Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,10

Republic, but look, she had good in her also. Mercy, even for rapists and brutes. O, cue the swelling violiiiiiiins!”

CHAPTER 3

HOPELESS

Something had followed her from that place. The place above the music where her father died. Something hungry. A blind, grub consciousness, dreaming of shoulders crowned with translucent wings. And she, who would gift them.

The little girl had slumped on a palatial bed in her mother’s chambers, cheeks wet with tears. Her brother lay beside her, wrapped in swaddling and blinking with his big black eyes. The babe understood none of what was going on about him. Too young to know his father had ended, and all the world beside him.

The little girl envied him.

Their apartments sat high within the hollow of the second Rib, ornate friezes carved into walls of ancient gravebone. Looking out the leadlight window, she could see the third and fifth Ribs opposite, looming above the Spine hundreds of feet below. Nevernight winds howled about the petrified towers, bringing cool in from the waters of the bay.

Opulence dripped on the floor; all crushed red velvet and artistry from the four corners of the Itreyan Republic. Moving mekwerk sculpture from the Iron Collegium. Million-stitch tapestries woven by the blind propheteers of Vaan. A chandelier of pure Dweymeri crystal. Servants moved in a storm of soft dresses and drying tears, and at the eye stood the Dona Corvere, bidding them move, move, for the love of Aa, move.

The little girl had sat on the bed beside her brother. A black tomcat was pressed to her chest, purring softly. But he’d puffed up and spat when he saw a deeper shadow at the curtain’s feet. Claws dug into his girl’s hands and she’d dropped him into the path of an oncoming maidservant, who fell with a shriek. Dona Corvere turned on her daughter, regal and furious.

“Mia Corvere, keep that wretched animal out from underfoot or we’ll leave it behind!”

And as simple as that, we have her name.

Mia.

“Captain Puddles isn’t filthy,” Mia had said, almost to herself.1

A boy in his middling teens entered the room, red-faced from his dash up the stairs. Heraldry of the Familia Corvere was embroidered on his doublet; a black crow in flight against a red sky, crossed swords below.

“Mi Dona, forgive me. Consul Scaeva has demanded—”

Heavy footfalls stilled his tongue. The doors swept aside and the room filled with men in snow-white armor, crimson plumes on their helms; Luminatii they were called, you may recall. They reminded little Mia of her father. The biggest man she’d ever seen lead them, a trimmed beard framing wolfish features, animal cunning twinkling in his gaze.

Among the Luminatii stood the beautiful consul with his black eyes and purple robes—the man who’d spoken “… Death” and smiled as the floor fell away beneath her father’s feet. Servants faded into the background, leaving Mia’s mother as a solitary figure amid that sea of snow and blood. Tall and beautiful and utterly alone.

Mia climbed off the bed, slipped to her mother’s side and took her hand.

“Dona Corvere.” The consul covered his heart with ring-studded fingers. “I offer condolences in this time of trial. May the Everseeing keep you always in the Light.”

“Your generosity humbles me, Consul Scaeva. Aa bless you for your kindness.”

“I am truly grieved, Mi Dona. Your Darius served the Republic with distinction before his fall from grace. A public execution is always a tawdry affair. But what else is to be done with a general who marches against his own capital? Or the justicus who’d have placed a crown upon that general’s head?”

The consul looked around the room, took in the servants, the luggage, the disarray.

“You are leaving us?”

“I take my husband’s body to be buried at Crow’s Nest, in the crypt of his familia.”

“Have you asked permission of Justicus Remus?”

“I congratulate our new justicus on his promotion.” A glance at the wolfish one. “My husband’s cloak fits him well. But why would I need him to grant my passage?”

“Not permission to leave the city, Mi Dona. Permission to bury your Darius. I am unsure if Justicus Remus wishes a traitor’s corpse rotting in his basement.”

Realization dawned in the Dona’s face. “You would not dare…”

“I?” The consul raised one sculpted eyebrow. “This is the will of the Senate, Dona Corvere. Justicus Remus has been rewarded your late husband’s estates for uncovering his heinous plot against the Republic. Any loyal citizen would see it fitting tithe.”

Murder gleamed in the Dona’s eyes. She glanced at the loitering servants.

“Leave us.”

The girls scuttled