Nevernight Read online

  “I’ve friends enough, thank you, sir. Please leave me be.”

  “You look friendless enough to me, lass.”

  He reached out one too-gentle hand, brushed a hair from her cheek. She turned, stepped closer with the smile that, in truth, was her prettiest part. And as she spoke, she drew her stiletto and pressed it against the source of most men’s woes, her smile widening along with his eyes.

  “Lay hand upon me again, sir, and I’ll feed your jewels to the fucking drakes.”

  The peacock squeaked as she pressed harder at the heart of his problems—no doubt a smaller problem than it’d been a moment before. Paling, he stepped back before any of his fellows witnessed his indiscretion. And giving his very best bow, he slunk off to convince himself his hand might be better company after all.

  The girl turned back to the sea. Slipped the dagger back into her belt.

  Not without her charms, as I said.

  Seeking no more attention, she kept herself mostly to herself, emerging only at mealtimes or to take some air in the still of nevernight. Hammock-bound in her cabin, studying the tomes Old Mercurio had given her, she was content enough. Her eyes strained with the Ashkahi script, but the cat who was shadows helped her with the most difficult passages—curled within the folds of her hair and watching over her shoulder as she studied Hypaciah’s Arkemical Truths and a dust-dry copy of Plienes’ Theories of the Maw.7

  She was bent over Theories now, smooth brow marred by a scowl.

  “… try again…,” the cat whispered.

  The girl rubbed her temples, wincing. “It’s giving me a headache.”

  “… o poor girl, shall i kiss it better…”

  “This is children’s lore. Any knee-high tadpole gets taught this.”

  “… it was not written with itreyan audiences in mind…”

  The girl turned back to the spidery script. Clearing her throat, she read aloud:

  “The skies above the Itreyan Republic are illuminated by three suns—commonly believed to be the eyes of Aa, the God of Light. It is no coincidence Aa is often referred to as the Everseeing by the unwashed.”

  She raised an eyebrow, glanced at the shadowcat. “I wash plenty.”

  “… plienes was an elitist…”

  “You mean a tosser.”

  “… continue…”

  A sigh. “The largest of the three suns is a furious red globe called Saan. The Seer. Shuffling across the heavens like a brigand with nothing better to do, Saan hangs in the skies for near one hundred weeks at a time. The second sun is named Saai. The Knower. A smallish blue-faced fellow, rising and setting quicker than its brother—”

  “… sibling…,” the cat corrected. “… old ashkahi does not gender nouns…”

  “… quicker than its sibling, it visits for perhaps fourteen weeks at a stretch, near twice that spent beyond the horizon. The third sun is Shiih. The Watcher. A dim yellow giant, Shiih takes almost as long as Saan in its wanderings across the sky.”

  “… very good…”

  “Between the three suns’ plodding travels, Itreyan citizens know actual nighttime—which they call truedark—for only a brief spell every two and a half years. For all other eves—all the eves Itreyan citizens long for a moment of darkness in which to drink with their comrades, make love to their sweethearts…”

  The girl paused.

  “What does oshk mean? Mercurio never taught me that word.”

  “… unsurprising…”

  “It’s something to do with sex, then.”

  The cat shifted across to her other shoulder without disturbing a single lock of hair.

  “… it means ‘to make love where there is no love’…”

  “Right.” The girl nodded. “… make love to their sweethearts, fuck their whores, or any other combination thereof—they must endure the constant light of so-called nevernight, lit by one or more of Aa’s eyes in the heavens.

  “Almost three years at a stretch, sometimes, without a drop of real darkness.”

  The girl closed the book with a thump.

  “… excellent…”

  “My head is splitting.”

  “… ashkahi script was not meant for weaker minds…”

  “Well, thank you very much.”

  “… that is not what i meant…”

  “No doubt.” She stood and stretched, rubbed her eyes. “Let’s take some air.”

  “… you know i do not breathe…”

  “I’ll breathe. You watch.”

  “… as it please you…”

  The pair stole up onto the deck. Her footsteps were less than whispers, and the cat’s, nothing at all. The roaring winds that marked the turn to nevernight waited above—Saai’s blue memory fading slowly on the horizon, leaving only Saan to cast its sullen red glow.

  The Beau’s deck was almost empty. A huge, crook-faced helmsman stood at the wheel, two lookouts in the crow’s nests, a cabin boy (still almost a foot taller than she) snoozing on his mop handle and dreaming of his maid’s arms. The ship was fifteen turnings into the Sea of Swords, the snaggletooth coastline of Liis to the south. The girl could see another ship in the distance, blurred in Saan’s light. A heavy dreadnought, flying the triple suns of the Itreyan navy, cutting the waves like a gravebone dagger through an old nooseman’s throat.

  The bloody ending she’d gifted the hangman hung heavy in her chest. Heavier than the memory of the sweetboy’s smooth hardness, the sweat he’d left drying on her skin. Though this sapling would bloom into a killer whom other killers rightly feared, right now she was a maid fresh-plucked, and memories of the hangman’s expression as she cut his throat left her … conflicted. It’s quite a thing, to watch a person slip from the potential of life into the finality of death. It’s another thing entirely to be the one who pushed. And for all Mercurio’s teachings, she was still a sixteen-year-old girl who’d just committed her first act of murder.

  Her first premeditated act, at any rate.

  “Hello, pretty.”

  The voice pulled her from her reverie, and she cursed herself for a novice. What had Mercurio taught her? Never leave your back to the room. And though she might’ve protested her recent bloodlettings constituted worthy distraction, or that a ship’s deck wasn’t even a room, she could almost hear the willow switch the old assassin would have raised in answer.

  “Twice up the stairs!” he’d have barked. “There and back again!”

  She turned and saw the young sailor with his peacock-feather cap and his bednotch smile. Beside him stood another man, broad as bridges, muscles stretching his shirtsleeves like walnuts stuffed into poorly tailored bags. An Itreyan also by the look, tanned and blue-eyed, the dull gleam of Godsgrave streets etched in his gaze.

  “I was hoping I’d see you again,” Peacock said.

  “The ship isn’t large enough for me to hope otherwise, sir.”

  “Sir, is it? Last we spoke, you voiced threat of removing parts most treasured and feeding them to the fish.”

  She was looking at the boy. Watching the stuffed walnut bag from beneath her lashes.

  “No threat, sir.”

  “Just boasting, then? Thin talk for which apology is owed, I’d wager.”

  “And you’d accept apology, sir?”

  “Below decks, doubtless.”

  Her shadow rippled, like millpond water as rain kissed the surface. But the peacock was intent on his indignity, and the walnut thug on the lovely hurtings he might bestow if given a few minutes with her in a cabin without windows.

  “I only need to scream, you realize,” she said.

  “And how much scream could you give voice,” Peacock smiled, “before we tossed your scrawny arse over the side?”

  She glanced to the pilot’s deck. To the crow’s nests. A tumble into the ocean would be a death sentence—even if the Beau came about, she could swim only a trifle better than its anchor, and the Sea of Swords teemed with drakes like a dockside sweetboy crawled with crabs.


  “Not much of a scream at all,” she agreed.

  “… pardon me, gentlefriends…”

  The thugs started at the voice—they’d heard nobody approach. Both turned, Peacock puffing up and scowling to hide his sudden fright. And there on the deck behind them, they saw the cat made of shadows, licking at its paw.

  It was thin as old vellum. A shape cut from a ribbon of darkness, not quite solid enough that they couldn’t see the deck behind it. Its voice was the murmur of satin sheets on cold skin.

  “… i fear you picked the wrong girl to dance with…,” it said.

  A chill stole over them, whisper-light and shivering. Movement drew Peacock’s eyes to the deck, and he realized with growing horror that the girl’s shadow was much larger than it should, or indeed could have been. And worse, it was moving.

  Peacock’s mouth opened as she introduced her boot to his partner’s groin, kicking him hard enough to cripple his unborn children. She seized the walnut thug’s arm as he doubled up, flipping him over the railing and into the sea. Peacock cursed as she moved behind him, but he found he couldn’t shift footing to match her—as if his boots were glued in the girl’s shadow on the deck. She kicked him hard in his backside and he toppled face-first into the rails, spreading his nose across his cheeks like bloodberry jam. The girl spun him, knife to throat, pushing him against the railing with his spine cruelly bent.

  “I beg pardon, miss,” he gasped. “Aa’s truth, I meant no offense.”

  “What is your name, sir?”

  “Maxinius,” he whispered. “Maxinius, if it please you.”

  “Do you know what I am, Maxinius-If-It-Please-You?”

  “… D—da…”

  His voice trembled. His gaze flickering to shadows shifting at her feet.

  “Darkin.”

  In his next breath, Peacock saw his little life stacked before his eyes. All the wrongs and the rights. All the failures and triumphs and in-betweens. The girl felt a familiar shape at her shoulder—a flicker of sadness. The cat who was not a cat, perched now on her clavicle, just as it had perched on the hangman’s bedhead as she delivered him to the Maw. And though it had no eyes, she could tell it watched the lifetime in Peacock’s pupils, enraptured like a child before a puppet show.

  Now understand; she could have spared this boy. And your narrator could just as easily lie to you at this juncture—some charlatan’s ruse to cast our girl in a sympathetic light.8 But the truth is, gentlefriends, she didn’t spare him. Yet, perhaps you’ll take solace in the fact that at least she paused. Not to gloat. Not to savor.

  To pray.

  “Hear me, Niah,” she whispered. “Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close.”

  A gentle shove, sending him over into the gnashing swell. As the peacock’s feather sank beneath the water, she began shouting over the roaring winds, loud as devils in the Maw. Man overboard! she screamed, man overboard! and soon the bells were all a-ringing. But by the time the Beau turned about, no sign of Peacock or the walnut bag could be found among the waves.

  And as simple as that, our girl’s tally of endings had multiplied threefold.

  Pebbles to avalanches.

  The Beau’s captain was a Dweymeri named Wolfeater, seven feet tall with dark locks knotted by salt. The good captain was understandably put out by his crewmen’s early disembarkation, and keen on hows and whys. But when questioned in his cabin, the small, pale girl who sounded the alarm only mumbled of a struggle between the Itreyans, ending in a tumble of knuckles and curses sending both overboard to sailor’s graves. The odds that two seadogs—even Itreyan fools—had tussled themselves into the drink were slim. But thinner still were the chances this girlchild had gifted both to Trelene all by her lonesome.

  The captain towered over her; this waif in gray and white, wreathed in the scent of burned cloves. He knew neither who she was nor why she journeyed to Ashkah. But as he propped a drakebone pipe on his lips and struck a flintbox to light his tar, he found himself glancing at the deck. At the shadow coiled about this strange girl’s feet.

  “Best be keeping yourself to yourself ’til trip’s end, lass.” He exhaled into the gloom between them. “I’ll have meals sent to your room.”

  The girl looked him over, eyes black as the Maw. She glanced down at her shadow, dark enough for two. And she agreed with the Wolfeater’s assessment, her smile sweet as honeydew.

  Captains are usually clever fellows, after all.

  1. She didn’t know how to listen yet. You people seldom do.

  2. Something noticed. Something cared.

  3. The Ribs are perhaps the most spectacular feature of Itreya’s capital; sixteen great ossified towers gleaming at the heart of the City of Bridges and Bones. The Ribs are said to have belonged to the last titan, overthrown by the Light God Aa in the war for dominion of Itreya’s heaven. Aa commanded his faithful to build a temple at the place where the titan fell to earth, commemorating his victory. Thus, the seeds of the great city were planted in the grave of the Light’s last foe.

  A strange thing, gentlefriend, that in no holy scripture or book will you find mention of this titan’s name …

  4. Lady of Oceans, Thirdborn of the Light and the Maw, She Who Will Drink the World.

  5. How drunk would a man have to be to consider romancing a giantess a sensible option, for example? Furthermore, in such a state of inebriation, how could a fellow be expected to safely operate his own equipment, let alone the requisite stepladder?

  6. A poet this one, and no mistake.

  7. One of only six remaining in existence. Plienes and all known copies of his work were put to the torch in 27PR, in a conflagration briefly known as “the Brightest Light.”

  Organized by Grand Cardinal Crassus Alvaro, the pyre destroyed over four thousand “incendiary” works and was considered a resounding success by the Itreyan clergy—until it was pointed out by Crassus’s son, Cardinal Leo Alvaro, that there was no light in all creation brighter than that of the God of Light himself, and that naming any man-made bonfire to the contrary was, in fact, heresy.

  After the grand cardinal’s crucifixion, Grand Cardinal Alvaro II decreed the pyre should be referred to as “the Bright Light” in texts thereafter.

  8. “She may have been the most feared killer in Itreya, murderess of legions, Lady of Blades, destroyer of the Republic, but look, she had good in her also. Mercy, even for rapists and brutes. O, cue the swelling violiiiiiiins!”

  CHAPTER 3

  HOPELESS

  Something had followed her from that place. The place above the music where her father died. Something hungry. A blind, grub consciousness, dreaming of shoulders crowned with translucent wings. And she, who would gift them.

  The little girl had slumped on a palatial bed in her mother’s chambers, cheeks wet with tears. Her brother lay beside her, wrapped in swaddling and blinking with his big black eyes. The babe understood none of what was going on about him. Too young to know his father had ended, and all the world beside him.

  The little girl envied him.

  Their apartments sat high within the hollow of the second Rib, ornate friezes carved into walls of ancient gravebone. Looking out the leadlight window, she could see the third and fifth Ribs opposite, looming above the Spine hundreds of feet below. Nevernight winds howled about the petrified towers, bringing cool in from the waters of the bay.

  Opulence dripped on the floor; all crushed red velvet and artistry from the four corners of the Itreyan Republic. Moving mekwerk sculpture from the Iron Collegium. Million-stitch tapestries woven by the blind propheteers of Vaan. A chandelier of pure Dweymeri crystal. Servants moved in a storm of soft dresses and drying tears, and at the eye stood the Dona Corvere, bidding them move, move, for the love of Aa, move.

  The little girl had sat on the bed beside her brother. A black tomcat was pressed to her chest, purring softly. But he’d puffed up and spat when he saw a deeper shadow at
the curtain’s feet. Claws dug into his girl’s hands and she’d dropped him into the path of an oncoming maidservant, who fell with a shriek. Dona Corvere turned on her daughter, regal and furious.

  “Mia Corvere, keep that wretched animal out from underfoot or we’ll leave it behind!”

  And as simple as that, we have her name.

  Mia.

  “Captain Puddles isn’t filthy,” Mia had said, almost to herself.1

  A boy in his middling teens entered the room, red-faced from his dash up the stairs. Heraldry of the Familia Corvere was embroidered on his doublet; a black crow in flight against a red sky, crossed swords below.

  “Mi Dona, forgive me. Consul Scaeva has demanded—”

  Heavy footfalls stilled his tongue. The doors swept aside and the room filled with men in snow-white armor, crimson plumes on their helms; Luminatii they were called, you may recall. They reminded little Mia of her father. The biggest man she’d ever seen lead them, a trimmed beard framing wolfish features, animal cunning twinkling in his gaze.

  Among the Luminatii stood the beautiful consul with his black eyes and purple robes—the man who’d spoken “… Death” and smiled as the floor fell away beneath her father’s feet. Servants faded into the background, leaving Mia’s mother as a solitary figure amid that sea of snow and blood. Tall and beautiful and utterly alone.

  Mia climbed off the bed, slipped to her mother’s side and took her hand.

  “Dona Corvere.” The consul covered his heart with ring-studded fingers. “I offer condolences in this time of trial. May the Everseeing keep you always in the Light.”

  “Your generosity humbles me, Consul Scaeva. Aa bless you for your kindness.”

  “I am truly grieved, Mi Dona. Your Darius served the Republic with distinction before his fall from grace. A public execution is always a tawdry affair. But what else is to be done with a general who marches against his own capital? Or the justicus who’d have placed a crown upon that general’s head?”

  The consul looked around the room, took in the servants, the luggage, the disarray.

  “You are leaving us?”