don’t know what any of this means,’ she whispered.
The old man’s eyes twinkled as he smiled. With a glance towards the cat made of shadows, Mercurio drew out her mother’s stiletto from his coat, stabbed it into the floorboards between them. The polished gravebone gleamed in the lantern light.
‘Would you like to learn?’ he asked.
Mia eyed the knife, nodded slow. ‘Yes, I would, sir.’
‘There’s no sirs ’round here, little Crow. No donas or dons. Just you and me.’
Mia chewed her lip, tempted to just grab the blade and run for it.
But where would she go? What would she do?
‘What should I call you, then?’ she finally asked.
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘If you want to take back what’s yours from them what took it. If you’re the kind who doesn’t forget, and doesn’t forgive. Who wants to understand why the Mother has marked you.’
Mia stared back. Unblinking. Her shadow rippled at her feet.
‘And if I am?’
‘Then you call me “Shahiid”. Until the turn I call you “Mia”’.
‘What’s “Shahiid” mean?’
‘It’s an old Ashkahi word. It means “Honoured Master”.’
‘What will you call me in the meantime?’
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