Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,95

what she’d done. But as far as magik went, being able to stumble about near blind and almost invisible seemed a far cry from Adonai or Marielle’s brand of sorcery. Everyone paid a price, she supposed. Adonai thirsted for what he controlled. Marielle wove the flesh of others and corrupted her own. And Mia could remain unseen, but hardly see while doing it …

She pawed her way through the maze of back streets, but she didn’t know Shield Arm as well as Little Liis. Even with Mister Kindly roaming ahead, it’d take hours to find her way back to the Porkery at this rate. So finally, she threw aside her shadows and made for the nearest thoroughfare. Out onto the main drag, crossing three bridges to the Heart, then down to the Nethers, dodging any Luminatii who came within a block. Running into the puppy-choker had unnerved her. Filled her mind with memories. Her mother in chains. Her baby brother crying. The turn her whole world came apart. She needed to get back to the Mountain, away from these bastard sun-botherers.

A moment to think.

A moment to breathe.

If she weren’t so intent on spotting large groups of men in gleaming white armor waving burning swords, she might have noticed a slender figure dressed all in mortar gray, picking up her trail as she entered the harbor district. She might have noticed the gang of young bucks trudging down the boardwalk toward her, nodding to the figure shadowing behind. She might’ve noticed they wore soldiers’ boots. That they had rather suspicious truncheon-shaped lumps beneath their cloaks.

She might have noticed all this before it was too late.

But then it was too late.

1. Spiderkiller tried to poison her class twice more in the intervening weeks—the first, with a contact toxin known as “shiver,” which she dumped in the bathhouse water early one morn, and the second, where in concert with Mouser, every lock on every acolyte’s bedchamber was replaced with a Liisian needletrap tipped with enough allbane to kill a horse.

Two acolytes died from the allbane traps; an Itreyan boy named Angio, whom Mia hardly knew, and a mild-mannered girl named Larissa, who’d been one of the better students in Mouser’s class. A quiet mass was said for them in the Hall of Eulogies, attended by the novices and Ministry. The bodies were interred with the other servants of the Mother, each placed within a tomb on the walls, no names to mark their stones. Mia watched Spiderkiller through the service, looking for some hint of remorse. The woman met her eyes only once, just as the requiem was sung.

And then she shrugged.

2. The material that comprises the Ribs and Spine in Godsgrave is referred to as “gravebone,” though in truth, its tensile strength is stronger than steel. The secrets of working it were lost in time, though two high arkemists of the Iron Collegium are rumored to still possess them.

Though hollowed during the building of Godsgrave, the Ribs and Spine are now considered Itreyan treasures, and to deface them in any way is a crime punishable by crucifixion. Much of the gravebone acquired at the city’s dawn has been lost over centuries, and the material is considered a near priceless commodity. That said, the elite cohorts of the Luminatii legion wear gravebone armor, and most wealthy and powerful familia are in possession of a few gravebone relics, usually blades and, in rare cases, jewelry. The kings of Itreya wore a gravebone crown, though it is now kept on a marble plinth in the senate house, engraved with the words Nonquis Itarem.

“Never again.”

If you look closely, gentlefriend, you can see it is still stained with the blood of the last man to wear it.

3. I must specify, there are actually very few of these. The Luminatii are, for the most part, intent only upon crimes that upset the people who pay their wages—the Senate of Godsgrave. So long as the criminal elements of the city keep to killing themselves and staying below the Hips, the Senate could give less than a tinker’s cuss about the murder of an inkfiend who crossed the wrong people, or a pimp who bet the wrong gladiator in the arena. The Luminatii aren’t a tool of law and order in the Itreyan capital, gentlefriend. They are a tool of the status quo.

Still, accidents happen. And in those cases, you want to know someone who works at the Porkery.

4. Though you’ve no doubt heard stories about pigs eating wagon wheels