And then she charged the silent boy, desperate to even the scales before Solis could break loose of her shadow werking.
Hush drew a rapier from his belt, met her charge, steel on steel. Mia knew the boy from the brief comradeship they’d shared as acolytes in the halls of the Quiet Mountain. She knew where he’d come from, what he’d been before he joined the Church, why he never spoke. It wasn’t because he lacked a tongue, no—it was because the owners of the pleasure house he’d been enslaved to as a child had knocked out all his teeth so he could better service their clientele.
Mia had been training in the art of the sword since she was ten years old. Hush had still been on his hands and knees on silken sheets. They’d both trained under Solis, true, and the boy had proved himself no novice with a blade. But in the last nine months, Mia had trained under the whip of Arkades, the Red Lion of Itreya—schooled in the arts of the gladiatii by one of the greatest swordsmen alive. And though she was exhausted, bleeding, bruised, her muscles were still hardened, her grip still callused, her form drilled into her hour upon hour beneath the burning sunslight.
“Guards!” came Jonnen’s call. “She’s here!”
Mia struck low, forcing Hush aside, her backswing whistling through the air. The boy stepped away like a dancer, blue eyes glittering. Mia raised her blade, telegraphing another strike. But with a deft flick of her boot, she scooped up a toeful of grit from the earth beneath them—an old gladiatii trick—and kicked it right at Hush’s face.
The boy reeled back and Mia’s blade sliced him across the chest, just a few inches short of splitting his ribs clean open. His doublet and the flesh beyond parted like water, but still the boy made no sound. He staggered back, one hand pressed to his wound as Mia raised her blade for the deathblow.
“… MIA…!”
She turned with a gasp, barely deflecting the strike that would have split her head apart. Solis had hacked his boots away, left them wrapped in tendrils of his own shadow, and charged Mia barefoot. The big man collided with her, sent her flying, her backside and thighs shredded on the stone as she hit the ground. She tumbled back up onto her feet with a black curse, fending off the flurry of strikes Solis aimed at her head, neck, chest. She struck back, sweat-soaked and desperate, long black hair stuck to her skin, Mister Kindly and Eclipse working hard to eat her fear.
“Guards!”
This was no fresh Blade of the Church she faced now, no. This was the deadliest swordsman in the congregation. And no cheap tricks learned in the arena would avail Mia here. Only skill. And steel. And sheer, bloody will.
She struck back at Solis, their blades ringing bright beneath the burning suns. His white eyes were narrowed, fixed somewhere in the empty over her left shoulder. And yet the blind man moved as if he saw her every strike coming from a mile away. Forcing her back. Beating her down. Wearing her out.
The crowd in the street had gathered outside the chapel gates now, drawn like flies to a corpse by Jonnen’s cries. The boy stood in the middle of the thoroughfare, waving at the cadre of legionaries, who were even now tromptromptromping toward them. Mia was tired, weak, outnumbered—she had only moments before this situation dissolved into a puddle of shite.
“Where’s Ashlinn and Mercurio?” she demanded.
Solis’s blade streaked past her chin as he smiled. “If you’ve a wish to see your old master alive again, girl, you’d best drop your steel and come with me.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed as she struck at the big man’s knees.
“You don’t call me girl, bastard. Not as if the word were kin for ‘shit.’”
Solis laughed and launched a riposte that almost took Mia’s head off. She twisted aside, sweat-soaked fringe hanging in her eyes.
“Perhaps you only hear what you want to hear, girl.”
“Aye, laugh now,” she wheezed. “But what will you do without your beloved Scaeva? When your other patrons learn the savior of the fucking Republic died at the hands of one of your own Blades?”
Solis tilted his head and smiled wider, stilling the heart in Mia’s chest.
“Did he?”
“Halt! In the name of the Light!”
The legionaries burst through the chapel gates, all glittering armor and blood-red plumes on their helms. Hush was on his knees, the Rictus from Mia’s stolen blade rendering him