He was panicked, desperate, scrabbling at her mask as she twisted the blade. Nothing like the dreadful imaginings she’d filled this moment with. His legs splayed and his neck gushing, kicking against the mattress and wanting her to stop. To wait.
Is this the way it should feel?
Is this the way it should be?
If all had gone awry, this would have been her last nevernight in this world. And she knew the first was usually the worst. She’d thought she wasn’t ready; not strong enough, not cold enough, that Old Mercurio’s reassurances wouldn’t be true for her.
‘Remember to breathe,’ he’d counselled. ‘It’ll be over soon enough.’
He was thrashing, and she was holding him still, and everything about her wondered if this was the way it would always be. She’d imagined this moment might feel like some kind of evil. A tithe to be paid, not a moment to be savoured. But now she was here, she thought it a beautiful, balletic affair. His spine arching beneath her. The fear in his eyes as he tore her mask aside. The gleam of the blade she’d thrust home, hand over his mouth as she nodded and shushed with a mother’s voice, waiting for him to be done.
He clawed her cheek, the vile reek of his breath and shit filling the room. And in that moment there was a flicker of it – a horror giving birth to mercy, despite the fact that he deserved this ending and a hundred more. Drawing back her blade, she buried it in his chest, and there was heat on her hands, flooding and sluicing as his every muscle went taut. And he grasped her knuckles and sighed through his death, deflating beneath her, soft and damp and boneless.
Sitting atop him, she breathed deep. Tasted salt and scarlet. Sighed.
She rolled away, crumpled sheets around her. Touching her face, she found wetness, warmth. Smeared on her hands and lips.
Blood.
‘Hear me, Niah,’ she whispered. ‘Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close.’
The cat who was shadows watched from its perch on the bedhead. Watched her the way only the eyeless can. It said not a word.
It didn’t need to.
Muted sunslight on her skin. Raven hair, damp with sweat and hanging in her eyes. She pulled up leather britches, tossed a mortar-grey shirt over her head, tugging on wolfskin boots. Sore. Stained. But glad in it, somehow. Somewhere near content.
‘The room is paid up for the nevernight,’ she’d said. ‘If you want it.’
The sweetboy had watched from the other side of the bed, head on his elbow.
‘And my coin?’
She motioned to a purse beside the looking glass.
‘You’re younger than my usuals,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t get many firsts.’
She looked at herself in the mirror then – pale skin and dark eyes. Younger than her years. And though evidence to the contrary lay drying on her skin, for a moment, she still found it hard to think of herself as anything more than a girl. Something weak and shivering, something sixteen years in this city had never managed to temper.
She’d pushed her shirt back into her britches. Checked the harlequin mask in her cloak. The stiletto at her belt. Gleaming and sharp.
The hangman would be leaving the taverna soon.
‘I have to go,’ she’d said.
‘May I ask you something, Mi Dona?’
‘… Ask then.’
‘Why me? Why now?’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s no kind of answer.’
‘You think I should have saved myself, is that it? That I’m some gift to be given? Now for ever spoiled?’
The boy said nothing, watching her with those fathom-deep eyes. Pretty as a picture. The girl drew a cigarillo from a silver case. Lit it on one of the candles. Breathing deep.
‘I just wanted to know what it was like,’ she finally said. ‘In case I die.’
She shrugged, exhaled grey.
‘Now I know.’
And into the shadows, she walked.
Muted sunslight on her skin. Mortar-grey cloak flowing down her shoulders, rendering her a shadow in the sullen light. She stood beneath a marble arch in the Beggar King’s Piazza, the third sun hanging faceless in the sky. Memories of the hangman’s end drying in the bloodstains on her hands. Memories of the sweetboy’s lips drying with the stains on her britches. Sore. Sighing. But still glad in it, somehow. Still somewhere near content.
‘Didn’t die, I see.’
Old Mercurio watched her from the other side of the arch, tricorn pulled low, cigarillo at his lips. He seemed smaller somehow. Thinner. Older.
‘Not for lack of trying,’ the girl replied.
She looked at him then – stained hands and fading eyes. Old beyond his years. And though evidence to the contrary was crusting on her skin, for a moment, she found it hard to think of herself as anything more than a girl. Something weak and shivering, something six years in his tutelage had never managed to temper.
‘I won’t see you for a long time, will I?’ she asked. ‘I might never see you again.’
‘You knew this,’ he said. ‘You chose this.’
‘I’m not sure there was ever a choice,’ she said.
She opened her fist, a sheepskin purse in her palm. The old man took the offering, counting the contents with one ink-stained finger. Clinking. Bloodstained. Twenty-seven teeth.
‘Seems the hangman lost a few before I got to him,’ she explained.
‘They’ll understand.’ Mercurio tossed the teeth back to the girl. ‘Be at the seventeenth pier by six bells. A Dweymeri brigantine called Trelene’s Beau. She’s a freeship, not flying under Itreyan colours. She’ll bear you hence.’
‘Nowhere you can follow.’
‘I’ve trained you well. This is for you alone. Cross the Red Church threshold before the first turn of Septimus, or you’ll never cross it at all.’
‘… I understand.’
Affection gleamed in rheumy eyes. ‘You’re the greatest pupil I’ve ever sent into the Mother’s service. You’ll spread your wings in that place and fly. And you will see me again.’
She drew the stiletto from her belt. Proffered it on her forearm, head bowed. The blade was crafted of gravebone, gleaming white and hard as steel, its hilt carved like a crow in flight. Red amber eyes gleamed in the scarlet sunslight.
‘Keep it.’ The old man sniffed. ‘It’s yours again. You earned it. At last.’
She looked the knife over, this way and that.
‘Should I give it a name?’
‘You could, I suppose. But what’s the point?’
‘It’s this bit.’ She touched the blade’s tip. ‘The part you stick