Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,138

tirade seemed to knock the worst of the heat from Carlotta. Mia and Ash were hanging on to an arm each, slowly loosing their grips. Diamo eased off Jessamine, and with a final, poisonous glance, the girl wiped the blood from her chin and sat back at table, eating as if nothing had happened. Cold and hard as a barrel of ice.

Mia and Ash helped Carlotta gather her scattered notes. The trio were crouched over the wreckage, Carlotta trying to arrange the pages into some sort of order. Her work was a shambles, soaked to ruin in places. Her shoulders were slumped, her usually stoic facade in tatters. Weeks of labor undone in a moment. Mia found herself feeling sorry for the girl. Lotti was sharp as a razor, and good company to boot. Next to Ash, the girl was as close to a friend as any she really had in these halls.

“Don’t trouble yourself about what that bitch said,” Ash whispered, glancing at Carlotta’s flawless cheek. “That’s not who you are anymore.”

“It was never who I was.”

Carlotta’s hands fell still. Her stare growing clouded.

“It was just who they made me.”

Mia threw Ash a warning glance, thinking it best to leave the sore spot alone. Gathering more pages, she handed them to Lotti along with a change of subject.

“I keep my notes in my room,” she said. “I’m perhaps not as far along as you, but you can borrow them if you like.”

Carlotta blinked. Seeming to return from whatever memory she was lost in, her mask locking back into place. She spared Mia a small smile.

“I’ll be all right. I’ve memorized much of it. I’ll ask Spiderkiller for permission to work late in the hall. Should be able to catch the rest up if I miss a little sleep. So my thanks for the offer, but I’m still going to kick your arse, Corvere.”

“Be careful,” Ash warned. “There’s someone who wants to kick yours worse.”

Carlotta glanced at Jessamine. The girl was calmly eating her meal, acting as if she had her nose punched bloody all the time. Showing no pain. No weakness. Jess was an insufferable cow, but Mia had to admit it: The girl had stones.

“Let her try,” Carlotta said.

Lotti glanced over her shoulder, looking Osrik up and down. The boy had resumed his place at table after his tirade, scowling at the post-brawl mess. “You know, your brother’s a bit of all right when he gets all shouty, Ashlinn.”

“O, Black Mother, shut your mouth before I spew.”

Carlotta rose and padded over to Osrik, spoke to him quietly, sodden notebook in hand. Oz smiled his handsome smile, fingertips brushing Lotti’s own.

Mia waggled her eyebrows at Ash. “They’ve been getting cozy. I saw them working together on some concoction a few turns back. And they seem to get paired up in Truths an awful lot.”

Ash ballooned her cheeks, pretended to vomit under the table.

Mia smirked, but inside, she found herself more than a little uneasy. Initiation was creeping closer. Friction was rising. Knives were out. The knowledge that not everyone would become a Blade hung between every breath, the idea that fellow acolytes were competition coloring every moment. It’d become easy to think that way. Seeing their fellows drop by the wayside, one by one. Every death turning them a little colder. The Church’s tests were becoming more dangerous, the Ministry’s regard for the acolytes’ lives ever more cavalier. Mia knew it was idiocy to worry about anyone but herself.

That was the point, she supposed. What was it Naev had said?

This place gives much. But it takes much more.

Stripping away the empathy. The pity. Piece by piece. Death by death.

And what will be left in the end?

Mia looked about the Sky Altar. The faces. The bloodstains. The shadows.

Blades, she realized.

Blades.

1. A language spoken entirely in gestures of the hands, fingers and face. Utilized by a master, a conversation in Tongueless can appear as little more than a series of tics, winks and subtle nods, completely unremarkable to anyone not trained in the art.

Newer practitioners often appear to be pulling silly faces in the midst of a seizure, but practice makes perfect, as they say.

2. The braavi are a loose collective of gangs that run much of the criminal undertakings in Godsgrave—prostitution, larceny and organized violence. For hundreds of years, the braavi were a thorn in the sides of various Itreyan kings, and even after the Republic was formed, they remained dug into the Nethers of Godsgrave like particularly stubborn ticks.