saddle, and galloped off in pursuit. Mia clutched her bruised arm, listening to the faint laughter of a cat who was not a cat echoing on the wind.
She spat into the dust, eyes on the fleeing stallion.
‘Bastard …’ she hissed.
Tric returned a half-hour later, a limping Bastard in tow. Reunited, he and Mia trekked overland to the thin spur of rock that’d serve as their lookout. They were on constant watch for disturbances beneath the sand, Tric sniffing the air like a bloodhound, but no more horrors reared any tentacles (or other appendages) to impede progress.
Bastard and Flowers were allowed to graze on the thin grass surrounding the spire – Flowers partook happily, while Bastard fixed Mia in the withering stare of a beast used to fresh oats for every meal, refusing to eat a thing. He tried to bite Mia twice more as she tied him up, so the girl made a show of patting Flowers (despite not really liking him much either) and gifted the chestnut with some sugar cubes from her saddlebags. The stolen stallion’s only gift was the rudest hand gesture Mia could conjure.fn8
‘Why do you call your horse Flowers?’ Mia asked, as she and Tric prepared to climb.
‘… What’s wrong with Flowers?’
‘Well, most men name their horses something a little more … manly, is all.’
‘Legend or Prince or suchlike.’
‘I met a horse named Thunderhoof once.’ She raised a hand. ‘Light’s truth.’
‘Seems a silly thing to me,’ the boy sniffed. ‘Giving out that kind of knowing for free.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you call your horse Legend, you’re letting people know you think you’re some hero in a storybook. You call your horse Thunderhoof … Daughters, you might as well hang a sign about your neck saying, “I have a peanut for a penis”.’
Mia smiled. ‘I’ll take your word on that.’
‘It’s like these fellows who name their swords “Skullbane” or “Souldrinker” or somesuch.’ Tric tied his saltlocks into a matted knot atop his head. ‘Tossers, all.’
‘If I were going to name my blade,’ Mia said thoughtfully, ‘I’d call it “Fluffy”.’
Tric snorted with laughter. ‘Fluffy?’
‘’Byss, yes,’ the girl nodded. ‘Think of the terror you’d instil. Being bested by a foe wielding a sword called Souldrinker … that you could live with. Imagine the shame of having the piss smacked out of you by a blade called Fluffy.’
‘Well, that’s my point. Names speak to the namer as much as the named. Maybe I don’t want folks knowing who I am. Maybe I like being underestimated.’
The boy shrugged.
‘Or maybe I just like flowers …’
Mia found herself smiling as the pair scaled the broken cliff face. Both climbed without pitons or rope – the kind of foolishness common among the young and seemingly immortal. Their lookout loomed a hundred feet high, and the pair were breathless when they reached the top. But, as Mia predicted, the spur offered a magnificent vantage; all the wastes spread out before them. Saan’s red glare was merciless, and Mia wondered how brutal the heat would be during truelight, when all three suns burned the sky white.
‘Good view,’ Tric nodded. ‘Anything sneezes in Last Hope, we’ll ken it for certain.’
Mia kicked a pebble off the cliff, watched it tumble into the void. She sat on a boulder, boot propped on the stone opposite in a pose the Dona Corvere would have shuddered to see. From her belt, she withdrew a thin silver box engraved with the crow and crossed swords of the Familia Corvere. Propping a cigarillo on her lips, she offered the box to Tric. The boy took it as he sat opposite, wrinkling his nose and squinting at the inscription on the back.
‘Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a,’ he muttered. ‘My Liisian is woeful. Something about blood?’
‘When all is blood, blood is all.’ Mia lit her cigarillo with her flintbox, breathed a contented sigh. ‘Familia saying.’
‘This is familia?’ Tric thumbed the crest. ‘I’d have bet you’d stolen it.’
‘I don’t strike you as the marrowborn type?’
‘I’m not sure what type you strike me. But some snotty spine-hugger’s child? Not at all.’
‘You need to work on your compliments, Don Tric.’
The boy prodded her shadow with his boot, eyes unreadable. He glanced at the not-cat lurking near her shoulder. Mister Kindly stared back without a sound. When Tric spoke, it was with obvious trepidation.
‘I’ve heard tell of your kind. Never met one before, though. Never thought to.’
‘My kind?’
‘Darkin.’
Mia exhaled grey, eyes narrowed. She reached out to Mister Kindly as if to pet him, fingers passing through him as if he were smoke. In all truth, there were few who’d seen her work her gift and lived to tell the tale. Folk of the Republic feared what they didn’t understand, and hated what they feared. And yet this boy seemed more intrigued than afraid. Looking him up and down – this half-pint Dweymeri with his islander tattoos and mainlander’s name – she realised he was an outsider too. And it briefly dawned on her, how glad she was to find herself in his company on this strange and dusty road.
‘And what do you know about the darkin, Don Tric?’
‘Folklore. Bullshit. You steal babies from their cribs and deflower virgins where you walk and other rot.’ The boy shrugged. ‘I heard tell darkin attacked the Basilica Grande a few years back. Killed a whole mess of Luminatii legionaries.’
‘Ah.’ Mia smiled around her smoke. ‘The Truedark Massacre.’
‘Probably more horseshit they cooked up to raise taxes or suchlike.’
‘Probably.’ Mia waved to her shadow. ‘Still, you don’t seem unnerved by it.’
‘I knew a seer who could ken the future by rummaging in animal guts. I met an arkemist who could make fire from dust and kill a man just by breathing on him. Messing about with the dark seems just another kind of huckster thaumaturgy to me.’ He glanced up to the cloudless sky. ‘And I can’t see much use for it in a place where the suns almost never set.’
‘… the brighter the light, the deeper the shadows …’
Tric looked to the not-cat, obviously surprised to hear it speak. He watched it carefully for a moment, as if it might sprout a few new heads or breathe black flame. With no show of multiple heads forthcoming, the boy turned his eyes back to Mia.
‘Where do you get the gift from?’ he asked. ‘Your ma? Your da?’
‘… I don’t know where I got it. And I’ve never met another like myself to ask. My Shahiid said I was touched by the Mother. Whatever that means. He surely didn’t seem to know.’
The boy shrugged, ran his thumb over the sigil on the cigarillo box.
‘If memory serves, Familia Corvere was involved in some trouble a few truedarks back. Something about kingmaking?’
‘Never flinch. Never fear,’ Mia sighed. ‘And never, ever forget.’
‘So. The puzzle begins to make sense. The last daughter of a disgraced familia. Headed to the finest school of killers in all the Republic. Planning on settling scores after graduation?’
‘You’re not about to regale me with some wisdom on the futility of revenge, are you, Don Tric? Because I was just starting to like you.’
‘O, no,’ Tric smiled. ‘Vengeance I understand. But