Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,192
have lived with the lie. Sleepless nevernights spent worrying if the morrow would be the turn Scaeva discovered Corvere’s daughter still lived. And now was his chance to not only avenge the loss of his eye, but put to rest any fear of his failure coming to light.
I wonder if he thought himself lucky for it.
Out in the black, another roar sounded.
Closer now.
“Centurion?” one of his men asked. “What is that?”
Alberius paused, scanning the dark. He raised his voice, called over the shelves.
“Graccus? Belcino? Report!”
“No sign, sir!”
“Nothing, sir!”
Another roar. The sound of something heavy approaching.
Closer.
The good centurion looked troubled now. Second thoughts perhaps overcoming his initial fervor. And just as he opened his mouth to speak, he heard soft footsteps, a rippling breeze, a roar of pain. He turned, saw one of his legionaries clutching a stab wound in his back, a small, dark-haired girl staring at him from a mask of drying blood.
“Good turn, centurion,” she said.
“She’s here!” Alberius roared.
The girl smiled, gently tossing something at his chest. “A gift for you.”
The centurion raised his shield, smashed the object from the air. He realized it was some old book; leather-bound and dusty, the binding popping and a dozen pages bursting loose. It skidded across the floor, shedding more of its guts as it went.
“… unwise…,” came a whisper.
“Kill that fucki—”
Something reared up over the top of the shelves. Something huge, many-headed and monstrous, all blunt snouts and leathery skin and jaws full of O, too many teeth. The Luminatii cried out—to their credit, not in alarm, but warning—raising their little shields and toothpicks and roaring to the fellows in the other aisles. And then the Something struck, engulfing Centurion Alberius with those O, so many teeth and shaking him like a dog with a particularly sad and bloody little bone.
Soldiers came running. Soldiers ran screaming. More Somethings reared up over the shelves, huge and sightless, snapping and roaring and ripping the little men to pieces, all the while disturbing not a single page on a single shelf.
Back up on the mezzanine, Mia stepped from the shadows of the balustrade. Stood beside an old man, his back bent like a questionmark, leaning against the railing and watching the show.
“A girl with a story to tell,” Aelius smiled.
“So they say.”
“Smoke?”
“Maybe later.”
And she was gone.
CHAPTER 34
PURSUIT
She stole into the Hall of Truths, found it empty, faint light glittering on walls of green glass. But after carefully picking the lock and rummaging through Spiderkiller’s desk, she found them—the three bags of wyrdglass. Most of the onyx orbs had been used up, but the pouches containing the pearl and ruby wyrdglass were almost full. Two bags full of Swoon and Spiderkiller’s arkemical fire.
It’ll do.
Next, she headed to the Hall of Songs, stopping to softly murder two more Luminatii she found stationed in the Hall of Eulogies. She flitted past the unmarked tombs, trying not to picture Tric lying inside one. Turning the sorrow in her breast to rage. Halfway up the stairs, she found the bodies of murdered Hands, beaten and bludgeoned. Near the top, she found another dozen corpses, Marcellus and Petrus among them, eyes open wide and seeing nothing at all.
No time to pray.
No time to care.
She dashed into Solis’s hall, threw a heavy leather training jerkin over her blood-soaked shirt. Rummaging through the racks and stuffing her boots with daggers, strapping a fine, sharp gladius at her belt, slinging a bandolier of throwing knives about her chest and a quiver and crossbow at her back.
“Maw’s teeth…”
She spun at the whisper, crossbow raised, the shadows about her flaring. There at the top of the stairs, she saw figures robed in black, a bare half-dozen in total. Among them, she glimpsed red, bobbed hair, a pretty face, green, hunter’s eyes.
“… Jessamine?”
“Corvere,” the girl hissed. “What in the Mother’s name are you doing here?”
A veiled figure pushed her way through the group, a smile in her eyes.
“Naev is pleased to see her,” she said.
“Goddess, you’re all right!”
Mia ran across the room and threw her arms around the woman. But Naev flinched in Mia’s embrace, pushed away with a groan. Looking around, Mia could see most of the group were injured; Jessamine bleeding badly from a gash above her eye, her arm in a rough sling, a few others nursing broken wrists or ribs. Naev was breathing heavily now, clutching her side.
“What happened? Are you well?”
“Bastards came at us like a flood.” Jessamine winced, pawing the blood from her eyes. “No warning. Murdered every Hand