Darkdawn

“You always did have a silver tongue, my dear.”

The old woman lifted a cup of steaming tea from the saucer in her lap, sipped slowly. Her eyes were fixed on Mercurio as he peered around the bedchamber, breathed deep, finally understanding where he was. The song of a choir hung in the cool, dark air. He smelled candles and incense, steel and smoke. He remembered the Ministry accosting him in the Godsgrave chapel. The scratch from the poisoned blade in Spiderkiller’s hand. The old man realized the blood he could taste belonged to pigs.

They’ve brought me back to the Mountain.

“You haven’t changed your decor much,” he sighed.

“You know me, love. I was never one for extravagance.”

“The last time I was in this bed, I told you it really was the last time,” Mercurio said. “But if I knew you were this hungry for a return performance …”

“O, please,” the old woman sighed. “You’d need a block and tackle to get it up at your age. And your heart could barely stand it when we were twenty.”

Mercurio smiled despite himself.

“It’s good to see you, ’Silla.”

“Would that I could say the same.” The Lady of Blades shook her head and sighed. “You addle-minded old fool.”

“Did you really drag me all the way to the Quiet Mountain for a rebuke?” Mercurio reached to his coat for his smokes and found both smokes and coat missing. “You could’ve just chewed my cods off back in the ’Grave.”

“What were you thinking?” Drusilla demanded, setting aside her tea. “Helping that idiot girl in her idiot schemes? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“I’m not fresh fallen from the last rains, ’Silla.”

“No, you’re the bishop of Godsgrave!” Drusilla stood, prowling around the bed, eyes flashing. “Years of faithful service. Sworn to the Dark Mother. And yet you helped a Blade of the Church break the Red Promise and murder one of our own patrons!”

“O, Goddess, don’t play the wounded devotee with me,” Mercurio growled. “It’s as obvious as a beagle’s bollocks that you and your nest of snakes wanted Cardinal Duomo dead. You’ve all been in bed with Scaeva for years. Did Lord Cassius know? Or was this something you and the others conspired to behind his back?”

“You’re a fine one to speak of conspiracies, love.”

“How do you think the rest of the congregation would react if they knew, ’Silla? That the Ministry was content to bend over and spread cheek for our beloved People’s Senator? The hands of Niah upon this earth, become lapdogs of a fucking tyrant?”

“I should have you killed for your betrayal,” Drusilla snarled.

“And yet I can’t help notice I’m not dead.” The old man peered under the sheets. “Or that I’m sans trousers. You certain I’m not here for an encore? I’ve learned a few tricks since—”

Drusilla hurled a gray robe at the old man’s head.

“You are here to serve as the worm you are.”

“… As bait?” Mercurio shook his head. “You really think she’s stupid enough to come after me? After all she’s been through, after all she’s—”

“I know who Mia Corvere is,” Drusilla snapped. “This is a girl who gave up any chance at a normal life or happiness to see her parents avenged. She sold herself into slavery on a gambit that even a lunatic would consider insanity, for a single chance to strike down the men who destroyed her house. She is fearless. Reckless beyond reckoning. So if there is one thing I’ve learned about your little Crow, it is this: there is nothing that girl will not do for her familia. Nothing.”

The old woman leaned over the bed, stared into the old man’s eyes.

“And you, dear Mercurio, are more a father to her than her father ever was.”

The old man stared back, saying nothing. Swallowing the bile flooding his mouth. The Lady of Blades only smiled, leaning a little closer. He could still see her beauty beneath the scars of time. Remember the last nevernight they’d been in this bedchamber together, all those years ago. Sweat and blood and sweet, sweet poison.

“You may wander in the Mountain if you wish,” Drusilla said. “I’m certain you remember where everything is. The congregation has been informed of your betrayal, but you are not to be touched. We need you breathing for now. But please, don’t push the friendship by being more the fool than you’ve already been.”

Drusilla reached under the sheet between his legs, squeezed tight as he gasped.

“A man can still breathe without these, after all.”

The old woman held on a moment longer, then released her icy grip. Lips still curled in her matronly smile, the Lady of Blades took her saucer and cup back up, turned, and stalked toward the bedchamber door.

“Drusilla.”

The Lady of Blades glanced over her shoulder. “Aye?”

“You really are a cunt, you know that?”

“Ever the flatterer.” The old woman turned back to him, her smile vanished. “But a man like you should know exactly where flattery gets you with a woman like me.”

Mercurio sat in the gloom after she left, wrinkled brow creased with worry.

“Aye,” he muttered. “In deep shit.”

He’d lurked in the bedchamber a few hours more, nursing his aching head and wounded ego. But boredom eventually bid him pull on the gray robe Drusilla had given him, tie the thin strip of leather about his waist. He didn’t bother trying to arm himself—Mercurio knew the only ways out of the Quiet Mountain were a two-week trek across the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, out through Speaker Adonai’s blood pool, or by leaping off the railings of the Sky Altar and into the shapeless night beyond.

Escape from here without help or wings was all but impossible.

He stepped from the bedchamber, leaning on the cane they’d (rather thoughtfully) left him, out into the gloom of the Quiet Mountain. Ice-blue eyes that seemed born to scowl surveyed the dark around him. The disembodied choir sung faintly, nowhere and everywhere at once. The halls were black stone, lit by windows of stained glass and false sunslight, decorated with grotesque statuary of bone and skin. Spiral patterns covered every inch of wall, intricate and maddening.

As soon as Mercurio’s feet touched the flagstones outside Drusilla’s room, he felt the presence of a robed figure, watching from the gloom. One of Drusilla’s Hands, no doubt, tasked to be his shadow for the duration of his stay.

He ignored the figure, wandered about his way, listening to it following behind. His old knees creaked as he descended the stairs, down the wending paths and through the labyrinthine dark, until he finally stepped into the Hall of Eulogies.

He looked around the vast space, forced to admire the grandeur even after all these years. Enormous stone pillars were arranged in a circle, stone gables carved from the Mountain itself soaring above. The names of the Church’s countless victims were scribed on the granite at his feet. Unmarked tombs of the faithful lined the walls.

The space was dominated by a colossal statue of Niah herself. Her black eyes seemed to follow Mercurio as he stepped closer, squinting in the false light. She held a scale and a wicked sword in her hands, her face beautiful and serene and cold. Jewels glittered on her ebony robe like stars in the truedark sky.

She who is All and Nothing.

Mother, Maid, and Matriarch.

Mercurio touched his eyes, his lips, his heart, looking up at his Goddess with clouded eyes. As he stood there in the hall, a knot of young folk entered from the steps below. They regarded the old bishop with wary stares as they passed, meeting his gaze only briefly. Smooth skin and bright eyes and clean hands, teenagers all. New acolytes by the look, just beginning their training.

He stared after them wistfully as they left. Remembering his own tutelage within these walls, his devotion to the Mother of Night. How long ago it all seemed now, how cold he’d grown inside. Once he’d been fire. Breathed it. Bled it. Spat it. But now, the only ember that remained was the one he kept burning for her—that snot-nosed, stuck-up little lordling’s bitch who’d wandered into his shop all those years ago, a silver brooch shaped like a crow in her hand.

He’d never made time for familia. To live as a Blade of the Mother was to live with death—with the knowledge that every turn could be your last. It hadn’t seemed fair to take a wife when she’d likely end a widow, nor make a child who’d probably be raised an orphan. Mercurio never thought he’d a need for children. If you’d asked him why he’d taken that raven-haired waif in all those years ago, he’d have muttered something about her gift, her grit, her guile. He’d have laughed if you’d told him he needed her as much as she needed him. He’d have cut your throat and buried you deep if you’d told him that one turn, he’d love her like the daughter he’d never had.

But in his bones, even as he ended you, he’d have known it true.

And now, here he was. A worm on Drusilla’s hook. For all his bluff, he knew the Lady of Blades spoke truth—Mia loved him like blood. She’d never let him die in here, not if she thought she had a chance to save him. And with those wretched daemons riding her shadow and eating her fear, in Mia’s head there was always a chance.