CHAPTER 3

       EMBER

      Mercurio awoke in darkness.

      The pain in his head felt like the kind earned after a three-turn bender, and yet he could recall no recent debauchery. His jaw ached, and he could taste blood on his tongue. Groaning, he slowly sat upright in a bed lined with soft gray fur, hand to his brow. He had no idea where he might be, but something … the scent in the air perhaps, dragged him back to younger years.

      “Hello, Mercurio.”

      He turned to his left, saw an old woman seated beside his bed. She looked to be around his age, her long gray hair bound in neat braids. She was dressed in dark gray robes, cool blue eyes pouched in deep wrinkles. At first glance, a bystander might’ve expected to find her in a rocking chair beside a merry hearth, a handful of grandsprogs around her, an old moggy on her knee. But Mercurio knew better.

      “Hello, you murderous old cunt,” he replied.

      Drusilla, Lady of Blades, smiled in reply.

      “You always did have a silver tongue, my dear.”

      The old woman lifted a cup of steaming tea from the saucer in her lap, sipped slowly. Her eyes were fixed on Mercurio as he peered around the bedchamber, breathed deep, finally understanding where he was. The song of a choir hung in the cool, dark air. He smelled candles and incense, steel and smoke. He remembered the Ministry accosting him in the Godsgrave chapel. The scratch from the poisoned blade in Spiderkiller’s hand. The old man realized the blood he could taste belonged to pigs.

      They’ve brought me back to the Mountain.

      “You haven’t changed your decor much,” he sighed.

      “You know me, love. I was never one for extravagance.”

      “The last time I was in this bed, I told you it really was the last time,” Mercurio said. “But if I knew you were this hungry for a return performance …”

      “O, please,” the old woman sighed. “You’d need a block and tackle to get it up at your age. And your heart could barely stand it when we were twenty.”

      Mercurio smiled despite himself.

      “It’s good to see you, ’Silla.”

      “Would that I could say the same.” The Lady of Blades shook her head and sighed. “You addle-minded old fool.”

      “Did you really drag me all the way to the Quiet Mountain for a rebuke?” Mercurio reached to his coat for his smokes and found both smokes and coat missing. “You could’ve just chewed my cods off back in the ’Grave.”

      “What were you thinking?” Drusilla demanded, setting aside her tea. “Helping that idiot girl in her idiot schemes? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

      “I’m not fresh fallen from the last rains, ’Silla.”

      “No, you’re the bishop of Godsgrave!” Drusilla stood, prowling around the bed, eyes flashing. “Years of faithful service. Sworn to the Dark Mother. And yet you helped a Blade of the Church break the Red Promise and murder one of our own patrons!”^[1]

      “O, Goddess, don’t play the wounded devotee with me,” Mercurio growled. “It’s as obvious as a beagle’s bollocks that you and your nest of snakes wanted Cardinal Duomo dead. You’ve all been in bed with Scaeva for years. Did Lord Cassius know? Or was this something you and the others conspired to behind his back?”

      “You’re a fine one to speak of conspiracies, love.”

      “How do you think the rest of the congregation would react if they knew, ’Silla? That the Ministry was content to bend over and spread cheek for our beloved People’s Senator? The hands of Niah upon this earth, become lapdogs of a fucking tyrant?”

      “I should have you killed for your betrayal,” Drusilla snarled.

       “And yet I can’t help notice I’m not dead.” The old man peered under the sheets. “Or that I’m sans trousers. You certain I’m not here for an encore? I’ve learned a few tricks since—”

      Drusilla hurled a gray robe at the old man’s head.

      “You are here to serve as the worm you are.”

      “… As bait?” Mercurio shook his head. “You really think she’s stupid enough to come after me? After all she’s been through, after all she’s—”

      “I know who Mia Corvere is,” Drusilla snapped. “This is a girl who gave up any chance at a normal life or happiness to see her parents avenged. She sold herself into slavery on a gambit that even a lunatic would consider insanity, for a single chance to strike down the men who destroyed her house. She is fearless. Reckless beyond reckoning. So if there is one thing I’ve learned about your little Crow, it is this: there is nothing that girl will not do for her familia. Nothing.”

      The old woman leaned over the bed, stared into the old man’s eyes.

      “And you, dear Mercurio, are more a father to her than her father ever was.”

      The old man stared back, saying nothing. Swallowing the bile flooding his mouth. The Lady of Blades only smiled, leaning a little closer. He could still see her beauty beneath the scars of time. Remember the last nevernight they’d been in this bedchamber together, all those years ago. Sweat and blood and sweet, sweet poison.

      “You may wander in the Mountain if you wish,” Drusilla said. “I’m certain you remember where everything is. The congregation has been informed of your betrayal, but you are not to be touched. We need you breathing for now. But please, don’t push the friendship by being more the fool than you’ve already been.”

      Drusilla reached under the sheet between his legs, squeezed tight as he gasped.

      “A man can still breathe without these, after all.”

      The old woman held on a moment longer, then released her icy grip. Lips still curled in her matronly smile, the Lady of Blades took her saucer and cup back up, turned, and stalked toward the bedchamber door.

      “Drusilla.”

      The Lady of Blades glanced over her shoulder. “Aye?”

      “You really are a cunt, you know that?”

      “Ever the flatterer.” The old woman turned back to him, her smile vanished. “But a man like you should know exactly where flattery gets you with a woman like me.”

      Mercurio sat in the gloom after she left, wrinkled brow creased with worry.

      “Aye,” he muttered. “In deep shit.”

      He’d lurked in the bedchamber a few hours more, nursing his aching head and wounded ego. But boredom eventually bid him pull on the gray robe Drusilla had given him, tie the thin strip of leather about his waist. He didn’t bother trying to arm himself—Mercurio knew the only ways out of the Quiet Mountain were a two-week trek across the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, out through Speaker Adonai’s blood pool, or by leaping off the railings of the Sky Altar and into the shapeless night beyond.

      Escape from here without help or wings was all but impossible.

      He stepped from the bedchamber, leaning on the cane they’d (rather thoughtfully) left him, out into the gloom of the Quiet Mountain. Ice-blue eyes that seemed born to scowl surveyed the dark around him. The disembodied choir sung faintly, nowhere and everywhere at once. The halls were black stone, lit by windows of stained glass and false sunslight, decorated with grotesque statuary of bone and skin. Spiral patterns covered every inch of wall, intricate and maddening.