Nevernight

‘A touch?’ The boy cast one haunted look back to the tower, the smeared and groaning horrors therein. ‘Look, don’t be offended if I do all the cooking out there, aye?’

‘Suit yourself.’

Mia set her sights on the wastes beyond Last Hope, and with a doffed hat towards the watchtower, kicked Chivalry’s flanks. Sadly, instead of a dashing gallop off towards the horizon, the girl found herself bucked into the air, her brief flight ending in a crumpled heap on the road. She rolled in the dirt, rubbing her rump, glaring at the now whinnying stallion.

‘Bastard …’ she hissed.

She looked to Mister Kindly, sitting on the road beside her.

‘Not. A. Fucking. Word.’

‘… meow …’ he said.

With a sharp bang, the watchtower door burst open. A befouled Centurion Vincenzo Garibaldi staggered into the street, one hand clutching his unbuckled britches.

‘Thieves!’ he moaned.

With a half-hearted flourish, the Luminatii centurion drew his longsword. The steel flared brighter than the suns overhead. At a word, tongues of fire uncurled along the edge of the blade and the man stumbled forward, face twisted with righteous fury.

‘Stop in the name of the Light!’

‘Trelene’s sugarplums, come on!’

Tric leaped into Chivalry’s saddle, dragging Mia over the pommel like a sack of cursing potatoes. And with another sharp boot to the stallion’s flanks, the pair galloped off in the direction of their certain doom.

The pair stopped off long enough to retrieve Tric’s own stallion – a looming chestnut inexplicably named ‘Flowers’ – before fleeing into the wastes. The Plumber’s Bane had done its work, however, and pursuit by Last Hope’s garrison was short-lived and largely messy. Mia and Tric soon found themselves slowing to a brisk canter, no pursuers in sight.

The Whisperwastes, as they were called, were a desolation grimmer than any Mia had seen. The horizon was crusted like a beggar’s lips, scoured by winds laden with voices just beyond hearing. The second sun kissing the horizon was usually the sign for Itreya’s brutal winters to begin, but out here, the heat was still blistering. Mister Kindly was coiled in Mia’s shadow, just as miserable as she. Propping a (stolen and paid-for) tricorn upon her head, Mia surveyed the horizon.

‘I’d guess the churchmen nest on high,’ Tric ventured. ‘I suggest we start with those mountains to the north, then swing east. After that, we’ll probably have been drained lifeless by dustwraiths or eaten by sand kraken, so our bones won’t mind where they get shit out.’

Mia cursed as Bastard gave a small buck. Her thighs ached from the saddle, her rump was preparing to wave the white flag. She pointed to a lonely digit of broken stone ten miles distant.

‘There.’

‘All respect, Pale Daughter, but I doubt the greatest enclave of assassins in the known world would set up headquarters within smelling distance of Last Hope’s pig farms.’

‘Agreed. But that’s where I think we should set camp. Looks to be a spring there. And we’ll have a good view of Last Hope from up top, and all the wastes around, I’d wager.’

‘… I thought we were following my nose?’

‘I only suggested that for the sake of whoever might be listening.’

‘Listening?’

‘We agree this is a trial, aye? That the Red Church is testing us?’

‘Aye,’ the boy nodded slow. ‘But that shouldn’t come as any shock. Surely your Shahiid tested you in preparation for the trials we’ll face?’

Mia jerked the reins as Bastard tried to turn back for the fifth time in as many minutes.

‘Old Mercurio loved his testings,’ she nodded. ‘Never a moment that couldn’t be some trial in disguise.

Thing is, he never gave me a test I couldn’t beat. And the Church shouldn’t be any different. So what’s the one clue we’ve been given? What’s the only piece of this puzzle we have in common?’

‘… Last Hope.’

‘Exactly. I’m thinking the Church can’t be self-sustaining. Even if they grow their own food, they’d need other supplies. I was poking around the Beau’s hold and I saw goods the inbreds in Last Hope would have no use for. I’m thinking the Church has a disciple there. Maybe watching for novices, but more important, to trek those goods back to their stronghold. So all we need to do is watch for a laden caravan heading out into the wastes. Then we follow it.’

Tric looked the girl up and down, smiling faintly. ‘Wisdom, Pale Daughter.’

‘Have no fear, Don Tric. I won’t let it go—’

The boy held up a hand, pulled Flowers to a sudden stop. He squinted at the badlands around them, nose wrinkled, sniffing the whispering desert air.

‘What is it?’ Mia’s hand drifted to her gravebone dagger.

Tric shook his head, eyes closed as he inhaled.

‘Never smelled the like before. Reminds me of … old leather and dea—’

Bastard snorted, rearing up. Mia clutched his saddle, cursing as the red sand exploded around them and a dozen tentacles burst from beneath the ground. Twenty feet long, studded with grasping, serrated hooks, they looked as dry as the innards of an inkfiend’s needle.

Bastard whinnied in terror as one leathery appendage snaked around his foreleg, another cinching his throat in a hangman’s grip. The stallion fought, snotting and bucking like a wild thing. Mia found herself airborne again, bounced over Bastard’s head and tumbling towards the tentacles’ owner, now dragging itself from the earth and opening a hideous beaked maw. The air rang with a chittering, guttural hisssssssssssssssssss.

‘Sand kraken!’ Tric roared, a little needlessly.

Mia drew her gravebone dagger, lashing out at a tentacle whipping her way. Oily blood spurted, a chuddering roar shivering the earth as Mia tumbled between two more of the dreadful limbs, ducking a third and rolling up into a panting crouch. Mister Kindly unfurled from her shadow, peering at the horror and not-breathing a small, soft sigh.

‘… pretty …’

Tric drew his scimitar, leaped from his stallion’s back, and hacked at the tentacle clutching Bastard’s leg. With the snapping whip of salted cord, the appendage split, another roar spilling from the beast, eyes wide as dinner plates, dusty gills flaring. Its severed limb flailed about, spraying Tric with reeking ichor. Bastard whinnied again in terror, blood spilling from his neck where the tentacle was wrapped and squeezing.

‘Let him go!’ Mia shouted, stabbing at another tentacle.

‘Back off!’ Tric roared to her.

‘Back off? Are you mad?’

‘Are you?’ Tric gestured at her dagger. ‘You plan on killing a sand kraken with that damned toothpick? Let it have the stallion!’

‘To the ’byss with that! I just stole that fucking horse!’

Feinting low, Mia lashed out at another hooked limb, drawing a fresh gout of blood. A flailing backswing saw Tric splayed in the dust, cursing. Mia curled her fingers, wrapping a hasty handful of shadows around herself so she might avoid a similar blow. Those hooks looked vicious enough to gut a War Walker.

Though inconvenienced by the little sacks of meat and their sharp sticks, the kraken seemed mostly intent on dragging its thoroughbred meal – who no doubt begrudged his theft now more than ever – below the sands. But as Mia pulled the darkness to her, the monstrosity spat a shuddering roar and exploded back out from the earth, limbs flailing. Almost as if it were angry at her.

Tric spat a mouthful of red sand and shouted warning, hacking at another limb. The shadowcloak seemed to do Mia no good – she was near blind beneath it, and the beast seemed to be able to see her regardless. And so she let it fall from her shoulders, dived towards the wailing horse, tumbling across the dust. She moved between the forest of hooks and flails, feeling the breeze of the almost-blows narrowly missing her face and throat, the whistling hiss of the tentacles in the air. There was no real fear in her amid that storm. Simply the sway and the feint, the slide and the roll. The dance she’d been taught by Mercurio. The dance she’d lived with almost every turn since her father took his long plunge from his short rope.