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.”12
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.
“Would it kill you,” he’d roared, “to serve [stab] some fucking [stab] salad?”
11. O, look, there is good in her! Cue the swelling violiiiiiiins.
12. O, very well. A primer, if you’ll indulge me.
In all religions, there must be an adversary. An evil for the good. A black for the white. For folk of the Republic, this role is filled by Niah, Goddess of Night, Our Lady of Blessed Murder, sisterwife to Aa, also (as you’ve no doubt surmised) referred to as the Maw.
In the beginning, Niah and Aa’s marriage was a happy one. They made love at dawn and dusk, then retired to their respective domains, sharing rule of the sky equally. Fearing a rival, Aa commanded Niah bear him no sons, and dutifully, the Night bore the Light four daughters—Tsana, the Lady of Fire, Keph, the Lady of Earth, and finally the twins Trelene and Nalipse, the Ladies of Oceans and Storms, respectively. However, Niah missed her husband in the long, cold hours of darkness, and to alleviate her loneliness, she chose to bring a boychild into the world. The Night named her son Anais.
Aa, however, was outraged at his wife’s disobedience. As punishment, Niah was banished from the sky. Feeling betrayed by her husband, Niah vowed vengeance against Aa, and has not spoken to him since. Aa himself is still sulking about the whole affair.
And what became of Anais, you might ask? The rival Aa so rightly feared?
That, gentlefriend, would be spoiling things.
CHAPTER 4
KINDNESS
Captain Puddles had loved his Mia.
He’d known her since he was a kitten, after all. Before he’d forgotten the warm press of his siblings around him, she’d cradled him in her arms and kissed him on his little pink nose and he’d known she’d always be the center of his world.
And so when Justicus Remus had stooped to seize the girl’s wrist at his consul’s command, Captain Puddles spat a yellow-tooth hiss, reached out with a paw full of claws, and tore the justicus’s face from eyehole to lip. Roaring, the big man seized the brave captain’s head with one hand, his shoulders with the other, and with an almost practiced ease, he twisted.
The sound was like wet sticks snapping, too loud to be drowned by Mia’s scream. And at the end of those dreadful damp pops, a black shape hung limp in the justicus’s hand; a warm, soft, purring shape Mia had fallen asleep beside every nevernight, now purring no more.
She lost herself then. Howling, clawing, scratching. Dimly aware of being seized by another Luminatii and slung over his shoulder. The justicus clutched his bleeding face and drew his sword, fire uncurling down its length, the steel glowing with painful, blinding light.
“Not here, Remus,” Scaeva said. “Your hands must be clean.”
The justicus bellowed at his men, and her mother had screamed and kicked. Mia called for her, but a sharp blow struck her head, and it was all she could do to not fall into the black beneath her feet as the Dona Corvere’s cries faded into nothing.
Servants’ stairs, spiraling down. A passageway through the Spine—not the wondrous halls of polished white gravebone and crystal chandeliers and marrowborn1 in all their finery. A dim and claustrophobic little tunnel, leading out into the grounds beyond. Mia had squinted up—the Ribs arching into stormwashed skies, the great council buildings and libraries and observatories—before the men threw her into an empty barrel, slammed the lid, and tossed it into a horsedrawn cart.
She felt the cart whipped into motion, the trundle of wheels across cobbles. Men rode in the tray beside her, but she couldn’t make out their words, stricken by the memory of Captain Puddles lying twisted on the floor, her mother in chains. She understood none of it. The barrel rasped against her skin, splinters plucking at her dress. She felt them cross bridge after bridge, the haze of semiconsciousness thin enough now for her to start crying, hiccupping and heaving. A fist slammed hard against the barrel’s flank.