believe! Long have I warned the Kingmaker’s legacy still festers in our Republic’s heart! And yet not even I dared imagine that on this most holy feast, in the greatest city the world has known, the paragon of the Everseeing’s faith might be cut down by an assassin’s blade? In sight of us all? Before the three unblinking eyes of Aa himself? What madness is this?”
He rent his purple robe and howled at the sky.
“What madness is this?”
The crowd roared again, dismay to rage and back again. Mia watched the emotion roll up and down like waves on a storm-wracked beach, Scaeva wringing them for every drop.
The consul spoke again once the bedlam had subsided.
“As you know, my friends, to safeguard the security of the Republic, it was my intention to stand for a fourth term as consul in the truedark elections. But in the face of this assault upon our faith, our freedom, our familia, I have no other choice. As of this moment, by the emergency provisions of the Itreyan constitution, and in the face of the undeniable threat to our glorious Republic, I, Julius Scaeva, do hereby claim title of imperator and all powers…”
Scaeva’s voice was momentarily drowned out by the volume of the mob. Every man, woman, and child was cheering. Soldiers. Holy men. Bakers and butchers, sweetgirls and slaves, Black Goddess, even the fucking senators up there on that awful little stage. The constitution of the Republic was being torn up in front of them. Their voices being reduced to a pale echo in an empty chamber. And still, all of them,
Every
Single
One
They didn’t cry.
They didn’t rage.
They didn’t fight.
They fucking cheered.
When a babe is frightened, when the world goes wrong, who does it cry for? Who seems the only one who can make it right again?
Mia shook her head.
Father …
Scaeva held up his hand, but it seemed even the maestro couldn’t calm the applause now. The people stomped their feet in time, chanted his name like a prayer. Mia stood, bathed in the thunder of it, sick to her bones. Ashlinn reached down, squeezed her hand. Glancing to the deadboy beside her, Mia wasn’t certain if she should squeeze it back.
It seemed an age before the mob stilled enough for Scaeva to speak again.
“Know I do not take this responsibility lightly,” he finally shouted. “From now until truedark, when I am certain our friends in the Senate will ratify my new position, my people, I will be your shield. I will be your sword. I will be the stone upon which we may rebuild our peace, reclaim that which was taken from us, and reforge our Republic so that it shall be stronger, greater, and more glorious than ever it was before!”
Scaeva managed a smile at the elated response, though he seemed now to be wilting. His wife whispered in his ear and he pawed his bloody shoulder, nodded slow. A centurion of the Luminatii stepped forward, began to usher him and his wife away under guard. But with one final show of strength, Scaeva turned back to the mob.
“Hear me now!”
A hush fell at his cry, deep and still as the Abyss itself.
“Hear me!” he called. “And know it true! For I speak to you now. You.”
Mia swallowed hard, her jaw clenched and aching.
“Wherever you may be, whatever shadow has fallen over your heart, whatever darkness you may find yourself in…”
Mia noted the emphasis on “shadow” and “darkness.” The fervor in Scaeva’s voice. And though they stood hundreds of feet apart, with a hundred thousand or more between them, for a second, she felt as if they were the only two people in the world.
“I am your father,” Scaeva declared. “I always have been.”
He held out his hand as the crowd raised theirs.
“And together? Nothing can stop us.”
CHAPTER 7
BE
The flash of a gravebone sword.
A bubbling gasp.
A spatter of red.
Another guard sank to his knees and Mia
Stepped
across
the hallway
to the second man, his eyes going wide as he saw his comrade fall. Her gravebone sword cut through muscle and bone like mist. His muscles slackened, his bladder loosed, piss and blood pooling on the polished stone floor as he sank to his knees and from there, to his end.
Mia dragged the bodies to an antechamber and crouched in the shadows, curtains of long dark hair draped about her face. Listening for footfalls. The forum outside was still awash with sound, people uncertain whether to celebrate Scaeva’s speech or mourn their slain cardinal. Godsgrave was in the grip