Nevernight (14 page)

Presumably she stopped the gigglefits when the republicans turned their blades on her and her children.

CHAPTER 7

I
NTRODUCTIONS

Mia pushed open the door to Mercurio’s Curios, a tiny bell above the frame chiming her arrival. The store was dark and dusty, sprawling off in every direction. Shutters were drawn against the sunslight. Mia recalled the sign outside—“Oddities, Rarities & the Fynest Antiquities.” Looking at the shelves, she saw plenty of the former. The latter parts of the equation were up for debate.

Truth be told, the shop looked filled to bursting with junk. Mia could’ve sworn it was also bigger inside than out, though she put that down to her lack of mornmeal. As if to remind her of its neglect, her belly growled a sternly worded complaint.

Mia made her way through the flotsam and jetsam until she arrived at a counter. And there, behind a mahogany desk carved with a twisting spiral pattern that made her eyes hurt to look at, she found the greatest oddity inside Mercurio’s Curios—the proprietor himself.

His face was the kind that seemed born to scowl, set atop with a short shock of light gray hair. Blue eyes were narrowed behind wire-rimmed spectacles that had seen better turns. A statue of an elegant woman with a lion’s head crouched on the desk beside him, an arkemical globe held in its upturned palm. The old man was reading from a book as big as Mia. A cigarillo hung from his mouth, smelling faintly of cloves. It bobbed on his lips when he mumbled.

“Help ya w’somthn?”

“Good turn to you, sir. Almighty Aa bless and keep you—”

The old man tapped the small brass placard on the countertop—a repeat of the warning outside his door. “No time-wasters, rabble or religious sorts welcome.”

“Forgive me, sir. May the Four Daughters—”

The old man tapped the placard more insistently, shifting his scowl to Mia.

The girl fell silent. The old man turned back to his book.

“Help ya w’somthn?” he repeated.

The girl cleared her throat. “I wish to sell you a piece of jewelry, sir.”

“Just wishing about it won’t get it done, girl.”

Mia hovered uncertainly, chewing her lip. The old man began tapping the placard again until she finally got the message, unpinning her brooch and placing it on the wood. The little crow stared back at her with its red amber eyes, as if wounded at the thought she might hock it to such a grumpy old bastard. She shrugged apology.

“Where’d y’steal that?” the old man mumbled.

“I did not steal it, sir.”

Mercurio pulled the cigarillo from his lips, turned his full attention to Mia.

“That’s the sigil of the Familia Corvere.”

“Well spotted, sir.”

“Darius Corvere died a traitor’s death yesterturn by order of the Itreyan Senate. And rumor has it his entire household have been locked in the Philosopher’s Stone.”
1

The little girl had no kerchief, so she wiped her nose on her sleeve and said nothing.

“How old are you, sprat?”

“… Ten, sir.”

“You got a name?”

Mia blinked. Who did this old man think he was? She was Mia Corvere, daughter of the justicus of the Luminatii Legion. Marrowborn of a noble familia, one the great twelve houses of the Republic. She’d not be interrogated by a mere
shopkeep
. Especially when offering a prize worth more than the rest of the junk in this squalid hole put together.

“My name is none of your business, sir.” Mia folded her arms and tried her best to impersonate her mother when dealing with an unruly servant.

“Noneofyourbusiness?” One gray eyebrow rose. “Strange name for a girl, innit?”

“Do you want the brooch or no?”

The old man put his cigarillo back on his lips and turned back to his book.

“No,” he said.

Mia blinked. “It is finest Itreyan silver. Th—”

“Fuck off,” the man said, without looking up. “And take your trouble with you when you off with the fuck, Miss Noneofyourbusiness.”

Mia’s cheeks burned pink with fury. She snatched the brooch up and pinned it back to her dress, tossed her hair over one shoulder and spun on her heel.

“Word of advice,” said the old man, still not looking up. “Corvere and his cronies got off light with that hanging. Their commonborn troops have been crucified along the banks of the Choir. Rumor is they’re going to pave the Senate House streets with their skulls. A lot of those soldiers had familia ’round here. So, I’d not walk about with a traitor’s mark pinned to my tits were I you.”

The words struck Mia like a rock in the back of her head. She turned back to the old man, teeth bared in a snarl.

“My father was no traitor,” she spat.

As she stormed out the door, her shadow unfurled along the pavement and slammed it behind her. The girl was so angry she didn’t even notice.

Back out in the marketplace, she stood on the stoop, fury curling her hands into fists. How
dare
he talk about her father like that? She was of half a mind to stomp back inside and demand apology, but her stomach was growling and she needed coin.

She was stepping down into the crush looking for a jewelry stall, when a boy a little older than her came careening out of the throng. His arms were laden with a basket of pastries, and before Mia could step aside, with a curse and a small explosion of powdered sugar, the boy plowed straight into her.

Mia cried out as she was sent sprawling, her dress powdered white. The boy was likewise knocked onto his backside, pastries strewn in the filth.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” Mia demanded.

“O, Daughters, a thousand pardons, miss. Please forgive me…”

The boy climbed to his feet, offered a hand and helped Mia up. He brushed the white powder off her dress as best he could, mumbling apologies all the while. Then, leaning down to the fallen pastries, he stuffed them back into his basket. With an apologetic smile, he plucked one of the less dirty tarts off the pile and offered it to Mia with a bow.

“Please accept this by way of apology, Mi Dona.”

Mia’s anger slowed to a simmer as her belly growled, and, with a pout, she took the pastry from the boy’s grubby hand.

“Thank you, Mi Don.”

“I’d best be off. The good father gets in a frightful mood if I’m late to almsgiving.” He smiled again at Mia, doffed an imaginary hat. “Apologies again, miss.”

Mia gave a curtsey, and scowled a little less. “Aa bless and keep you.”

The boy hurried off into the crowd. Mia watched him go, anger slowly dissipating. She looked at the sweet tart in her hand, and smiled at her fortune. Free mornmeal!

She found an alley away from the press, lifted the tart and took a big bite. Her smile curdled at the edges, eyes growing wide. With a curse, she spat her mouthful into the muck, throwing the rest of the tart with it. The pastry was hard as wood, the filling utterly rancid. She grimaced, wiping her lips on her sleeve.

“Four Daughters,” she spat. “Why would—”

Mia blinked. Looked down at her dress, still faintly powdered with sugar. Remembering the boy’s hands patting her down, cursing herself a fool and realizing, at last, what his game had been.

Her brooch was missing.

The ironsong
did
eventually scare off the krakens.

Or so Tric insisted, at any rate. He’d spent four hours beating the xylophone as if it owed him coin, and Mia supposed he needed some kind of vindication. As the pursuers dropped off one by one, Mister Kindly suggested the ground was growing harder as the caravan galloped closer to the mountains. Mia was reasonably certain the beasts simply grew bored and pissed off to eat someone easier. Naev ventured no opinion at all, instead lying in a pool of coagulating blood and doing her best not to die.

Truthfully, Mia wasn’t certain she’d pull it off.

Tric took the reins at her insistence. In the merciful quiet after the boy abandoned his percussionist duties, Mia knelt beside the unconscious woman and wondered where to begin.

Naev’s guts had been minced by kraken hooks, and the reek of bowel and vomit hung in the air—Four Daughters only knew how Tric was handling it with that knife-keen nose of his. Knowing the smell of shit and death well enough, Mia simply tried to make the woman comfortable. There was nothing she could really do; sepsis would finish the job if blood loss didn’t. Knowing the end awaiting Naev, Mia realized it’d be a mercy to end her.

Peeling the cloth back from Naev’s ravaged belly, Mia looked for something to bind the wounds with, settling at last on the fabric about the woman’s face. And as she peeled the veil from Naev’s head, she felt Mister Kindly swell and sigh, drinking the surge of sickening terror that would’ve otherwise made her scream.

Even still, it was a close thing.

“’Byss and blood…,” she breathed.

“What?” Tric glanced over his shoulder, almost falling off the driver’s seat. “Black Mother of Night … her face…”

Daughters, such a face
…

To call her disfigured would be to call a knife to the heart “mildly inconvenient.” Naev’s flesh was stretched and twisted into a knot in the place her nose might have been. Her bottom lip sagged like a beaten stepchild, top lip snarled back from her teeth. Five deep runnels were carved into her flesh—as if her face were clay, and someone had grabbed a fistful and
squeezed
. And yet the hideousness was framed by beautiful curls of strawberry blond.

“What could have done that?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Love,” the woman whispered, spit dribbling over mangled lips. “Only love.”

“Naev…,” Mia began. “Your wounds…”

“Bad.”

“It’s a far cry from good.”

“Get Naev to the Church. She has much to do before she meets her Blessed Lady.”

“We’re two turns from the mountains,” Tric said. “Maybe more. Even if we get there, you’re in no condition to climb.”

The woman slurped, coughed bloody. Reaching to her neck, she snapped a leather cord, drew out a silver phial. She tried sitting up, groaned in agony. Mia pushed her back down.

“You mustn’t—”

“Get off her!” Naev snarled. “Help her up. Drag her.” She waved to the back of the wagon. “Out of this blood, where the wood is clean.”

Mia had no idea what the woman was about, but she obeyed, hauling Naev through the congealing puddle to the wagon’s rear. And there the woman pulled out the phial’s stopper with her teeth and upended the contents onto the unfinished boards.

More blood.

Bright red, as if from a fresh-cut wound. Mia frowned as Mister Kindly coiled up on her shoulder, peering through her curtain of hair. And as Naev dragged her fingers through the puddle, the cat who was shadows did his best to purr, sending a shiver down Mia’s spine.

“…
interesting
…”

Naev was writing, Mia realized. As if the puddle were a tablet and her finger the brush. The letters were Ashkahi—she recognized them from her studies, but the ritual itself …

“That’s blood sorcery,” she breathed.

But that was impossible. The magik of the Ashkahi had been extinguished when the empire fell. Nobody had seen real blood werking in …

“How do you know how to do that? Those arts have been dead for a hundred years.”

“Not all the dead truly die,” Naev rasped. “The Mother keeps … only what she needs.”

The woman rolled onto her back, clutching her butchered belly.

“Ride for the mountains … the simplest of them all.” Mia swore she could see tears in the woman’s eyes. “Do not end her, girl. Set mercy aside. If the Blessed Lady … takes her, so be it. But do not help Naev on her way. Does she hear?”

“… I hear you.”

Naev clutched her hand. Squeezed. And then she slipped back into darkness.

Mia bound the wounds as best she could, wrist deep in gore, fetching her cloak from Bastard’s saddlebag (he tried to bite her) and rolling it beneath Naev’s head. Joining Tric on the driver’s seat, she peered at the mountains ahead. A range of great black spurs stretched north and south, a few high enough to be tipped with snow. One looked almost like a scowling face, just as Naev described. Another long range might’ve been the broken wall she mentioned. And nestled beside a spur resembling a sad old man, Mia saw a peak that fit the bill.

It was entirely average, as far as mighty spires of prehistoric granite went. Not quite high enough to be frost-clad, not really conjuring any comparisons to faces or figures. Just a regular lump of ancient rock out here in this blood-red desert. The kind you wouldn’t look twice at.

“There,” Tric said, pointing to the spur.

“Aye.”

“You think they’d have picked something a touch more dramatic.”

“I think that’s the point. Anyone looking for a nest of assassins isn’t likely to start at the most boring mountain in all creation.”

Tric nodded. Gifted her a smile. “Wisdom, Pale Daughter.”

“Fear not, Don Tric.” She smiled back. “I won’t let it go to my head.”

They rode another two turns, with Tric in the driver’s seat and Mia by Naev’s side. She wet a cloth, moistened those malformed lips, wondering who or what could have mutilated the woman’s face like that. Naev talked as if in a fever, speaking to some phantom, asking it to wait. She reached out to thin air once, as if to caress it. And as she did so, those lips twisted into a hideous parody of a smile. Mister Kindly sat beside her the entire time.

Purring.

Flowers and Bastard were both exhausted, and Mia feared either might go lame at any moment. It seemed cruel (even to Bastard) to make them run beside the wagon needlessly. Tric and Mia had passed the point of no return; they’d either make the Red Church or die now. She’d seen wild horses roaming the broken foothills, supposed there must be water someplace near. And so, reluctantly, she suggested they let the pair go.