spilling from their homes and taverna, out into the piazzas, bewildered, drunken, afraid. Screams and smoke were rising from the south, fear spreading through the streets like evershade through a bottle of Albari goldwine. The Shahiid kept to the back ways, crossing the Bridge of Threads and softly cursing the long, elaborate hems of her gown. She drew one of her poisoned blades from her waist, gilt with gold, carefully cutting a long slit into her dress so she might run better. And then, run she did.
The city shook again. Vermin streaming about her feet. Spiderkiller could see the gates of the necropolis ahead, fences of wrought iron silhouetted against the storm sky. She was only a few blocks from the waterline now, and from there, escape. Picking up her pace, she wiped sweat from her eyes, one long saltlock coming loose from the artful coils atop her head. The lightning above glittered on the gold at her throat and wrists, gleamed on her black lips as she entered the houses of Godsgrave’s dead.
Making her way through the graveyard, she stopped to steady herself against the cache—hidden in the tomb of some long-dead senator. She cast one dark eye over the inscription while she waited for the tremor to subside. The name was worn away with time, the features of the marble bust smoothed by years.
“Food for worms, all of us,” she murmured.
Black lips curled in a smile as she gazed to the night above.
“But not tonight, Mother.”
A chill stole over her, dark and hollow. Goosebumps rippling on her skin. Lightning flashed overhead, etching the necropolis shadows in black. A shape rose up before the Shahiid of Truths, hooded and cloaked, swords of what could only have been gravebone in its hands.
“Maw’s teeth,” she whispered.
It wasn’t human. That much was clear. O, it was shaped like one beneath that cloak. But though the night wasn’t all that cold, the figure’s breath hung in white clouds before its lips, Spiderkiller’s body shivering at the chill.
“Greetings, Shahiid.”
“’Byss and blood,” Spiderkiller breathed.
The thing peeled back its hood. Pallid skin. Ink-black fingernails. Long braids writhing like living things. Dark and bottomless eyes, alabaster wrought anew by the Mother’s hand. But even in truedark, all the city around her falling to chaos, Spiderkiller would have recognized her face anywhere.
The light of a thousand stars glittered in the girl’s gaze.
Empty as the Abyss she’d crossed to return here.
“… Ashlinn?”
“He couldn’t be here himself,” she said, black tears gleaming in her eyes. “Not even the Mother has the power to gift life to the dead twice. So he could only show me the way back. He was willing to give that much for her. That was the kind of boy he was. But Tric told me to tell you hello, Spiderkiller.”
The gravebone swords rose up in her hands.
“And he asked me to give you these.”
The truedark breeze was cool on her skin.
The sky above as empty as the place her heart had once been.
And Spiderkiller closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 46
FATHER
The shadows loosed their grip on his throat, and Mercurio fell to his knees.
The wind was a funeral dirge, howling and clawing at his skin. The fire was spreading from the spilled coals across the fallen furniture, smoke on his tongue. The thing that had been Julius Scaeva lowered his gaze from the ceiling to the entrance of the great hall as every door blasted inward with the sound of thunder. The shadows in the room warped and stretched, the entire Rib trembling. The dark seemed to deepen, the light of the few working arkemical globes suffocated. Mercurio felt a weight on his shoulders, pressing on his chest, crushing out his breath. A chill descended on the room, the scent of cloves and fallen leaves, the air thrumming with a tempest song. He lifted his head, old eyes turned toward the door.
And there she was. In all her glory.
“Mia,” he whispered.
Goddess, she was beautiful. The weight of years and blood and sacrifice, spread at her shoulders like dark wings. The scars of her trials etched on her skin and in the hollows of her chest, mirrored in her eyes. But nothing, no one, not the broken hearts or the shattered dreams or the simple tragedy of being alive and breathing had ever been enough to stop her. Larger than life, she was.
A girl with a story to tell.
She was dressed all in black: a corset and long skirts flowing like a river about her feet. A gravebone longblade waited