Church against her now. Every Blade the Ministry can find. Question is, were your words just that? Or something more? How far does your loyalty to the Church extend, Adonai? In a house of thieves and liars and murderers, how much weight does a promise carry?”
“We are no thieves,” Adonai spat. “Earned, our magiks be. Dredged from the sands of Ashkah Old, verily, and paid for again in anguish, turn by bloody turn.”
“Liars, neither,” Marielle lisped, slipping her hand around her brother’s waist. “Though killers, aye. That we be. Name us the former, find truth in the latter, good Mercurio. Slow and painful truth.”
“As for loyalty, who can say.” The sorcerii placed his arm around his sister, wiping at the gore on his mouth. “Ours be not bought with coin, that much be certain. And these walls place much stock in that since Cassius fell. But there is much danger in crossing the Ministry, Mercurio. And a vow to thy little darkin shall only carry me so far.”
“And I, not at all,” Marielle smiled. “My debt to thy ward be already repaid.”
“We did not drag ourselves through blood and fire to wrest the secrets of the Moon from the dust of Old Ashkah, only see them thrown away on—”
“Wait, wait,” Mercurio frowned. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Adonai’s eyes narrowed. “Blood and fire were—”
“The Moon, you perverted fuck. The part about the Moon.”
“’Twas he who taught the Ashkahi sorcery,” Adonai said, head tilted, eyes glittering in the gloom. “A god dead, ages past, and all magik in this world with him.”
“Our arts are but fragments of larger truths,” Marielle lisped. “Forever taken from this world. Gleaned from scraps long buried beneath the sands of Old Ashkah.”
The old man looked between them, his heart racing. “What if I told you Mia has something to do with this damned Moon thing? Darkin. Her passengers. What if I told you she knows the way to its crown?”
“… What madness is this?” Marielle asked.
“Aye, mad it might just be,” the old man said. “But I swear by the Black Mother, the Everseeing, and all four of their holy daughters that Ashlinn Järnheim has a map to the Moon’s crown branded in arkemical ink on her back. Ink that will fade in the event she gets murdered. Say, for example, while she’s protecting Mia.”
The siblings looked at each other. Back to Mercurio. Red eyes glittering in the low light. The pool of blood at Adonai’s back began swaying like the sea in a storm. Marielle’s breath had grown so thick, she seemed almost to be wheezing.
“What do you say?” Mercurio offered his hand. “You two want to help me keep that pair alive? You’ve still a vow to keep, after all.”
Adonai looked at the man’s upturned palm. Took a deep, shivering breath. But without another word, he grasped Mercurio’s hand in his, fingers slicked with gore. With no hesitation, Marielle placed her hand atop her brother’s, warped and leaking pus.
The old man looked at the sorcerii and nodded.
“All right, then. Seems we’ve got ourselves a conspiracy.”
CHAPTER 14
REUNIONS
“It’s a rancid shithole,” Sidonius declared.
“It’s not that bad,” Bladesinger said.
“It is that bad,” Sidonius scowled. “The rats are big as dogs, the timbers are rife with mites, and one stray cigarillo and the whole shithouse will go up in flames.”
“Brother,” the Dweymeri woman sighed. “Considering you were locked in a piss-stained cell beneath Godsgrave Arena facing your own execution a week ago, you think you’d be more kindly disposed to the feel of the free wind upon your face.”
“We’re inside, ’Singer,” Sidonius said, pointing to the various holes in the theater’s walls. “We’re not supposed to feel the fucking wind.”
Wavewaker pushed aside a pair of moldy curtains and stomped out onto the stage. His foot went through one of the rotten timbers and he stumbled, dragging his boot free and staring at his comrades with mad joy upon his tattooed, bearded face.
“Isn’t it grand?” he breathed.
Sidonius sighed. It seemed a lifetime ago he’d been locked under the ’Grave’s Arena, not just a week as Bladesinger said. Looking back on the events of the past few months, it all felt like a dream—one he might wake from at any moment, realizing he was still gladiatii, still in chains, still a slave.
When he’d been sold to the Remus Collegium alongside Mia Corvere, he’d had no idea how that girl was set to change his life. He’d served under her father, Darius, in the Luminatii Legion, and out on the