Naev leaned down and began unlacing Mia’s boots. Mia yelped, tucked them underneath her. The woman reached for the ties on Mia’s shirt, and Mia slapped her hands away, backing off across the bed with her own hands raised.
‘Now, look here …’
‘She must undress.’
‘You really picked the wrong girl. And most people offer a drink first.’
Naev put her hands on her hips. ‘She must bathe before she meets the Ministry. If Naev may speak plain, she reeks of horse and excrement, her hair is greasier than a Liisian sweetbread, and she is painted in dried blood. If she wishes to attend her baptism into the Blessed Lady’s congregation looking like a Dweymeri savage, Naev suggests she saves herself the pain and simply steps off the Sky Altar now.’
‘Wait …’ Mia blinked. ‘Did you say bath?’
‘… Naev did.’
‘With water?’ Mia was up on her knees, hands clutched at her breast. ‘And soap?’
The woman nodded. ‘Five kinds.’
‘Maw’s teeth,’ Mia said, unlacing her shirt. ‘You picked the right girl after all.’
Dark figures gathered in the gaze of a stone goddess, bathed with colourless light.
It had been twelve hours since Mia arrived at the Quiet Mountain. Four since she woke. Twenty-seven minutes since she’d dragged herself from her bath and down to the Hall of Eulogies, leaving a scum of blood and grime on the water’s surface that could’ve walked away by itself if given a few more turns to gestate.
The robe was soft against her skin, her hair bound in a damp braid. Soap scent drifted about her when she turned to look among the other acolytes – twenty-eight in all, dressed in toneless grey. A brutish Itreyan boy with fists like sledgehammers. A wiry lass with bobbed red hair, eyes filled with wolf cunning. A towering Dweymeri, with ornate facial tattoos and shoulders you could rest the world on. Two blond and freckled Vaanians – brother and sister, by the look. A thin boy with ice-blue eyes, standing near Tric at the end of the row, so still she almost missed him. All of them around her age. All of them hard and hungry and silent.
Naev stood close by Mia, swathed in shadows. Other quiet figures in black robes stood at the edge of the darkness, men and women, fingers entwined like penitents in a cathedral.
‘Hands,’ Naev had whispered. ‘She will find two kinds in the Red Church. The ones who take vocations, make offerings … what commonfolk call assassins, yes? We call them Blades.’
Mia nodded. ‘Mercurio told me such.’
‘The second are called Hands,’ Naev continued. ‘There are twenty Hands for every Blade. They keep her House in order. Manage affairs. Make supply runs, like Naev. No more than four acolytes in every flock become Blades. Those who survive the year but fail to pass the grade will become Hands. Other folk simply come here to serve the goddess as they can. Not everyone is suited to do murder in her name.’
So. Only four of us can make the cut.
Mia nodded, watching the black-robed figures. Squinting in the dark, she could see the arkemical scar of slavery on a few cheeks. After the acolytes had finished assembling beneath the statue’s gaze, the Hands spoke a scrap of scripture, Naev along with them, each speaking by rote.
‘She who is all and nothing,
First and last and always,
A perfect black, a Hungry Dark,
Maid and Mother and Matriarch,
Now, and at the moment of our deaths,
Pray for us.’
A bell rang, soft, somewhere in the gloom. Mia felt Mister Kindly curled about her feet, drinking deep. She heard footsteps, saw a figure approaching from the shadows. The Hands raised their voices in unison.
‘Mouser, Shahiid of Pockets, pray for us.’
A familiar figure stepped onto the dais around the statue’s base. Handsome face and old eyes – the man who’d met Mia and Tric outside the Mountain. He was robed in grey, his blacksteel sword the only embellishment. He took his place, faced the acolytes, and with a grin that could easily make off with the silverware and the candelabras, too, he spoke.
‘Twenty-six.’
Mia heard more footsteps, and the Hands spoke again.
‘Spiderkiller, Shahiid of Truths, pray for us.’
A Dweymeri woman stalked from the gloom, tall and stately, her back as straight as the pillars around them. Long hair in neat, knotted locks, streaming down her back like rope. Her skin was dark like all her people, but she wore no facial tattoos. She seemed a moving statue, carved of mahogany. Clasped hands were stained with what might have been ink. Her lips were painted black. A collection of glass phials hung at her belt beside three curved daggers.
She took her place on the dais, spoke with a strong, proud voice.
‘Twenty-nine.’
Mia watched on in silence, gnawing at her lip. And though Mercurio had schooled Mia well in the subtle art of patience, curiosity finally got the best of her.fn5
‘What are they doing?’ Mia whispered to Naev. ‘What do the numbers mean?’
‘Their tally for the goddess. The number of offerings they have wrought in her name.’
‘Solis, Shahiid of Songs, pray for us.’
Mia watched a man stride from the shadows, also clad in grey. He was a huge lump of a thing, biceps big as her thighs. His head was shaved to stubble, so blond it was almost white, scalp lined with scars. His beard was set in four spikes at his chin. He wore a sword belt, but his scabbard was empty. As he took his place, Mia looked into his eyes and realised he was blind.
‘Thirty-six,’ he said.
Thirty-six murders? At the hands of a blind man?
‘Aalea, Shahiid of Masks, pray for us.’
Another woman padded into the soft light, swaying as she came, all curves and alabaster skin. Mia found her jaw agape – the newcomer was easily the most beautiful woman she’d laid eyes on. Thick black hair cascading to her waist, dark eyes smeared with kohl, lips painted bloody red. She was unarmed. Apparently.
‘Thirty-nine,’ she said, with a voice like sweet smoke.
‘Revered Mother Drusilla, pray for us.’
A woman slipped out of the darkness, soundless as cot death. She was elderly, curling grey hair bound in braids. An obsidian key hung about her throat on a silver chain. She seemed a kindly old thing, eyes twinkling as she looked over the group. Mia would’ve expected to find her in a rocking chair beside a happy hearth, grandchildren on her knee and a cup of tea by her elbow. This couldn’t be the chief minister of the deadliest band of—
‘Eighty-three,’ the old woman said, taking her place on the dais.
Maw take me, eighty-three …
The Revered Mother looked over the group, a gentle smile on her lips.
‘I bid you welcome to the Red Church, children,’ she said. ‘You have travelled miles and years to be here. You have miles and years to go. But at journey’s end, you will be Blades, wielded for the glory of the goddess in the most sacred of sacraments.
‘Those who survive, of course.’
The old woman gestured to the four figures around her.
‘Heed the words of your Shahiid. Know that everything you were prior to this moment is dead. That once you pledge