just as it had perched on the hangman’s bedhead as she delivered him to the Maw. And though it had no eyes, she could tell it watched the lifetime in Peacock’s pupils, enraptured like a child before a puppet show.
Now understand; she could have spared this boy. And your narrator could just as easily lie to you at this juncture—some charlatan’s ruse to cast our girl in a sympathetic light.8 But the truth is, gentlefriends, she didn’t spare him. Yet, perhaps you’ll take solace in the fact that at least she paused. Not to gloat. Not to savor.
To pray.
“Hear me, Niah,” she whispered. “Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close.”
A gentle shove, sending him over into the gnashing swell. As the peacock’s feather sank beneath the water, she began shouting over the roaring winds, loud as devils in the Maw. Man overboard! she screamed, man overboard! and soon the bells were all a-ringing. But by the time the Beau turned about, no sign of Peacock or the walnut bag could be found among the waves.
And as simple as that, our girl’s tally of endings had multiplied threefold.
Pebbles to avalanches.
The Beau’s captain was a Dweymeri named Wolfeater, seven feet tall with dark locks knotted by salt. The good captain was understandably put out by his crewmen’s early disembarkation, and keen on hows and whys. But when questioned in his cabin, the small, pale girl who sounded the alarm only mumbled of a struggle between the Itreyans, ending in a tumble of knuckles and curses sending both overboard to sailor’s graves. The odds that two seadogs—even Itreyan fools—had tussled themselves into the drink were slim. But thinner still were the chances this girlchild had gifted both to Trelene all by her lonesome.
The captain towered over her; this waif in gray and white, wreathed in the scent of burned cloves. He knew neither who she was nor why she journeyed to Ashkah. But as he propped a drakebone pipe on his lips and struck a flintbox to light his tar, he found himself glancing at the deck. At the shadow coiled about this strange girl’s feet.
“Best be keeping yourself to yourself ’til trip’s end, lass.” He exhaled into the gloom between them. “I’ll have meals sent to your room.”
The girl looked him over, eyes black as the Maw. She glanced down at her shadow, dark enough for two. And she agreed with the Wolfeater’s assessment, her smile sweet as honeydew.
Captains are usually clever fellows, after all.
1. She didn’t know how to listen yet. You people seldom do.
2. Something noticed. Something cared.
3. The Ribs are perhaps the most spectacular feature of Itreya’s capital; sixteen great ossified towers gleaming at the heart of the City of Bridges and Bones. The Ribs are said to have belonged to the last titan, overthrown by the Light God Aa in the war for dominion of Itreya’s heaven. Aa commanded his faithful to build a temple at the place where the titan fell to earth, commemorating his victory. Thus, the seeds of the great city were planted in the grave of the Light’s last foe.
A strange thing, gentlefriend, that in no holy scripture or book will you find mention of this titan’s name …
4. Lady of Oceans, Thirdborn of the Light and the Maw, She Who Will Drink the World.
5. How drunk would a man have to be to consider romancing a giantess a sensible option, for example? Furthermore, in such a state of inebriation, how could a fellow be expected to safely operate his own equipment, let alone the requisite stepladder?
6. A poet this one, and no mistake.
7. One of only six remaining in existence. Plienes and all known copies of his work were put to the torch in 27PR, in a conflagration briefly known as “the Brightest Light.”
Organized by Grand Cardinal Crassus Alvaro, the pyre destroyed over four thousand “incendiary” works and was considered a resounding success by the Itreyan clergy—until it was pointed out by Crassus’s son, Cardinal Leo Alvaro, that there was no light in all creation brighter than that of the God of Light himself, and that naming any man-made bonfire to the contrary was, in fact, heresy.
After the grand cardinal’s crucifixion, Grand Cardinal Alvaro II decreed the pyre should be referred to as “the Bright Light” in texts thereafter.
8. “She may have been the most feared killer in Itreya, murderess of legions, Lady of Blades, destroyer of the