Darkdawn

And so, she began to back away from him.

A single step. Then another. Farther and farther from the throat she’d sought for almost eight years. Their shadows were still entwined on the wall, strangling and seething, a knot of black rage. With effort, Mia dragged her shade back, Scaeva’s clinging on.

“Bring me my son, Mia,” he said, his voice soft and deadly.

She tore her shadow free, the dark about her shivering.

“I’ll consider it,” she said. “Father.”

A rippling in the darkness.

The whispered song of running feet.

And she was gone.

He stood there for long moments afterward, still as stone and just as silent.

The shadowserpent wove its way across the vast map of the Republic he now ruled, coiled in a black ribbon about his ankles.

“… Do you think she will listen …?” Whisper asked.

The imperator looked to the burning light outside.

“I think she is as much her mother’s daughter as mine,” he replied.

The serpent sighed. “… A pity …”

Scaeva walked to the chessboard. He stood above the frozen battleground, the pieces arrayed in fractured rows, looking down with those cool black eyes. In one swift motion, he sat, sweeping aside the pieces with his hand. Reaching to his throat, he grasped a leather thong, snapped it free. A silver phial hung upon it, stoppered with dark wax and engraved with runes in the tongue of Old Ashkah.

Scaeva broke the seal, pouring the contents upon the board, thick and ruby red.

And, using his fingertip like a brush, he began writing in the blood.

CHAPTER 8

SCOUNDREL

If the entry under “scoundrel” in Don Fiorlini’s bestselling Itreyan Diction: The Definitive Guide had an illustration, it probably would have looked a lot like Cloud Corleone.[1] But Cloud himself preferred the term “entrepreneur.”

The Liisian was clad all in black: a leather vest over a finely cut shirt (unlaced perhaps a touch too far) and a pair of what could only be described as conspicuously tight pants. Emerald-green eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his feathered tricorn hat, and a perpetual three-turn growth of beard dusted a jaw you could break a shovel on. He was stood in the harbormaster’s office in the Nethers docks. And he was haggling with a nun.

It had been a strange turn all told, really. It had begun eight hours earlier, when Cloud had placed a sizable and very drunken wager on the outcome of the Venatus Magni. In hindsight, the bet proved a less-than-sound investment of his meager funds.

O, he’d picked the winner, all right. Even the bookman who took the bet had told him he was thinking with his cock, but watching the gladiatii known as the Crow slice her former collegium mates to bloody chunks, Cloud had found himself admiring her form along with her legs. So confident had he been of the lass’s abilities, he’d wagered every coin he’d won over the previous five turns of bloodsport on her victory, along with a bunch more coin he truthfully couldn’t spare.

As the Crow had carved her way toward triumph in the final match, Cloud had been on his feet, hollering and howling with the rest of the mob. When she’d struck the final blow against the Unfallen, Cloud had danced a jig on the spot, grabbed the nearest comely lass and planted a kiss square on her lips (returned rather enthusiastically), which resulted in an all-in brawl with the lass’s sweetheart, a dozen of his friends, half of Cloud’s crew, and a hundred other punters who simply wanted a good dose of fisticuffs after a hard turn’s carnage. Truthfully, it’d been absolutely marvelous.

But then along came the first dose of the unexpected.

He’d watched it happen in slow motion. The Crow drawing her hidden blade on the victor’s plinth. Slicing the cardinal’s throat clean through. Stabbing the consul in the chest (or so he and half the crowd had imagined, anyway). Blood flowing like cheap plonk at a Liisian wedding. And even though the rest of the crowd fell to wailing, baying, panicking, watching that greasy fucker Duomo go down in a puddle of his own shit and blood, Cloud Corleone had found himself cheering at the top of his lungs.

The next dose of the unexpected had arrived in short order.

It’d taken Cloud almost an hour to shove his way to the bookman’s pits to collect his winnings, still riding high on the sight of the cardinal’s messy end. It was there that the scoundrel was informed by a scowling pack of Itreyan legionaries that because a slave had just topped the fanciest bastards in the whole bloody Republic, all bets were null and void. It wouldn’t do, you see, to profit from the death of the consul and grand cardinal at the hands of human property.

Cloud was tempted to inform the soldiers exactly what flavor of bastard the good cardinal actually was in life, but looking into their eyes, listening to the budding chaos in the city around him, he decided making a fuss would only make for further fuss. And so, with a flip of the knuckles toward the bookman’s shit-eating grin, the captain and his crew headed back to the harbor with tragically empty pockets.

With all the fistfights and fuckarsery and Scaeva’s announcement of his miraculous escape from the assassin’s blade in the forum (Cloud could’ve sworn she’d stabbed him clean), it took another three hours to make it back to the Bloody Maid. And now, in the office of one Attilius Persius, harbormaster of Godsgrave[2], the final oddity in Cloud’s eventful turn had arrived in the form of the aforementioned Sister of Tsana.

Cloud had been putting the last touches on the Bloody Maid ’s paperwork and giving Attilius a friendly heaping of shit (his wife had recently given birth to their sixth daughter, poor fucker) when the nun had marched into the office, shoved Cloud aside, and slapped a hefty bag of coin down on the countertop.

“I need passage to Ashkah. Swift, if it please you.”

She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but she looked a few years harder. Dressed all in snow white, a coif of starched cloth and voluminous robes that flowed to the floor. Her cool blue eyes were fixed on the harbormaster, her lips pressed thin. She was Vaanian, tall and fit, what appeared to be blond hair dyed with henna peeking from the edge of her coif. Cloud idly wondered if her carpet matched her curtains.

In the doorway behind her stood a hulking fellow shrouded in dark cloth. A Trinity of Aa (of rather middling quality, Cloud thought) was strung around his neck, several suspiciously sword-shaped bulges were hidden under his robes.

Cloud shivered a little. The office seemed to have gotten cold all of a sudden.

The sister raised an expectant eyebrow at the harbormaster.

“Mi Don?”

Attilius simply stared, his stubbled jowls all awobble. “Apologies, Sister. I just … It’s not often one sees a Sister of the Sorority of Flame outside a convent, let alone in a district as rough as the Nethers.”[3]

“Ashkah,” she repeated, clanking her coin. “This eve, if possible.”

“We’re headed that way,” Cloud said, leaning against the counter. “Stormwatch first, then Whitekeep. But after that, through the Sea of Swords and on to Ashkah.”

The nun turned to regard him carefully. “Is your ship a swift one?”

“Swifter than my heart beats looking into those pretty eyes of yours, Sister.”

The nun rolled the aforementioned eyes and drummed her fingers on the countertop. “You’re trying to be charming, I assume.”

“Trying and failing, apparently.”

“How much for our passage?” she asked.

“‘Our’ passage?” Cloud glanced at her hulking companion. “I didn’t know it was habit for Sisters of the Virgin Flame to travel in the company of men?”

“Not that it is any of your concern,” the sister replied coolly, “but Brother Tric is here to ensure nothing ill befalls me on my travels. As the murder of our beloved Grand Cardinal Duomo illustrates, Aa bless and keep him, these are dangerous times.”

“O, aye,” Cloud nodded. “Terrible shame about good Duomo. Cleaves the heart, it does. But you’re safe aboard the Bloody Maid, Sister, you’ve no fear of that.”

“No.” She gave a meaningful glance to her thug. “I don’t.”

’Byss and blood it’s cold in here …

“How much for passage, good sir?” she asked again.

“To Ashkah?” Cloud asked. “Three hundred priests ought to suffice.”

In the background, the harbormaster almost choked on his goldwine.

“That seems … excessive,” the sister said.

“You seem … desperate,” Cloud grinned in reply.

The nun glanced at the big fellow behind her. Pressed her lips thinner.

“I can give you two hundred now. Two hundred more when we reach Ashkah.”

With a smile that had earned him four confirmed bastards and Daughters knew how many more besides, Cloud Corleone tipped his tricorn hat and extended his hand to the sister.

“Done.”

A bigger hand engulfed his. It was stained black with what must’ve been ink, and it belonged to the large fellow. His grip was hard enough that Cloud could hear his knuckles grinding together. And it was cold as tombs.

“DONE,” the fellow said, in a strange, oceans-deep voice.

The captain pulled his hand free, flexed his fingers open and closed.

“What name should I call you by, Sister?”

“Ashlinn,” she replied.

“And you, Brother?” He glanced at the big bastard. “Tric, I heard?”

The fellow simply nodded, features hidden in the shadows of his hood.

“You have baggage?” Cloud asked. “I’ll have my salts load—”

“We have all we need, Captain, thank you,” the sister replied.

“Well,” he said simply, snatching up the laden purse. “Best follow me, then.”

He led the pair out of Attilius’s office, down the crowded boardwalk, feeling the jitters in the air. He could see at least twenty other ships making ready to put out to the blue, the calls and cries of their crews echoing across the harbor. The whole city was of a mood after Scaeva’s announcement—overjoyed the new imperator had taken control of the situation, but dismayed at the cardinal’s murder. Cloud was glad to be leaving the city for a spell.

They arrived at the Bloody Maid, rocking at her berth, the deep waters of the Nethers harbor a muddy brown beneath the Everseeing’s three burning eyes. The ship was a swift-cut three-masted carrack, keeled oak but planked cedar, her skin stained a warm reddish brown. Her figurehead was a beautiful naked woman with long red hair artfully arranged to preserve her modesty—or cover the most interesting parts, depending how you looked at it. Her trim and sails were blood-red, hence her name, and though he’d owned her more than seven years, the sight of her always took Cloud’s breath away. Truth told, he’d lost count of the women he’d known in his life. But he’d never loved a one of them close to the way he loved his Maid.

“Ahoy, mates,” he said as he climbed the gangplank.

“You’ve got a nun,” BigJon said cheerfully.

“Well spotted,” Cloud told his first mate.

“That’s a novelty.”

“First time for everything,” Cloud replied.

BigJon was a littleman. Everyone in Nethers Harbor knew it. He wasn’t a dwarf—he’d made that clear to the last fool who’d named him so by bashing the man’s skull in with a brick. He wasn’t a midget either, fuck no. He’d explained that to a taverna full of sailors as he took to some stupid bastard’s crotch with his knife. Nailing the man’s severed scrotum to the counter with his blade, BigJon had declared to the entire pub he preferred the term “littleman” and asked if there was anyone present who objected.

Nobody did. And nobody had since.

“Sister Ashlinn,” Cloud said. “This is my first mate, BigJon.”

“A pleasure.” The littleman bowed, showing a row of silver teeth. “Do you leave the costume on during, or—”

“She’s not a sweetgirl in a costume. She’s a real nun.”

“… O.” BigJon clawed at the collar of his sky-blue tunic. “I see.”

“I’m taking her down to the cabins. Get us under way.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” BigJon spun on his heel and roared in a voice that belied his small frame. “All right, you bobtailed dung-eaters, get moving! Toliver, pull your fist from your shithole and get those fucking barrels stowed! Kael, get your eyes off Andretti’s whore pipe and up into the nest before I make you wish your old man plowed your mother’s earhole instead …”

… and so on.

“Apologies, Sister,” Cloud said. “He’s got a mouth like a sewer, but he’s the best mate this side of Old Ashkah.”

“I’ve heard worse, Captain.”

He tilted his head. “Have you now?”

The sister simply stared, and the lump of beef behind her loomed a little larger, and so without further ado Cloud escorted them down the stairwell into the Maid ’s belly. Leading the pair along the tight hallway to the portside stateroom, he opened the door with a flourish and stepped aside.

“Hammocks only, I’m afraid, but there’s space aplenty. You can dine with me or alone, as it please you. I’ve a bath in my cabin also, if you’ve a need. Arkemical stove. Hot water. Your privacy will be golden, and though I’d not expect it, you get lip from any of my salts, inform myself or BigJon and we’ll see it put arights.”

“Your ‘salts’?”

“My crew,” the man smiled. “Apologies, Sister, I’ve a sailor’s tongue. Regardless, the Bloody Maid is my home, and you’re my guests in it.”

“My thanks, Captain,” the sister said, easing herself into one of the hammocks.

Cloud Corleone considered the girl carefully. Her shapeless white robes were almost loose enough to hide another nun beneath—sadly designed to leave almost everything to the imagination. Her face was pretty, though, freckled cheeks, bright eyes the color of a cloudless sky. Dragging off her coif, she released long red locks down over her shoulders, creased with a gentle curl. She looked three turns tired and in need of a good meal, but still, you’d not kick her out of bed for farting, holy virgin or no.

But something about her wasn’t right.

“May I help you with something, Captain?” she asked, eyebrow cocked.

The privateer stroked his stubble. “I’ve a bed in my cabin, too, should the hammock grow tiresome.”

“Still trying to be charming, I see …”

“Well.” He gave a bashful schoolboy smile. “I’ve a thing for women in uniform.”

“More out of them than in, I’d wager.”

The captain grinned. “We’ll be under way momentarily. North to Stormwatch, swift as sparrows, then back to Whitekeep. We’ll be there by weeksend, winds be kind.”

“Let us pray, then, that they are.”

“Any time you want me on my knees, Sister, just say the word.”

The big fellow in the corner stirred slightly, adjusting one of those suspiciously sword-shaped lumps, and the captain decided he’d learned enough for now. With a wink that could charm the paint right off the walls, Cloud Corleone tipped his tricorn hat.

“Good nevernight, Sister.”

And he closed the cabin door.

Walking up the hallway a moment later, the captain muttered softly to himself.

“Nun my arse.”

The balls on that slick bastard,” Ashlinn whispered incredulously.

Mister Kindly coalesced above the cabin door.

“… i wonder where he keeps his wheelbarrow …?”

“I’m dressed as a nun,” Ashlinn said, looking about the room in indignation. “He does realize I’m dressed as a fucking nun, aye?”

Throwing aside her cloak of shadows, Mia faded into view in the far corner. Jonnen stood with his wrists bound, one of his sister’s arms about him, her other hand clapped over his lips. He glared at the Vaanian girl as his sister removed her hand.

“You have a filthy mouth, harlot.”

“Quiet,” Mia warned. “Or it’s the gag for you again.”

Jonnen pouted but fell silent, his eyes on his sister’s back as she crossed the cabin floor. Locking the door, Mia turned and met Ashlinn’s eyes.

“I don’t trust him.”

In the other corner, Tric drew his hood back off his head, thin white plumes spilling from his lips as he spoke. “NOR I.”

“Well, that makes three of us,” Ash replied. “He might as well have the word ‘pirate’ stenciled on the arse end of those ridiculous pants. It’s a good thing he only gets his second two hundred after our arrival in Ashkah.”

“I didn’t think the funds Mercurio gave us were still so flush.”

“They’re … not,” Ash admitted. “But we can burn that bridge when we arrive at it. The Siren’s Song already left port. This ship is sailing in our direction, and we’ve got nothing left to barter passage with elsewhere. So we take our chances here, or start marching across the aqueduct on foot and praying for a miracle. And considering we stole this habit of mine off a clothesline at a convent, I’m not too sure any of the divinities will be in a mood to answer nicely.”

Mister Kindly began licking a translucent paw on his perch above the door.

“… this whole endeavor would be made infinitely easier if, o, i don’t know, we could somehow make ourselves unseen for the rest of the journey …”

Mia scowled up at her passenger. “It’s truelight, Mister Kindly. I can barely manage to hide me and Jonnen with those accursed suns in the sky. But my thanks for making me feel shittier about our predicament than I already did.”

“… you are most welcome …,” he purred.

Mia turned her eyes to the door the privateer had left by.

“Our captain seems a clever one,” she murmured.

“PERHAPS TOO CLEVER,” Tric said.

“No such thing, in my experience.”

Mia eased herself into one of the hammocks with a groan and a wince. She sat and chewed her lip in thought for a while, fighting a losing battle with her leaden eyelids.

“But Ash is right,” she finally declared. “We don’t have much left in the way of choice. I say we take our chances on the Maid. As long as Jonnen and I stay out of sight, and you can put up with his flirting for a few weeks, I think we’re safe here.”

“… i am sure dona järnheim will loathe every minute of the attention …”

Ashlinn ignored the shadowcat above the door, looking at Mia with concern. The girl was slouched in her hammock, head hung low, rocking softly with the shush and whisper of the water against the hull. Mia looked about to fall over from sheer exhaustion. They could hear the Maid ’s crew overhead, BigJon’s rainbow-colored bouts of profanity, the song of sails being unfurled, the smell of salt and sea strung in the air.

Jonnen was still standing in the corner, Eclipse in his shadow.

“Did you hurt him, Kingmaker?” he asked softly.

Mia met her brother’s dark eyes, the shadow of Julius Scaeva hanging in the air between them. It was long moments before she answered.

“No.”

“I want to go home,” the boy said.

“And I want a box of cigarillos and a bottle of goldwine big enough to drown in,” Mia sighed. “We don’t always get what we want.”

“I do,” he scowled.

“Not anymore.” Mia ran her fingers across her eyes and stifled a yawn. “Welcome to the real world, little brother.”

Jonnen simply glared back at her. Eclipse uncoiled from the dark at his feet, the shadowwolf joining the boy’s silhouette on the wall, darkening it further. Without the daemon riding his shadow, he’d likely have been reduced to hysterics by now, but considering what he’d been through, the child was doing well.

Still, Ashlinn didn’t like the way the boy stared at his sister.

Angry.

Hungry.

“… WHAT NOW …?” Eclipse growled.

“… a quick round of crumpets and strumpets …?” Mister Kindly offered.

“… MUST YOU, LITTLE MOGGY …?”

“… always, dear mongrel …”

The shadowwolf turned its not-eyes to the rest of the room.

“… AM I HONESTLY EXPECTED TO BELIEVE THIS BOORISH CUR AND ITS PREPUBESCENT HUMOR IS THE FRAGMENT OF A SHATTERED DIVINITY …?”

“Shut up, the pair of you,” Ashlinn snapped.

“The ‘what now’ is simple,” Mia said, stifling another yawn. “The Ministry have Mercurio. Until we have him back, Scaeva and I are at an impasse.” She shrugged. “So we have to get him back.”

“Mia, they’ll have Mercurio in the Quiet Mountain,” Ashlinn said. “The heart of the Red Church’s power on this earth. Guarded by Blades of the Mother, the Ministry themselves, and ’byss knows what else.”

“Aye,” Mia nodded.

“Further, I’m sure I don’t need to point out that they took Mercurio to get to you,” Ashlinn continued, her voice rising. “They told you they have him because they want you to come looking for him. If this were any more obviously a fucking trap, they’d have a row of high-priced courtesans dancing in Liisian lingerie atop it, singing a rousing chorus of ‘this is obviously a fucking trap.’”

Mia smiled faintly. “I love that song.”

“Mia …,” Ashlinn moaned, exasperated.

“He took me in, Ashlinn,” Mia said, her smile vanishing. “When everything else had been taken away. He gave me a home and he kept me safe when he had no reason under the suns to do it.” Mia looked up at the girl, eyes shining. “He’s familia. More familia to me than almost anyone in this world. Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a.”

“When all is blood …”

“Blood is all,” Mia nodded.

Ashlinn just shook her head.

“MIA—” Tric began.

“The Quiet Mountain is in Ashkah, Tric,” Mia interrupted. “We have to head that way, regardless. So ease off on the destiny talk for a while, neh?”

“YOU HAVE ACCEPTED IT, THEN?”

“My mind’s nothing close to made up,” Mia said, stretching her legs out on the hammock with a soft groan. “But traveling in the right direction’s enough for now.”

“The Ministry are going to know we’re coming,” Ash pointed out, standing to help Mia off with her bloodstained boots. “The Quiet Mountain is a fortress.”

“Aye,” Mia said, wiggling her toes with a wince.

“So how in the Mother’s name do you expect to get inside and rescue Mercurio?” Ash demanded, pulling off the other boot. “Let alone out alive again?”

“Front door,” Mia said, sighing deep as she finally lay back in the hammock and gave in to her exhaustion.

“The front fucking door?” Ash hissed. “Of the Quiet Mountain? You’d need an army to get in there, Mia!”

Mia closed her eyes.

“I know an army,” she murmured. “A little one, anyways …”

“What in the Mother’s holy name are you babbling about?” Ash raged.

The hammock swayed and rolled with the weary girl atop it. The chaos and bloodshed of the last few turns, the epiphanies and prophecies, the promises broken and yet unfulfilled, all of them seemed to have finally caught up with her. As the lines of care in her face softened, the scar upon her cheek twisted her lip ever so slight, made it seem like she was smiling. Her breast rose and fell with the rhythm of the waves.

“Mia?” Ash asked.

But the girl already slept.

Jonnen spoke softly into the silence.

“… What does ‘prepubescent’ mean?”

CHAPTER 9

SLUMBER

She dreamed.

She was a child, beneath a sky as gray as goodbye. Walking on water so still it was like polished stone, like glass, like ice beneath her bare feet. It stretched as far as she could see, flawless and endless. A meniscus over the flood of forever.

Her mother walked to her left. In one hand, she held a lopsided scale. The other was wrapped in Mia’s own. She wore gloves of black silk, long and glimmering with a secret sheen, all the way up to her elbows. But when Mia looked closer, she saw they weren’t gloves at all, that they dripped