‘I’m sick to my guts on this, Alberius.’
‘Orders are orders. Luminus Invicta, aye?’ fn2
‘Sod off.’
‘You want to trifle with Remus? With Scaeva? The saviours of the bloody Republic?’
‘Saviours 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 armour. The first was a man with arms like tree trunks and hands like dinner plates. 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 backwards, 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 dinner plate man’s eyes grew wide as his friend went down screaming. He drew a sunsteel sword and stepped towards 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 towards 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,fn3 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.fn4
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 recognised this second voice as Scupps’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 towards her door, sniffed once, then slipped inside.
The girl sat in her room, considering whether to approach him or simply leave Last Hope at turn’s end as she planned.fn5 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.
‘… if i do not return by the morrow, tell mother i love her …’
The girl snorted as the not-cat slipped beneath her door. She waited hours, reading by candlelight rather than open her shutters to the sun. If she was leaving this turn, she’d need do it at twelve bells, when the watchtower changed shifts. Easier to steal the stallion then. The knowledge she could have just bought some old nag raised its hand at the back of the lesson hall, and was shushed by the thought she shouldn’t be heading out into the wastes on anything but the finest horse this town had to offer.fn6
She felt a rippling chill, a sense of loss, and the cat who was shadows hopped up onto the bed beside her. Blinked with eyes that weren’t there. Tried to purr and failed.
‘Well?’
‘… he ate a sparing meal, watched the ones who insulted him between mouthfuls, and followed them home when they left …’
‘Did he kill them?’
‘… pissed in their water barrel …’
‘Not too bloodthirsty, then. And afterwards?’
‘… climbed up on the stable roof. he has been watching your window ever since …’
A nod. ‘I thought he marked me when he first entered.’
‘… a clever one …’
‘Let’s see how clever.’
Mia
