Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,48

forget.”

Mia stepped back as Naev produced a hidden blade from within her sleeve, Mister Kindly puffing up in her shadow. But Naev drew the knife along the heel of her hand, blood welling from the cut and spattering on the floor.

“She saved Naev’s life,” the woman said. “So now, Naev owes it. On her blood, in the sight of Mother Night, Naev vows it.”

“You don’t need to do this…”

“It is done.”

Naev leaned down and began unlacing Mia’s boots. Mia yelped, tucked them underneath her. The woman reached for the ties on Mia’s shirt, and Mia slapped her hands away, backing off across the bed with her own hands raised.

“Now, look here…”

“She must undress.”

“You really picked the wrong girl. And most people offer a drink first.”

Naev put her hands on her hips. “She must bathe before she meets the Ministry. If Naev may speak plain, she reeks of horse and excrement, her hair is greasier than a Liisian sweetbread and she is painted in dried blood. If she wishes to attend her baptism into the Blessed Lady’s congregation looking like a Dweymeri savage, Naev suggests she saves herself the pain and simply step off the Sky Altar now.”

“Wait…” Mia blinked. “Did you say bath?”

“… Naev did.”

“With water?” Mia was up on her knees, hands clutched at her breast. “And soap?”

The woman nodded. “Five kinds.”

“Maw’s teeth,” Mia said, unlacing her shirt. “You picked the right girl after all.”

Dark figures gathered in gaze of a stone goddess, bathed with colorless light.

It had been twelve hours since Mia arrived at the Quiet Mountain. Four since she woke. Twenty-seven minutes since she’d dragged herself from her bath and down to the Hall of Eulogies, leaving a scum of blood and grime on the water’s surface that could’ve walked away by itself if given a few more turns to gestate.

The robe was soft against her skin, her hair bound in a damp braid. Soap scent drifted about her when she turned to look among the other acolytes—twenty-eight in all, dressed in toneless gray. A brutish Itreyan boy with fists like sledgehammers. A wiry lass with bobbed red hair, eyes filled with wolf cunning. A towering Dweymeri, with ornate facial tattoos and shoulders you could rest the world on. Two blond and freckled Vaanians—brother and sister, by the look. A thin boy with ice-blue eyes, standing near Tric at the end of the row, so still she almost missed him. All of them around her age. All of them hard and hungry and silent.

Naev stood close by Mia, swathed in shadows. Other quiet figures in black robes stood at the edge of the darkness, men and women, fingers entwined like penitents in a cathedral.

“Hands,” Naev had whispered. “She will find two kinds in the Red Church. The ones who take vocations, make offerings … what commonfolk call assassins, yes? We call them Blades.”

Mia nodded. “Mercurio told me such.”

“The second are called Hands,” Naev continued. “There are twenty Hands for every Blade. They keep her House in order. Manage affairs. Make supply runs, like Naev. No more than four acolytes in every flock become Blades. Those who survive the year but fail to pass the grade will become Hands. Other folk simply come here to serve the goddess as they can. Not everyone is suited to do murder in her name.”

So. Only four of us can make the cut.

Mia nodded, watching the black-robed figures. Squinting in the dark, she could see the arkemical scar of slavery on a few cheeks. After the acolytes had finished assembling beneath the statue’s gaze, the Hands spoke a scrap of scripture, Naev along with them, each speaking by rote.

“She who is all and nothing,

First and last and always,

A perfect black, a Hungry Dark,

Maid and Mother and Matriarch,

Now, and at the moment of our deaths,

Pray for us.”

A bell rang, soft, somewhere in the gloom. Mia felt Mister Kindly curled about her feet, drinking deep. She heard footsteps, saw a figure approaching from the shadows. The Hands raised their voices in unison.

“Mouser, Shahiid of Pockets, pray for us.”

A familiar figure stepped onto the dais around the statue’s base. Handsome face and old eyes—the man who’d met Mia and Tric outside the Mountain. He was robed in gray, his blacksteel sword the only embellishment. He took his place, faced the acolytes, and with a grin that could easily make off with the silverware and the candelabras, too, he spoke.

“Twenty-six.”

Mia heard more footsteps, and the Hands spoke again.

“Spiderkiller, Shahiid of Truths, pray for us.”

A Dweymeri woman