say, ‘If you don’t believe in him, why would he believe in you?’”
Corleone took another long, slow pull from the bottle.
“He could sing, my brother. Voice that could shame a lyrebird. So the bishop at our parish recruited him into the choir. This was twenty years ago now, mind you. I was twelve. Nicco fourteen. My brother practiced every turn.” Cloud chuckled and shook his head. “His singing around the house drove me mad. But I remember my ma was so proud, she cried all through his first mass. Cried like a fucking babe.
“And then Nicco stopped singing. Like his voice just got … stolen. He told Ma he didn’t want to be in the choir anymore. Didn’t want to go to church. But she said it’d be a shame on him to waste the gift Aa gave him. ‘If you don’t believe in him, why would he believe in you, Nicco,’ she told him. And she made him go back.”
The brigand took another swig, put his boots on the table.
“One nevernight, he came home from practice and he was shaking. Crying. I asked him what was wrong. He wouldn’t say. But there was blood. Blood on his bedding. I ran and got Ma. Said, ‘Nicco’s bleeding, Nicco’s bleeding,’ and she came running, asked what was wrong.
“And he said the bishop hurt him. Made him…”
Corleone shook his head, his eyes lost focus.
“She didn’t believe him. Asked him why he’d lie like that. And then she hit him.”
“Black Mother…,” Mia whispered.
“She couldn’t grasp it, aye? Something like that … the shape of it just didn’t fit into her world. But it’s a terrible thing, Dona Mia, when the ones who should love you best leave you for the wolves.”
Mia hung her head. “Aye.”
“Nicco jumped off the Bridge of Broken Promises four turns later. Bricks in his shirt. He’d been in the water a week when they found him. The bishop came to his funeral. Said the mass over his stone. Embraced my mother and told her everything would be all right. That the Everseeing loved her. That he had a plan. And then he turned to me, and put his hand on my shoulder, and asked if I liked to sing.”
Mia tried to speak. Couldn’t find her voice.
Corleone looked her in her eyes.
“That bishop’s name was Francesco Duomo.”
Mia’s belly dropped into the soles of her boots. Her mouth full of bile, lashes dewed with tears. She’d known Duomo deserved the murder she’d gifted him in the arena, but Goddess, she’d never guessed just how deeply.
Corleone stood slow, walked around the table, and, still looking into her eyes, he placed a familiar bag of coin on the table in front her.
“You stay on this ship as long as you fucking please.”
CHAPTER 13
CONSPIRACY
Mercurio sat in the office of Chronicler Aelius, nose deep in “THE BOOKS.”
That’s how he thought of them in his head now. “THE BOOKS.” Capital letters. A bold, no-nonsense script. Quotation marks, perhaps underscored—he wasn’t quite sure yet. But what he was certain of was this: to think of these things as “some books,” or “Some Books,” or even “SOME BOOKS” was to deny, in every true and real sense, what they actually were.
Incredible books.
Impossible books.
Brain-breaking, mon-fucking-strosities of books.
“THE BOOKS.”
The old man’s scowl had become so permanent a fixture on his face over the past few turns, it actually hurt to change expressions now. His pale blue eyes carefully scanned his current page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word, his gnarled, toxin-stained forefinger tracking the movement of his eyes across the lines.
He was just nearing the end of the second volume, heart beating quick.
And with a final gasp, the Unfallen fell.
A hammerblow to Mia’s spine. A rush of blood in her veins, skin crawling, every nerve ending on fire. She fell to her knees, hair billowing about her as if in some phantom breeze, her shadow scrawled in maddened, jagged lines beneath her, Mister Kindly and Eclipse and a thousand other forms scribbled among the shapes it drew upon the stone. The hunger inside her sated, the longing gone, the emptiness suddenly, violently filled. A severing. An awakening. A communion, painted in red and black. And face upturned to the sky, for a moment, just for a breath, she saw it. Not an endless field of blinding blue, but of bottomless black. Black and whole and perfect.
Filled with tiny stars.
Hanging above her in the heavens, Mia saw a globe of pale light shining. Like a sun almost, but not red or