red door. “When you are ready, you will find clothes through here, loves.”
Smiling, the woman padded away on bare feet. Ashlinn stripped off her slip and jumped into the bath, plunging below the surface and turning the waters a deeper red. She reappeared after a spell, pawing crimson water from her eyes.
“So that’s the Blood Walk,” she explained.
“That’s what they call it?” Mia asked.
“Aye.” The girl tilted her head to knock the water from her ears. “Da said it’s how Blades move about the Republic. A chapel in every major city, devoted to the Mother. Provided there’s a bloodbath there, Adonai can Walk us to any of them. All of them.”
“You mean my master made me trek across the Whisperwastes for nothing?”
Ash shrugged. “They don’t let just anyone Walk, Corvere. Adonai needs to permit you to pass the threshold. The Red Church isn’t about to let every would-be novice know they’ve got access to an Ashkahi blood speaker. If the Senate found out, they’d stop at nothing to get their hands on Adonai. Imagine if the Republic could move its armies about the world at will?”
“But they trust us to know? We’ve only been acolytes for a month or two.”
Ash simply shrugged.
“Maw’s teeth, where do they get it all?” Mia breathed. “There must be gallons.”
Ashlinn wiggled her eyebrows. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“… I’m not going to like it, am I?”
Ashlinn simply laughed and sank below the bloodstained water.
“The Porkery,” Mia breathed. “Of course.”
Looking out over an oinking sea, Mia felt the unpleasant pieces falling into place.
From her childhood spent below the Hips, she knew four abattoirs skirted Godsgrave’s Bay of Butchers—four mountains of offal and stench, spitting fresh meat onto the plates of the wealthy, and shitting their leavings into the bay. Two dealt with cattle, the third in exotic meats, and the fourth only with pigs. Known as “the Porkery,” it was comparatively small, and better appointed than its counterparts. Run by a man known only as “Bacon” and his three sons, “Ham,” “Trotter,” and “Piglet,” it was famous among Godsgrave’s marrowborn for having the finest cuts in all Itreya, and among more questionable folk as an excellent place to dispose of a body, should one happen to create a body the Luminatii might be interested in.3
The female acolytes had dressed in simple leathers and cloaks, armed themselves with plain but functional blades from the large armory off the bathhouse, and been led up a spiraling staircase. The stench of offal and excrement had grown stronger, until finally they’d emerged on a wooden mezzanine. The hour was late and the butchers had gone home for nevernight, but a seething mass of pigs was milling about in a large pen below. On the bloodstained stone of the killing floor, Mia saw drains in the rock, no doubt leading down to the pool beneath. Putting two and two together, the girl discovered she was beginning to hate mathematics.
“We just bathed in pig’s blood,” Carlotta said flatly.
“Probably people blood, too,” Mia said.
“… Tell me you’re jesting.”
Mia shook her head. “A lot of the Godsgrave braavi get rid of their messes down here when they don’t want questions asked.”
Carlotta stared. Mia shrugged.
“Hungry pig will eat just about anything.”
“O, lovely,” the girl muttered, wringing out her long bangs.
“Master Bacon and his sons are Hands of the Church,” Aalea said. “The coin they make from the local braavi assists with Godsgrave operations. And I must confess, the irony is delicious. I wonder if this city’s marrowborn would be as fond of Bacon’s Fynest Cuts if they knew exactly what went into the pigs they were cut from.”4
“Juuuust lovely.” Carlotta deadpanned, wringing harder at her hair.
“Blood is blood, love,” the Shahiid smiled. “Pigs. Paupers. Cattle. Kings. It makes no difference to Our Lady. It all stains alike. And it all washes out the same.”
Mia looked into the woman’s eyes. Beyond the kohl and the paint. Beyond that dark beauty. It would’ve been easy to think that callousness made her talk so. The mark of dozens of murders draining her of all empathy, like Naev had warned. But Mia realized it was something different that drove the Shahiid of Masks in her service to the Lady of Blessed Murder. Something altogether more frightening, simply because Mia didn’t quite share it.
Devotion.
The truth was, she didn’t know if she truly believed. Light gods in the sky watching her? Mothers of Night counting her sins? If the waves drowned a sailor, was it because the Lady of Oceans hadn’t been