Nevernight (71 page)
“Another girl with a story to tell.”
Mia thumbed through the pages, creaking and cracked with age, studying the beautiful illustrations within. Human forms, with the shadows of different beasts at their feet. Wolves and birds. Vipers and spiders. Other things, monstrous and obscene. She frowned at the strange sigils, twisting and shifting before her eyes.
“I don’t know this script.”
“…
i doubt there are many in this world that can read it
…”
“But you can?”
Mister Kindly nodded.
“…
i do not know how. but the letters … speak to me
…”
Eclipse climbed to her feet, prowled up the mattress to sit beside Mia. Mister Kindly spat and the wolf growled in return, peering at the pages in Mia’s hands.
“…
I CAN READ IT ALSO
…”
“What’s it called?”
The not-cat dropped onto Mia’s shoulder, peered at the strange, shifting symbols.
“…
the hungry dark
…”
Mia ran her fingers down the pages. The shadows inked in black, the shifting, crawling text. This might be it. The answer to all her questions. Who she was.
What
she was. Or it might be simple nonsense. A book that died because it never should’ve been; just one more lifeless husk from Niah’s library of the dead.
“Will you two read it for me?”
“…
do you really wish to know
…?”
“How can you ask that? We need to understand what we are, Mister Kindly.”
“…
i like things the way they are now
…”
“…
I WILL READ FOR YOU
…”
“… BACK IN YOUR KENNEL, MONGREL…”
“… HAVE A CARE, LITTLE GRIMALKIN. ONLY REAL CATS HAVE NINE LIVES…”
“…
she was mine before she was yours
…”
“…
IF SHE IS ANYONE’S, SHE IS HER OWN
…”
Mia thumped her hand on the pages. Stared at the shadows around her.
“Read.”
The not-cat sighed. Settled on her shoulder and peered at the shifting text. The ink was blacker than black, blurring and swirling before her Mia’s eyes. She was overcome with a strange sense of vertigo if she stared at the writing too long, so instead she focused on the illustrations, beautiful and monstrous. She flipped through page after page, the not-cat’s tail switching side to side, the not-wolf utterly motionless.
“…
it is mostly nonsense. the babble of the broken
…”
“There must be something.”
“…
THE AUTHOR’S NAME WAS CLEO. SHE LIVED IN THE TIME BEFORE THE REPUBLIC. SHE SPEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. MARRIED TO A CRUEL MAN BEFORE SHE HAD YET BLOOMED. THE SHADOWS HER ONLY FRIENDS
…”
“…
when truedark fell the year she first bled, she choked her husband with the darkness when he came to take her. she fled, traveled through liis searching for … i think this word is ‘truth’
…?”
“…
TRUTH, YES
…”
“…
i did not ask you, mongrel
…”
Eclipse growled and Mia smiled, running her hand over the shadowwolf’s neck.
The next sections of the tome were mostly illustrative; shifting patterns of black, a female form with a multitude of different shadows. Entire pages covered in impenetrable black scrawl, like a truedark sky with the stars all picked out in patches of bare white.
“…
THIS IS UNCLEAR. SHE SPEAKS OF THE MOTHER’S LOVE. THE FATHER’S SINS. THE CHILD INSIDE HER
…”
“She was pregnant?”
“…
she was quite clearly mad
…”
“Did she find the truth she sought?”
Mister Kindly shifted to Mia’s other shoulder, peered closer at the page.
“…
she speaks of feeling others like her. drawn to them like spider to fly
…”
A picture of a woman, swathed in black. Shadows uncurling from her fingertips.
“…
she writes of hunger
…”
A black page, covered in hundreds of mouths, filled with sharp teeth.
“…
ENDLESS HUNGER
…”
Broad brush strokes, black and violent.
“…
o, dear
…”
“What?”
“…
she speaks of meeting others like her. those who spoke to the dark. meeting them and
…”
“… And?”
Eclipse growled softly in the back of her throat.
“…
EATING THEM
…”
“’Byss and blood…”
“…
the many were one
…,” Mister Kindly read. “… and will be again; one beneath the three, to raise the four, free the first, blind the second and the third. o, mother, blackest mother, what have i become…”
“Maw’s teeth.”
“…
indeed
…”
“Does any of this look or sound familiar to you, Eclipse? These drawings? This story? Did you or Cassius ever see anything like this?”
“…
WE NEVER LOOKED
…”
“Ever?”
“…
CASSIUS DID NOT QUESTION HIS NATURE. HE DID NOT CARE
WHAT
HE WAS, ONLY
THAT
HE WAS
…”
Mia sighed. Shook her head.
“What became of her? Cleo?”
“…
read on
…”
The shadows fell silent as Mia turned the page. There on the parchment was a map, outlining the known world. The countries of Itreya and Liis, Vaan and old Ashkah. Far out in the middle of the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, surrounded by the shifting forms of what could only be sand kraken, there was an X marked in red ink.
“…
she speaks of a journey
…”
“…
‘SEARCHING FOR THE CROWN OF THE MOON’
…”
Mia blinked. “The Moon?”
“…
that is what she says
…”
Mia chewed her lip. Turning the page, her breath caught in her throat.
“Look at that…”
The page was another map of the known world, drawn by the same hand. But on the west coast of Itreya, the bay that harbored the city of Godsgrave was gone. A landmass sat there instead; a peninsula jutting out into the Sea of Silence. And in the heart of the peninsula, where the great metropolis now stood, another X was marked, a shifting scrawl in red ink beside it.
“What does it say?”
Mister Kindly looked at the page.
“…
‘here he fell’
…”
“The Moon?”
“…
presumably
…”
Mia stared at the map.
The place where the City of Bridges and Bones should have been.
Godsgrave …
“Who or what is the Moon?” she asked.
But the shadows made no reply.
DICTA ULTIMA
I suppose now you think you know her.
The girl some called Pale Daughter. Or Kingmaker. Or Crow. The girl who was to murder as maestros are to music. Who did to happy ever afters what a sawblade does to skin.
Look now upon the ruins in her wake. As pale light glitters on the waters that drank a city of bridges and bones. As the ashes of the Republic dance in the dark above your head. Stare mute at the broken sky and taste the iron on your tongue and listen as lonely winds whisper her name as if they knew her too.
Do you think she would laugh or weep to see the world her hand has wrought?
Do you think she knew it would come to this?
Do you really know her at all?
Not yet, little mortal. Not yet by half.
But after all, this tale is only one of three.
Birth and life and death.
So take my hand now.
Close your eyes.
And walk with me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks as deep as the Dark to the following:
Amanda, Peter, Emma, Paul, Justin, Allison, Nancy, Kim, Young, Mike, Melissa, and all at Thomas Dunne/SMP, Emma, Kate, and all at Harper Voyager UK, Mia, Matt, Lindsay, Josh, Tracey, Samantha, Stefanie, Steven, Steve, Jason, Megasaurus, Kat, Stef, Wendy, Marc, Vilma, Molly, Tovo, Orrsome, Tsana, Lewis, Shaheen, Soraya, Amie, Jessie, Caitie, Louise, Marc, Tina, Maxim, Zara, Ben, Clare, Jim, Weez, Sam, Eli, Rafe, AmberLouise, Caro, Melanie, Barbara, Judith, Rose, Tracy, Aline, Louise, Anna, Adele, Jordi, Ineke, Kylie, Julius, Antony, Antonio, Emily, Robin, Drew, William, China, David, Aaron, Terry (RIP), Douglas (RIP), George, Margaret, Tracy, Ian, Steve, Gary, Mark, Tim, Matt, George, Ludovico, Philip, Randy, Oli, Corey, Maynard, Zack, Pete (RIP), Robb, Ian, Marcus, Trent, Winston, Tony, Kath, Kylie, Nicole, Kurt, Jack, Max, and Poppy.
The people and city of Rome.
The people and city of Venice.
And you.