took a deep breath as he always did. Reaching down to run his fingers over his precious scabbard. The leather embossed with concentric circles, much like a pattern of eyes.
Slowly, he removed it from his waist, feeling all the world around him fall away into darkness. Once again blind as he’d been the turn he was born. He folded his robe neatly and placed it by the edge of the broad, sunken bath, coiling his belt and scabbard carefully on top. There were only a few in the entire Church who knew its true purpose, the magiks that coursed through it. Old Ashkahi sorcery engraved into the leather, lifting the veil on a world that would otherwise be utterly hidden to him.
Stepping down into the warm bath, Solis closed his eyes and tilted his head back beneath the water, allowing himself to float for a handful of minutes.
Deaf, dumb, and blind.
It was a habit, and the Revered Father didn’t like habits—they made a man easier to ambush. But he always allowed himself this tiny moment of peace and quiet. This was the Red Church, after all. The bastion of Niah’s might upon this earth.
Who could touch him here?
Solis rose to the surface, blinked the water from milk-white eyes. He smelled soap’s perfume, maple burning low in the braziers, candle scent. His ears were keener than his beak, but all he heard were crackling flames, the ghostly choir out in the Church’s dark. And though his own eyes were almost sightless, sensing only the absence of light, he noticed nothing odd as he sat up in the bath, save perhaps the chamber was a touch darker than usual.
Darker …
“… GOOD EVE, SHAHIID…”
To his credit, Solis didn’t flinch. Didn’t even deign to look in the shadowwolf’s direction. He heard a featherlight scuff of a boot on stone, caught the faint smell of sweat above the smell of maple, and … Spiderkiller’s perfume? He knew who stood there, off to one side of the pool. Watching him with her dark, shaded eyes.
“You.”
“Me,” Mia replied.
A cold trickle of dread cooled Solis’s belly. His hand flashed toward his robe at the bath’s edge. But though his fingers found the cloth, he realized his scabbard was …
Gone.
“I was actually disappointed when I found out,” Mia said, now speaking from farther away. “There’s something quite romantic in the notion of the blind swordmaster, isn’t there? But it was all lies, wasn’t it, Solis? All bullshit. Just like the rest of this fucking place.”
Fear turned his insides greasy cold. He reached into his robe for the dagger he kept hidden there. Not really surprised to find that gone, too. Solis rose from the bath in a cloud of steam, crouched naked at the edge. He was drawing breath to shout when—
“Your Hand is sleeping, by the by,” came the girl’s voice from across the room. “If you were thinking of screaming for help, that is.”
“Scream?” Solis sneered. “You always did think too much of yourself, girl.”
“And you too little,” she replied. “Is that why you let me train here? Knowing how badly it could bite you in the arse? Did you really think I’d never find out what you all did?”
He tilted his head to better hear, straining for the sound of her footfalls. Retreating along the edge of the bath, he tried putting his back to the wall. But he heard a soft whisper of cloth over the crackling wood in the braziers, realized she was
Behind me.
He struck, hands outstretched, finding nothing but air.
“A fine lunge, Revered Father,” the girl said. “But your aim. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
She was to his right, drifting away. He could feel her. Years in the dark before he’d found his Belt of Eyes, the years he’d spent locked in the Philosopher’s Stone, all came rushing back in a flood now. He’d murdered a hundred men to win his freedom from that pit, all while blind as a newborn pup. He didn’t need eyes to kill then. He’d not need them now.
But she’s good. Quiet as death when she moves.
“It’s all lies,” she whispered. “The murders. The offerings. Hear me, Mother. Hear me now. All that bollocks. This place wasn’t a church, Solis. It was a brothel. You were never a holy Blade in service to the Mother of Night. You were a whore.”
Keep her talking.
“And you expected something greater, is that it?” he asked. “Did you swallow the nonsense Drusilla and your Mercurio told you? ‘Chosen of the Mother,’ is that it?”