he’d smoked in his life and wondering if he couldn’t have found a less-debilitating way to thumb his nose at society, propriety, and mortality in general.
Still, he followed, knees creaking, left arm aching (more often, lately), sweat rising on his liver-spotted skin. He lost sight of the running Hand in short order, but he knew exactly where the lad would be headed. Stained-glass light spilled down the stairwells, his breath rasping as he entered the Hall of Eulogies, touching brow, then eyes, then lips as he hobbled past the looming statue of the Mother.
Hope you know what you’re playing at …
His young female Hand eventually took pity as Mercurio’s struggles worsened, as his knees cried mercy, as his lungs burst into black moldering flame inside his withered chest. She slipped an arm about his waist, propped him up a little as he climbed, higher and higher, dry-mouthed, breath burning, heart afire. There were never this many stairs when he was younger, he was sure of it. The air was never this thick. But finally he stood, bent double and wheezing, outside the chambers of the Revered Father.
“Fuck me, I’ve got to quit smoking,” he rasped.
He entered without knocking, found Solis seated at his desk, the breathless Hand who’d made the discovery standing before him. Spiderkiller was stood beside the Revered Father, clad all in emerald green and gleaming gold. The dour Shahiid of Truths was bent over the open tome and reading aloud.
“‘It struggled to hold itself together, more and more washed away in the downpour, thinned near to worthlessness. But before it lost cohesion entirely, bleeding out into the puddle of Hush’s pretty ruin, the blood managed to form itself into simple shapes. Four letters that formed a single word. A name.’”
Spiderkiller straightened, stabbed the page with one poison-stained finger.
“‘NAEV.’”
Solis turned his blind eyes to the Hand before him.
“Have Adonai send word to the Lady of Blades immediately.”
The Hand bowed low. “What word, Revered Father?”
Solis’s smile glittered in his milk-white eyes.
“We have her.”
* * *
The tea was a touch too hot.
Drusilla sat on a rocking chair in a rolling garden green, breathing its perfume. The sunsbells were in bloom, the lavender and candlewick wearing their dresses, too. The light of two suns was bright on the palazzo’s walls, warm on her bones, banishing the Quiet Mountain’s lingering chill. She could hear little Cyprian and Magnus playing nearby, their laughter like sweetest music to her ears.
But her tea was a touch too hot.
She snapped her fingers, and a tall Liisian slave in a pristine white toga stepped forward, tipping a splash of goat’s milk into her cup. The old woman sipped—much better—and dismissed the girl back to the shadows with a wordless glance. She leaned back in her chair, closed her pale blue eyes, and breathed a soft, contented sigh.
She heard a shout. A distressed cry following.
“Cyprian, be nice to your brother!” she called. “Or no treats after supper.”
“… Yes, Grandmother,” came the chastened reply.
“Mother?”
Drusilla opened her eyes, saw Julia standing before her, draped in red silk. A Dweymeri jeweler stood behind her daughter, carrying a velvet board studded with expensive wares. Julia held an ornate chain dripping with rubies up to her throat, then swapped it for a more austere gold circlet, studded with a single, larger stone.
“First?” Julia asked. “Or second?”
“The occasion?”
“The Imperator’s Ball, of course,” Julia replied.
“My dear, truedark isn’t for weeks…”
“One can’t be too prepared,” her daughter replied, her tone prim. “If Valerius is to pursue his seat in the Liisian quarter, we must seek to impress.”
“I hardly think your husband’s senatorial ambitions will be thwarted by your choice of jewelry, my dear. The imperator tells me the seat is assured.”
Julia sighed, examined each necklet in turn. “Perhaps I’ll just get both.”
“Have you heard news from your brother? Is he coming to dinner?”
“Aye, he’ll be here. He’s bringing that frightful Cicerii woman.” Julia’s lips turned down in distaste. “I’m afraid he’ll announce their engagement soon.”
“Good,” Drusilla nodded. “He should be thinking toward his future at his age. Familia is the most important thing in the world, my dear. If your father and I taught you one thing, it’s that.”
Julia looked to the palatial gardens around them. Sighed soft.
“I miss him.”
“I miss him, too. But life is for living, my love.”
Julia smiled, leaned down, and kissed Drusilla’s brow, then wandered back into the palazzo. Godsgrave’s cathedrals began to ring in fivebells, their dulcet tones echoing through the marrowborn quarter. The old woman looked up to the third