Words simply can’t do justice to the splendor of an Itreyan sunsset.
The faintest blood-red of Saan’s fallen glow, like blush on a courtesan’s cheek. Saai’s pale blue, like the eye of a newborn babe, falling into sleep. A magnificent watercolor portrait, glittering on the ocean’s face and reaching up into the gables of heaven. Dark stains leaking across the edges of the canvas.
It takes three turns for the light to fully die. All the Republic is washed in the stink of blood as Aa’s ministers sacrifice animals by the hundreds, the thousands, beseeching their Everseeing to return quick as he may. Long shadows fall across the streets of Godsgrave like funeral shrouds. As the Night creeps closer on pale, bare feet, the citizenry is gripped with a kind of hysteria. Purchasing their pretty dominos and fearsome voltos and smiling punchinellos from the mask makers. Fetching their finest coats and gowns from tailors and seamstresses. Hands shaking all the while. The pious flee to the cathedrals in droves to pray the long night away. The rest seek solace in the company of friends or the arms of strangers or the bottom of bottles. An endless run of soirees and salons pepper the calendar in the turns prior, as the light slowly perishes, as the citizens fight or fawn or fuck their fears away.
Then truedark falls. And Carnivalé begins.
Mercurio stared up at the night above his head. Black as the cloak across his thin shoulders. The gondola swayed and rolled along the canal under Sidonius’s careful hands. Bladesinger sat at the fore, watching with dark eyes as they slipped below a crowd of revelers on the Bridge of Vows. Adonai sat beside the old man, red stare glittering in the starlight. Like Mercurio’s, the blood speaker’s gaze was turned to the sky above, his long and clever fingers entwined in his lap.
They’d waited for Mia to return as long as they were able, but after Saai began its final descent, the bishop of Godsgrave had decided they could wait no longer. Sidonius had promised Mia he’d rescue her brother if she failed to return, and the gladiatii took his vows to heart. Adonai had spoken of nothing save his beloved Marielle’s return ever since Spiderkiller and Scaeva fled with the weaver in their clutches. Tric had simply disappeared one nevernight, and Mercurio had no idea where the boy had gone. Their numbers were thin. But who knew what was happening in the ’Grave since the imperator took the godsblood? Who knew what would remain after truedark fell? And so, as the suns failed, they’d gathered in the speaker’s chambers and slipped beneath the flood.
Drusilla’s palazzo had been abandoned—Mercurio presumed her familia and servants had fled at some prearranged moment when the Lady of Blades failed to return from the Mountain. They’d found weapons aplenty in the Lady of Blades’ caches, though—shortswords and daggers and longblades of Liisian steel, fine and sharp. Rummaging through her familia’s belongings, they purloined clothes that fit well enough, black cloaks to cover the pieces that didn’t. The taste of pig’s blood on his tongue, Mercurio had wandered out into the street and flagged down a runner, sent a coded message to one of his old contacts in Little Liis. Over the course of the next eight hours, word had been delivered back and forth across the City of Bridges and Bones, the old man’s information network thrumming with whispers like a dusty spider’s web. And finally satisfied, the bishop had led his band out to the private jetty behind Drusilla’s estate and stolen the choicest of her five gondolas.
Another round of fireworks burst in the skies overhead—the noise and light meant to frighten the Mother of Night back below the horizon. In the streets beyond the canal networks, Mercurio heard the citizens whoop and cheer in appreciation. Drusilla’s estate was in the heart of the marrowborn district, and they had only a short way to travel to the Ribs. But the canals were choked with boats of every shape and size, and the streets were even busier. Every taverna and pub overflowed with merrymakers, the air ringing with music and laughter, drunken shouts and bloody oaths. The citizens who passed them on the water wished them a swift truedark and a merry Carnivalé. Face hidden behind a purloined punchinello, the bishop of Godsgrave nodded and gave greeting in return, his old