her temples, wincing. ‘It’s giving me a headache.’
‘… o, poor girl, shall i kiss it better …’
‘This is children’s lore. Any knee-high tadpole gets taught this.’
‘… it was not written with itreyan audiences in mind …’
The girl turned back to the spidery script. Clearing her throat, she read aloud:
‘The skies above the Itreyan Republic are illuminated by three suns – commonly believed to be the eyes of Aa, the God of Light. It is no coincidence Aa is often referred to as the Everseeing by the unwashed.’
She raised an eyebrow, glanced at the shadowcat. ‘I wash plenty.’
‘… plienes was an elitist …’
‘You mean a tosser.’
‘… continue …’
A sigh. ‘The largest of the three suns is a furious red globe called Saan. The Seer. Shuffling across the heavens like a brigand with nothing better to do, Saan hangs in the skies for near one hundred weeks at a time. The second sun is named Saai. The Knower. A smallish blue-faced fellow, rising and setting quicker than its brother—’
‘… sibling …’ the cat corrected. ‘… old ashkahi does not gender nouns …’
‘… quicker than its sibling, it visits for perhaps fourteen weeks at a stretch, near twice that spent beyond the horizon. The third sun is Shiih. The Watcher. A dim yellow giant, Shiih takes almost as long as Saan in its wanderings across the sky.’
‘… very good …’
‘Between the three suns’ plodding travells, Itreyan citizens know actual nighttime – which they call truedark – for only a brief spell every two and a half years. For all other eves – all the eves Itreyan citizens long for a moment of darkness in which to drink with their comrades, make love to their sweethearts …’
The girl paused.
‘What does oshk mean? Mercurio never taught me that word.’
‘… unsurprising …’
‘It’s something to do with sex, then.’
The cat shifted across to her other shoulder without disturbing a single lock of hair.
‘… it means “to make love where there is no love” …’
‘Right.’ The girl nodded. ‘… make love to their sweethearts, fuck their whores, or any other combination thereof – they must endure the constant light of so-called nevernight, lit by one or more of Aa’s eyes in the heavens.
‘Almost three years at a stretch, sometimes, without a drop of real darkness.’
The girl closed the book with a thump.
‘… excellent …’
‘My head is splitting.’
‘… ashkahi script was not meant for weaker minds …’
‘Well, thank you very much.’
‘… that is not what i meant …’
‘No doubt.’ She stood and stretched, rubbed her eyes. ‘Let’s take some air.’
‘… you know i do not breathe …’
‘I’ll breathe. You watch.’
‘… as it please you …’
The pair stole up onto the deck. Her footsteps were less than whispers, and the cat’s, nothing at all. The roaring winds that marked the turn to nevernight waited above – Saai’s blue memory fading slowly on the horizon, leaving only Saan to cast its sullen red glow.
The Beau’s deck was almost empty. A huge, crook-faced helmsman stood at the wheel, two lookouts in the crow’s nests, a cabin boy (still almost a foot taller than she) snoozing on his mop handle and dreaming of his maid’s arms. The ship was fifteen turnings into the Sea of Swords, the snaggletooth coastline of Liis to the south. The girl could see another ship in the distance, blurred in Saan’s light. A heavy dreadnought, flying the triple suns of the Itreyan navy, cutting the waves like a gravebone dagger through an old nooseman’s throat.
The bloody ending she’d gifted the hangman hung heavy in her chest. Heavier than the memory of the sweetboy’s smooth hardness, the sweat he’d left drying on her skin. Though this sapling would bloom into a killer whom other killers rightly feared, right now she was a maid fresh-plucked, and memories of the hangman’s expression as she cut his throat left her … conflicted. It’s quite a thing, to watch a person slip from the potential of life into the finality of death. It’s another thing entirely to be the one who pushed. And for all Mercurio’s teachings, she was still a sixteen-year-old girl who’d just committed her first act of murder.
Her first premeditated act, at any rate.
‘Hello, pretty.’
The voice pulled her from her reverie, and she cursed herself for a novice. What had Mercurio taught her? Never leave your back to the room. And though she might’ve protested her recent bloodlettings constituted worthy distraction, or that a ship’s deck wasn’t even a room, she could almost hear the willow switch the old assassin would have raised in answer.
‘Twice up the stairs!’ he’d have barked. ‘There and back again!’
She turned and saw the young sailor with his peacock-feather cap and his bed-notch smile. Beside him stood another man, broad as bridges, muscles stretching his shirtsleeves like walnuts stuffed into poorly tailored bags. An Itreyan also by the look, tanned and blue-eyed, the dull gleam of Godsgrave streets etched in his gaze.
‘I was hoping I’d see you again,’ Peacock said.
‘The ship isn’t large enough for me to hope otherwise, sir.’
‘Sir, is it? Last we spoke, you voiced threat of removing parts most treasured and feeding them to the fish.’
She was looking at the boy. Watching the stuffed walnut bag from beneath her lashes.
‘No threat, sir.’
‘Just boasting, then? Thin talk for which apology is owed, I’d wager.’
‘And you’d accept apology, sir?’
‘Belowdecks, doubtless.’
Her shadow rippled, like millpond water as rain kissed the surface. But the peacock was intent on his indignity, and the walnut thug on the lovely hurtings he might bestow if given a few minutes with her in a cabin without windows.
‘I only need to scream, you realise,’ she said.
‘And how much scream could you give voice,’ Peacock smiled, ‘before we tossed your scrawny arse over the side?’
She glanced to the pilot’s deck. To the crow’s nests. A tumble into the ocean would be a death sentence – even if the Beau came about, she could swim only a trifle better than its anchor, and the Sea of Swords teemed with drakes like a dockside sweetboy crawled with crabs.
‘Not much of a scream at all,’ she agreed.
‘… pardon me, gentlefriends …’
The thugs started at the voice – they’d heard nobody approach. Both turned, Peacock puffing up and scowling to hide his sudden fright. And there on the deck behind them, they saw the cat made of shadows, licking at its paw.
It was thin as old vellum. A shape cut from a ribbon of darkness, not quite solid enough that they couldn’t see the deck behind it. Its voice was the murmur of satin sheets on cold skin.
‘… i fear you picked the wrong girl to dance with …’ it said.
A