Darkdawn

“Stop it!” Mia gasped.

“Let me go!”

“Jonnen, stop it, please!”

She wrapped the boy up, pinning his arms so he couldn’t punch anymore. His cries echoed on the pipe above her head. Struggling with her armor’s clasps and straps with her free hand, she dragged the pieces away, one by one. Shedding the skin of the gladiatii, the assassin, the daughter of vengeance, sloughing those eight years off her bones. It’d been worth it. All of it. Duomo dead. Scaeva dead. And Jonnen, her blood, the babe she’d thought long buried in his grave …

My little brother lives.

The boy kicked, thrashed, bit. There were no tears for his murdered da, only fury, rippling and red. Mia had thought the boy dead years ago—swallowed up inside the Philosopher’s Stone with her mother and the last of her hope. But if she’d had any lingering doubts he could be a Corvere, that he could be her mother’s son, the boy’s bloody rage put them all to the sword.

“Jonnen, listen to me!”

“My name is Lucius!” he shrieked, his voice echoing on the iron.

“Lucius, then, listen!”

“I won’t!” he shouted. “You k-killed my father! You killed him!”

Pity swelled inside Mia, but she clenched her jaw, hardened her heart against it.

“I’m sorry, Jonnen. But your father …” She shook her head, breathed deep. “Listen, we need to get out of this pipe before they start draining the arena. The stormdrakes will come back this way, do you understand?”

“Let them come, I hope they eat you!”

“… O, I LIKE HIM …”

“… why does that not surprise me …”

The boy turned to the dark shapes coalescing on the wall beside them, the air around them growing chill. A cat made of shadows and a wolf of the same, staring at him with their not-eyes. Mister Kindly’s tail twitched side to side as he studied the child. Eclipse simply tilted her head, shivering slightly. Jonnen fell silent for a moment, wide, dark eyes looking first to Mia’s passengers, then to the girl who held him.

“You hear them, too …,” he breathed.

“I’m like you,” Mia nodded. “We’re the same.”

The boy stared at her, perhaps feeling the same sickness, hunger, longing she did. Mia looked him over, tears welling in her eyes. All the miles, all the years …

“You don’t remember me,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “You were only a baby when they t-took you away from us. But I remember you.”

She was almost overcome for a moment. Tears in her lashes and a sob caught in her throat. Recalling the baby boy wrapped in swaddling on her mother’s bed the turn her father died. Staring up at her with his big, dark eyes. Envying him that he was too young to know their father had ended, and all their world besides.

But he wasn’t Jonnen’s father at all, was he?

Mia shook her head, blinked back those hateful tears.

O, Mother, how could you …

Looking at the boy now, she could barely speak. Barely force her jaw to move, her lungs to breathe, her lips to form the words burning in her chest. He had the same flint-black eyes as she, the same ink-black hair. She could see their mother in him so clearly, it was like peering into a looking glass. But beyond the her in him, something in the shape of Jonnen’s little nose, the line of his puppy-fat cheeks …

She could see him.

Scaeva.

“My name is Mia,” she finally managed. “I’m your sister.”

“I have no sister,” the boy spat.

“Jonn—” Mia caught herself. Licked her lips and tasted salt. “Lucius, we have to go. I’ll explain everything, I swear it. But it’s dangerous here.”

“… ALL WILL BE WELL, CHILD …”

“… breathe easy …”

Mia watched as her daemons slipped into the boy’s shadow, eating away at his fear as they’d always done for her. But though the panic in his eyes lessened, the rage only swelled, the bunched muscles in his little arms suddenly flexing against hers. He wriggled and bucked again, slipping a hand free and clawing at her face.

“Let me go!” he cried.

Mia hissed as his thumb found her eye, whipping her head away with a snarl.

“Stop it!” she snapped, temper flaring.

“Let go!”

“If you’ll not be still, I’ll hold you still!”

Mia pushed the boy hard against the pipe, pressing him in place as he kicked and spat. She could understand his rage, but in truth, she had no time to spend on hurt feelings right now. Working at the remaining buckles on her armor with her free hand, she slipped off the long leather straps that held her breastplate and spaulders in place, dropping the armor to the floor of the valve. She kept her boots, her studded leather skirt, the threadbare, bloodstained tunic beneath. And using the straps, one each for his wrists and ankles, she bound up her brother like a hog to slaughter.

“Unhand m—ffll-ggmm!”

Jonnen’s protests were muted as Mia tied another thong about his mouth. And gathering the boy into her arms, she held him tight, looked him hard in the eyes.

“We have to swim,” she said. “I’d not waste my breath on shouting if I were you.”

Dark eyes locked on hers, glittering with hate. But the boy seemed sensible enough to comply, finally dragging a deep draft into his lungs.

Mia pulled them below and swam for their lives.

They surfaced in sapphire water a half hour later to the sound of pealing bells.

With Jonnen in her arms, Mia had swum through the vast storage tanks below the arena, through the echoing dark of the mekwerk outflow pipes, catching her breath where she could and spilling finally out into the sea a few hundred feet north of Sword Arm harbor. Her brother had glared at her all the while, bound hand and foot and mouth.

Mia felt wretched at having to tie her own kin up like a spring lamb, but she had no idea what else to do with him. She couldn’t possibly have left him up there on the victor’s plinth with the cooling corpses of his da and Duomo. Couldn’t ever have left him behind. But in all her planning with Ashlinn and Mercurio, she’d not bargained on having to wrangle a nine-year-old boy after having murdered his father right in front of him.

His father.

The thought swam behind her eyes, too dark and heavy to look at for long. She pushed it aside, focusing on getting them into shallower waters. Ash and Mercurio were waiting for her aboard a swift galley named the Siren’s Song, berthed at the Sword Arm. The sooner they were out of Godsgrave, the better. Word would be spreading across the metropolis about Scaeva’s assassination, and if they didn’t know already, the Red Church would soon learn their richest and most powerful patron was dead. A storm of knives and shit was about to start raining down on Mia’s head.

As she swam toward the Sword Arm docks, she saw the streets of the metropolis beyond were in chaos. Cathedrals were ringing a death knell across the City of Bridges and Bones. Folk were emerging from taverna and tenements, bewildered, outraged, terrified as rumor of Scaeva’s murder uncoiled through the city like blood in the water. Legionaries were everywhere, armor glinting under that awful sunslight.