“Aye,” Mercurio asked. “Scaeva’s destroyed the local chapel. And the blood pool along with it. We’re cut off from the ’Grave.”
Mia looked to Adonai. “The Lady of Blades never struck me as the kind of woman who wouldn’t leave herself a back door.”
The speaker slowly nodded. “Another pool there be. In Drusilla’s palazzo.”
Mia looked among her friends, her eyes finally resting on Sidonius. “I need you to do this for me. If I don’t make it back…”
Sidonius breathed deep, his eyes shining.
“Please, Sid. Promise me.”
The big man sighed. But finally, as she knew he would, he nodded. Because if Mia could’ve had a big brother, she’d have chosen him.
“Aye, Crow. I swear it,” he said.
Mia’s chest was empty. Her whole body numb. But somehow, she managed to conjure a grateful smile. Squeezing ’Singer’s hand. Kissing Sid’s cheek.
“I’ll not leave you to face this alone,” Mercurio said.
“I’m not alone,” Mia said, turning to face her old mentor. “I’ve never been alone. You’ve been with me ever since that grubby, spoiled little brat stormed into your store and demanded you buy her brooch. You saved my arse that turn. And in some small way, you’ve been saving it ever since.”
Mercurio scowled, his ice-blue eyes welling with tears.
“Never took a wife,” the old man said. “Never had a familia. Didn’t seem fair in my line of work. But … if I ever had a daughter—”
“You had a daughter,” Mia said.
The girl threw her arms around the old man and squeezed hard as she could.
“And she loves you,” she whispered.
Mercurio closed his eyes, tears spilling down his cheeks. He kissed the top of her head, shaking his own.
“I love you, too, little Crow.”
“I’m sorry it had to end this way,” she murmured.
“It’s not the last chapter yet.”
“Not yet.”
Mia pulled back, leaving his waistcoat a little damp. She dragged her sleeve across her nose, tucked her tear-soaked hair behind her ears.
“If…”
She pressed her lips together, breathed deep.
“If I don’t come back … remember me, neh? Not just the good parts. The ugly parts and the selfish parts and the real parts. Remember all of it. Remember me.”
Mercurio nodded. Swallowed hard. “I will.”
Mia looked about the Mountain’s belly for the last time. There was still no whisper of the ghostly choir in the air; all was silence. But that seemed fitting somehow. She closed her eyes a moment, letting the quiet wash over her, unearthly and beatific. She felt it tingling along her skin like music, down her spine, the song of the dark between the stars. Crowning her shoulders with blackest wings. Wishing her good fortune. Kissing her goodbye. Her heart ached that another hadn’t been here to do that. All the things they could’ve been …
Mia drew a deep breath. Feeling a cat-shaped hole in her chest, and all the fear and sorrow and anguish that had seeped in to fill it. But she pushed it back. Fought it down. Thinking of her brother, her father, her mother. The words she’d been taught when she was but a girl of ten. The words that had shaped her, ruled her, ruined her.
The words that had made her all she was.
Never flinch.
Never fear.
Never forget.
She kissed Mercurio’s cheek, nodded farewell to Sid and ’Singer, then took hold of her camel’s reins and led him out into the dying sunslight.
Giving all, not giving in.
“Farewell, gentlefriends.”
* * *
Tric was waiting for her outside the Mountain.
Whisperwinds played in his long saltlocks, shifting them about his broad shoulders. His stare was fixed on the eastern horizon. His gravebone blades were crossed at his back, black leathers hugging his frame. As always, he seemed some masterwork, inexplicably placed on a rocky outcropping in a nowhere stretch of the Ashkahi wastes. Until he moved, that is, raising one ink-black hand and tucking one thick lock fallen across his face back behind his ear. His eyes were bottomless black, shot through with tiny pricks of illumination. Narrowed against the dying light.
Saan had sunk so low it was almost hidden below the horizon. Saai loitered yet in the heavens, the Knower twisting the sky into an awful, lonely violet. But truedark was near now. Tric was almost as close as he’d ever be to what he’d been. As she walked up beside him, Mia could feel the gathering dark in her bones.
“IT’S NOT FAIR,” he sighed. “NONE OF THIS IS.”
“I know.”
“I LOVE YOU, MIA.”
She sighed. “I know.”
He turned to look at her. Tall and beautiful and carved of sorrow.