Nevernight

He led them from the grand hall, through one of the vast pointed arches. A great flight of steps spiralled up into the black. Mia remembered Old Mercurio’s willow switch, the accursed library stairs he’d made her run up and down so many times she’d lost count. She smiled at the memory, even as she thanked the old man for the exercise, climbing in long, easy strides.

They ascended, the Shahiid of Pockets behind them, silent as the plague.

‘Black Mother,’ Tric panted. ‘They should have named it the Red Stairwell …’

‘Are you well?’ she whispered. ‘Mister Kindly helped?’

‘Aye. It was …’ The boy shook his head. ‘To look inside and find only steel … I’ve never felt anything like it. Crutch be damned. Being darkin must be a grand thing.’

They trudged up the stairs into a long corridor. Arches stretching away into lightless black, spiral patterns on every wall. Shahiid Mouser stopped outside a wooden door, pushed it open. Mia looked in on a large room, furnished with beautiful dark wood and a huge bed covered in lush grey fur. Her body ached at the sight. It’d been at least two nevernights since she slept …

‘Your chambers, Acolyte Mia,’ Mouser said.

‘Where do I stay?’ Tric asked.

‘Down the hall. The other acolytes are already settled. You two are the last to arrive.’

‘How many are there?’ Mia asked.

‘Almost thirty. I look forward to seeing which are iron and which are glass.’

Tric nodded in farewell and followed Mouser down the corridor. Mia stepped inside and dropped her pack by the door. Habit forced her to search every corner, drawer, and keyhole. She finished by peering under the bed before collapsing atop it. Contemplating untying her boots, she decided she was too exhausted to bother. And dropping back into the pillows, she crashed into a sleep deeper than she’d ever known.

A cat made of shadows perched on the bedhead, watching her dreams.

She woke to Mister Kindly’s cold whisper in her ear.

‘… someone comes …’

Her eyes flashed open and she sat up as a soft rapping sounded at her door. Mia drew her dagger, clawed the hair from sand-crusted eyes. Forgetting where she was for a moment. Back in her old room above Mercurio’s shop? Back in the Ribs, her baby brother asleep beside her, parents in the next room …

No.

Don’t look …

She spoke uncertainly. ‘Come in?’

The door opened softly and a figure swathed in black robes entered, crossing the room to halt at the foot of the bed. Mia raised her gravebone blade warily.

‘You either picked the wrong room or the wrong girl …’

The intruder raised her hands. She pulled back her hood, and Mia saw strawberry-blonde curls, familiar eyes peering out between veils of black cloth.

‘Naev …?’

But that was impossible. The woman’s guts had been torn to ribbons by those kraken hooks. After two turns rotting in the sun, her blood would’ve been swimming with poison. How in the Maw’s name was she even alive, let alone walking and talking?

‘You should be dead …’

‘Should be. But is not.’ The thin woman bowed. ‘Thanks to her.’

Mia shook her head. ‘You don’t owe me thanks.’

‘More than thanks. She risked her life to save Naev. Naev will not forget.’

Mia shuffled back as Naev produced a hidden blade from within her sleeve, Mister Kindly puffing up in her shadow. But Naev drew the knife along the heel of her own hand, blood welling from the cut and spattering on the floor.

‘She saved Naev’s life,’ the woman said. ‘So now, Naev owes it. On her blood, in the sight of Mother Night, Naev vows it.’

‘You don’t need to do this …’

‘It is done.’

Naev leaned down and began unlacing Mia’s boots. Mia yelped, tucked them underneath her. The woman reached for the ties on Mia’s shirt, and Mia slapped her hands away, backing off across the bed with her own hands raised.

‘Now, look here …’

‘She must undress.’

‘You really picked the wrong girl. And most people offer a drink first.’

Naev put her hands on her hips. ‘She must bathe before she meets the Ministry. If Naev may speak plain, she reeks of horse and excrement, her hair is greasier than a Liisian sweetbread, and she is painted in dried blood. If she wishes to attend her baptism into the Blessed Lady’s congregation looking like a Dweymeri savage, Naev suggests she saves herself the pain and simply steps off the Sky Altar now.’

‘Wait …’ Mia blinked. ‘Did you say bath?’

‘… Naev did.’

‘With water?’ Mia was up on her knees, hands clutched at her breast. ‘And soap?’

The woman nodded. ‘Five kinds.’

‘Maw’s teeth,’ Mia said, unlacing her shirt. ‘You picked the right girl after all.’

Dark figures gathered in the gaze of a stone goddess, bathed with colourless light.

It had been twelve hours since Mia arrived at the Quiet Mountain. Four since she woke. Twenty-seven minutes since she’d dragged herself from her bath and down to the Hall of Eulogies, leaving a scum of blood and grime on the water’s surface that could’ve walked away by itself if given a few more turns to gestate.

The robe was soft against her skin, her hair bound in a damp braid. Soap scent drifted about her when she turned to look among the other acolytes – twenty-eight in all, dressed in toneless grey. A brutish Itreyan boy with fists like sledgehammers. A wiry lass with bobbed red hair, eyes filled with wolf cunning. A towering Dweymeri, with ornate facial tattoos and shoulders you could rest the world on. Two blond and freckled Vaanians – brother and sister, by the look. A thin boy with ice-blue eyes, standing near Tric at the end of the row, so still she almost missed him. All of them around her age. All of them hard and hungry and silent.

Naev stood close by Mia, swathed in shadows. Other quiet figures in black robes stood at the edge of the darkness, men and women, fingers entwined like penitents in a cathedral.

‘Hands,’ Naev had whispered. ‘She will find two kinds in the Red Church. The ones who take vocations, make offerings … what commonfolk call assassins, yes? We call them Blades.’

Mia nodded. ‘Mercurio told me such.’

‘The second are called Hands,’ Naev continued. ‘There are twenty Hands for every Blade. They keep her House in order. Manage affairs. Make supply runs, like Naev. No more than four acolytes in every flock become Blades. Those who survive the year but fail to pass the grade will become Hands. Other folk simply come here to serve the goddess as they can. Not everyone is suited to do murder in her name.’

So. Only four of us can make the cut.