Nevernight

‘You need to work on your compliments, Don Tric.’

The boy prodded her shadow with his boot, eyes unreadable. He glanced at the not-cat lurking near her shoulder. Mister Kindly stared back without a sound. When Tric spoke, it was with obvious trepidation.

‘I’ve heard tell of your kind. Never met one before, though. Never thought to.’

‘My kind?’

‘Darkin.’

Mia exhaled grey, eyes narrowed. She reached out to Mister Kindly as if to pet him, fingers passing through him as if he were smoke. In all truth, there were few who’d seen her work her gift and lived to tell the tale. Folk of the Republic feared what they didn’t understand, and hated what they feared. And yet this boy seemed more intrigued than afraid. Looking him up and down – this half-pint Dweymeri with his islander tattoos and mainlander’s name – she realised he was an outsider too. And it briefly dawned on her, how glad she was to find herself in his company on this strange and dusty road.

‘And what do you know about the darkin, Don Tric?’

‘Folklore. Bullshit. You steal babies from their cribs and deflower virgins where you walk and other rot.’ The boy shrugged. ‘I heard tell darkin attacked the Basilica Grande a few years back. Killed a whole mess of Luminatii legionaries.’

‘Ah.’ Mia smiled around her smoke. ‘The Truedark Massacre.’

‘Probably more horseshit they cooked up to raise taxes or suchlike.’

‘Probably.’ Mia waved to her shadow. ‘Still, you don’t seem unnerved by it.’

‘I knew a seer who could ken the future by rummaging in animal guts. I met an arkemist who could make fire from dust and kill a man just by breathing on him. Messing about with the dark seems just another kind of huckster thaumaturgy to me.’ He glanced up to the cloudless sky. ‘And I can’t see much use for it in a place where the suns almost never set.’

‘… the brighter the light, the deeper the shadows …’

Tric looked to the not-cat, obviously surprised to hear it speak. He watched it carefully for a moment, as if it might sprout a few new heads or breathe black flame. With no show of multiple heads forthcoming, the boy turned his eyes back to Mia.

‘Where do you get the gift from?’ he asked. ‘Your ma? Your da?’

‘… I don’t know where I got it. And I’ve never met another like myself to ask. My Shahiid said I was touched by the Mother. Whatever that means. He surely didn’t seem to know.’

The boy shrugged, ran his thumb over the sigil on the cigarillo box.

‘If memory serves, Familia Corvere was involved in some trouble a few truedarks back. Something about kingmaking?’

‘Never flinch. Never fear,’ Mia sighed. ‘And never, ever forget.’

‘So. The puzzle begins to make sense. The last daughter of a disgraced familia. Headed to the finest school of killers in all the Republic. Planning on settling scores after graduation?’

‘You’re not about to regale me with some wisdom on the futility of revenge, are you, Don Tric? Because I was just starting to like you.’

‘O, no,’ Tric smiled. ‘Vengeance I understand. But given the wrong you’re set on righting, I’m fancying your targets are going to be tricky to hit?’

‘One mark is already in the ledger.’ She patted her purse of teeth. ‘Three more to come.’

‘These walking corpses have names?’

‘The first is Francesco Duomo.’

‘… The Francesco Duomo? Grand cardinal of the Church of the Light?’

‘That’d be him.’

‘’Byss and blood …’

‘The second is Marcus Remus. Justicus of the Luminatii Legion.’

‘… And the third?’

Saan’s light gleamed in Mia’s eyes, wisps of long black hair caught at the edges of her mouth. The shadows around her swayed like oceans, rippling near Tric’s toes. Twice as dark as they should have been. Almost as dark as her mood had become.

‘Consul Julius Scaeva.’

‘Four Daughters,’ Tric breathed. ‘That’s why you seek training at the Church.’

Mia nodded. ‘A sharp knife might clip Duomo or Remus with a lot of luck. But it’s not going to be some guttersnipe with a shiv that ends Scaeva. Not after the Massacre. He doesn’t climb into bed without a cadre of Luminatii there to check between the sheets first.’

‘Thrice-elected consul of the Itreyan Senate,’ Tric sighed. ‘Master arkemist. The most powerful man in the entire Republic.’ The boy shook his head. ‘You know how to make it hard on yourself, Pale Daughter.’

‘O, aye. He’s as dangerous as a sack of blackmark vipers,’ Mia nodded. ‘A right cunt and no mistake.’

The boy raised his eyebrows, mouth slightly agape.

Mia met his stare, scowling. ‘What?’

‘… My mother said that’s a filthy word,’ Tric frowned. ‘The filthiest. She told me never to say it. Especially in front of a dona.’

‘O, really.’ The girl took another pull on her cigarillo, eyes narrowed. ‘And why’s that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tric found himself mumbling. ‘It’s just what she said.’

Mia shook her head, crooked bangs swaying before her eyes.

‘You know, I’ve never understood that. How being named for a woman’s nethers is somehow more grievous than any other insult. Seems to me calling someone after a man’s privates is worse. I mean, what do you picture when you hear a fellow called a cock?’

Tric shrugged, befuddled at the strange turn in conversation.

‘You imagine an oaf, don’t you?’ Mia continued. ‘Someone so full of wank there’s no room for wits. A slow-minded bastard who struts about full of spunk and piss, completely ignorant of how he looks to others.’

An exhalation of clove-sweet grey into the air between them.

‘Cock is just another word for “fool”. But you call someone a cunt, well …’ The girl smiled. ‘You’re implying a sense of malice there. An intent. Malevolent and self-aware. Don’t think I name Consul Scaeva a cunt to gift him insult. Cunts have brains, Don Tric. Cunts have teeth. Someone calls you a cunt, you take it as a compliment. As a sign that folk believe you’re not to be lightly fucked with.’ A shrug. ‘I think they call that irony.’

Mia sniffed, staring at the wastes laid out below them.

‘Truth is, there’s no difference between your nethers and mine. Aside from the obvious, of course. But one doesn’t carry any more weight than the other. Why should what’s between my legs be considered any smarter or stupider, any worse or better? It’s all just meat, Don Tric. In the end, it’s all just food for worms. Just like Duomo, Remus, and Scaeva will be.’

One last drag, long and deep, as if drawing the very life from her smoke.