Nevernight

She glanced over her shoulder, just in case the ungodly racket had indeed scared off the monstrosities chasing them, but alas, the four runnels of churning earth were still in close pursuit. Bastard galloped alongside the wagon, tethered by his reins. The stallion was glaring at Mia, occasionally spitting an accusing whinny in her direction.

‘O, shut up!’ she yelled at the horse.

‘… he really does not like you …’ whispered Mister Kindly.

‘You’re not helping!’

‘… and what would help …?’

‘Explain to me how we got into this stew!’

The cat who was shadows tilted his head, as if thinking. A chuddering growl from the behemoths behind shivered the wagon in its rivets, but the bouncing across the dunes moved him not at all. He looked at the rolling Whisperwastes, the jagged horizon drawing nearer, his mistress above him. And he spoke with the voice of one unveiling an ugly but necessary truth.

‘… it is basically your fault …’

Two weeks had passed atop their lookout, and both Mia and Tric had begun losing faith in her theory. The first turn of Septimus was fast approaching – if they didn’t cross the Church threshold before then, there’d be no chance to be accepted among this year’s flock. They watched in turns, one climbing the spire to relieve the other, pausing to chat awhile between shifts. They’d swap tales of their time as apprentices, or tricks of the trade. Mia seldom mentioned her familia. Tric never mentioned his. And yet he always lingered – even if he had nothing to say, he’d simply sit and watch her read for a spell.

Bastard had eventually taken to eating the grass around the spire’s roots, though he did it with obvious disdain. Mia often caught him looking at her as if he wanted to eat her instead.

Around nevernight’s falling on what was probably the thirteenth turn, she and Tric were sitting atop the stone, staring over the wastes. Mia was down to her last forty-two cigarillos and already wishing she’d brought more.

‘I tried to quit once,’ she said, peering at Black Dorian’s

watermark on the fine, hand-rolled smoke. ‘Lasted fourteen turns.’

‘Missed it too much?’

‘Withdrawals. Mercurio made me take it back up. He said me acting like a bear with a hangover three turns a month was bad enough.’

‘Three turns a … ah.’

‘Ah.’

‘… You’re not that bad are you?’

‘You can tell me in a turn or so,’ she chuckled.

‘I had no sisters.’ Tric began retying his hair, a habit Mia had noted he indulged when uncomfortable. ‘I am unversed in …’ – vague handwaving – ‘… women’s ways.’

‘Well then, you’re in for a treat.’

He stopped in mid-knot, looking at Mia strangely. ‘You are unlike any girl I have ev—’

The boy fell silent, slipped off his rock into a crouch. He took out an old captain’s spyglass, engraved with the same three seadrakes as his ring, and pressed it to his eye.

Mia crouched next to him, peering towards Last Hope. ‘See something?’

‘Caravan.’

‘Fortune hunters?’

‘Don’t think so.’ Tric spat on the spyglass lens, rubbed away the dust. ‘Two laden wagons. Four men. Camels leading, so they’re in for a deep trek.’

‘I’ve never ridden a camel before.’

‘Nor me. I hear they stink. And spit.’

‘Still sounds a step up from Bastard.’

‘A whitedrake wearing a saddle is a step up from Bastard.’

They watched the caravan roll across the blood-red sand for an hour, pondering what lay ahead if the group were indeed from the Red Church. And when the caravan was almost a dot on the horizon, the pair clambered down from their throne, and followed across the wastes.

They kept distance at first, Flowers and Bastard plodding slowly. Mia was sure she could hear a strange tune on the wind. Not the maddening whispers – which she’d still not become accustomed to – but something like off-key bells, stacked all atop one another and pounded with an iron flail. She’d no idea what to make of it.

The pair weren’t outfitted for a trek into the deep desert, and they resolved to ride up to the caravan when it stopped to rest. There was no creeping up on it – the stone outcroppings and broken monuments studding the wastes weren’t enough to conceal approach, and Mia’s cloak of shadows was only big enough for one. Besides, she reasoned, if these were servants of the Lady of Blessed Murder, they may not take kindly to being crept up on as they stopped to piss.

Sadly, the caravan folk seemed happy enough to go as they went, so to speak. The pair were gaining ground, but after two full turns in the saddle, with Bastard nipping her legs and occasionally trying to buck her into the dust, Mia could take no more. Pulling the stallion up near a circle of weathered statues, she didn’t so much lose her temper as drop-kick it across the sand.

‘Stop, stop,’ she spat. ‘Fuck this. Right in the earhole.’

Tric raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’

‘There’s more bruises in my britches than there is bottom. It needs a breather.’

‘Are we playing alliteration and you didn’t tell me, or …’

‘Fuck off. I need a rest.’

Tric frowned at the horizon. ‘We might lose them.’

‘They’re led by a dozen camels, Tric. A noseless dog could follow this trail of shit in the middle of truedark. If they suddenly start trekking faster than a forty-a-turn smoker with an armload of drunken prostitutes, I think we can find them again.’

‘What do drunken prostit—’

‘I don’t need a foot massage. Don’t want a back rub. I just want to sit on something that isn’t moving for an hour.’ Mia slipped off the saddle with a wince, waved her stiletto at Bastard. ‘And if you bite me again, I swear to the Maw I’ll make you a gelding.’

Bastard snorted, Mia sinking down against a smooth stone with a sigh. She pressed one hand to her cramping innards, rubbed her backside with the other.

‘I can help with that,’ Tric offered. ‘If you need it.’

The boy grinned as Mia raised the knuckles. Tethering the horses, he sat opposite Mia as she fished a cigarillo from her case, struck her flintbox, and breathed deep.

‘Your Shahiid was a wise man,’ Tric said.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Three turns of this a month is plenty.’