‘Or what?’ the boy said, raising his blade.
‘Or I yell for the Luminatii. They’ll cut off your hands and dump you in the Choir if you’re lucky. Throw you in the Philosopher’s Stone if not.’
The trio gifted her a round of mocking laughter.
The black at Mia’s feet rippled. The fear inside her became nothing at all. And folding her arms, she puffed out her chest, narrowed her eyes, and spoke with a voice she didn’t quite recognise as her own.
‘Give. It. Back.’
‘Fuck off, you little whore,’ the big one said.
A scowl darkened Mia’s brow. ‘… Whore?’
‘Cut her, Shivs,’ the younger boy said. ‘Cut her a new hole.’
Cheeks reddening, Mia peered at the first boy.
‘Your name is Shivs? O, because you carry knives, aye?’ She glanced at the younger boy. ‘You’d be Fleas then?’ To the girl. ‘Let me guess, Worms?’ fn1
‘Clever,’ said the blonde. And stepping lightly to Mia’s side, she drew back a fist and buried it in Mia’s stomach.
The breath left her lungs with a wet cough as she fell to her knees. Blinking and blinded, Mia clutched her belly, trying not to retch. Astonishment inside her. Astonishment and rage.
Nobody had hit her before.
Nobody had dared.
She’d seen her mother fence wits countless times in the Spine. She’d seen men reduced to stuttering lumps by the Dona Corvere, women driven to tears. And Mia had studied well. But the rules said the aggrieved was supposed to riposte with some barb of their own, not haul off and punch her like some lowborn thug in an alley scra—
‘O …’ Mia wheezed. ‘Right.’
Shivs strode across the alley and slammed a boot into her ribs. The blonde (who in Mia’s mind would ever after be thought of as Worms) smiled cheerfully as Mia vomited on an empty stomach. Turning to the younger boy, Shivs pointed at their loot.
‘Pick that up and let’s be off. I’ve got—’
Shivs felt something sharp and deathly cold dig into his britches. He glanced down to the stiletto poking his privates, the little fist clutching it tight. Mia had wrapped herself around his waist, pressing her mother’s dagger into the boy’s crotch, the crow on the pommel glaring at Shivs with two amber eyes. Her whisper was soft and deadly.
‘Whore, am I?’
Now, if this were a storybook tale, gentlefriend, and Mia the hero within it, Shivs would’ve seen some shadow of the killer she’d become and backed away all a-tremble. But the truth is, the boy stood two feet taller than Mia, and outweighed her by eighty pounds. And looking down at the girl around his waist, he didn’t see the most feared assassin in all the Republic – just a sprat with no real idea how to hold a knife, her face so close to his elbow one good twitch would send her sprawling.
So Shivs twitched. And Mia wasn’t sent sprawling so much as flying.
She fell into the mud, clutching a broken nose, blinded by agonised tears. The younger boy (ever after thought of as Fleas) picked up Dona Corvere’s fallen dagger, eyes wide.
‘Daughters, lookit this!’
‘Toss it here.’
The boy flipped it hilt first. Shivs snatched the knife from the air, admired the craftsmanship with greedy eyes.
‘Aa’s cock, this is real gravebone …’
Fleas kicked Mia hard in the ribs. ‘Where did a trollop like you get—’
A wrinkled hand landed on the lad’s shoulder, slamming him against the wall. A knee said hello to his groin, a gnarled walking stick invited his jaw to dance.fn2 A double-handed strike to the back of his head left him bleeding in the dirt.
Old Mercurio stood above him, clad in a long greatcoat of beaten leather, a walking stick in one bony hand. His ice-blue eyes were narrowed, taking in the scene, the girl sprawled bloody on the ground. He looked at Shivs, lips peeled back in a sneer.
‘That’s your game is it? Kickball?’ He aimed a savage boot into the ribs of young Fleas, rewarded with a sickening crack. ‘Mind if I join?’
Shivs glared at the old man, down at his bleeding comrade. And with a black curse, he hefted the Dona Corvere’s stiletto and hurled it at Mercurio’s head.
It was a fine throw. Right between the eyes. But instead of dying, the old man snatched the blade from midair, quick as the stink on the banks of the Rose.fn3 Tucking the stiletto inside his greatcoat, Mercurio took hold of his walking stick, and with a crisp ring, drew a long, gravebone blade hidden within the shaft. He advanced on Shivs and Worms, brandishing the sword.
‘O, Liisian rules, aye? Old school? Fair enough, then.’
Shivs and Worms glanced at each other, panic in their eyes. And without a word, the pair turned and bolted down the alley, leaving poor Fleas unconscious in the muck.
Mia was on her hands and knees. Cheeks stained with tears and blood. Her nose felt raw and swollen, throbbing red. She couldn’t see properly. Couldn’t think.
‘Told you that brooch would be naught but trouble,’ Mercurio growled. ‘You’d have done better listening, girl.’
Mia felt a heat in her chest. Stinging at her eyes. Another child might have bawled for her mother, then. Cried the world wasn’t fair. But instead, all the rage, all the indignity, the memory of her father’s death, her mother’s arrest, the brutality and attempted murder, stacked afresh now with robbery and an alley scrap she’d been on the wrong side of winning – all of it piled up inside her like tinder on a bonfire and bursting into bright, furious flame.
‘Don’t call me “girl”.’ Mia spat, pawing the tears from her eyes. She pulled herself halfway up the wall, slumped back down again. ‘I am the daughter of a justicus. Firstchild of one of the twelve noble houses. I’m Mia Corvere, damn you!’
‘O, I know who you are,’ said the old man. ‘Question is, who else does?’
‘… What?’
‘Who else knows you’re the Kingmaker’s sprog, missy?’
‘No one,’ she snarled. ‘I’ve told no one. And don’t call me “missy”, either.’
A sniff. ‘Not as stupid as I thought, then.’
The old man looked down the alley. Back at the marketplace. Finally, to the bleeding girl at his feet. And with something close to a sigh, he offered his hand.
‘Come on, little Crow. Let’s get your beak straightened out.’
Mia wiped her fist across her lips, brought it away bloody.
‘I know you not at all, sir,’ she said. ‘And I trust you even less.’
‘Well, those’re the first sensible words I’ve heard you hatch. But if I wanted