‘… MIA … !’
She turned with a gasp, barely deflecting the strike that would have split her head apart. Solis had hacked his boots away, left them wrapped in tendrils of his own shadow, and charged Mia barefoot. The big man collided with her, sent her flying, her backside and thighs shredded on the stone as she hit the ground. She tumbled back up onto her feet with a black curse, fending off the flurry of strikes Solis aimed at her head, neck, chest. She struck back, sweat-soaked and desperate, long black hair stuck to her skin, Mister Kindly and Eclipse working hard to eat her fear.
‘Guards!’
This was no fresh Blade of the Church she faced now, no. This was the deadliest swordsman in the congregation. And no cheap tricks learned in the arena would avail Mia here. Only skill. And steel. And sheer, bloody will.
She struck back at Solis, their blades ringing bright beneath the burning suns. His white eyes were narrowed, fixed somewhere in the empty over her left shoulder. And yet the blind man moved as if he saw her every strike coming from a mile away. Forcing her back. Beating her down. Wearing her out.
The crowd in the street had gathered outside the chapel gates now, drawn like flies to a corpse by Jonnen’s cries. The boy stood in the middle of the thoroughfare, waving at the cadre of legionaries, who were even now tromptromptromping towards them. Mia was tired, weak, outnumbered – she had only moments before this situation dissolved into a puddle of shite.
‘Where’s Ashlinn and Mercurio?’ she demanded.
Solis’s blade streaked past her chin as he smiled. ‘If you’ve a wish to see your old master alive again, girl, you’d best drop your steel and come with me.’
Mia’s eyes narrowed as she struck at the big man’s knees.
‘You don’t call me girl, bastard. Not as if the word were kin for “shit”.’
Solis laughed and launched a riposte that almost took Mia’s head off. She twisted aside, sweat-soaked fringe hanging in her eyes.
‘Perhaps you only hear what you want to hear, girl.’
‘Aye, laugh now,’ she wheezed. ‘But what will you do without your beloved Scaeva? When your other patrons learn the saviour of the fucking Republic died at the hands of one of your own Blades?’
Solis tilted his head and smiled wider, stilling the heart in Mia’s chest.
‘Did he?’
‘Halt! In the name of the Light!’
The legionaries burst through the chapel gates, all glittering armour and blood-red plumes on their helms. Hush was on his knees, the Rictus from Mia’s stolen blade rendering him numb and lethargic. Mia and Solis hung still, swords poised as the legionaries spread out into the courtyard. The centurion leading them was burly as a pile of bricks, heavy brows and a thick beard bristling beneath his glittering helm.
‘Put down your weapons, citizens!’ he barked.
Mia glanced at the centurion, the troops around them, the crossbows aimed square at her heaving chest. Jonnen forced his way through the soldiers, pointing right at her and shouting at the top of his lungs.
‘That’s her! Kill her now!’
‘Get back, boy!’ the captain snapped.
Jonnen scowled at the man, drew himself up to his full height.[fn1]
‘I am Lucius Atticus Scaeva,’ he spat. ‘Firstborn son of Consul Julius Maximillianus Scaeva. This slave murdered my father, and I order you to kill her!’
Solis tilted his head slightly, as if taking note of the lad for the first time. The centurion raised an eyebrow, looking the little lordling up and down. Despite his dishevelled appearance, the grime on his face and sopping robes, it could hardly be missed that he was clad in brilliant purple – the colour of Itreyan nobility. Nor that he wore the triple-sun crest of the Luminatii legion upon his chest.
‘Kill her!’ the boy roared, stamping his foot.
The crossbowmen tightened their fingers on their triggers. The centurion looked at Mia, drew breath to shout.
‘Lo—’
A chill stole over the scene – the legionaries, the assassins, the crowd gathered in the street beyond. Despite the blazing heat, goosebumps shivered on Mia’s bare skin. A familiar shape rose up behind the soldiers, hooded and cloaked, twin gravebone swords clutched in its ink-black hands. Mia recognized it immediately – the same figure that had saved her life in the Galante necropolis. The same one who’d given her that cryptic message.
‘SEEK THE CROWN OF THE MOON.’
Its face was hidden in the depths of its cloak. Mia’s breath hung in white clouds before her lips, and despite the heat, she found herself shivering in its chill.
Without a word, the figure struck the closest soldier, its gravebone blade splitting his breastplate asunder. The other legionaries cried out in alarm, turning their crossbows upon their assailant. As the figure wove among them, blades flashing, they fired. The crossbow bolts struck home, thudding into the figure’s chest and belly. But it seemed not to slow at all. The crowd in the street beyond fell to panicking as the figure wheeled and spun among the soldiers, cutting them to bloody chunks, raining red.
Mia moved swift despite her fatigue, grabbing her wriggling brother by the scruff of his neck. Solis charged across the broken flagstones towards her, and Mia brought up her blade to block his onslaught. The Shahiid’s strikes were deathly quick, sheer perfection. And hard as she tried, swift as she was, she felt a blow sail past her guard and slice into her shoulder.
Mia spun aside, dropping her stolen blade as she cried out. Within seconds she could feel the Rictus in her veins, a numbing chill spreading out from the wound, flowing down her arm. With a grunt of effort, she threw up her hand, wrapped up Solis’s feet in his shadow again as she tumbled onto her backside, her brother clutched tight to her chest. The Shahiid stumbled, cursed, trying to rip his bare feet free from her grip. Mister Kindly and Eclipse coalesced on the stone between them, the shadowcat hissing and puffing up, the shadowwolf’s growl coming from beneath the earth.
‘… back, bastard …’
‘… YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HER …’
Behind Mia, the strange figure finished its grim work. The churchyard looked like the floor of an abattoir, pieces of legionaries scattered all across it, the bystanders fleeing in panic. The figure’s gravebone blades dripped with gore as it stepped across the flagstones, stood above the fallen girl, levelling a sword at Solis’s throat. The Revered Father of the Red Church seemed unperturbed despite the trio of shadowthings arrayed against him, lips pulled back over his teeth, white breath hanging in the air between them.
The figure spoke, its voice tinged with a strange reverberation.
‘THE MOTHER IS DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, SOLIS.’
‘Who are you, daemon?’ he demanded.
‘YOU TRULY ARE BLIND,’ it replied. ‘BUT WHEN DARK DAWNS, YOU WILL SEE.’
The figure knelt beside Mia. Her right arm was numb, she was barely able to keep her head up. But she still clung to her brother like grim death – after all the blood and miles and years, she’d be damned to come all this way and discover he lived, only to lose him again. For his part, between the presence of this strange wraith and the bloody murder it had just unleashed, Jonnen seemed frozen with fear.
The figure reached out one hand. It was black and gleaming, as if dipped in fresh paint.