Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,21

smile that might have reached all the way to its eyes, if only it had some. She reached into her sleeve, found the blood-stained stiletto it had given her.

The gift that had saved her life.

“What are you?” she whispered to the black at her feet.

No answer.

“Do you have a name?”

It shivered.

Waiting.

Wait

ing.

“You’re nice,” she declared. “Your name should be nice too.”

Another smile. Black and eager.

Mia smiled also.

Decided.

“Mister Kindly,” she said.

According to the plaque above his stable, the stallion’s name was “Chivalry,” but Mia would come to know him simply as “Bastard.”

To say she wasn’t fond of horses is to say geldings aren’t fond of knives. Growing up in Godsgrave, she’d had little need for the beasts, and truthfully, they’re an unpleasant way to travel despite what your poets might say. The smell is akin to a solid right hook into an already broken nose, the toll on the rider’s tenders is measured more often in blisters than bruises, and traveling by hoof isn’t much quicker than traveling by foot. And all these issues are compounded if a horse has a sense of its own importance. Which, sadly, poor Chivalry did.

The stallion belonged to the garrison centurion, a marrowborn member of the Luminatii legion named Vincenzo Garibaldi. He was a thoroughbred, black as a chimneysweep’s lungs.1 Treated (and fed) better than most of Garibaldi’s men, Chivalry was tolerant of none but his master’s hand. And so, confronted with a strange girl in his stable as the watch sounded, he neighed in irritation and set about voiding his bladder over as many square feet as possible.

Having spent years living near the Rose River, the stench of stallion piss came as no real shock to Mia, who promptly slapped a bit into the horse’s mouth to shut him up. Hateful as she found the beasts, she’d endured a three-week stint on a mainland horse farm at Old Mercurio’s “request,” and at least knew enough not to place the bridle on the beast’s arse-end.2 However, when Mia hoisted the saddle blanket, Chivalry began thrashing in his pen, and it was only through a hasty leap onto the doorframe that the girl avoided growing considerably thinner.

“Trelene’s heaving funbags, keep him quiet!” Tric hissed from the stable door.

“… Did you honestly just swear by a goddess’s ‘funbags’?”

“Forget that, shut him up!”

“I told you horses don’t like me! And blaspheming about the Lady of the Ocean’s baps isn’t going to help matters any. In fact, it’ll probably get you drowned, you nonce.”

“I’ll no doubt have long years locked in whatever stinking outhouse passes for the jail in this cesspool to repent my sins.”

“Keep your underskirts on,” Mia whispered. “The outhouse will be occupied for a while.”

Tric wondered what the girl was on about. But as she slipped into Chivalry’s pen for another saddling attempt, he heard wails within the garrison tower, pleas to the Everseeing, and a burst of profanity so colorful you could fling it into the air and call it a rainbow. A stench was rising on the wind, harsh enough to make his eyes water. And so, as Mia rained whispered curses down on Chivalry’s head, the boy decided to see what all the fuss was about.

Mister Kindly sat on the stable roof, trying his best to copy the curiosity found in real cats. He watched as the boy moved quietly to the tower, scaled the wall. Tric peered through the sandblasted window into the room beyond, his face turning greenish beneath his artless tattoos. Without a sound, he dropped to the ground, creeping back to the stable in time to see Mia wrangle the saddle onto Chivalry’s back with the aid of several stolen sugar cubes.

The boy helped Mia handle the snorting stallion through the stable doors. She was short, and the thoroughbred twenty hands high, so it took her a running leap to make the saddle. As she struggled up, she noticed the green pallor on Tric’s face.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“What the ’byss is going on in that tower?” Tric whispered.

“Mishap,” Mia replied.

“… What?”

“Three dried buds of Liisian loganberry, a third of a cup of molasses essence, and a pinch of dried cordwood root.” She shrugged. “Mishap. You might know it as ‘Plumber’s Bane.’”

Tric blinked. “You poisoned the entire garrison?”

“Well, technically Fat Daniio poisoned them. He served the evemeal. I just added the spice.” Mia smiled. “It’s not lethal. They’re just suffering a touch of … intestinal distress.”

“A touch?” The boy cast one haunted look back to the tower, the smeared and groaning