Nevernight (52 page)
And then the weaver clenched her fists.
The blow was white-hot flame and rusted razors. Lemon and salt rubbed into a fresh and bleeding wound, torn in four ragged strips across her back and peeling her lips back from her teeth in a silent scream.
Every muscle seized tight. Her back tore like paper. Mia bucked against the stone, her grip on Tric’s fingers tightened as fear rushed in to the empty void after the whiplash faded. Great, freezing tidal waves of it, crashing over her head and dragging her down. Every second bleeding into forever. Every moment spent waiting for the next blow to fall was its own agony. She found herself praying for it, just so the pause would end. And then it fell, tearing across her back in four lines of perfect pain.
She threw back her head. Mouth open but refusing to scream. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Jessamine and Diamo. Solis. She could feel their stares. Taste their smiles. The blood flowed warm and thick down her back, pooled on the empty shadow at her feet. The Weaver struck again, the sound of invisible whips cracking across the air, the pain incandescent. Still she hung on to Tric’s hand, clung to that single, burning thought; that no matter how much it hurt
(
crack
)
no matter how much she wanted to
(
crack
)
she would never
(
crack
)
let them
(
crack
)
hear
(
crack
)
her
(
crack
)
scream.
But by the tenth strike, she’d lost her grip on Tric’s hand. By the twelfth, she’d lost her grip on her terror, and the cry spilled from her lips, long and thin and trembling. She could feel Tric’s hand groping for hers, but she curled her fingers into a fist. Lowered her chin and pressed her forehead to the stone. No crutches. No passengers. No one beside her. No one inside her. Just she (
crack
) and the pain (
crack
) and the fear (
crack
). All of them one.
Light-headed now. Drifting but still awake. Held somewhere between consciousness and oblivion by the sorcerii and their magiks. A brief respite dawned after the twentieth scourge, the warmth flowing back up her legs, reentering her severed veins and sundered arteries, ending the winter threatening to overwhelm her. She heard Tric’s whisper from somewhere far away
“Mia take him back…”
grinding her forehead upon the stone, blood in her eyes
“Mia please…”
The dark loomed before her now. The nightmare lurking behind the wall of sleep. And as the weaver struck again, the agony flaring anew and ripped in a wordless howl from her throat, the wall began to crumble. No waking state to hold them in check, here on the edge of oblivion. No shadowcat perched above the bed, watching with his not-eyes for the nightmares to come calling. Just she. Little Mia Corvere. Alone in the dark as it swelled ever deeper, fear rushing faster, madness creeping closer. And there in the paper-thin black, so little left between them and her and her and them, she finally saw the things that had haunted her sleep all these years with her waking eyes.
(
crack
)
Not phantoms.
(
crack
)
Not nightmares.
(
crack
)
(
crack
)
(
crack
)
Memories.
CHAPTER 27
T
RUEDARK
Don’t look.
Mia stole through the hallways of bloody stone, wrapped in a darkness so deep she could barely see. Bodies. Everywhere. Men choked and stabbed. Beaten to death with their own chains and bludgeoned to death with their own limbs. The sound of murder ringing all around, the stink of offal thick in the air. Vague shapes running past her, tangling and screaming on the floor. The cries ringing somewhere far away, somewhere the dark wouldn’t let her hear.
She slipped inside the Philosopher’s Stone like a knife between ribs. This prison. This abattoir. Down past the open cells to the quieter places, where the doors were still sealed, where the prisoners who didn’t wish to try their luck in the Descent were still locked, thin and starving. She threw the shadowcloak aside so she could see better, peering through the bars at the stick-thin scarecrows, the hollow-eyed ghosts. She could see why folks would try their luck in the Senate’s horrid gambit. Better to die fighting than linger here in the dark and starve. Better to stand and fall than kneel and live.
Unless, of course, you had a four-year-old son locked in here with you …
The scarecrows cried out to her, thinking her some Hearthless wraith come to torment them. She ran the length and breadth of the cell block, eyes wide. Desperation now. Fear, despite the cat in her shadow. They must be here somewhere? Surely the Dona Corvere wouldn’t have dragged her son out into the butchery above for the chance to escape this nightmare?
Would she?
“Mother!” Mia called, tears in her eyes. “Mother, it’s Mia!”
Endless hallways. Lightless black. Deeper and deeper into the shadow.
“Mother?”
“…
i will search the other halls. swifter that way…
”
“Don’t go far.”
“…
never fear…
”
Mia felt a chill as Mister Kindly went bounding down the corridor. The gloom closed in, and she wrenched a guttering torch from the wall, shadows dancing. A cold fear crept into her gut, but she grit her teeth, beating it back. Breath quickening. Heart pounding as she roamed corridor to corridor, calling loud as she dared.
“Mother?”
Down deeper into the Stone.
“Mother!”
And finally, she found her way into the deepest pit. The darkest hole.
A place the light had never touched.
Don’t look.
“Pretty flower.”
The girl squinted in the dark. Heart seizing tight at the sound of her voice.
“… Mother?”
“Pretty flower,” came the whisper. “Pretty, pretty.”
Mia stepped forward in the guttering torchlight, peered between the bars of a filthy cell. Damp stone. Rotten straw. The reek of flies and shit and rot. And there, curled in the corner, stick-thin and wrapped in rags and sodden drifts of her own tangled hair, she saw her.
“Mother!”
Though she held her hand up to the light, wincing, the Dona Corvere’s smile was yellow and brittle and far, far too wide.
“Pretty thing,” she whispered. “Pretty thing. But no flowers here, no. Nothing grows. What is she?” Wide eyes searched the dark, falling anywhere but Mia’s face. “What is she?”
“Mother?” Mia approached the bars with halting steps.
“No flowers, no.”
Dona Corvere rocked back and forth, closing her eyes against the light.
“All gone.”
The girl set down the torch, knelt by the bars. Looking at the shivering skeleton beyond, her heart shattering into a million glittering shards. Too long.
She’d waited too long.
“Mother, don’t you know me?”
“No me,” she whispered. “No she. No. No.”
The woman clawed the walls with bloody fingers. Mia saw scores of marks on the stone, rendered in dried scarlet and broken fingernails. A pattern of madness, carved with the Dona Corvere’s bare hands. A tally of the endless time she’d spent rotting here.
It had been four long years since Mia had seen her, but not so long she couldn’t remember the beauty her mother had been. A wit sharper than a duelist’s blade. A temper that shook the ground where she walked. Where was that woman now? The woman who’d held Mia against her skirts so she couldn’t look away? Forcing her to stare as her father flopped and twisted at the end of his rope? As the sky itself cried?
Mia could hear Scaeva’s voice in her head, an echo of the turn her father died.
“And as you go blind there in the dark, sweet Mother Time will lay claim your beauty, and your will, and your thin conviction you were anything more than Liisian shit wrapped in Itreyan silk.”
Dona Corvere shook her head, chewing at matted strands of her hair. Jewels and gold had once sparkled in that raven black, now rife with fleas and flecked with rotten straw. Mia stretched her hand through the bars. Reaching out as far as she could.
“Mother, it’s Mia.”
Eyes filling with tears. Bottom lip trembling.
“Please, Mother, I love you.”
The Dona Corvere flinched at that. Peering through bloody fingers. Recognition flaring in the shattered depths of her pupils. Some remnant of the woman she’d been, clawing to surface. The woman every senator once feared. Her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re dead,” she breathed. “I am dead with you?”
“Mother, no, it’s me.”
“They drowned you. My beautiful girl. My baby.”
“Mother, please,” Mia begged. “I’ve come to save you.”
“O, yes,” she whispered. “Take me to the Hearth. Sit me down and let me sleep. I’ve earned my rest, Daughters know it.”
Mia sighed. Heart breaking. Tears in her eyes. But no. No seconds to waste. Time enough to tend her mother’s hurts when they were far from here. Time enough when they were …
… they …
Mia blinked in the gloom. Eyes searching the cell beyond.
“Mother, where’s Jonnen?”
“No,” she whispered. “No flowers. Nothing grows here. Nothing.”
“Where is my brother?”
The woman mouthed shapeless words. Lips flapping. She clawed her skin, dug her hands into her matted hair. Gritting her teeth and closing her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Gone,” she breathed. “With his father. Gone.”
“No.” Mia shook her head, pawed at her aching chest. “O, no.”
“O, Daughters, forgive me.”
It took all she had. Every ounce of herself. But Mia pushed the grief aside. Stamped it underheel. Blinked back the burning tears. Trying not to remember the nevernights she’d held her baby brother in her arms, singing to shush his little cries. Ignoring her mother’s fevered moans, she studied the heavy lock on the cell door. Drawing a pick from her belt, she set to work as Mercurio had taught her. Focusing on the task. The comfort of the rote. The darkness around her shivering. The cries of distant murder growing louder. Closer?
Don’t look.
Her mother’s hand snaked out of the shadows. Wrapped around Mia’s wrist. The girl flinched, but the Dona Corvere held her daughter tight. Rotten breath hissing.
“How can I touch you if you’re dead?”
“Mother, I’m not dead.” She took the woman’s other hand, pressed to her face. “See? I live. Same as you. I live.”
Dona Corvere squeezed her wrist so tight it hurt.
“O, god,” she breathed. “O, never. No flowers…”
“Hush, now. We’re getting you out of here.”
“My baby boy,” she keened. “My sweet little Jonnen. Gone. Gone.”
Tears spilling down filthy cheeks. Whispering, soft as snow.
“My Mia is dead too.”
“No, I’m here.” Mia kissed those bleeding, torn fingers. “It’s me, Mother.”
“…
mia, the way is clear, we must hurry…
”
Mister Kindly materialized on the floor beside her, his whisper cutting in the gloom. The Dona Corvere took one look at the shadowcat and hissed like she’d been scalded. Shrinking back from the bars, into the far corner, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Mother, it’s all right! This is my friend.”
“Black eyes. White hands, O, god, no…”
“…
mia, we
must
go…
”
“He’s in you,” the Dona whispered. “O, Daughters, he’s
in
you.”
Mia’s hands were shaking. The lock wouldn’t budge. Rusted and clogged with grime. Dona Corvere was in the corner, three fingers held up to Mister Kindly; Aa’s warding sign against evil. Mia could hear the chaos above, the screams of the dying, blood thick in the air. Rage filled her then, to see the suffering her mother had been subjected to, the ruin it had made of her. The suns were far below the horizon now, the power of truedark outside swelling in her bones. Unthinking, she raised both hands, face twisted as the shadows trembled. Liquid darkness snaked around the bars, pulling tight. Iron shrieked as it was torn loose from its moorings, the cell peeling open, bars snapping like dry twigs. Mia stepped through the hole she’d made, held out her hand.
“You’re his,” her mother hissed. “You’re
his
.”
“…
mia, we have to go…
”
“Mother, come with me.”
Dona Corvere shook her head. Eyes full of horror. “You’re not my baby.”
Mia grabbed her mother’s hand. The woman screamed, trying to pull loose, but Mia held on tight. Binding her in ribbons of darkness, Mia dragged her mother to her feet and out of the cell. Alinne Corvere no longer seemed to recognize her daughter, writhing in Mia’s grip. But Mia clung on, dragging her down the corridors and up the stairs toward the battlements above. The smell of carnage grew thicker, the song of murder rose higher. And when they began to stumble past the bodies, the dona’s moans became screams. Bloodshot eyes squinting in the burning light. Mouth open.
Screaming.
“…
she must be quiet…
!”