Mia emerged from Adonai’s pool with a gasp.

Blood in her eyes and on her tongue, thudding in her temples. Standing naked in the pool, she looked at the speaker at its apex. Pale skin and paler hair, his lips twisted in a small smile. He opened his eyes, the whites slicked with red.

“Thou hast returned, Blade Mia. Thy quarry dead, thy offering complete?”

“Not yet.”

Adonai tilted his head, smiling wider. “Missed me then, didst thou?”

Mia turned her back, waded up out of the pool, feeling the speaker’s eyes roaming her curves. Dripping red on the stone, she headed to the baths to wash the gore off, sinking below the water with a sigh.

“ . . . i do not like this, mia . . .”

Mister Kindly sat at the corner of her bath, watching with his not-eyes.

“Nor I. But what choice do I have?”

“ . . . ashlinn is a liar, and we are fools to trust her . . .”

“We don’t trust her. Eclipse is watching her.”

“ . . . i do not trust eclipse, either . . .”

She dried off, wrapped herself in black leathers and velvet, picturing Ash as she’d left her; chained to a four-poster bed in a cheap Godsgrave inn, a wolf made of shadows poised over her, translucent fangs bared. Eclipse couldn’t actually touch the girl, of course. But Mia didn’t feel any particular need to tell Ashlinn that . . .

“ . . . she is leading you by the nose, mia . . .”

“You think I don’t suspect that? I’m not a fucking idiot, Mister Kindly. But what if she’s telling the truth?”

“ . . . then we will find ourselves in interesting waters . . .”

“I have to know . . .”

The shadowcat sighed.

“ . . . i know. and i am with you, mia. do not be afraid . . .”

She checked the gravebone blade at her belt, the other in her sleeve.

“Not with you beside me.”

She stole out from the bathhouse, into the Red Church’s gloom. The hymns of the ghostly choir hung in the air as she made her way up winding stairs and down corridors of black stone, carved with patterns of endless spirals. Naev had once told her the patterns in the walls were a song about finding her way in the dark. Thinking about all Ashlinn had told her, she found herself wishing she knew the words. If the girl had spoken true, Mia would be utterly lost.

It can’t be true.

On through the hungry dark.

It can’t be . . .

Up coiling stair and down twisting spiral until she reached it.

The Hall of Eulogies.

She looked up at the towering statue of Niah, her sword and scales in hand. It might have been a trick of the light, but the goddess looked grimmer than usual.

Mia’s footsteps echoed in the silent hall as she walked the periphery, brushing her fingertips over the empty tomb marked with Tric’s name. She thought of her friend, then. The counsel he’d given. The comfort she’d found in his arms. He’d been a rock in a world growing more uncertain by the nevernight . . .

“You miss him,” came a voice.

Mia turned, saw Shahiid Aalea standing in the archway, dark eyes glittering. She was dressed in sheer, bloody red, the same color as her lips. Black curls tumbled about her shoulders, her skin alabaster pale. A woman like her could have seemed cold as wintersdeep in the wrong light. But Aalea’s smile was as warm as a glass of goldwine.

“Shahiid,” Mia said, bowing low.

“You return.” Dark eyes flitted over Mia’s face. “Absent victory, by the look.”

“I needed a nevernight back in my own bed,” Mia said. “But the Dona is dead. And the map is almost within my grasp.”

“You’d rather the boy there instead, I’ll wager?”

Aalea nodded to Tric’s empty tomb. Mia stared too, saying nothing. The Shahiid ran fingertips over Tric’s name, carved in the stone.

“You miss him?” she asked.

Mia saw no sense in denying it.

“Not like a piece of me is gone.” She shrugged. “But aye. I do.”

Aalea pursed her lips, as if uncertain to speak.

“I loved someone once,” she finally said. “Thinking this place, this life I chose, could not sully what I knew to be so pure.” The Shahiid ran her fingers across her lips. “I loved that man as the Night loved the Day. I promised him we’d be together forever.”

“What happened?” Mia asked.

“He died,” Aalea sighed. “Death is the only promise we all keep. This life we live . . . there is room in it for love, Mia. But a love like autumn leaves. Beautiful one turn. A bonfire the next. Only ashes the remainder.”

Mia was quietened by the picture Aalea conjured. Eyes to the tombs. She’d no wish to raise suspicion, but the last thing in the world she wanted was to stand here talking about love and loss with a mass murderer. Not if what Ashlinn had told her was anything close to true . . .

“Did you think one turn you might find yourself beside a happy hearth?” Aalea asked. “With a beau at your side and grandchildren on your knee?”

“ . . . I’m not sure what I supposed anymore.”

“Such is not the lot of a Blade,” Aalea took Mia’s hand, pressing it to her lips. “But there is beauty in knowing all things end, Mia. The brightest flames burn out the fastest. But in them, there is warmth that can last a lifetime. Even from a love that only lasts the nevernight. For people like us, there are no promises of forever.”

Mia looked to the statue above. Those eyes that followed wherever she walked. “My father used to say the art of telling a good story lies in knowing when to stop. Keep talking long enough, you’ll find there’s no such thing as a happy ending.”

Aalea smiled. “A wise man.”

Mia shook her head. Remembering the way he died. What he died for.

“Not that wise.”

Ashlinn’s words ringing in her ears. Her jaw clenched.

Aalea looked again to Tric’s empty tomb.

“He would have made a fine Blade,” she sighed. “And he was a beauty. But he is gone. Do not allow your sorrows to stray you from your path, Mia.”

Mia looked Aalea deep in the eye. Her voice was iron.

“I know my path, Shahiid. Sometimes, sorrow is all that keeps me on it.”

Aalea smiled, sweet and dark as chocolate.

“Forgive me. An old teacher’s habits die hard, I suppose. You are a Blade, for now. And a woman. And a beauty at that.” Aalea leaned closer, eyes locked on Mia’s, lips just a breath from her own. “I have been ever fond of you. Know if ever you seek counsel, it is yours. And if ever you wish to build a bonfire to keep you warm one nevernight, I am here.”

Mia’s pulse ran quicker, skin prickling. This close, she could smell the rose and honey of the Shahiid’s perfume. Staring into those dark, kohl-smudged eyes, she wondered again if there was some arkemy at work at work in Aalea’s scent, or if . . .

Eyes on the prize, Corvere.

Mia slipped her hand free of Aalea’s. Licked at suddenly dry lips.

“My thanks, Shahiid,” she murmured. “I’ll think on it.”

“I am certain you will, love,” Aalea said, her smile deepening. “But now, I will leave you to your memories. Do not let the Revered Father find you here absent quarry, unless you actually enjoy hearing him bluster.”

The Shahiid of Masks inclined her head and drifted out of the room, leaving her perfume hanging in the air. Mia watched her go, the pull of the woman almost dragging her off-balance. But knowledge of why she was here tempered all, crushing the butterflies in her belly. She felt her shadow ripple, the dark swelling at her feet.

“ . . . dangerous, that one . . .”

“The same could be said of every woman I know.”

“ . . . where to begin . . . ?”

“You start at this end and head inward. I’ll begin at the Mother’s feet. Keep an ear out for company. We’ve need of none.”

“ . . . you do not honestly expect this search to bear fruit . . .”

“I don’t know what to expect anymore. Let’s be about it.”

Mia crouched at the foot of Niah’s statue, and in the light of that bloody stained glass, she began searching the names carved into the stone. One by one. Thousands of them. A spiral, coiling out from the goddess’s feet. The names of kings, senators, legates, lords. Priests and sugargirls, beggars and bastards. The names of every life taken in the service of the Black Mother.

The choir and Mister Kindly were her only company, and she worked in silence. Wondering what she would do if all Ashlinn had told her was true. Once or twice she was forced to hide herself beneath her cloak of shadows as a Hand or new acolytes wandered through the hall. But for the most part, she was uninterrupted, on her knees in the dark as the names of the dead blurred together inside her head.

She remembered the turn he died. Her father. Standing before the noose and the baying mob. Cardinal Duomo on the scaffold, hedgerow beard and broad shoulders. Julius Scaeva standing above, with his jet-black hair and his deep, dark eyes and his consul’s robes dipped in purple and blood. There to watch the leaders of the rebellion executed for their crimes against the great Itreyan Republic. Justicus Darius Corvere and General Gaius Antonius had gathered an army, set to march it upon their own capital. But on the eve of the invasion had come salvation, the rebel leaders delivered into the Republic’s hands.

Mia had been too young to ask. And then, too blinded to wonder.

But how?

How had the leaders of the rebellion fallen into the Senate’s clutches, when they were safely ensconced within an armed camp? Antonius was no fool. Mia’s father, neither. It would have taken God himself to breach their defenses and steal them away.

God. Or perhaps someone in service to a goddess . . .

“ . . . mia . . .”

She looked up at the tone in Mister Kindly’s voice, pupils dilating in the dark.

“ . . . o, mia . . .”

She scuttled across the floor to where the shadowcat stood. Searching the names carved in the granite. Her father and Antonius had been hanged before the Godsgrave mob—even if the Red Church had something to do with their capture, they hadn’t actually killed them. But if others fell during their capture, then perhaps . . .

Mia’s belly turned to greasy ice.

“’Byss and blood,” she whispered.

Carved in the stone, just as Ashlinn promised. A single name among the thousands. The name of a slave who purchased his freedom, and yet remained by her father’s side afterward. Darius Corvere’s right hand. His majordomo. A man who would have been with his justicus as he prepared to march on his own capital. A man who would have been with her father until the end.

Andriano Varnese.

“ . . . it is true, then . . .”

Cold ice in her belly as her fingers traced the name in the stone.

Ashes and dust in her mouth.

The Red Church had a hand in her father’s capture. The rebellion’s failure. Why else would the name of her father’s majordomo be carved here on the stone? How else would a general and his justicus be captured in the middle of ten thousand men?

All this time, she’d been training in a den of murderers to avenge herself on the men who’d executed her father. Never imagining for a moment that the murderers she trained with played a role in that same execution.

And all at the behest of the man she wished to murder most of all.

Ash had spoken truth.

All of it. Everything.

Undone in a moment.

“O, Goddess,” Mia breathed.

She looked to the statue above her. The sword and scales in her hand. The jewels sparkling in her robe, like stars in the still of truedark. Those black, pitiless eyes.

“O, Black Mother, what do I do now?”

The crowd was thunder.

It reverberated through the stone around her, echoed on the sweat-slick walls. Dust drifted down from the wooden beams above, the rumble of thousands of feet, the tremor of their applause, the deafening peals of their adulation all around her, crawling on her skin and vibrating in the pit of her belly.

Mia had never heard anything like it in all her life.

She stood in the holding cell beneath the arena, peering out through the bars to the sands beyond. Matteo stood beside her, dark eyes wide in wonder. Sidonius paced up and down their little cell, like a caged beast longing to be unleashed. Or perhaps, longing to run. Mia looked at the word COWARD branded into his chest. Wondered what exactly he’d done to earn it.

“You ever attended a venatus, little Crow?” he asked.

“My father would never allow it. He thought the games were barbaric.”

Sidonius looked out to the mob and nodded. “A wise man.”

“Not that wise . . .”

The wagon ride from Crow’s Nest to Blackbridge had taken almost a week. As ever, Mia, Matteo and Sidonius had been kept apart from the true gladiatii, and none of them deigned to speak a word to her. They’d been well fed, however, and perhaps out of some sympathy for what was to come, Butcher had refrained from pissing in any more dinners. After six turns, they’d arrived in the shadows of the Drakespine Mountains, and rolled into the sprawling metropolis of Blackbridge.

Now, they waited under the city’s great arena. The first exhibitions were under way—public murders sponsored by the local administratii. Mia watched as the sands were baptized with blood, convicted criminals and heretics and escaped slaves being executed e gladiatii, whetting the crowd’s appetite for the bloodshed to come.

The Blackbridge arena was huge, elliptical, four hundred feet long. It seated at least twenty thousand people, the sunslight kept off the crowd by moving mekwerk canvases overhead. The stalls and bleachers were packed, folk traveling from miles around to witness the blood and glory of the venatus. Mia could see vendors selling salted meats and wine. Wives sitting with husbands, children riding on their parents’ shoulders for a better view.

Nothing brings the familia together like a nice afternoon of slaughter.

As common chattel, Mia and the other recruits were scheduled to fight first. The Winnowing was always a bloody spectacle, and the editorii always tried to put on a good show for the mob. But the crowd still favored bouts between their heroes over the mass slaughter of nameless wretches, no matter how impressive their murders. The bouts featuring true gladiatii would be fought afterward, once the Winnowing was done.

Staring out at the blood-soaked sand, Mia felt herself trembling. The long-forgotten sensation of fear was swelling in her gut, turning her legs to water. The absence of Mister Kindly and Eclipse was a gnawing emptiness. An almost physical pain. She gripped the bars to still her shaking hands, cursing herself a coward.

You fought to be here. All this, your design. And now you stand there, trembling like a fucking child . . .

She pictured Duomo and Scaeva presiding over her father’s execution in the forum. The baying crowd, howling for her father’s blood. Looking out into the arena seats, she saw those same faces, that same awful delight. The same kind of people who cheered for her father’s death.

But not for mine, you bastards. This is not where I die.

She curled her fingers into fists.

I’ve far too much killing to do.

“Recruits,” came a voice.

Mia turned, saw Executus at the cell door. Instead of his usual leather armor and whip, he was dressed in britches and a fine doublet, set with the red falcon of the Familia Remus and the golden lion of the Familia Leonides. His long gray hair was braided, his beard combed—if not for the scar slicing down his face and the iron leg, he might have been mistaken for a wealthy don out for an afternoon’s sport.

“Now is the hour,” he said, his voice grave. “Death or glory awaits. It shall be for you to decide which is given, and which received.”

Matteo spoke with a trembling voice. “What shape will the Winnowing take?”

“The editorii will announce once you are in position. But no matter the challenge, the way to victory is always the same.” He gave a soft shrug. “Don’t get killed.”

Matteo looked ready to spew his mornmeal all over his sandals. Sidonius was pacing again, running his hand over his stubbled scalp. Mia shifted her weight, one foot to another, sick to her stomach.

The executus looked among them, and for the first time, Mia thought she saw the tiniest hint of softness in his eyes.

“Every gladiatii once stood where you stand now,” he said. “Myself among them. No matter what you face on those sands, fear is the only enemy in your path. Conquer your fear, and you can conquer the world.”

He placed his hand on his chest. Nodded once.

“Sanguii e Gloria. I will see you after the Winnowing as blooded gladiatii, or by the Hearth when I go to my eternal sleep. Aa watch over you, and Tsana guide your hand.”

Arena guards in black armor marched into the cell, escorted Mia and the others down a long corridor. She heard trumpets signaling the end of the executions. A roar echoed above their heads in response. Through the walls and beneath her feet, Mia heard the creak and groan of metal on metal, the grinding of mighty gears.

“What is that?” Matteo whispered.

“Mekwerk beneath the arena floor,” Mia replied. “The editorii control everything that happens on the sands from the underbelly.”

“You know an awful lot about the venatus for a girl who’s never attended one,” Sidonius muttered.

Mia tried to smile mysteriously in reply, but couldn’t quite manage it for the butterflies in her belly.

They were marched into a larger holding pen, sealed with a great iron portcullis. Beyond, Mia could see the blistering sunslight, and the waiting arena. The sands daubed in crimson. The crowd swaying and rolling like water.

The room was filled with perhaps forty others, lined up in orderly rows. Each was handed a heavy iron helm with a tall crest of scarlet horse hair, a short steel gladius and a broad rectangular shield daubed with a red crown. No armor. Nothing to protect the rest of her skin but the strips of fabric around her hips and chest. Mia looked among the mob, saw folk of every color and size, mostly men, a handful of women. In their eyes, she saw fervor, she saw fury, she saw fatalism.

But most of all, she saw fear.

“When the doors open,” bellowed a guard in a centurion’s plume, “take your place upon the sands and upon the stage of history! Sanguii e Gloria!”

“Four Daughters, I’m not ready for this . . . ,” Matteo whispered.

“Stay staunch,” Mia said, squeezing his hand. “Stay beside me.”

“You have a plan, little Crow?” Sidonius murmured.

Trumpets sounded again, the crowd roaring in answer.

“Aye.” She swallowed thickly. “Don’t get killed.”

A voice rang out across the arena, loud as the bellowing crowd.

“Citizens of Itreya! Honored administratii! Senators and marrowborn! Welcome to the forty-second venatus of Blackbridge!”

The roof above Mia’s head shook, dust falling as the folk on the bleachers overhead thundered in reply.

“In honor of Governor Salvatore Valente, we present epic contest between heroic gladiatii of the finest collegia in the Republic! But first, those who seek glory upon the sands must be proved worthy before the eyes of the Everseeing! The time is nigh! The hour has come! The Winnowing is here!”

Mia pushed her helm down onto her head, checked her gladius, missing Mister Kindly like a hole in her chest.

Conquer your fear, and you can conquer the world . . .

“Behold!” came the cry. “As we present to you, the Siege of Blackbridge!”

Applause came then, almost deafening. But beneath the crowd’s fervor, Mia heard the great grinding under the floor rising in pitch. A commotion broke out in the front ranks, men and women pushing forward against the portcullis to see. Before Mia’s wondering eyes, the arena floor split apart, and a small keep made of stone began rising from the mechanism in the stadium’s underbelly.

“Four Daughters,” Matteo breathed. “Is that a . . . castle?”

Other parts of the floor split asunder, hidden platforms rising as the great mekwerk gears in the depths churned and rolled. Mia saw siege towers made of wood, a battering ram covered with a pavilion of thick hide, a heavy ballista, and two catapults stocked with barrels of burning pitch. Scarlet banners unfurled on the stone keep’s walls, set with the sigil of the old Kingdom of Vaan. Mia looked at the red crown daubed on her shield, the scarlet plumes on the helms around her.

“O, shit,” she breathed.

“ . . . What?” Matteo asked.

“They’re reenacting the Siege of Blackbridge,” she realized. “The battle between Itreya and Vaan that marked the beginning of King Francisco’s empire.” Mia tapped the red crown on Matteo’s shield, the scarlet plume on his helm. “We’re the Vaanians.”

The boy tilted his head. Mia inwardly sighed.

“The Vaanians lost, Matteo.”

“ . . . O, shit.”

The mekwerk gears slowly ground to a halt, all the pieces of the battle to come laid out on the field. The editorii’s voice rang across the sands.

“Behold! The troops of King Brandr VI, the besieged defenders of Vaan!”

The portcullis shifted, rolled up. Guards shoved Mia and her fellows, prodding them with spears until they emerged blinking into the sunslight. They were met with jeers, the mostly Itreyan crowd roaring with disapproval at the sight of their ancient foes. The guards marched the competitors across the arena floor, toward the open gates of the small keep. And ushering them inside, they sealed its doors behind them.

The keep stood perhaps twenty feet high, fifty feet square. Taller towers loomed on every corner, crenelated battlements crested the walls. From the inside, Mia saw the structure wasn’t stone at all, but a thick plaster facade reinforced with a heavy timber frame. The group milled about in confusion, most unsure what came next.

“Man the walls, for fucksakes!” someone hollered.

“Get up there, you bastards!”

Trumpets rang across the arena as Mia, Matteo and Sidonius scrambled up a wooden ladder and claimed their place on one of the towers. She saw two shortbows made of ashwood, two quivers full of arrows.

“Can either of you shoot?” she asked her fellows.

“I can,” Matteo replied.

Mia took up one bow and slung a quiver over her shoulders, handed the other to Matteo. She squeezed his hand as he took it, looked him in the eye.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “This is not where we die.”

The boy nodded. All around them, an ocean of people were on their feet in the stands. The arena walls stood fifteen feet high, boxes containing the marrowborn and politicians studded around the edges. In one, Mia saw Dona Leona, seated with other sanguila. She was dressed in a golden gown, her long auburn hair coiled around her brow like a victor’s laurel. But for all her beauty, the legacy of her name, her property had still wound up playing the roles of the conquered.

Not the politician your father is by half, Mi Domina.

In a great booth on the western edge, Mia saw a man she presumed was the city governor, surrounded by officials, administratii, pretty women in beautiful gowns. The games’ editorii stood at the edge of this booth, clad in a blood-red robe, the waist and sleeves trimmed with dozens of small golden daggers. A white capuchin monkey sat on his shoulder. He spoke into a long curling horn, his voice amplified by other horns around the arena’s edge.

“Citizens!” he cried. “Behold the noble legions of Itreya!”

A portcullis at the other end of the arena yawned wide, and the guards escorted in another cadre of competitors. They were armed and armored the same as Mia and her fellows, but the plumes on their helms were golden, the three eyes of Aa painted on their shields. The crowd roared in approval at the sight of them, stamping their feet and shaking the floor. Most of the group took up position by the wooden siege towers, others manned the ballista and catapults on the arena’s edge.

“The contest ends when only one color remains!” cried the editorii. “To the victors, the right to stand as full-fledged gladiatii upon the sands of the venatus! To the defeated, the eternal sleep of death! Let the Winnowing . . . begin!”

Roars from the crowd. Movement from the golden troops, dozens of them bracing against the base of the siege towers and pushing them forward. Mia looked about the red troops manning the walls, searching for a leader and finding none. Turning her eyes back to the approaching towers, she called above the mob.

“Any of you fine gentles serve in the legion?”

“Aye,” said a burly man on the tower opposite.

“You wouldn’t be experienced in siege warfare by any chance?”

“I was a fucking cook, lass.”

Mia looked at the approaching army. Down to the little sword in her hand.

“Well, shit,” she sighed.

“Archers, lay down fire on those incoming towers! I need six of you ready at the gate for that battering ram, the rest of you on the walls to repel their troops! Two men to a station, lock your shields and keep your backs to each other, clear?”

Mia raised an eyebrow, looked about to see who was shouting.

It was Sidonius. But not the smart-mouthed, lecherous Sid she’d kicked in the bollocks and punched in the jaw. This man was fierce as a whitedrake, his voice booming, radiating an aura of command that brooked no dissent.

“O, aye?” someone yelled. “And who the fuck are you?”

“Aye,” Mia murmured. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the bastard who’s going to save your miserable lives!” Sid bellowed. “Unless one of you pathetic sheepfuckers have a better plan? Now see to your swords and send these bastards to the ’byss where they belong!”

Mia stared a moment longer, eyebrow raised. But seeing Sid was in no mood to argue, and being counted among the pathetic sheepfuckers with no better plan, she aimed her bow at the incoming towers. Matteo nocked an arrow beside her, speaking from the corner of his mouth as he smirked at Sid.

“Well, that was unexpect—”

The ballista bolt hit him like an anvil. Blood spattered Mia’s face as Matteo was flung off the tower with a “whufff,” toppling head first into the sand below. The boy hit the ground with a sickening crunch, two feet of steel and wood in his chest, neck twisted the entirely wrong way around.

“’Byss and blood,” Mia breathed.

A shattering boom shook the castle as one of the catapults flung a barrel of burning pitch. The projectile shattered on the wall, liquid fire raining down on the men and women inside. The crowd roared approval as the second catapult fired, the barrel smashing into the facade and setting the wooden gate ablaze. Men fell from the battlements covered in flaming oil, screaming as they tried to douse themselves on the sand. Mia and Sidonius ducked low, looking at each other with wide eyes.

“Four fucking Daughters,” the big man breathed.

“Suggestions, General?” Mia asked.

“Archers! Have at those towers!”

Mia and a few of her fellows rose up from cover, unleashed a volley into the approaching siege towers. Several of the gold troops fell, the crowd howling as a second volley dropped a handful more. Black smoke billowed from the rising flames, clawing at Mia’s eyes and throat as she fired again.

“Battering ram!” she shouted. “Coming hard.”

“Brace the doors!” Sidonius roared.

Half a dozen of the Golds rushed forward between the troop towers, the battering ram between them. Mia fired again, but the team were protected by a cover of thick hide. The walls shook as they hit the front gate, shaking further as another barrel of blazing oil hit one of the keep’s rear towers to the crowd’s delight. The explosion bloomed, bright and fierce, immolating another three Reds on the walls. They fell screaming, a fourth among them tumbling back with a ballista bolt through her chest.

“Those siege weapons are killing us!” Mia shouted.

“Well, we’ve little to throw at them but harsh language!” Sidonius roared. “The Vaanians lost the siege of Blackbridge, little Crow! These dice are rigged!”

The gate boomed again as the ram struck home. Mia twisted up from cover, firing through the rolling smoke and putting an arrow through the foot of one of the battering team. It was all she could see of them under that blasted hide, but it had the desired effect; the man dropped howling, and Mia ducked a ballista bolt as she loosed another shot, her arrow striking him clean through the throat.

Another barrel exploded, the crowd now howling drunk with fury. The castle was ablaze, the gate coming off its hinges. The first siege tower struck the battlements, spilling half a dozen men onto the defenses with bloodthirsty cries. Sidonius charged along the wall and put his sword through a man’s belly with a roar. Mia rose without a sound, reaching out to one Gold’s shadow and fixing him in place, battering aside another man’s sword and slamming him off the wall with her shield before burying her blade in the first man’s chest. Blood spattered, warm and copperish on her lips. She’d wondered how she might use her gifts without the crowd getting wise, but in all the chaos and smoke and flame, nobody could see a thing of her shadowerking.

The gate shuddered again, the wood splitting. One more good thrust and they’d be home. Another Red sailed off the battlement with a ballista bolt through his belly, another barrel burst on the ground in front of the keep, spraying the walls with burning oil. It was all well and good to stay here and defend the walls—Mia cut down another Gold, slicing his belly wide open and spilling his guts across the deck as he fell screaming—but those catapults would eventually set the whole place ablaze.

Conquer your fear, and you can conquer the world.

She thought back to her lessons in the Hall of Masks with Shahiid Aalea. The assassin inside her rising to the fore. She could swing a sword with the best of them, she knew that true, but the advantage she truly had over the people fighting and dying around her was her training in the Red Church. Her wits. Her guile.

Don’t think like a gladiatii. Think like a Blade.

She looked at the faces around her. The face of the man she’d just killed, sealed inside his helm. And tearing the helm off the dead Gold’s head, she shoved her hand into his sundered guts, and pulled out a great, steaming handful. Pulling off her own headgear, she slammed on the golden-crested helmet and shouted to Sidonius.

“Don’t let them shoot me on the way back!”

Mia smeared blood down her neck and chest, slapped her handful of ruptured intestines against her belly, and taking a deep breath, dropped off the wall. She hit the sand outside the keep with a grunt, wobbled and fell onto her side. Black smoke boiled all around her, timbers breaking and folk roaring as the gate shattered. A boom echoed across the arena as another barrel exploded against the wall, Mia curling up tight to shield herself from the flaming globules of oil.

She rose to her feet, holding her fistful of torn guts against her own stomach. And with her sword dangling from her other hand, she staggered toward the first catapult.

The crowd paid her little mind—from the look of her wound across the arena, she was a dead girl walking. The crew on the catapult paid no heed either; her golden helm marked her as one of their own, but each of them was fighting to save their own skins. And so, nobody ran to help her or stop her as she staggered across the sand, blood and guts drenching her front, dripping at her feet.

She stumbled to sell it better, rising with a gasp. Closer now, the catapult and the three men manning it just a few feet away. She dragged herself up with a groan, limping ever closer. And a few feet from the team, she came to life, slinging her handful of guts into the first Gold’s face and plunging her gladius into his chest.

The man fell back with a cry. Before the other two could process what had happened, Mia had gutted one, his insides spraying across the sand as he fell with a bloodcurdling scream. The last fumbled for his blade but Mia smashed it aside, weaving left, right. And with a flash of her blade, she gifted him to the Maw.

“Hear me, Mother,” she whispered, snatching up one of the fallen men’s swords.

“Hear me now,” she breathed, sprinting toward the second catapult.

“This flesh your feast.”

One of the team saw her coming out of the smoke

“This blood your wine.”

opening his mouth, perhaps to cry warning

“Hold them close.”

but her blow severed his throat all the way to the bone, lodging in his spine. She tore it free, chopped another’s legs out from under him, hurling her second blade at the last man’s chest. The sword punched through flesh and ribs, knocking the man off his feet in a spray of red, and the second catapult fell silent.

The crowd began to notice something amiss. The Golds had broken through to the keep, a bloody brawl now erupting at the gate, upon the walls. But more and more were pointing at the short, pale girl, drenched in red among the now silent machines. She knelt by the bodies of those she’d killed, took off her helm and dipped the gold plume in the blood pooled on the sand, staining it red. And slamming it back on her head, she dashed with swords in hand, right at the ballista crew.

They saw her coming, swiveling the weapon and firing off a bolt at her. But smoke was rolling across the sands from the burning keep, and after all, she was only a little thing, fast and sharp as knives. Mia tumbled aside, rolling back up to her feet as one of the crew charged her down. He was a giant of a man; a Dweymeri with long saltlocks, two feet taller than she. Mia met his blades with her own, taking a glancing blow to her helm, and being so much shorter than him, slipped her blade lower than his shield could reach. His hamstring was sliced through to the bone, Mia grabbing a handful of his saltlocks as he fell to one knee. She twisted him around as the ballista fired at her again, shielding herself behind her foe as the bolt punched through his shield and into the chest beyond.

The crowd roared as she climbed up on the falling man’s shoulder and sprang at the two women crewing the machine, twisting the shadows at the first one’s feet as she sliced the second’s chest open. The woman fell with a scream, her own strike cutting deep into Mia’s arm, blood spraying. The girl staggered, crowd and pulse and thunder deafening in her ears as she hurled her second sword at the other woman’s head.

With her boots fixed to the floor, the woman could only fall backward to dodge the blow, landing on her backside in the dust. She cursed, eyes wide with fear as she pulled at her boots, still stuck fast in the sand. Mia loomed up over her, one arm hanging limp, drenched head to foot in blood, second sword raised.

“No,” the woman breathed. “I have a baby girl, I—”

No mothers.

No daughters.

Only enemies.

Her sword silenced the woman’s plea. The crowd around her bellowed. With a pained wince for her wounded arm, she loaded another bolt into the ballista, ratcheted back the drawline to fire another shot. But the battlements behind her were now clear, the only fighting seemed to be going on inside the keep walls.

Mia picked up a sword with a weary sigh. Her right arm was bleeding freely from a deep gash in her bicep, her head swimming. Adjusting her helm on her head and slinging a shield onto her wounded arm, she stalked back across the bloodied, burning sands to face whoever was left alive in there. The crowd were chanting, stamping their feet in time with her tread—though the girl wore the color of the enemy, the fancy of the reenactment had given way to a purer kind of bloodlust, and this small slip of a girl had just murdered almost a dozen people in a handful of minutes.

She stopped twenty feet before the gate in a veil of smoke, the stench of sundered bowel and burning blood. She saw four figures in the haze, marching toward her. Drawing a deep breath, picturing all she stood to lose if she failed, she raised her sword. And squinting through the smoke, she made out the color of their plumes.

Blood red.

Mia dropped her shield, laughing loud as she saw Sidonius, battered and bleeding among the men. Beyond them, Mia could see the bottleneck at the gate had become a slaughterhouse, golds and reds lying dead by the dozen. She saw Matteo among them, pretty eyes open wide and seeing nothing at all.

She tried to push the sorrow aside, knowing she had no use for it. This was her world now. Life and death, with just a sword stroke between them. And with every stroke, she stood one step closer to revenge.

No room for anything but enemies.

“Citizens!” cried the editorii. “Governor Valente presents to you, your victors!”

The crowd bellowed in answer, a fanfare of trumpets splitting the air. Smeared head to foot in blood, Mia limped forward, held out her hand to Sidonius. The big man grinned, clasped her forearm, then dragged her into a crushing hug.

“Come here, you magnificent little bitch,” he laughed.

“Let me go, you great fucking lump!” she grinned.

Sidonius raised the knuckles into the air, roared at the crowd. “Take that, you bastards! No man can kill me, you hear? NO MAN CAN KILL ME!”

Mia looked to the marrowborn boxes, saw Dona Leona on her feet applauding. Beside her stood Executus, his arms folded, glowering as always. But ever so slightly, the man inclined his head. The closest thing to praise he’d ever given.

She turned in a circle, taking in the ocean of faces, the blood-drunken cheers, the thundering feet. And for a tiny moment, she ceased being Mia Corvere, the orphaned girl, the darkin assassin, the embodiment of vengeance. She held her arms wide, dripping red onto the sand, and listened to the crowd roar in response. And just for a breath, she forgot what she had been.

Knowing only what she’d become.

Gladiatii.