“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 bed-notch 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?”
“Belowdecks, 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 aringing. 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.
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.