Darkdawn

And now the announcement was rippling through the streets. Floating up over the balconies and terra-cotta roofs and ringing across the canals. Shushing rumor and quieting unrest and promising the answers all in the city sought.

Was the cardinal really slain? The consul, too?

The savior of the Republic, laid low by the blade of a mere slave?

Mia had stolen a cloak from some washwoman’s line, another strip of cloth to wrap around the scar and slave brand on her face. They made their way through the Sword Arm and down toward the Heart, Ashlinn to her left, Tric to her right, Jonnen in her arms. The boy’s weight made her muscles ache, her spine groan in protest. But even if she was no longer the assassin who killed his father, she was still the abductor claiming to be his long-lost sister, and Mia didn’t trust him not to make a break for it if given half the chance. Even if she didn’t fear the clever little shit doing a runner, she was still loathe to let him go. She couldn’t lose him now.

Not after all this.

With both Eclipse and Mister Kindly riding in his shadow, the boy seemed a little more sedate. Watching her with clouded eyes as they slipped through the Godsgrave streets, over the wending cobbles and through the grand piazzas of the marrowborn district, closer, ever closer to the forum. The crowd around them was alight with fear, curiosity, violence waiting in the wings. Mia saw the flash of hidden blades. The glint of bared teeth. The potential for ruin, just a breath and a wrong word away.

Every grudge. Every slave, every unhappy pleb, every malcontent with a bone to pick. She saw how fragile it all was—this so-called “civilization.” The rage boiling at the heart of this place. Godsgrave felt like a barrel full of wyrdglass, wrapped in oil-soaked rags. Waiting for the spark that would send it all up in flames.

In the forum, a few hundred feet from the first Rib, they found the streets were simply too crowded to get any closer. The thoroughfares and bridges were packed with folk of every kind, young and old, rich and poor, Itreyan, Liisian, Vaanian, Dweymeri. Instead of trying to push on, Mia and her comrades forced their way to the base of the mighty statue of the Everseeing in the forum’s heart.

The effigy towered above the mob, fifty feet high, carved of solid marble. Three arkemical globes representing the three suns were held in one of Aa’s outstretched hands. In his other, he held out a mighty sword. Mia had destroyed this very statue the truedark she turned fourteen, but Scaeva had ordered it rebuilt, paying the fee from his own coffers. One more pious gesture to buy the mob’s adoration.

With Jonnen in Tric’s arms, the quartet climbed the statue, finding a place to rest in the great folds of the Everseeing’s robes. Peering out over the mob below.

“Black Goddess, look at them all,” Ash breathed beside her.

Mia could only stare. The crowd she’d fought in front of at the Venatus Magni had been impressive, but it seemed every citizen of Godsgrave had been ushered here for the announcement. The Ribs rose above them, sixteen gravebone arches, gleaming white and towering high into the sky. Soldiers and Luminatii shoved their way through the mob, cracking skulls and holding order by the throat. Desperation and fear hung in the air like blood-stink in a butchery. At least they had their perch to themselves—though he seemed to be struggling in the truelight as much as Mia, Tric’s chill presence dissuaded other folk from climbing too close.

Mia narrowed her eyes in the truelight glare. The journey up from beneath the city had been long, silent, a hundred twists and turns. She had no idea of how long they’d trekked—time had seemed meaningless in the hollow dark below the city’s skin. But now she was away from it, she longed for it again. That black pool. Those silent, wailing faces. She missed it, like she missed Mister Kindly and Eclipse when they were apart. Missed it like a part of herself had been torn away.

The many were one.

She pushed the thought aside. Focused on the rage. Her knuckles white on the hilt of her gravebone sword. None of it, the Moon, Niah, Cleo, Mercurio, Ashlinn, Tric, none of it fucking mattered.

Not until that bastard’s dead.

Trumpets sounded, ringing crisp and clear in the truelight glare. The suns above were living things, beating upon her shoulders, grinding her beneath their light like a worm under a boot. The shadows in the folds of the Everseeing’s robes were her only respite, and Mia clung to them like a child to its mother’s skirts. But she stood taller as the fanfare sounded, squinting past the great open ring of the forum and the circle of mighty pillars crowned with statues of the Senate’s finest. The Senate House itself stood to the west, all fluted columns and polished bone. The first Rib loomed to the south, the balcony of the consul’s palazzo crowded with Luminatii in gravebone plate and senators in green laurel wreaths and rippling white robes trimmed in purple.

The trumpets rang long and loud, stilling the shouts, the whispers, the uncertainty brewing in the City of Bridges and Bones. Truth told, Mia had never truly considered the consequences of her scheme in the magni far beyond seeing Duomo and Scaeva dead. But with rumor of the consul’s death running rife, all seemed on the verge of calamity.

What would happen to this place if the consul truly fell?

What truly would become of this city, this Republic, if she cut off its head? Would it simply thrash and roil for a time, then grow another? Or, like a god laid low by his father’s hand, shatter into a thousand pieces?

“Merciful Aa!” came a cry from the street below. “Look!”

A shout from a rooftop behind. “Four Daughters, is it him?”

Mia felt her heart drop and thump inside her chest. Squinting in the glare toward the balcony of the consul’s apartments as the Luminatii and senators stepped aside.

O, Goddess.

O, merciful Black Mother.

His purple robe was still drenched with blood, his golden laurel missing. A bandage was wrapped around his throat and shoulder, soaked with red. His face was pale, his salt-and-pepper hair damp with sweat. But there could be no mistaking the man as he stepped forward and raised his hand like a shepherd before the sheep. Three fingers outstretched in the sign of Aa.

“Father,” Jonnen said.

Mia glared at her brother, wondering if he’d be troublesome enough to shout for help—but he seemed afeared enough of the Hearthless boy holding him to keep quiet for now. The crowd, however, were overcome with a wave of jubilance, a deafening, giddy roar rippling from those near enough to see with their own two eyes, out, out into the forum. Folk farther back began shouting, demanding the truth, to see, shoving and brawling. Soldiers stepped in, truncheons at the ready. The streets swayed and rolled, folk shoving and spitting and pushing each other off bridges and into the canals below, chaos budding higher, building upw—

“My people!”

The cry rang through horns scattered about the forum, amplified and echoing on the walls of the Senate House, the gravebone of the Spine. Like some kind of magik, it brought stillness to the chaos. Balance to the edge of the knife.

Though he was too far away for Mia to really see his expression, Julius Scaeva’s voice was hoarse with pain. She could see Scaeva’s wife, Liviana, by his side, her gown red as bloodstains, her throat glittering with gold. Mia looked down to Jonnen beside her, saw his eyes fixed on the woman who’d claimed to be his mother.

The boy glanced up at Mia. Looked away again just as swift.

Scaeva drew a deep breath before continuing.

“My people!” he repeated. “My countrymen! My friends!”

Silence fell in the City of Bridges and Bones. The air was still enough to hear the whispers of the distant sea, the gentle prayer of the wind. Mia had known the love of the crowd in the arena, sure and true. She’d brought them to their feet, roaring in adoration, made them thrill and cry and sing her name like a hymn to heaven. But never once in her time on the sands had she held them in thrall like this.

They called Julius Scaeva “Senatum Populiis”—the People’s Senator. The Savior of the Republic. And though it sickened her to acknowledge, she marveled to see him still the entire city like millpond water with a mere handful of words.

“I have heard whispers!” Scaeva called. “Whispers that your Republic is beheaded! That your consul is slain! That Julius Scaeva is fallen! I have heard these whispers, and in turn, I shout my defiance before you all!” He slammed one bloody fist down on the balustrade. “Here I stand! And by God, here I stay!”

A roar. Thunderous and joyous, spreading like wildfire through the crowd. Mia could see folk below her embracing, cheeks wet with jubilant tears. Her stomach turned, her lips curled, her grip on her sword so tight her hand was shaking.

After a suitable time, Scaeva held up his hand for silence, and the hush fell like an anvil once more. He drew a deep breath, then coughed, once, twice. Hand going to his blood-soaked shoulder, he swayed on his feet before the mekwerk horn. Soldiers and senators stepped forward to aid the consul lest he fall. Dismay rippled through the mob. But with a shake of his head, Scaeva pushed his well-meaning helpers aside and stood tall again, despite his “wounds.” Brave and staunch and O, so very strong.

The crowd lost their collective mind. Rapture and bliss swept through them in a flood. Even as her mouth soured, Mia had to admire the theater of it. The way this snake turned every snag and stumble to bitterest advantage.

“We are wounded!” he cried. “There is no doubt. And though it pains me greatly, I speak not of the knife blow I bear, no. I speak of the blow dealt to us all! Our counsel, our conscience, our friend … nay, our brother, is taken from us.”

Scaeva bowed his head. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with grief.

“My people, it cleaves my heart to bring you tidings ill as these.” The consul steadied himself against the balustrade, swallowed as if overcome with sorrow. “But I must confirm that Francesco Duomo, grand cardinal of Aa’s ministry, and the Everseeing’s chosen on this blessed earth … is slain.”

Dismayed cries rang through the forum. Anguished wails and gnashing teeth. Scaeva slowly held up his hand, like a maestro before an orchestra.

“I grieve the loss of my friend. Truly. Long were the nevernights I sat in his radiance, and I shall carry the heavenly wisdom he gifted me for the rest of my years.” Scaeva hung his head, heaved a sigh. “But long have I warned that the enemies of our great Republic stood closer than my brothers in the Senate would believe! Long have I warned the Kingmaker’s legacy still festers in our Republic’s heart! And yet not even I dared imagine that on this most holy feast, in the greatest city the world has known, the paragon of the Everseeing’s faith might be cut down by an assassin’s blade? In sight of us all? Before the three unblinking eyes of Aa himself? What madness is this?”

He rent his purple robe and howled at the sky.

“What madness is this?”

The crowd roared again, dismay to rage and back again. Mia watched the emotion roll up and down like waves on a storm-wracked beach, Scaeva wringing them for every drop.

The consul spoke again once the bedlam had subsided.

“As you know, my friends, to safeguard the security of the Republic, it was my intention to stand for a fourth term as consul in the truedark elections. But in the face of this assault upon our faith, our freedom, our familia, I have no other choice. As of this moment, by the emergency provisions of the Itreyan constitution, and in the face of the undeniable threat to our glorious Republic, I, Julius Scaeva, do hereby claim title of imperator and all powers …”