Out into the dark of the athenaeum.
The Luminatii burst into the room, the doors swinging open and slamming into the small wooden trolley marked
RETURNS
that had been placed—rather carelessly, it might have appeared—directly in the door’s path.
The trolley upended, smashed to the stone, dozens of tomes sent sprawling, skittering, skidding. A red-faced Alberius stormed into the room and booted the trolley aside, more books sailing across the mezzanine as his soldiers fanned out around him. He scanned the dark, a black scowl on his brow.
And somewhere out in the forest of pages and shelves,
came a rumbling,
chuddering
roar.
“… What in the Everseeing’s name was that?” one soldier asked.
“Fan out!” the centurion ordered. “Find that heretic bitch and gut her!”
Twenty-nine salutes thumped against twenty-nine chests. The Luminatii marched down the stairs and into the shelves, weapons raised. Splitting wordlessly into small columns of six men apiece, they spread out, scouring aisle after aisle. Alberius led a group of his finest, narrowed eyes searching every nook and corner. Six years he must have lived with the lie. Sleepless nevernights spent worrying if the morrow would be the turn Scaeva discovered Corvere’s daughter still lived. And now was his chance to not only avenge the loss of his eye, but put to rest any fear of his failure coming to light.
I wonder if he thought himself lucky for it.
Out in the black, another roar sounded.
Closer now.
“Centurion?” one of his men asked. “What
is
that?”
Alberius paused, scanning the dark. He raised his voice, called over the shelves.
“Graccus? Belcino? Report!”
“No sign, sir!”
“Nothing, sir!”
Another roar. The sound of something heavy approaching.
Closer.
The good centurion looked troubled now. Second thoughts perhaps overcoming his initial fervor. And just as he opened his mouth to speak, he heard soft footsteps, a rippling breeze, a roar of pain. He turned, saw one of his legionaries clutching a stab wound in his back, a small, dark-haired girl staring at him from a mask of drying blood.
“Good turn, centurion,” she said.
“She’s here!” Alberius roared.
The girl smiled, gently tossing something at his chest. “A gift for you.”
The centurion raised his shield, smashed the object from the air. He realized it was some old book; leather-bound and dusty, the binding popping and a dozen pages bursting loose. It skidded across the floor, shedding more of its guts as it went.
“…
unwise
…,” came a whisper.
“Kill that fucki—”
Something reared up over the top of the shelves. Something huge, many-headed and monstrous, all blunt snouts and leathery skin and jaws full of O, too many teeth. The Luminatii cried out—to their credit, not in alarm, but warning—raising their little shields and toothpicks and roaring to the fellows in the other aisles. And then the Something struck, engulfing Centurion Alberius with those O, so many teeth and shaking him like a dog with a particularly sad and bloody little bone.
Soldiers came running. Soldiers ran screaming. More Somethings reared up over the shelves, huge and sightless, snapping and roaring and ripping the little men to pieces, all the while disturbing not a single page on a single shelf.
Back up on the mezzanine, Mia stepped from the shadows of the balustrade. Stood beside an old man, his back bent like a questionmark, leaning against the railing and watching the show.
“A girl with a story to tell,” Aelius smiled.
“So they say.”
“Smoke?”
“Maybe later.”
And she was gone.
CHAPTER 34
P
URSUIT
She stole into the Hall of Truths, found it empty, faint light glittering on walls of green glass. But after carefully picking the lock and rummaging through Spiderkiller’s desk, she found them—the three bags of wyrdglass. Most of the onyx orbs had been used up, but the pouches containing the pearl and ruby wyrdglass were almost full. Two bags full of Swoon and Spiderkiller’s arkemical fire.
It’ll do.
Next, she headed to the Hall of Songs, stopping to softly murder two more Luminatii she found stationed in the Hall of Eulogies. She flitted past the unmarked tombs, trying not to picture Tric lying inside one. Turning the sorrow in her breast to rage. Halfway up the stairs, she found the bodies of murdered Hands, beaten and bludgeoned. Near the top, she found another dozen corpses, Marcellus and Petrus among them, eyes open wide and seeing nothing at all.
No time to pray.
No time to care.
She dashed into Solis’s hall, threw a heavy leather training jerkin over her blood-soaked shirt. Rummaging through the racks and stuffing her boots with daggers, strapping a fine, sharp gladius at her belt, slinging a bandolier of throwing knives about her chest and a quiver and crossbow at her back.
“Maw’s teeth…”
She spun at the whisper, crossbow raised, the shadows about her flaring. There at the top of the stairs, she saw figures robed in black, a bare half-dozen in total. Among them, she glimpsed red, bobbed hair, a pretty face, green, hunter’s eyes.
“… Jessamine?”
“Corvere,” the girl hissed. “What in the Mother’s name are you doing here?”
A veiled figure pushed her way through the group, a smile in her eyes.
“Naev is pleased to see her,” she said.
“Goddess, you’re all right!”
Mia ran across the room and threw her arms around the woman. But Naev flinched in Mia’s embrace, pushed away with a groan. Looking around, Mia could see most of the group were injured; Jessamine bleeding badly from a gash above her eye, her arm in a rough sling, a few others nursing broken wrists or ribs. Naev was breathing heavily now, clutching her side.
“What happened? Are you well?”
“Bastards came at us like a flood.” Jessamine winced, pawing the blood from her eyes. “No warning. Murdered every Hand and acolyte they could find. How the ’byss did they get inside? Where are the Ministry?”
“Likely in chains by now,” Mia said. “Ashlinn and Osrik betrayed us. Poisoned the initiation feast. Killed Tr—”
Mia bit down on the words. Shook her head.
“Ashlinn?” Jessamine breathed. “Osrik? But they’re blooded disciples.”
“Vengeance for their father.” Mia shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Justicus Remus is here with two centuries of men. They’ve captured Lord Cassius and the Ministry. They mean to take them back to the ’Grave for torture and execution.”
“Then they are fools, to challenge Niah’s disciples in her house.” Naev turned to the other Hands. “Gather arms. Blades and bows.”
“You want me to fight alongside her?” Jessamine glared at Mia. “After she killed Diamo? Not bloody likely.”
“We must stand together in this.”
“I don’t have to stand anywhere near this bitch.”
“We don’t have time for our bullshit, Jess,” Mia said. “This is
Justicus Marcus Remus
we’re talking about. He helped end the Kingmaker Rebellion. He’s probably trodden on your father’s skull every turn for six years walking into the Senate House. All the shit you’ve given me? All the hate?
This
is a man who actually deserves to taste it.”
The girl searched Mia’s eyes, Diamo’s memory plain in her own. Seconds they didn’t have trickling through the hourglass. Hatred for Mia warring with hatred for the ones who’d seen her familia destroyed. But the truth of it was, she and Jess really were cut from the same cloth. Both orphans of the Kingmaker Rebellion. Both robbed of their familia. Held together by the kind of bond only hate can forge.
In the end, there was only one real choice.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Adonai is gone.” Mia saw Naev stiffen at the words, put a reassuring hand on her friend’s arm. “He’s taken Marielle. They’re safe. But without access to the Blood Walk, Remus is cut off. He only has one way back to Godsgrave.”
“The Whisperwastes,” Naev said.
Mia nodded. “They’ll know by now that the Blood Walk isn’t an option. But Ashlinn is with them. She can take them to the stables. They’ll be headed there, looking to ride our camel trains back to Last Hope.”
“So we hit them in the stables,” Jessamine said. “Cut them off.”
“Crowded quarters,” Naev agreed. “Their numbers will count for less.”
“You’re wounded,” Mia said. “All of you. It’s going to be a slaughterhouse in there and I don’t want—”
“Remind me again when I started giving a fuck what you want, Corvere?” Jessamine snapped. “You might believe you’re the Mother’s gift to the world, but you’re not half the blademaster you think you are. If you want a chance of ending these bastards, you’re going to need our help.”
Mia looked to Naev, met by cold hard eyes.
“She speaks truth.”
“All right,” Mia sighed. “You’re right.”
The Hands armed themselves to the teeth, covered their robes with leather jerkins, hefting crossbows and swords and knives. Mia distributed the wyrdglass among them, keeping a fat handful of ruby and pearl for herself. She’d no idea how they’d pull this off. No idea if any of them would live to see the morrow.
No time.
No chance.
No fear.
She looked at the disciples around her. Nodded once.
“Let’s go.”
It seemed Justicus Remus wasn’t the kind to be fooled twice.
He’d left his back exposed as he assaulted the Mountain, and his overconfidence had been repaid with the slaughter of his rearguard and the loss of the speaker. With his planned escape route cut off, the justicus had headed to the stables, just as Mia predicted. But to his credit, it also looked like he’d learned from past mistakes.
Sadly, the justicus hadn’t counted on Mister Kindly.
The not-cat stalked down the stairs ahead of Mia and her fellows, slipping out into the Hall of Eulogies and immediately sensing the tremor of fear in the air. He’d marked hidden figures, lying in wait in alcoves or skulking in antechambers. Whispered prayers to the Everseeing on their lips.
He’d flitted back up the stairs, coalescing on Mia’s shoulder and whispering in her ear.
“There are legionaries in the Hall of Eulogies,” Mia repeated. “Almost forty.”
“Forty,” Naev whispered, looking at their pitiful half-dozen.
Mia fished a handful of white wyrdglass from the pouch at her belt and smiled.
“I think I can even the score. As soon as you hear the ruckus, come running.”
The girl wrapped herself in her cloak of shadows, heard Jessamine and the other Hands gasp as she faded from sight. The world dropped to near blackness beneath her veil, and she had to feel her way down the stairs. But soon enough, she sensed an archway, the vast, sweeping space of the hall beyond. The dead names on the floor. The nameless tombs in the walls. She could see the vague silhouette of Niah’s statue above, picked out against the blurry, stained-glass light.
Creeping slow, near-blind, she crouched behind a nearby pillar. Throwing off her cloak long enough to get a decent view of her surroundings, she stepped into the shadows at her feet and reappeared forty feet off the ground, nestled in the deep shadows of Niah’s folded hood.
One of the Luminatii saw movement above, yelled warning. But by then, Mia was raining wyrdglass down from her perch, thick clouds of Swoon bursting around the room. At least a dozen men dropped after inhaling a lungful, others running from their nooks and crannies to seek better shelter.
As the Luminatii broke cover, Naev, Jessamine and the other Hands charged into the room, black and swift and deadly silent. The soldiers didn’t even know they were facing more than one assailant until five more of their number were dead. The disciples fell on the invaders with a fury that staggered them, Jessamine’s blades a blur, Naev fighting like a daemon despite her broken ribs. Perhaps it was rage at the invasion of their home. Perhaps it was the presence of the goddess, sword and scales poised above them, cold stone eyes following the butchery. But within moments, the Luminatii ambush had turned into a slaughter, and the black ran red with the blood of Aa’s faithful.
Mia stood upon her perch, crossbow in hand, picking off runners and cutting down anyone who thought to strike at a disciple’s back. Ten quarrels later, she drew her blades and stepped out of the statue’s shadow forty feet below, burying a dagger in some poor fool’s back, cutting down another with a fistful of throwing knives. Fighting back to back with Naev, throwing up a wall of bloody steel, the song of their blades filling the empty space left behind by the Mother’s choir, the cries of the slaughtered echoing in the dark after the last man had fallen.
Naev staggered, clutching her ribs and gasping. Jessamine was bloodied and breathless. Two other Hands—a boy named Pietro, not much older than Mia, and an older man named Neraius—had fallen under the Luminatii’s blows.
“…
mia
…”
The girl stood over Pietro’s body, head hung low.
Staring into his sightless eyes.
“…
mia they are at the stables
…”
She hung there in the quiet gloom. Trying not to remember.
Trying and failing.
“He was just a boy, Mister Kindly.”
She shook her head.
“Just a boy.”
“…
now is not the time to mourn, mia. this boy or any other
…”
The girl looked at him then, grief shining in her eyes.
“…
avenge them instead
…”
Mia nodded slow.
Wiped the blood from her blades.
And she ran on.
The stables were a milling sea of men, animals, dust. The stink of sweat and blood and shit, the barks of centurions, the warbling murmurs of agitated camels and, above them all, Justicus Remus. Roaring.
Mia had only ever hidden one other person beneath her cloak, but Tric had been a giant, and Naev and Jessamine were each half his size. So, leaving the other wounded Hands behind, the trio had stolen down the stairs and out into the stables. Looking through the scrum, Jessamine sighed.
“’Byss and blood, we’re too late.”