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 twisted, 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.
“Exactly. So stop fuck-arsing about and get out of here.”
“And what shall ye do, little darkin? Destroy an army by thyself?”
“That’d be my problem, wouldn’t it?”
“…
our problem
…”
Adonai’s eyes never left Mia’s. His voice as cold and hard as stone.
“This cur threatened my sister love, my sister mine, little darkin. Were I thee and had need of his knowledge, on my life, I would ask my questions swift.”
Adonai gave a lazy wave of his hand. Osrik resurfaced from the blood pool again, coughing and blubbing, barely conscious.
“Osrik, can you hear me?”
“Mia, plea—”
“Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit,” she snarled. “You’ve got one chance to live and that’s by telling me what I want to know, understood?”
“I—” the boy sputtered, retching and coughing. “Aye.”
“You poisoned the initiation feast. Cassius, the Ministry and initiates?”
The boy nodded, bloody hair dripping in his eyes. “Aye.”
“None of them are dead?”
“N-no. We used a kind of Swoon. We had Carlotta brew a specialized dose that would act swifter than usual. Remus wanted the ministry alive for q-questioning.”
“What about Tric? He’d have smelled the Swoon in the meal a mile away. How did you stop him noticing?”
Osrik said nothing. Lips working silently.
“… Osrik?”
“Ashlinn, she…”
Mia knew it then. Heard it in his voice. Belly sinking into her toes. Remembering the way she’d felt in his arms. The way he’d kissed her.
She hadn’t loved him, but …
No.
She hadn’t loved him.
Mia opened her eyes. Looked up at Adonai. Breathed deep.
“That’s all I needed to know.”
“Mia, n—”
Osrik’s wail was swallowed up by the pool, the boy wrenched down to his doom.
“…
mia, we must move
…”
Mia nodded to the not-cat, took a moment to collect her thoughts.
“Adonai, you need to get out of here. Now.”
The speaker stared at her for a long moment, the only sound the faint splashing of his pool. But finally he reached to his neck, grasped a silver phial on a leather thong and snapped it loose. Mia recognized it—the same kind Naev had worn in the desert. The same kind that filled the alcoves in the Revered Mother’s rooms.
“My vitus,” Adonai said. “Shouldst thou triumph, spill it ’pon the floor, write as if the red were a tablet and thy finger the brush. I shall know it.”
Mia retied the phial about her neck, pawing coagulating gore from her lashes. She could feel it drying on her skin, cracking on her lips as she spoke.
“Go.”
Adonai gathered his sister in his arms, trod down the marble steps and into the churning flow. The blood seemed to cling to him as he walked, tiny tendrils rising off the surface and caressing him as he passed. He turned to Mia, nodded once.
“Good fortune to thee, little darkin. Thou shalt have a need of it.”
“When she wakes up, tell Marielle what happened here. Tell her she owes me.”
Adonai shook his head and smiled. “The dead are owed nothing.”
He spoke swiftly, humming discordant notes to the pool, like a father to a sleeping babe. The blood sang in reply, and in a rushing, iron-soaked flood, the pair disappeared beneath the swell. The surface fell still as a millpond. Not a ripple to mark their passing.
Mia wrung her hair out. Upended her boots to empty them of blood as best she could, stowed Osrik’s serrated blade at her shin. Mister Kindly watched the whole time, still and silent. But finally he whispered.
“…
i am sorry about tric
…”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”
“…
you felt what you felt, mia. there is no need to deny it
…”
“I’m not.”
A pause, filled with a quiet sigh.
“…
no need to lie, either
…”
The choir was silent.
It was the first thing she noticed as she stole from the speaker’s chambers, out into the Mountain’s dark. The ghostly tune that had accompanied her every moment within these halls was gone. Her footsteps seemed all the louder for it, breath rasping in her ears. It felt wrong. A splinter beneath her skin. A silence so loud it was deafening.
At the other end of the level, two Luminatii were stationed at the stairwells leading to higher ground. But their eyes were fixed above, of course, waiting for their justicus and his men to return. Mia stole toward them, quiet enough to make both Mercurio and Mouser beam with pride. She was less than a whisper as she rose up behind them. More than a blur as her gravebone blade sliced one man ear to ear, pierced the other’s heart as he turned to watch his comrade fall.
The soldier staggered, collapsing backward against the stairwell, hand to his chest. Eyes searching the darkness for what had killed him. And she threw aside her cloak then, just so he could see. See the pale waif soaked all in black and red, the mask of drying gore, the eyes beyond. See the shadow of a dead boy in her pupils as she reached out and covered his mouth, slicing his throat as she whispered.
“
Hear me, Niah. Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close
.”
The not-cat at her feet swelled and rippled, drinking deep of the soldier’s final terror. And all around her, she could feel it. The dark. Whispering. Urging her on.
It was pleased.
Mia opened her arms, willed the shadows to rise, wrap the bodies up and drag them off into the darkness. She almost wished she could stay and watch as their comrades returned, finding only bloodstains to mark their passing. Watch as the first seeds of fear took root, and these men realized just how far they were from home. That the dark around them was not only angry. It was hungry.
She dashed up the stairs, met two more soldiers at the top, gifting them an end the same as the ones below. They seemed so small here in the Mountain’s belly. Without their sunblades and white mail and their cloaks like crimson rivers. Just tiny little men, their faith in the Everseeing not quite enough to protect them from his bride. From the one she’d marked. The one she’d chosen, in this, her house. Her altar. Her temple.
Mia was almost at the Hall of Eulogies when they spotted her. Quietly ending two legionaries, she failed to notice two more descending from above. She heard roars of alarm, turning in time to see the Luminatii rushing toward her. She slipped low and sliced one from knee to privates, severing his femoral artery and bleeding him out on the floor. The second cracked her across the temple with his club, and she staggered, wrapping his feet up in darkness and slipping behind him, burying her blade half a dozen times into his back. But she heard more shouts now, more running feet.
Half a dozen Luminatii were charging down the stairwell toward her, among them Alberius, head of the century himself. She could throw on her cloak of shadows, perhaps slip past them unnoticed. But the thought of Ashlinn’s betrayal, of what she’d done to Tric, of these bastards invading the place she’d come to think of as home—all of it burned in her chest with an intensity that almost frightened her.
No more running. No more hiding.
“All right, bastards,” she whispered. “Follow me.”
The legionaries saw her, shouted warning. She drew her gravebone dagger. Osrik’s blade in her off-hand. The dried blood at her lips cracking as she snarled, the shadows about her writhing as she charged up the stairs to meet them. Alberius and the legionary beside him were both as broad as houses, cudgels and shields raised. The centurion squinted at her in the dark, at the blade in her hand that had claimed his eye. Recognition at last dawning on his paling face.
“You…,” he breathed.
The centurion touched three fingers to his brow and held them out to Mia.
“Luminus Invicta!” he roared.
Mia screamed wordlessly, heart singing as she raised her blades. The Luminatii roared answer, barreling down the stairs toward the blood-streaked daemon, raising their clubs, eyes growing wide as the girl stepped
into the shadow
at her feet
out of the shadows behind them
and kept right on running.
The Luminatii skidded to a halt, the rearmost soldier watching her disappear up the stair. Alberius bellowed and the chase was on, out along the broader hallways and into the Mountain proper. Mia saw four more Luminatii ahead, sprinting toward her. She picked up her pace, blades gleaming. And just as they reached her, cudgels raised, teeth bared, again she skipped
through the shadows
and out of the dark at their backs.
They turned, looked at her dumbfounded as she bent double, pausing to catch her breath. Alberius’s furious shouts ringing in the distance. And straightening, Mia raised the knuckles, blew them a kiss, and ran on.
There were thirty men chasing her by the time she arrived. More cries ringing through the Mountain, the sound of more approaching feet. Mia glanced over her shoulder and saw fury and murder in their eyes, skidding to a halt at a huge pair of double doors, slipping inside and sealing them behind her as she turned and ran.