Godsgrave

  . . . not his thoughts, but . . .

  His hunger. His longing. His thoughts for Leona, edged with sorrow and bitterness. His desire for the victor’s laurel, echoing in every beat of his heart. For a moment, she felt it so truly, so much a part of herself, that she was a tempted to simply throw down her sword and let him best her. For his own part, Furian seemed to feel her, also, sparing a glance for the consul’s box, the grand cardinal among his craven flock, his jaw clenching with hatred.

  “Almighty Aa,” he breathed. “Those bastards . . .”

  Her breath was burning, eyes stinging with sweat, pulse drumming beneath her skin. Her blade sang in the air, her arms aching, and somewhere in the distance, ever so faint, beneath the roar of the crowd, the roar of the flames, the roar of those three suns burning the sky blind overhead, she heard it.

  The darkness.

  Beneath the water.

  Beneath her skin.

  Beneath the marble crust over this city’s bones. Her shadow entwining with Furian’s, bleeding into his own like the gore slicked across the stone.

  “ . . . mia . . .”

  “Do you feel it?” she breathed.

  Furian buried his blade in another chest, blood slick on his hands.

  “I feel you,” he gasped.

  Twisting and turning, feinting and striking, time crawling.

  “I feel us . . .”

  “ . . . MIA, WHAT IS HAPPENING . . . ?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  She felled another gladiatii, ducking beneath his strike and slicing his hamstring clean through. “Black Mother help me, I don’t know . . .”

  Worldeater raised his mattock and charged at Mia, feet pounding on the stone. From behind, she could feel Ragnar and Furian locked together, blade to blade. Even with the Swoon in their veins, the men were champions, veterans of a dozen slaughters, hard as steel. But Mia could still sense Furian, their shadows utterly enmeshed, coiling across the stone, dancing in the blood. It was as if she had two sets of eyes, two hearts, two minds, twice the strength, twice the will, twice the fury. Worldeater swung his mattock at her head and she felt Furian’s hand on her own, guiding her counter. Furian struck at Ragnar, and he felt Mia’s grip on his blade. Coalescing, unending, no sense of where she ended and he began. There beneath those burning suns, if only for a moment, the puzzle seemed to have found its missing piece.

  Her gladius sliced the flesh behind Worldeater’s knee, severing tendon to the bone. Furian disarmed Ragnar with a lightning thrust, but the Vaanian crash-tackled the Unfallen to the ground, the pair clawing and punching on the red-slicked stone. As Ragnar’s hands closed about Furian’s throat, Mia felt her own windpipe constrict. She gasped, choking, felt Worldeater’s mattock crash against her ribs. Both she and Furian cried out in pain. Mia lost her grip on her dagger, the blade ringing bright as it skidded across the stone, coming to rest beside Furian and Ragnar.

  Ragnar’s hands tightened on Furian’s throat, Mia gasping for breath. Worldeater dragged the girl to the ground, slammed his fist into her head, knocking her helm loose, her gladius flying. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, Ragnar’s grip on Furian making her choke. Reaching out across the stone, the crowd roaring at the top of their lungs, Furian’s fingers scrabbled at the hilt of Mia’s fallen knife. Worldeater slammed Mia’s head into the ground, again, again, again, sunslight burning in her eyes.

  Furian’s fingers closed on the hilt of Mia’s dagger.

  “Furian,” Mia gasped. “It won’t—”

  With a desperate cry, the Unfallen drew back the knife and plunged it into the gap between Ragnar’s breastplate and spaulders.

  The crowd gasped.

  Furian cried out in triumph.

  And Mia’s spring-loaded blade folded up right up into the hilt.

  * * *

  “Oi.”

  Sidonius felt a light kick to his arm. His belly lurched sideways, but the gladiatii kept his eyes closed, holding his breath.

  Another kick from a particularly bony toe.

  “I can still see your slavebrand, deadman. Good thing the folks who dragged your corpse down here didn’t bother to pull of your helmets. Time to go.”

  Sidonius opened his eye the tiniest crack, saw an old man in tattered rags leaning over him. He had bright blue eyes, a shock of gray hair, a lit cigarillo on his lips.

  “You’re . . . Mercurio?” he whispered.

  “No, I’m the grand cardinal’s mistress. Now get up.”

  Sidonius sat up on the mortuary floor, surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies. He could see a slender girl in guard’s armor leaning over Wavewaker’s “corpse,” tapping him on the shoulder.

  “You’re Ashlinn,” Sidonius whispered.

  “Pleased to meet you,” the girl nodded. “Now seriously, get the fuck up.”

  Bladesinger was standing, dragging off her helmet, still drenched in gore. With a grimace, Sidonius pulled off his own helm, reached behind his neck, pulled the punctured bladder out from under his breastplate. He could feel the chicken’s blood down his back, coagulating into a slick, greasy mess.

  “Bucket’s in the wheelbarrow,” Mercurio said. “Get washed, get dressed. We need to be gone before the magni’s done. And that won’t be long.”

  The Falcons of Remus collegium took turns, scrubbing off the blood as best they could and changing into the outfits they were given. Armor from the unconscious doormen, rags for the rest of them. Sidonius pulled on a guard’s steel helm, leather breastplate, looking to the stone above as the crowd roared in delight.

  “How you suppose she’s doing up there?” he murmured.

  Wavewaker patted him on the shoulder. “Have faith, brother. She got us this far.”

  “With more than a little help from you,” Bryn grinned.

  “Aye, but did it have to be chicken’s blood?” Butcher grimaced. “It stinks.”

  Wavewaker shrugged. “That’s the way they taught me back in the theater.”

  Mercurio scowled, stubbed out his cigarette.

  “I realize the odds of the administratii sending out a search party to look for a pack of dead gladiatii are slim, but if you lot are finished chatting, we have a daring escape to undertake.” The old man gestured toward the door. “So if you wouldn’t fucking mind . . . ?”

  “Apologies,” Ashlinn muttered. “He’s always like this.”

  Straightening his helm, Sidonius squared his shoulders. His comrades behind him, he marched out into the corridor. The arena’s innards were virtually empty, all eyes on the spectacle above. They made their way swiftly through the hallways, Ashlinn out in front, until they came to a small servants’ entrance, locked and barred.

  Ashlinn opened the door onto a small alleyway. Two guards were slumped outside it, dead or sleeping, Sid couldn’t tell. But he also saw a small merchant’s wagon, and a pretty blond girl sitting in the driver’s seat. She looked at them and smiled.

  “This is Belle,” Mercurio said. “She’ll take you across the aqueduct. A slaver named Teardrinker is waiting for you on the mainland.”

  “A slaver?” Bladesinger growled.

  “She owes Mia a favor,” Ashlinn said. “The largest kind of favor there is. She has the papers verifying that you’ve purchased your freedom. And contacts with the administratii to get your brands removed. Now go.”

  “Mia . . . ,” Sid began.

  “Go.”

  Bryn and the others were already in the wagon. Wavewaker clasped Sidonius’s arm, hauled him up into the flatbed. The girl snapped the reins and they were moving, bouncing across the cobbles and off through the Godsgrave streets.

  “Fine horses,” Bryn said, nodding at the beasts leading the wagon.

  “The black stallion is Onyx,” the girl smiled. “The white mare is Pearl.”

  Sidonius climbed into the driver’s seat beside her, trying to look officious in his uniform. But he found his hands were shaking, his knees weak, the ordeal leaving him hollow. After week
s of plotting, playing the part, praying they might somehow pull it off, the adrenaline was souring in his veins, leaving him exhausted and . . .

  “Don’t be afraid,” the girl said, squeezing his hand. “All will be well.”

  Sidonius looked her up and down. Dark, wide eyes. Barely more than a child.

  “ . . . How do you know?” he scoffed.

  “Because the voices in your head that say otherwise are just fear talking. Never listen to fear.”

  The girl smiled, turned her eyes back to the open road.

  “Fear is a coward.”

  * * *

  Mia gasped as Worldeater cracked her skull back into the stone again, his thumbs pressed into her eyes. And slipping her gravebone dagger out from the bracer at her wrist, she slammed the blade up under the champion’s chin, right into his brain.

  Worldeater gurgled, toppled aside. Rolling to her feet, she snatched up her gladius and charged across the battlement, lips peeled back in a snarl. Ragnar had his hands about Furian’s throat, looking up as the girl ran him down. He raised arms to ward off her blow, but the Swoon still hummed in his veins and her blade of Liisian steel sheared through his wrist, cleaving his helmet and splitting the flesh and bone beyond. Mia tore the blade free, the champion’s body falling back in a spray of red.

  Furian kicked free of the corpse, rolled up to his feet. Mia’s spring-loaded dagger was still clutched in his hand, dark eyes burning into hers. The crowd was roaring with bloodlust. Of the hundreds of men and women who’d taken to the sand, only two now remained. Though they couldn’t hear the words the Falcons spoke over the distance, the howls of their fellows, the blood pounding in their veins, all knew the match would soon be ended. The fact that these two were comrades from the same collegium made no difference. There was only one way this could end.

  “All must fall so one may stand!” came the cry.

  Mia and Furian stared at each other across the carnage, shadows seething at their feet. Where once they’d been entwined, coalescing to a perfect black, now they were coiled, writhing, clawing at each other with fury.

  “So,” Furian spat, hurling the false dagger at Mia’s feet. “A liar to the last.”

  The crowd was a distant roar. The arena a faded backdrop, pale and translucent. Mia could feel the city of Godsgrave around them, sweltering beneath those awful suns. Feel it like a living thing, feel the rage and hatred nestled in its bones, like the truedark so long ago when she’d failed to kill Scaeva in the Basilica Grande.

  Feel it like she felt herself.

  “Furian . . . ,” she began.

  “You’ve learned nothing of honor, have you? I thought you claimed you weren’t a hero? That if they needed help, they could help themselves?”

  “They did help themselves, Furian,” Mia replied. “We helped each other.”

  “And why?”

  “Because they’re my friends. And they didn’t deserve to die.”

  “But die they will,” he spat. “Like the traitors they are. When I am named victor, the first thing I will do is tell the editorii of your ploy. And all your lies will be for naught.”

  He stooped and picked up a bloody sword from the carnage about them.

  “You can’t wash your hands clean with more blood, Furian,” Mia said.

  “I give myself to the Everseeing.”

  “Furian, can’t you feel it? Look at our shadows! Listen!”

  “I hear nothing,” he spat. “Save the witch I am about to kill.”

  “Don’t!”

  The Unfallen charged across the stone, bloody sword raised high. The roar of the crowd came crashing back down around her, a deafening tidal wave ringing in her skull. Time crawled, second by second, Furian’s mouth open in a roar, his blade raised high.

  She didn’t want to kill him.

  But she didn’t want to die.

  “ . . . mia . . . ?”

  “All must fall so one may stand!” came the cry.

  “ . . . MIA . . . !”

  All must fall so one may stand.

  And so she moved, gentlefriends. Moved like wind. Like silver. Like shadows. Slipping beneath the blow scything toward her throat, steel whistling past her skin. The dark beneath them clawed and tore at each other, ink black upon the bloody stone, hate and hunger and something close to sorrow. The shadowcat hissed and the shadowwolf growled and the girl, the Blade, the gladiatii struck, the tip of her sword catching the Unfallen in the neck as he rushed past.

  A spray of red. A breathless gasp. She felt pain, hand pressed to her throat as if she’d been dealt the blow herself. No bladders filled with chicken’s blood now. No ploy. No play. His blood as real as the sunslight on her skin.

  Furian looked to her, eyes wide with surprise. Clutching his throat, he turned to the sanguila’s box, looking toward his domina. Mia felt it all. Regret. Sorrow. Bidding Mister Kindly and Eclipse to reach out across the stone, and in his final breath, to take his fear away.

  And with a final gasp, the Unfallen fell.

  A hammerblow to Mia’s spine. A rush of blood in her veins, skin crawling, every nerve ending on fire. She fell to her knees, hair billowing about her as if in some phantom breeze, her shadow scrawled in maddened, jagged lines beneath her, Mister Kindly and Eclipse and a thousand other forms scribbled among the shapes it drew upon the stone. The hunger inside her sated, the longing gone, the emptiness suddenly, violently filled. A severing. An awakening. A communion, painted in red and black. And face upturned to the sky, for a moment, just for a breath, she saw it. Not an endless field of blinding blue, but of bottomless black. Black and whole and perfect.

  Filled with tiny stars.

  Hanging above her in the heavens, Mia saw a globe of pale light shining. Like a sun almost, but not red or blue or gold or burning with furious heat. The sphere was ghostly white, shedding a pale luminance and casting a long shadow at her feet.

  “THE MANY WERE ONE.”

  “Crow! Crow! Crow! Crow!”

  “AND WILL BE AGAIN.”

  A scream ripped up and out of her lungs, long and thin and keening. The sky crashed closed, the scorch of the suns bringing burning tears to her eyes. She was on her knees on the bloody stone, the arena ringing, the crowd on their feet, “Crow! Crow! Crow! Crow!” arkemical current dancing on her skin, sweeping her up on their wave of euphoria. Blood on her hands. Blood on her tongue.

  Furian dead on the stone before her.

  She hung her head. Gasping. Breath burning in her lungs. Full and empty all at once. Triumphant. All the miles, all the years, all the pain, and she’d done it.

  She’d won.

  But something . . .

  . . . something was different.

  And looking down, she saw her shadow, now still as a millpond, pooled on the bloodstained stone beneath her.

  Dark enough for four.

  1 An infamous clash in the earliest years of the Republic, and probably the largest sea battle ever fought under the three suns. The Battle of Seawall involved four massive fleets; the Itreyan Navy under command of the Great Unifier, Francisco I, and a tithed fleet from the vassal state of Vaan clashed with Dweymeri clan ships under command of Bara Sundancer of the Threedrake clan, and an armada of pirate lords who had sworn to resist Itreyan dominance of the seas.As you might have guessed, resistance lasted about as long as a bottle of top-shelf goldwine in a brothel full of pissheads.“0“

  35: gone

  Leona cried out with the rest, heart in her throat. Something between elation and agony, watching Furian topple and the Crow fall to her knees over his corpse, triumphant. She’d done it. She’d won. Victory for the Remus Collegium. All Leona’s dreams realized. All her sacrifice vindicated.

  But the dagger the Crow used during the magni was wrong.

  Which meant the execution bout . . .

  “Mi Dona, a glass?”

  Leona blinked, turned to a slave who’d materialized beside her. An old man with a silver tray, goblets, and a bottle of top-shelf go
ldwine. He was one of a dozen bondsmen now roaming the sanguila boxes, handing the blood masters fresh drinks as they stood and offered Leona grudging applause. The magni had been hard fought, but it had been glorious, and it was time for the men who profited most to honor the games and their victor with a traditional and well-earned drink.

  The old man’s circular brand looked fresh, a touch too dark on his cheek. His blue eyes twinkled like razors, and something about him put Leona distinctly ill at ease. She looked to the goblet he offered, shook her head.

  “No,” she murmured. “My thanks.”

  Leona turned her eyes back to the arena’s heart, saw the Crow standing amid the carnage. The girl held aloft her bloody gladius, and the audience erupted. Everyone was on their feet—from the ministers of Aa’s church to the commonfolk, all the way up to the consul’s box. Scaeva himself was standing, his boychild on his shoulders, cheering loud.

  Could none of them see?

  Were they all blind?

  “Mi Dona?” the old man asked again.

  “I said no,” Leona snapped. “I am not thirsty, begone!”

  “I’m not suggesting you drink, Dona,” he said, forcing a goblet into her hands.

  The dona snarled, ready to berate the old fool for his temerity. But then she caught sight of the vintage on his bottle. A label she recognized from her childhood, the memory burned into her mind’s eye. That bottle clutched in her father’s hand, splashed blood red as her mother screamed.

  “Albari,” she whispered. “The seventy-four.”

  “Fine drop, that one,” the old man replied.

  “Be off!” Magistrae snapped. “Before I have you beaten for your impertinence!”

  The old man turned to the magistrae, fixed her in his ice-blue stare. He pushed his laden tray into the woman’s arms as she blustered, and, reaching into his tunic, he pulled out an expensive clove cigarillo, propped it on his lips.