Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,177
“treasonous smut” were hunted down and burned under order of Francisco’s Queen, Aria, after her husband’s death. The copy in the Red Church athenaeum is the last one in existence.
The book, having inherited some of its author’s infamous temperament, is understandably upset about this fact.
2. What became of the boy’s beloved knife was anyone’s guess.
3. The third branch of the Republic’s bureaucracy, the first and second being the Luminatii and Administratii. Far smaller than their sibling organizations, the Obfuscatii are the Senate’s information-brokers and rumor-mongers. Concerned largely with internal threats to Itreya’s security, the organization is as old as the Republic itself. Its founder, Tiberius the Elder, was known to have stood among the insurgents who overthrew Itreya’s last king, Francisco XV.
Some rumor even places Tiberius’s hand on the blade that killed poor Franco himself.
CHAPTER 31
BECOMING
Mia slept like the righteous dead that eve. A soft knocking woke her sometime before midmeal, and she heard the low voice of a Hand on the other side of her door.
“Be in the Hall of Eulogies in one hour, Acolyte.”
Mia dressed slowly, made her way to the Sky Altar. The benches and chairs were deserted, the Quiet Mountain quieter than she ever remembered it. The thought of initiation filled her mind. She’d finished top of Truths, but the Revered Mother had hinted more trials awaited. She’d no clue what she might face in the Hall of Eulogies, or the final hurdles she’d need to overcome.
She stopped by the athenaeum on her way to the hall. Chronicler Aelius was loitering on the threshold as always, sorting through the RETURNS trolley. Wordlessly, he pulled his ever-present spare cigarillo from behind his ear and handed it to Mia. The pair leaned against the wall, staring out over the sea of shelves below. How many lifetimes could she spend down there if she let herself? How much easier would it be to get lost in those endless pages, and leave this road of shadows and blood behind?
“Initiation soon, eh?” Aelius asked.
Mia nodded, blew a perfect smoke ring in strawberry-scented gray.
“Well,” Aelius shrugged. “All good things…”
Mia licked the sugar from her lips. “You never found the book I was asking for?”
The chronicler shook his head. “I discovered a whole new wing out there yesterturn, though. Thousands of books. Millions of words. Maybe something about darkin in there.”
She looked out over the words below. Sighed.
“It’s a beautiful place, this. Part of me wishes I could stay here forever.”
“Careful what you wish for, lass.”
“I know,” Mia nodded. “The grass is always greener. Still, I envy you, Aelius.”
“The living don’t envy the dead.”
Mia looked at the old man. A slow frown forming on her brow. She realized she’d never seen him leave the athenaeum. Never seen him eat a meal in the Sky Altar or cross this threshold out into the Church proper even once. The girl stared at her cigarillo. The maker’s mark she’d never seen before.
“They don’t make them like this anymore.”
The library of Our Lady of Blessed Murder.
A library of the dead.
“You…”
“The Mother keeps only what she needs,” the old man said.
Mia simply stared, a chill in her belly. Horror and sorrow in her heart.
“You remember what I said that turn you met the bookworm?” Aelius asked.
“You said maybe here’s not where I’m supposed to be.”
Aelius drew hard on his cigarillo. Blew a series of smoke rings that chased each other through the quiet dark. “I’ll take a look in that new wing. If I find anything of the darkin, I’ll have someone leave it in your chambers. Or somewhere else. If that’s where you want to be.”
Mia frowned through a cloud of shifting gray.
“Good luck in the Hall of Eulogies, lass,” Aelius said. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
“… My thanks, Chronicler.”
Aelius stubbed out his smoke against the wall and put the remains in his pocket.
“I’d best be off. Too many books.”
“Too few centuries.”
He looked at her then. Something empty and awful in that milky-blue stare. But with a shrug, he limped off down the stairs, out into the endless shelves.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
Three acolytes stood in a goddess’s shadow.
The Mother of Night loomed above them, staring down with stone eyes.
Tric and Hush had been waiting when Mia arrived, several Hands hovering on the edge of the stained-glass light. As the ghostly choir sung out in the dark, a robed figure escorted Mia to the dais. Glancing sideways, she glimpsed strawberry curls.
“Friend Naev,” Mia whispered.
The woman squeezed her hand. “Good fortune. Hold fast.”