“Shut up, you little shit, or I’ll give you something to wail about.”
They’re going to kill me, she thought.
A chill stole over her. Not at the thought of dying, mind you; in truth, no child thinks of herself as anything less than immortal. The chill was a physical sensation, spilling from the darkness inside the barrel, coiling around her feet, cold as ice water. She felt a presence—or closer, a lack of one. Like the feeling of empty at an embrace’s end. And she knew, sure and certain, that something was in that barrel with her.
Watching her.
Waiting.
“Hello?” she whispered.
A ripple in the black. A silent, ink-spot earthquake. And where there had been nothing a moment before, something gleamed at her feet, caught by the tiny chinks of sunslight spilling through the barrel’s lid. Something long and wicked-sharp as only gravebone can be, its hilt crafted to resemble a crow in flight. Last seen skittering beneath the curtains as Consul Scaeva slapped her mother’s hand away and spoke of pleading and promises.
Dona Corvere’s gravebone stiletto.
Mia reached toward it. For the briefest moment, she swore she could see lights at her feet, glittering like diamonds in an ocean of nothing. She felt an emptiness so vast she thought she was falling—down, down into some hungry dark. And then her fingers closed on the dagger’s hilt and she clutched it tight, so cold it almost burned.
She felt the something in the dark around her.
The copper-tang of blood.
The pulsing rush of rage.
The cart bounced along the road, her stomach curdling until at last they drew to a halt. She felt the barrel lifted, slung, crashing to the ground with a bang that made her almost bite her tongue clean through. She heard voices again, loud enough to ken the words.
“I’m sick to my guts on this, Alberius.”
“Orders are orders. Luminus Invicta, aye?” 2
“Sod off.”
“You want to trifle with Remus? With Scaeva? The saviors of the bloody Republic?”
“Saviors my arsehole. You ever wonder how they did it? Captured Corvere and Antonius right in the middle of an armed camp?”
“No, I bloody don’t. Help me with this.”
“I heard it was magiks. Black arkemy. Scaeva’s in truck—”
“Get staunch, you bloody maid. Who cares how they did it? Corvere was a fucking traitor, and this is traitor’s get.”
The barrel lid was torn away. Mia squinted up at two men, dark cloaks thrown over white armor. The first was a man with arms like treetrunks and hands like dinnerplates. The second had pretty blue eyes and the smile of a fellow who choked puppies for sport.
“Maw’s teeth,” breathed the first. “She can’t be more than ten.”
“Never to see eleven.” A shrug. “Hold still, girl. This won’t hurt long.”
The puppy-choker clutched Mia’s throat, drew a long, sharp knife from his belt. And there in the reflection on that polished steel, the little girl saw her death. It would’ve been easy then, to close her eyes and wait. She was ten years old, after all. Alone and helpless and afraid. But here is truth, gentlefriends, no matter the number of suns in your sky. At the heart of it, two kinds of people live in this world or any other: those who flee and those who fight. Your kind has many terms for the latter sort. Berserker. Killer instinct. More balls than brains.
And it shouldn’t surprise you, knowing what little you know already, that in the face of this thug and his blade, and laden with memory of her father’s execution
never flinch
never fear
instead of wailing or breaking as another ten-year-old might have, young Mia gripped the stiletto she’d fished from the darkness, and slipped it straight up into the puppy-choker’s eye.
The man screamed and fell backward, blood gushing between his fingers. Mia rolled from the barrel, the sunslight impossibly bright after the darkness within. She felt the something come with her, coiled in her shadow, pushing at her heels. She saw they’d brought her to some mongrel bridge, a little canal choked with filth, boarded windows all around.
The dinnerplate man’s eyes grew wide as his friend went down screaming. He drew a sunsteel sword and stepped toward the girl, flame rippling down its edge. But movement at his feet drew his eyes to the stone, and looking down, he saw the girl’s shadow begin to move. Clawing and twisting as if alive, reaching out toward him like hungry hands.
“Light save me,” he breathed.
The blade wavered in the thug’s grip. Mia backed away across the bridge, bloody knife in one trembling fist, the something still pressing at her heels. And as the puppy-choker clawed back to his feet with his face painted blood, the little girl did what anyone would have done in her position—ratio of balls to brains be damned.
“… run . .!” said a tiny voice.
And run she did.
The Dweymeri boy underwent much the same exchange with Fat Daniio as Mia,3 although he suffered it with silent dignity.
The innkeeper informed him a girl had been asking the same questions, gestured to her booth—or at least, the booth she’d been sitting at. Mia had stolen up the stairwell by that point and was listening just out of sight, silent as an Itreyan Ironpriest.4
After muttering thanks, the Dweymeri boy asked if there were rooms available, paying coin from a malnourished purse. He was headed up the stairs when one of the local card players, a gent named Scupps, spoke.
“Yer one of Wolfeater’s mob?”
The boy replied with a deep, soft voice. “I know no Wolfeater.”
“He’s no crewman off the Beau.” Mia recognized this second voice as Scupp’s brother, Lem. “Look at the size of ’im. He’s barely tall enough to reach Wolfeater’s balls.”
Laughter.
“Mebbe that’s the point?”
More laughter.
The Dweymeri boy waited to ensure there was no more hilarity forthcoming, then continued up the stairs. Mia had slipped into her room, watching from the keyhole as the boy padded to his own door. His feet made barely a whisper, though Mia knew the boards squeaked like a family of murdered mice. The boy glanced over his shoulder toward her door, sniffed once, then slipped inside.
The girl sat in her room, considering whether to approach him or simply light out of Last Hope at turn’s end as she planned.5 He was obviously looking for the same thing she was, but he was likely a cold-blooded psychopath. She doubted many novices seeking the Red Church had motives as altruistic as her own.
As soon as the town bells rang in nevernight, she heard the boy head downstairs, soft as velvet. She felt her shadow stir and stretch, insubstantial claws digging at the floorboards.