“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.7
“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.8 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,9 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.10 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.11 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.