‘… WHAT NOW …?’ Eclipse growled.
‘… a quick round of crumpets and strumpets …?’ Mister Kindly offered.
‘… MUST YOU, LITTLE MOGGY …?’
‘… always, dear mongrel …’
The shadowwolf turned its not-eyes to the rest of the room.
‘… AM I HONESTLY EXPECTED TO BELIEVE THIS BOORISH CUR AND ITS PREPUBESCENT HUMOUR IS THE FRAGMENT OF A SHATTERED DIVINITY …?’
‘Shut up, the pair of you,’ Ashlinn snapped.
‘The “what now” is simple,’ Mia said, stifling another yawn. ‘The Ministry have Mercurio. Until we have him back, Scaeva and I are at an impasse.’ She shrugged. ‘So we have to get him back.’
‘Mia, they’ll have Mercurio in the Quiet Mountain,’ Ashlinn said. ‘The heart of the Red Church’s power on this earth. Guarded by Blades of the Mother, the Ministry themselves, and ’byss knows what else.’
‘Aye,’ Mia nodded.
‘Further, I’m sure I don’t need to point out that they took Mercurio to get to you,’ Ashlinn continued, her voice rising. ‘They told you they have him because they want you to come looking for him. If this were any more obviously a fucking trap, they’d have a row of high-priced courtesans dancing in Liisian lingerie atop it, singing a rousing chorus of “this is obviously a fucking trap.”’
Mia smiled faintly. ‘I love that song.’
‘Mia …’ Ashlinn moaned, exasperated.
‘He took me in, Ashlinn,’ Mia said, her smile vanishing. ‘When everything else had been taken away. He gave me a home and he kept me safe when he had no reason under the suns to do it.’ Mia looked up at the girl, eyes shining. ‘He’s familia. More familia to me than almost anyone in this world. Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a.’
‘When all is blood …’
‘Blood is all,’ Mia nodded.
Ashlinn just shook her head.
‘MIA—’ Tric began.
‘The Quiet Mountain is in Ashkah, Tric,’ Mia interrupted. ‘We have to head that way, regardless. So ease off on the destiny talk for a while, neh?’
‘YOU HAVE ACCEPTED IT, THEN?’
‘My mind’s nothing close to made up,’ Mia said, stretching her legs out on the hammock with a soft groan. ‘But travelling in the right direction’s enough for now.’
‘The Ministry are going to know we’re coming,’ Ash pointed out, standing to help Mia off with her bloodstained boots. ‘The Quiet Mountain is a fortress.’
‘Aye,’ Mia said, wiggling her toes with a wince.
‘So how in the Mother’s name do you expect to get inside and rescue Mercurio?’ Ash demanded, pulling off the other boot. ‘Let alone out alive again?’
‘Front door,’ Mia said, sighing deep as she finally lay back in the hammock and gave in to her exhaustion.
‘The front fucking door?’ Ash hissed. ‘Of the Quiet Mountain? You’d need an army to get in there, Mia!’
Mia closed her eyes.
‘I know an army,’ she murmured. ‘A little one, anyway …’
‘What in the Mother’s holy name are you babbling about?’ Ash raged.
The hammock swayed and rolled with the weary girl atop it. The chaos and bloodshed of the last few turns, the epiphanies and prophecies, the promises broken and yet unfulfilled, all of them seemed to have finally caught up with her. As the lines of care in her face softened, the scar upon her cheek twisted her lip ever so slight, made it seem like she was smiling. Her breast rose and fell with the rhythm of the waves.
‘Mia?’ Ash asked.
But the girl already slept.
Jonnen spoke softly into the silence.
‘… What does “prepubescent” mean?’
She dreamed.
She was a child, beneath a sky as grey as goodbye. Walking on water so still it was like polished stone, like glass, like ice beneath her bare feet. It stretched as far as she could see, flawless and endless. A meniscus over the flood of forever.
Her mother walked to her left. In one hand, she held a lopsided scale. The other was wrapped in Mia’s own. She wore gloves of black silk, long and glimmering with a secret sheen, all the way up to her elbows. But when Mia looked closer, she saw they weren’t gloves at all, that they dripped
dripdrip
dripdrip
on the stone/glass/ice at their feet, like blood from an open wrist.
Her mother’s gown was black as sin as night as death, strung with a billion tiny points of light. They shone from within, out through the shroud of her gown, like pinpricks in a curtain drawn against the sun. She was beautiful. Terrible. Her eyes were as black as her dress, deeper than oceans. Her skin was pale and bright as stars.
She had Alinne Corvere’s face. But Mia knew, in that dreaming, knowing kind of way, that this wasn’t her real face. Because the Night had no face at all.
And across the infinite grey, he waited for them.
Her father.
He was clad all in white, so bright and sharp it hurt Mia’s eyes to look at him. But she looked all the same. He stared back as she and her mother approached, three eyes fixed on her, red and yellow and blue. He was handsome, she had to admit – almost painfully so. Black curls dusted with just the faintest hints of grey at his temples. Shoulders broad, bronze skin contrasting sharply with the snow white of his robes.
He had Julius Scaeva’s face. But Mia knew, in that dreaming, knowing kind of way, that this wasn’t his real face, either.
Four young women stood about him. One wreathed in flame and another shrouded in waves and the third wearing only the wind. The fourth was sleeping on the floor, clad in autumn leaves. The wakeful trio stared at Mia with bitter, unveiled malice.
‘Husband,’ her mother said.
‘Wife,’ her father replied.
They stood there in silence, the six of them, and Mia could have heard her heart thumping in her chest, if only she’d had one.
‘I missed you,’ her mother finally sighed.
The silence grew so complete, it was deafening.
‘This is he?’ her father asked.
‘You know it is,’ her mother replied.
And Mia wanted to speak then, to say she wasn’t a he but a she. But looking down, the child saw the strangest thing reflected in the mirrored stone/glass/ice at her feet.
She saw