Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,201

he imagined a viper might watch a mouse.

That she hadn’t blinked yet.

“What problem would that be?” he managed.

“What do you hear, Daniio?” the girl asked.

“… Eh?”

“Listen,” she whispered. “What do you hear?”

Thinking it an odd game but now decidedly ill-at-ease, Daniio cocked his head, listening as she bid. Last Hope was death-quiet, but that was usually the case of a nevernight. Most folk would’ve retired by now, sitting at the hearth with a drink in hand. He heard camels grumbling in the garrison stables. A dog bark in the distance. The roar of the evewind and the crash of surf.

He shrugged. “Not much.”

“You’ve sixty men in your commonroom, Daniio. Devout servants of the Everseeing they might be, but shouldn’t they be a little rowdier?”

Daniio frowned. Now she mentioned it, the pub was a damn sight quieter than it should’ve been. He’d not heard one bellowed drinks order or a single shouted complaint since he stepped outside for his smoke …

Well, her smoke.

The girl sucked the last life from the cigarillo, dropped it at her feet and crushed it underheel. And reaching into her sleeve, she drew out a long stiletto, carved of what might’ve been gravebone. Daniio’s hackles went up along with his hands, and he slipped from nervous to downright terrified. The girl stepped closer as he shrank back against the wall. And reaching into her belt, she pulled out a single glass ball, smooth and small and perfectly white.

“What’s that?” Daniio asked.

“Swoon. I had a bag half-full of these, yesterturn. Now I’ve got one left.”

“W-where’s the rest of them?”

“I dissolved them in the broth you cooked for evemeal.”

Daniio risked a look over his shoulder, back at the pub. Quiet as tombs.

“Now, here’s our problem,” the girl said. “You were supposed to serve evemeal to the garrison tower right after you served it here. And after that, you were supposed to wander back here and find every soldier under your roof face down in their broth.”

“… You put them to sleep?”

The girl looked to her knife. Back to Daniio’s eyes.

“Not for long.”

Daniio tried to speak and found his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“But since you don’t serve evemeal over there anymore, I’m going to need a distraction,” the girl said. “So you may want to head upstairs and grab anything of value you might keep in your … no doubt fine establishment.”

Daniio pried his tongue loose.

“Why?” he managed.

She held out his flintbox on an open palm. Daniio’s slow eye caught on before the rest of him did, growing considerably wider. His words emerged as a croak.

“O, no…”

“If I live, I’ll see the Red Church compensates you for your losses. If not…” The girl shrugged, gifted him a wry smile. “Well, you’ve got my apologies.”

She stared at Daniio, sparking the flintbox in her hand.

“Best hurry, now. Seconds won’t be the only thing burning in a moment.”

The goldwine in Daniio’s cellars wasn’t what you’d call the finest vintage. Truthfully it was closer to paint thinner than whiskey. Unbeknownst to any of his customers, Daniio used it to clean the pots once a year and they always came up sparkling. But, wonderful thing about spirits, no matter how low-rent the production or gods-awful the taste.

They burn beautifully.

Smoke was already rising from the Old Imperial’s roof as Mia reached the garrison tower, sneaking around back of the stables and up to the rear wall. The tower rose thirty feet high, and there were no windows on the upper levels—she was almost certain that’s where the Ministry and Lord Cassius would be. She supposed they were in the same state they’d been in during the journey from the Mountain, gagged and chained up tight, but she needed to see for sure. She was horribly outnumbered, and didn’t know the lay of the land. Burning most of Remus’s troops alive to cause a distraction had seemed a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

Or sixty, as the case may be.

Truthfully, she’d not even known if the Swoon would dissolve in Daniio’s broth, but giving it a try seemed a better idea than just marching into the Imperial and flinging handfuls of wyrdglass around. The stink of burning flesh hung heavy on the winds, smoke rising in a twisting column to the sunburned sky, but if she felt any guilt about the fate she’d gifted the Luminatii, it was quickly quashed at the thought of Tric and the others who’d died in the Mountain’s belly.

She’d scaled halfway up the watchtower wall