Nevernight (6 page)

The Imperial’s proprietor seemed a harmless fellow—almost out of place in this town on the edge of the abyss. His eyes were a little too close together, and he reeked of rotten fish, but considering the stories Mia had heard about the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, she was just glad the fellow didn’t have tentacles. He was propped behind the bar in a grubby apron (bloodstains?) cleaning a dirty mug with a dirtier rag. Mia noticed one of his eyes moved slightly before the other, like a child leading a slow cousin by the hand.

“Good turning to you, sir,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Aa bless and keep you.”

“Come in wiv Wolfeater’s mob, didjer?”

“Well spotted, sir.”

“Pay’s four beggars weekly, but yer get board onna top.
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Twenty percent of anyfing you make turning trick onna side comes to me direct. And I’ll need a sample a’fore yer hired. Fair?”

Mia’s smile dragged the proprietor’s behind the bar and quietly strangled it.

It made very little sound as it died.

“I’m afraid you misunderstand, sir,” she said. “I am not here to apply for employ within your”—a glance about her—“no doubt fine establishment.”

A sniff. “Whya ’ere then?”

She placed the sheepskin purse atop the bar. The treasure within clinked with a tune nothing like gold. If you were in the business of dentistry, you might have recognized that the tiny orchestra inside the bag was comprised entirely of human teeth.

It took her a moment to speak. To find the words she’d practiced until she dreamed them.

“My tithe for the Maw.”

The man looked at her, expression unreadable. Mia tried to keep the tremors from her breath, her hands. Six years it had taken her to come this far. Six years of rooftops and alleys and sleepless nevernights. Of dusty tomes and bleeding fingers and noxious gloom. But at last, she stood on the threshold, a small nod away from the vaunted halls of the Red—

“What’s me maw got tado wivvit?” the proprietor blinked.

Mia kept her face as stone, despite the dreadful flips her insides were undertaking. She glanced around the room. The tomb-raiders were bent over their map. A handful of local wags were playing “spank” with a pack of moldy cards. A woman in desert-colored robes and a veil was drawing spiral patterns on a tabletop with what looked like blood.

“The Maw,” Mia repeated. “This is my tithe.”

“Maw’s dead,” the barman frowned.

“… What?”

“Been dead nigh on four truedarks now.”

“The Maw,” she scowled. “Dead. Are you mad?”

“You’re the one bringing my old dead mum presents, lass.”

Realization tapped her on the shoulder, danced a funny little jig.

Ta-da
.

“I’m not talking about your
mother
you fucki—”

Mia caught her temper by the collar, gave it a good hard shake. Clearing her throat, she brushed her crooked fringe from her eyes.

“I do not refer to your mother, sir. I mean the
Maw
. Niah. The Goddess of Night. Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Sisterwife to Aa, and mother to the hungry dark within us all.”

“O, you mean the
Maw
.”

“Yes.” The word was a rock, hurled right between the barman’s eyes. “The
Maw
.”

“Sorry,” the man said, sheepishly. “It’s just the accent, y’know.”

Mia glared.

The barman cleared his throat. “There’s no church to the Maw ’round ’ere, lass. Worship of ’er kind’s outlawed, even onna fringe. Got no business wiv Muvvers of Night and someandsuch in this particular place of business. Bad for the grub.”

“You are Fat Daniio, proprietor of the Old Imperial?”

“I’m not fat—”

Mia slapped the bartop. Several of the spank players turned to stare.

“But your name is Daniio?” she hissed.

A pause. Brow creased in thought. The gaze of Daniio’s slow cousin eye seemed to be wandering off, as if distracted by pretty flowers, or perhaps a rainbow.
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“Aye,” Daniio finally said.

“I was told—specifically
told
, mind you—to come to the Old Imperial on the coast of Ashkah and give Fat Daniio my tithe.” Mia pushed the purse across the counter. “So take it.”

“What’s in it?”

“Trophy of a killer, killed in kind.”

“Eh?”

“The teeth of Augustus Scipio, high executioner of the Itreyan Senate.”

“Is he comin’ ’ere to get them?”

Mia bit her lip. Closed her eyes.

“… No.”

“How the ’byss did he lose his—”

“He didn’t lose them,” Mia leaned further forward, smell be damned. “I tore them out of his skull after I cut his miserable throat.”

Fat Daniio fell silent. An
almost
thoughtful expression crossed his face. He leaned in close, wreathed in the stench of rotten fish, tears springing unbidden to Mia’s eyes.

“’Scuse me then, lass. But what am I sposed to do with some dead tosser’s teeth?”

The door creaked open, and the Wolfeater ducked below the frame, stepping into the Old Imperial as if he owned a part share in it.
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A dozen crewmen followed, cramming into dingy booths and leaning against the creaking bar. With an apologetic shrug, Fat Daniio set to serving the Dweymeri sailors. Mia caught his sleeve as he headed toward the booths.

“Do you have rooms here, sir?”

“Aye, we do. One beggar a week, mornmeal extra.”

Mia pushed an iron coin into Fat Daniio’s paw.

“Please let me know when that runs out.”

A week with no sign, no word, no whisper save the winds off the wastes.

The crew of
Trelene’s Beau
stayed aboard their ship while they resupplied, availing themselves of the town’s amenities frequently. A typical nevernight would commence with grub at the Old Imperial, a sally forth into the arms of Dona Amile and her “dancers” at the appropriately named Seven Flavors,
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before returning to the Imperial for a session of liquor, song, and the occasional friendly knife fight. Only one finger was removed during the entirety of their stay. Its owner took its loss with good humor.

Mia sat in a gloomy corner with the hangman’s teeth pouched up on the wood before her. Eyes on the door every time it creaked. Eating the occasional bowl of
astonishingly
hot (and she had to admit, delicious) bowls of Fat Daniio’s “widowmaker” chili, her frown growing darker as the turning of the
Beau
’s departure drew ever closer.

Could Mercurio have been wrong? It’d been years since he’d sent an apprentice to the Red Church. Maybe the place had been swallowed by the wastes? Maybe the Luminatii had finally laid them to rest, as Justicus Remus had vowed to do after the Truedark Massacre?

And perhaps this is all a test. To see if you’ll run like a frightened child …

She’d poke around the town at the turn of each nevernight, listening in doorways, almost invisible beneath her cloak of shadows. She came to know Last Hope’s residents all too well. The seer who augured for the town’s womenfolk, interpreting signs from a withered tome of Ashkahi script she couldn’t actually read. The slave boy from Seven Flavors, plotting to murder his madam and flee into the wastes.

The Luminatii legionaries stationed in the garrison tower were the most miserable soldiers Mia had ever come across. Two dozen men at civilization’s end, a few sunsteel blades between them and the horrors of the Ashkahi Whisperwastes. The winds blowing off the old empire’s ruins were said to drive men mad, but Mia was sure boredom would do for the legionaries long before the whisperwinds did. They spoke constantly of home, of women, of whatever sins they’d committed to be stationed in the Republic’s arse-end.
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After a week, Mia was sick of all of them. And not a single one spoke a word of the Red Church.

Seven turns after she’d arrived in Last Hope, Mia sat watching the
Beau
’s crew seal their holds, their calls rough with grog. Part of her wanted little more than to skulk aboard as they put out to the blue. Run back home to Mercurio. But truth was, she’d come too far to give up now. If the Church expected her to tuck tail at the first obstacle, they knew her not at all.

Sitting atop the Old Imperial’s roof, she watched the
Beau
sail from the bay, a clove cigarillo at her lips. The whisperwinds rolled off the wastes behind her, shapeless as dreams. She glanced at the cat who wasn’t a cat, sitting in the long shadow the suns cast for her. Its voice was the kiss of velvet on a baby’s skin.

“…
you fear
…”

“That should please you.”

“…
mercurio would not have sent you here needlessly
…”

“The Luminatii have been trying to take down the Church for years. The Truedark Massacre changed the game.”

“…
if ill befell them, there would still be traces
…”

“You suggest we go out into the Whisperwastes and look?”

“…
that, wait here, or return home
…”

“None of those options hold much appeal.”

“…
fat daniio’s job offer still stands, i am sure
…”

Her smile was thin and pale. She turned back to the sea, watching the sunslight glint and catch upon the gnashing waves. Dragging deep on her smoke and exhaling plumes of gray.

“…
mia
…?”

“Yes?”

“…
there is no need to be afraid
…”

“I’m not.”

A pause, filled with whispering wind.

“…
no need to lie, either
…”

Mia ended up stealing most of her supplies.

Waterskins, rations, and a tent from Last Hope General Supplies and Fine Undertakers. Blankets, whiskey, and candles from the Old Imperial. She’d already marked the finest stallion in the garrison stable for stealing, despite being as much at home in the saddle as a nun in a brothel.

She told herself the thievery would keep her sharp, and sneaking back into the robbed stores to deposit compensation on the countertops afterward struck her as good sport.
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Seated at the Imperial’s hearth, she enjoyed a final bowl of widowmaker chili and waited for the nevernight winds to begin, bringing blessed cool after a turn of red heat.

Mia glanced up as the front door creaked open, admitting curling fingers of dust.

The boy who entered looked Dweymeri—leviathan ink facial tattoos (of terrible quality), salt-kissed locks bound in matted knots. But his skin was olive rather than brown, and he was too short to be an islander; barely a head taller than Mia, truth told. Dressed in dark leathers, carrying a scimitar in a battered scabbard, smelling of horse and a long road. When he prowled into the room, he checked every corner with hazel eyes. As his stare roamed the alcoves, Mia pulled the shadows about herself, and faded like a watermark into the gloom.

The boy turned to Fat Daniio, polishing that same grubby cup with the same grubby cloth. Eyeing the man over, the boy spoke with a voice soft as velvet.

“Blessings to you, sir.”

“A’right,” Fat Daniio replied. “What’ll you ’ave?”

“I have this.”

The boy placed a small wooden box upon the counter. Mia’s eyes narrowed as it rattled. The boy looked around the room again, then spoke in a tight whisper.

“My tithe. For the Maw.”
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1. The tomcat was, as you probably suspect, named for his fondness for urinating outside designated areas—a name that had been tolerated by her mother, and met with uproarious approval by her dear-departed father.

2. Captain Puddles lurked under the bed, licking at dusty paws. The aforementioned
something
lingered yet beneath the curtains.

3. She’d learned to hear the music by now.

4. That dubious honor belonged to the Lonesome Rose, a pleasure house in the Godsgrave docklands frequented by syphilitic lunatics and newly released convicts, run by a Vaanian madam so disease-stricken she affectionately referred to her own nethers as “the Orphan Maker.”

5. The only man in Last Hope who knew how to play it—a local tomb raider nicknamed Blue Paulo—had been found strung up from the rafters in his room two summers previous. Whether his end was suicide or the protest of another resident particularly opposed to harpsichord music was a topic of much speculation and very little investigation in the weeks following his death/murder.

6. Coins in the Republic came in three flavors—the least valuable being copper, the middle child, iron, and the fanciest, gold. Gold coins were as rare as a likable tax collector, most plebs never laying eyes on one in their lives.

Itreyan coinage was originally referred to as “sovereigns,” but given the Itreyan’s penchant for brutally murdering their kings, the term had fallen out of vogue decades past. Coppers were now sometimes referred to as “beggars” and irons as “priests,” since those were the people usually found handling them with the most enthusiasm. There was no commonly accepted slang for gold coins—anyone rich enough to possess them likely wasn’t the sort who went in for nicknames. Or handled their own money.

So for argument’s sake, let’s call them golden tossers.

7. No rainbows were present in the room at this time.

8. He did not, although Fat Daniio
did
owe the captain a weighty debt, incurred during a drunken argument about the aerodynamics of pigs and the distance from the Old Imperial to the stable across the way. The debt, which would take the form of an extended session of … oral pleasure for the crew of
Trelene’s Beau
(which Daniio would apparently undertake while performing a handstand with his arse-end painted blue) had yet to be cashed in, but the threat of it hung heavy in the air whenever the
Beau
and its crew were in port.

9. Boy, Girl, Man, Woman, Pig, Horse, and, if sufficient notice and coin was given, Corpse.

10. Insubordination or drunken and disorderly behavior were the most common, although one legionary had been posted to Ashkah for murdering his cohort’s cook after being served corned beef for evemeal on no less than 342 consecutive nevernights.