about him like smoke. And without a word, the Luminatii marched back into the room. The wolfish one tore Mia from her mother’s skirts. Captain Puddles mreowled protest. Mia clutched the tom tightly, tears burning her eyes.
‘Stop it! Don’t touch my mother!’
‘Dona Corvere, I bind you by book and chain for crimes of conspiracy and treason against the Itreyan Republic. You will accompany us to the Philosopher’s Stone.’
Irons were slapped around the dona’s wrists, screwed tight enough to make her wince. The wolfish one turned to the consul, glanced at Mia with a question in his eyes.
‘The children?’
The consul glanced to little Jonnen, still wrapped in his swaddling on the bed.
‘The babe is still at the breast. He can accompany his mother to the Stone.’
‘And the girl?’
‘You promised, Julius!’ Dona Corvere struggled in the Luminatii’s grip. ‘You swore!’
Scaeva acted as if the woman had never spoken. He looked down at Mia, sobbing at the foot of the bed, Captain Puddles clutched to her thin chest.
‘Did your mother ever teach you to swim, little one?’
Trelene’s Beau spat Mia onto a miserable pier, jutting from the nethers of a ruined port known as Last Hope. Buildings littered the ocean’s edge like a prizefighter’s teeth, a stone garrison tower and outlying farms completed the oil painting. The populace consisted of fishermen, farmers, a particularly foolish brand of fortune hunter who earned a living raiding old Ashkahi ruins, and a slightly more intelligent variant who made their coin looting the corpses of colleagues.
As she stepped onto the jetty, Mia saw three bent fishermen lurking around a rod and a bottle of green ginger wine. The men looked at her the way maggots eye rotten meat. The girl stared at each in turn, waiting to see if any would offer to dance.fn3
Wolfeater clomped down the gangplank, several crew in tow. The captain noted the hungry stares fixed on the girl – sixteen years old, alone, armed only with a pig-sticker. Propping one boot on a jetty stump, the big Dweymeri lit his pipe, wiped sweat from tattooed cheeks.
‘It’s the smallest spiders that have the darkest poison, lads,’ he warned the fishermen.
Wolfeater’s word seemed to carry some weight among the scoundrels, as they turned back to the water, slurping and bubbling against the jetty’s legs.
Mildly disappointed, the girl offered the captain her hand.
‘My thanks for your hospitality, sir.’
Wolfeater stared at her outstretched fingers, exhaled a lungful of pale grey.
‘Few enough reasons folk come to old Ashkah, lass. Fewer still a girl like you would brave parts this grim. And I’ve no wish to cause offence. But I’ll not touch your hand.’
‘And why is that, sir?’
‘Because I know the name of the ones who touched it first.’ He glanced at her shadow, fingering the draketooth necklace at his throat. ‘If such things have names. I know for damned sure they have memories, and I’ll not have them remember mine.’
The girl smiled soft. Put her hand back to her belt.
‘Trelene watch over you, then, Captain.’
‘Blue below and blue above you, girl.’
She turned and stalked down the pier, the glare of a single sun in her eyes, looking for the building Mercurio had named for her. With heart in throat, she found it soon enough – a dishevelled little establishment at the water’s crust. A creaking sign above the doorway identified it as the Old Imperial. A sign in one filthy window informed Mia ‘Help’ was, in fact, ‘Wonted.’
It was a bucktoothed little shithole, and no mistake. Not the most miserable building in all creation.fn4 But if the inn were a man and you stumbled on him in a bar, you’d be forgiven for assuming he had – after agreeing enthusiastically to his wife’s request to bring another woman into their marriage bed – discovered his bride making up a pallet for him in the guest room.
The girl padded up to the bar, her back as close to the wall as she could get it. A dozen or so folk had escaped the turn’s heat inside – a few locals and a handful of well-armed tomb-raiders. All in the room stopped to stare as she entered; if anyone had been manning the old harpsichord in the corner, they’d surely have hit a wrong note for dramatic effect, but alas, the beast hadn’t uttered a squeak in years.fn5
The Imperial’s proprietor seemed a harmless fellow – almost out of place in this town on the edge of the abyss. His eyes were a little too close together, and he reeked of rotten fish, but considering the stories Mia had heard about the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, she was just glad the fellow didn’t have tentacles. He was propped behind the bar in a grubby apron (bloodstains?) cleaning a dirty mug with a dirtier rag. Mia noticed one of his eyes moved slightly before the other, like a child leading a slow cousin by the hand.
‘Good turning to you, sir,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘Aa bless and keep you.’
‘Come in wiv Wolfeater’s mob, didjer?’
‘Well spotted, sir.’
‘Pay’s four beggars weekly, but yer get board onna top.fn6 Twenty per cent of anyfing you make turning trick onna side comes to me direct. And I’ll need a sample a’fore yer hired. Fair?’
Mia’s smile dragged the proprietor’s behind the bar and quietly strangled it.
It made very little sound as it died.
‘I’m afraid you misunderstand, sir,’ she said. ‘I am not here to apply for employ within your’ – a glance about her – ‘no doubt fine establishment.’
A sniff. ‘Whya ’ere then?’
She placed the sheepskin purse atop the bar. The treasure within clinked with a tune nothing like gold. If you were in the business of dentistry, you might have recognised that the tiny orchestra inside the bag was comprised entirely of human teeth.
It took her a moment to speak. To find the words she’d practised until she dreamed them.
‘My tithe for the Maw.’
The man looked at her, expression unreadable. Mia tried to keep the tremors from her breath, her hands. Six years it had taken her to come this far. Six years of rooftops and alleys and sleepless nevernights. Of dusty tomes and bleeding fingers and noxious gloom. But at last, she stood on the threshold, a small nod away from the vaunted halls of the Red—
‘What’s me maw got tado wivvit?’ the proprietor blinked.
Mia kept her face as stone, despite the dreadful flips her insides were undertaking. She glanced around the room. The tomb-raiders were bent over their map. A handful of local wags were playing ‘spank’ with a pack of mouldy cards. A woman in desert-coloured robes and a veil was drawing spiral patterns on a tabletop with what looked like blood.
‘The Maw,’ Mia repeated. ‘This is my tithe.’
‘Maw’s dead,’ the barman frowned.
‘… What?’
‘Been dead nigh on four truedarks now.’
‘The Maw,’ she scowled. ‘Dead. Are you mad?’
‘You’re the one bringing my old dead mum presents, lass.’
Realization tapped her on the shoulder, danced a funny little jig.
Ta-da.
‘I’m not talking about your mother,