepping between the shadows like a wraith. But most of all, she remembered the man who helped start it all, who’d seen her father hung, her mother in chains, her brother dead before he could walk.

  She spread her arms beneath the blood. Fingers outstretched. Reaching through the flickering gloom, out to the shadows at each legionary’s feet. Curling them into hooks, digging them into the soles of the soldiers’ boots, every one. And, quiet as she could, she rose from Adonai’s pool.

  She realized her mistake at once—though she was still hidden beneath her cloak of shadows, the blood she was soaked in wasn’t. As she hauled herself up on the ledge, scarlet spattered on the stone, bloody handprints appearing beneath her palms. The legionaries in the room turned to the sound, Osrik’s brow creased.

  Confusion. Hesitation.

  It was enough.

  Mia stepped into the shadow beneath her

  stepped out

  of the shadow

  on the wall

  behind Osrik

  One of the legionaries saw movement from the corner of his eye, cried out in alarm, but by then Mia’s knife was already buried hilt deep in the join between the boy’s neck and swordarm, severing the tendons clean. Osrik screamed, blade falling from nerveless fingers, Mia bringing her knee up into his jaw and sending him crashing to the floor. She snatched up his dagger, and then

  she was

  stepping into

  the dark at her

  feet and out of the shadows behind another legionary, cutting his hamstrings with her blade and dropping him to the deck. The man beside him struck out at her with his cudgel and she swayed backward, the blow whistling past her chin, stepping inside his guard and burying her knee into his groin hard enough to make every man in the room wince in sympathy. The soldiers cried out, but trying to charge this gore-soaked horror from the sorcerer’s blood pit, they found their boots stuck fast to the stone.

  Mia could feel it. The power of the night, coursing beneath her skin. The hungry dark. The Mother herself, the goddess who’d marked her, staring with black eyes at these men who’d invaded her holy ground.

  And she was angry.

  She dropped one, then another, snatching up a cudgel and cracking it across jaws and the backs of skulls, skipping between patches of darkness and leaving only bloody footprints behind. They were men of the finest cohort in the legion—Remus hadn’t been foolish enough to bring any marrowborn lads or senators’ sons with him to the Mountain. But faced with this blood-soaked horror, black eyes and savage smile and red, red hands, soon enough, the fear had them.

  “Your boots!” one cried. “Take off your boots!”

  The shadows snatched at their clubs and smothered their cries as she felled them one by one. The nearby comrades who heard them screaming and came to investigate met the same fates; felled by vicious blows or dropping with their throats cut. Until only one remained. A man with dark, blood-soaked curls, falling on his backside as he kicked off his boots, scrambling back against the wall, eyes wide with terror as this daemon from the abyss stepped from the shadows before him. Bloody knife in one hand. Bloody club in the other. Hair clinging like black weed to the gore upon its face.

  And it opened its mouth, then. And it spoke with a girl’s voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The blade fell.

  Rising from the bloody mess she’d made, Mia heard a groan, looked to where Osrik was trying to rise from the floor. Marching over to the Vaanian boy, she kicked him hard in the head, tumbling him back to the flagstones. Kneeling beside Marielle, Mia checked the weaver was still breathing, covered her tortured skin with the tattered remnants of her robe. Then she crouched beside Adonai’s head, talking carefully.

  “Speaker, it’s Mia. I’m going to untie you now. Your sister is alive and well. Whatever you might see, I need you to not murder anyone for a minute or two, agreed?”

  Adonai grunted in response, nodding. Mia cut his bonds, untied the gag and blindfold. The speaker was on his feet in a flash, face twist
ed, hands raised. Tendrils of blood rose from the pool, writhing like serpents, pointed like spears. The albino’s eyes fell on his sister, on the boy beside her who had threatened her life …

  Osrik was trying to rise again, groaning and clutching his jaw. Adonai raised his arms above his head, fingers curled like a puppeteer over a marionette. Bloody coils whipped from the pool, seizing Osrik’s wrists, feet, dragging him across the flagstones and down into the red.

  “I said don’t kill him!”

  Mia seized the speaker’s arm, spun him to face her. With a wave of his fingers, the speaker wrapped another whip of gore around Mia’s throat and lifted her off the ground. The girl gasped, choking, legs kicking at the air. A dozen shadows about the room seized Adonai’s limbs, their ends fashioned into needle-sharp points, quivering just an inch or two from his eyes.

  “Let me go,” Mia croaked. “I just saved your life. Your sister’s life. We’re on the same damn side. And we need Osrik alive to find out what’s going on upstairs.”

  “Be it not obvious?” Adonai snarled. “The Luminatii hath come for Lord Cassius. What more need we know?”

  “Let. Me. Go. Fucker.”

  Adonai sneered. But the grip at her throat slackened, the tendril setting her down gently on the stone before slipping back into the pool. The speaker waved one hand and Osrik emerged, gasping, blood bubbling at his lips as he whispered

  “Mia, please…”

  before being jerked back down beneath the flood again.

  “Adonai, you and Marielle need to get out of here.”

  “And where shall we go?” he spat. “A traitor hath been reared in our midst. Like be the Luminatii hath the location of every chapel twixt here and Godsgrave by now.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re moving on all of them. They likely wouldn’t for fear of giving the game away. Lord Cassius is the prize, and they can’t be allowed to get him back to Godsgrave. With you gone, they only have one way back to civilization.”

  “The Whisperwastes,” Adonai said.