God of Broken Things

Chapter 7

I took a whole day to rest and recover and get absolutely stinking drunk, then I was up at the crack of dawn – not a natural time of day for me. Being Gifted had many health benefits when compared to a mundane human, but my physical resilience was making it harder and more expensive to get drunk, and did little to help with hangovers. A quick scouring of blades formed from compressed air across my skin and hair left me fresh and clean for the day ahead. This simple aeromancy form had been beaten into me long ago. With my meagre talent for such magics I would never be truly proficient, but recently I had begun to train hard – again, not something I was used to. Recent events proved I couldn’t always rely on my magical mind-fuckery. Black Autumn had exposed my magical weaknesses as glaring flaws that demanded correction, and the twin causes of survival and revenge proved a remorseless incentive.

I sat cross-legged on my bed and worked on the magic, twisting air into weapons that would rip enemies from their feet or blast them away – or at least that was my goal. If I was going to war I would need every trick at my disposal. I’d learnt a defensive windwall to divert arrows and a handful of weak offensive techniques, but with little time available I figured concentrating on mastering a handful of simple forms would prove more worthwhile than struggling with something complex. I kept up the practice until sweat beaded my brow and my Gift began to tremble from strain. I sighed and let the foreign forms of magic lapse into swirling motes of settling dust. I could hold them for longer now, but it still required gruelling effort to twist my own mental magic into such unnatural physical shapes.

I found body magics far more intuitive, the techniques of flushing away weariness, strengthening muscles and heightening senses came almost naturally. I could hold the basic forms for a goodly length of time, though I could never seem to harden my flesh enough to turn blades or toss boulders about like they were pebbles as a knight like Eva could.

Unbidden, my mind’s eye flashed back to Black Autumn, to Eva raging amidst crystalline shard beasts, tearing razor-limbs apart with her bare hands. Then Heinreich’s flames engulfed her and I was forced to abandon her charred body and run for my life. I swallowed my guilt and shame. I had done what I had to, but I would have died without her help. We all would.

Banishing all that pointless brooding, I quickly threw on clothes and raked my hair back into some semblance of order. I pulled on my coat and gloves, shoved my meagre belongings into a single backpack and stepped out into the chill morning air of the Crescent. The once-portly landlady was already out and brushing the front step free of slush and mud. Over the last two months I had watched her slowly slump in on herself, drained of life until she was not dissimilar to an artificer’s automaton made of wax and wire. She had lost her husband and two sons and they were everything that had mattered to her.

“Good day to you, magus,” she said by rote, not even looking up. “Good day,” I replied. “I have some news for you. I won’t need my room anymore.”

“I see.” “I’m off to war.”

That got her attention. She looked up from the step and her eyes were red from crying again. “Where are they sending you?”

“North, to fight the Skallgrim.”

Her eye ticced. She spat on her clean step and dropped her brush to grab the front of my coat. “You kill those vermin,” she snarled. “No prisoners, you hear me! I’d pick up a knife and march with you if I could, but the likes of me can’t do anything so you need to carry our vengeance with you. Never forget the fallen.” She hastily let go of my coat and smoothed out the cloth. “I… I apologise, my lord magus. I didn’t mean no harm.”

“Never apologise for that,” I said. “Do you know what I am?” Many people did these days.

She nodded, but was fearful of saying it out loud.

I grinned evilly. “That’s right. I’m a vicious tyrant, but I swear that you and yours will have your vengeance. They killed my friends too.”

The fear drained from her, replaced by cold anger. “The slicks up in the Old Town might be calling you a nightmare given flesh, but–” a ghost of a smile appeared, the first sign of pleasure I’d ever seen from her, “–you’re our nightmare I guess.”

It was oddly touching to be claimed as one of their own rather than the shunning I was used to, even if it was as their monster. I nodded and turned to go.

“Gods bless you, Magus Walker. May they keep you safe. I’ll keep the room made up for your return.”

Neither of us expected me to live for long, but it was nice for the both of us to keep up some sort of pretence.

Right in the centre of the very poorest area of East Docklands, down by the city walls and open sewers, squatted the grim stone cube known as the Black Garden, which most Setharii were proud to declare the harshest prison in the world. I’d visited a few in my years of exile, briefly, and it was certainly up there with the worst.

A moat of half-frozen sewage surrounded it, oozing downhill with the meltwaters before eventually flowing out into the bay beyond the city wall. I carefully wound my way across a charred wooden bridge that served as sole access and then pounded on the single small iron door. The thick walls bore the scars of battle: chipped stone and sooty smears, but that heavy door etched with potent wardings bore not a single mark.

Eventually a slot opened and a set of bushy grey eyebrows appeared. “What you wantin’?”

I held up Cillian’s writ and smiled. “I’m here to recruit for the army.”

He let me in, and I entered a gloomy building heaving with a rancid mass of pain, anger and despair. After a bit of wrangling the guards agreed to take me down to the deepest cells where they kept the worst of the worst: the mad and the bad and exceedingly dangerous mixed in with the folk whose only crime had been pissing off the wrong people. It was joining my coterie or this. A magus’ coterie stood between us and danger, keeping us alive while we worked our magic, and I didn’t trust my life to Arcanum cronies – they would be just as likely to stick a knife in my back as the enemy would in my front. I had my ways to make this lot of scum loyal, and nobody would ever care what I did to the likes of them.

The jailor handed me a list of inmates and I stared at one of the names. Jovian? How could my old drinking companion be here? Still, if it was indeed him and he was still whole then it meant I would be out of this dark pit sooner rather than later. My nerves were stretched thin, this gloomy prison far too similar to being buried underground again. “Him first.”

They opened the door to the depths and moist air rose to envelop me in damp, decay, and cess-pool scent. They led me down into the tunnels, passageways lit only by lantern light. I shivered and held my fears tight as the darkness and stone closed in around me. I wouldn’t be in here for long, and the way back remained open – I wasn’t trapped this time.

The jailer showed me to a hulking oak and iron cell door that looked like it could have withstood a battering ram. He pulled a large brass key from among the two-dozen others hanging on a thong around his neck, and unlocked it with a grinding clunk. The door swung open and a dozen filthy figures squinted against the lamplight, all naked and chained to a massive steel ring embedded in the centre of the floor. Several bore black eyes, bite marks and broken noses. All but one – the smallest – were pressed up against each other, edging as far away as they could get from the feral little bastard at the other side. My eyes watered at the smell.

“You don’t want this foreign scum, my lord magus,” the stony-eyed jailor spat, “this little copper-skinned bastard is a black-hearted killer through and through.” And he would have seen some dark as fuck things in his time. “He ate one of the other prisoners so he did.”

“What now, you merda,” Jovian said. “More secret assassins? Or are you finally here to sentence me and cut the head from my shoulders?” He clicked yellow teeth together and then grinned.

The slender Esbanian was a shadow of his former self: sallow-eyed and hollow-cheeked. His once-luxurious mane of black hair and glorious waxed moustache had both been shorn to stubble.

I laughed at the bold little shite. “Jovian of the Sardantia Esban – never thought I’d see you bald and wallowing in filth like the swine you are.”

He squinted into the light. “Who is that? I shall ram my hand up your bottom, rip out your heart, and you shall watch me eat it.” “That’s no way to greet an old friend,” I said. “I’m looking for hard men and women who want a chance at freedom.” And inside his head I added, Stop being a giant cūlus you pedicator and get to your feet. Do you want out of this pit or not? I have a job and I need a second.

“Walker? You pēdere! You live? Been twelve years, no? I say yes. A most enthusiastic yes and please. Thank you.”

“You are the best sword master I’ve ever seen, so what did you do to end up rotting here instead of swanning about the Old Town draped in silk and gold?”

He shrugged. “I stuck the wrong nobleman with my sword.” “You killed him?” “No, no. My other sword.” He thrust his groin at me. “His father was, hmm, unimpressed at the sight of his heir with his bottom in the air and me with only the hilt showing.”

“He was one of those sort, eh?” “Not at all, I had been sticking him too. A mistake, I admit.”

I groaned and turned to the jailor. “Set him free. And for all our sakes get the man some clothes, and a steel chastity belt if you can find one.”

After a few moments they found him some clothes. As the shackles came off Jovian snapped his teeth at the cringing jailor. He laughed, catching and donning a long shirt taken from the prison stores. He rubbed the sores on his ankles and eyed me thoughtfully. “This will be suicidal, yes?”

“Probably.”

He sighed and shrugged. “My gods-given luck has not changed.” He looked me up and down, noting the vicious scars that now marred my face. “Nor yours.”

I snorted. “Never will. If anything it’s getting worse.” Looking around at the other prisoners, I asked in Esbanian: “This lot any use?”

He spat on the filth-crusted stone and then glanced at one of the more attractive men before replying in his native tongue. “Depends what you mean by use.” He grinned. “But if you want good killers, I have better suggestions.”

We went from cell to cell collecting the names that Jovian reeled off, those that still lived. The guards hauled them all into a single large cell and locked us in there. I examined my haul: Jovian, five murderers – Coira with cheeks showing the scar-sign of the Smilers street gang; a big brute named Vaughn; three cold-eyed killers named Adalwolf, Baldo and Andreas who were all missing bits of ears – one hired killer and skilled poisoner named Diodorus who specialised in bow and arrow, and one mad-eyed, flame-haired habitual arsonist called Nareene. They were some of the foulest, most disreputable scum this city had to offer, myself excluded.

I opened my Gift and burrowed into their heads to see what use I could make of such terrible creatures.

Diodorus wasn’t evil or insane to his mind, it was simply that he valued gold over useless human lives. Casual atrocities were nothing to him. The hopes and fears and daily life of others were only an irritating irrelevance. He was perfect for my needs.

Nareene was a simple creature. She just loved to watch things burn, the dancing flames and roaring inferno causing an almost orgasmic euphoria. It was infectious and I’d probably have to resist the urge to torch something for hours afterwards.

The others were a mixed bag of bad and brutal with Coira the best of the bunch having taken the fall for her fellow Smilers after being cornered by wardens. Brutal but loyal.

Adalwolf had been a hunter and tracker in the wilds around Port Hellisen, happily married with two sweet daughters until he succumbed to the lures of drink and alchemic highs and needed increasing amounts of coin to feed his addictions. Barred from his own home, he’d fled to the big city one step ahead of hired thieftakers. Something had caused him to snap, a bad batch of alchemic perhaps, and he’d murdered indiscriminately until the wardens found him unconscious and choking on his own vomit and took him in.

Vaughn, Baldo and Andreas were your everyday hired muscle that communicated their employer’s displeasure with their fists and knives. They were painfully dull. Brave in their own way, but dimwitted. Vaughn was kind to animals, so there was that in his favour I supposed.

Then there was Jovian. The enigma. His mind was still and empty of all conscious thought, just a flow of experience and immediate goals. It was worrying in a way, but I knew from the old days that if you promised him an interesting time he would run into a burning building with you and laugh all the while. He was a simple man, and yet utterly unfathomable. Nothing ever dented his supreme confidence. I’d never been able to figure out how he did it. He had that twisted sense of Esbanian honour and would at least warn me before sticking a knife in my back.

I could use these killers. They had the wrong stuff. They would kill without hesitation, and as for morals, what little they had would not hold me back.

The big, dumb, hairy brute went for me first, as I knew he would. The others were sly predators, waiting and watching for weakness.

“Get us out of this festering pit,” Vaughn snarled, “and I’ll kill whoever you want.” In his mind I could already see my skull crushed and him off enjoying his new-found freedom in the taverns and brothels of the Warrens. Shame those establishments no longer existed. He’d heard rumours of the devastation topside but couldn’t quite believe it.

I shook my head sadly. “Sorry to disappoint, but you won’t be crushing my skull, Vaughn. And you won’t be enjoying any taverns and brothels unless I say so.”

He stared in shock, which flipped to anger and a raised fist. He tried to punch me but his arm refused to move. I was already in his head pulling his strings. He tried to swear, and failed there too. Instead I made him slap himself, a loud crack that reddened his cheek and shocked the others.

“You don’t know who I am yet,” I said. “But you do know Jovian here.” They shifted nervously, knowing the feral little bastard only too well. “Jovian, would you fight me?”

“I would rather rot here in the Black Garden,” he said with total honesty. “Worst magus ever made.”

“Why’s that?” Coira demanded. I was sifting the group’s thoughts and feelings on the matter and made a mental note to make her my third in case Jovian bit the mud. The woman had tits of steel to face down a magus without blinking.

“My name is Edrin Walker,” I said, smiling. “You might have heard rumours about a tyrant magus saving the city.”

The prisoners stared at me blankly. That was a no then. “Well that tyrant was me.” I could tell some of them knew what a tyrant was. The fear blooming in their eyes always gave it away without me even needing to dip into their minds. They shifted uncomfortably, seriously considering shouting to be dragged back to their dank and festering cells. “And yes, I can get inside your head and make you do whatever I bloody well want.” I paused to raise the tension. “But I would rather not have to.”

That got their full attention. “Here’s the deal. We are off to war up north in the mountains of the Clanholds and I need a coterie

I can rely on – and I don’t trust wardens. You lot are vicious and cunning bastards just like me, and I need that. What do you say? In or out? I don’t have time to play games and make deals.”

“And after the war?” Coira asked. “What’s in it for us?”

I shrugged. “Bound to be lots of corpses and lots of loot to be found along the way. Couldn’t give a rat’s arse what you lot do afterwards. Go wherever you want.”

Plans for my eventual murder began budding in several minds. In Diodorus’ imagination I choked on my own lungs, dissolved thanks to some rare poison he’d made from a particular breed of frog smeared on an arrow. In Nareene’s I was a human candle, my flesh bubbling like wax while she danced around me.

I shook my head sadly and gave them a mental prod. “Are you lot stupid? I can read your minds. And I can do much, much worse. How much do you value your secrets?” I looked at Baldo. “Some of you have stashes of coin.” Then my eyes flicked to Adalwolf and Diodorus. “Others have innocent family or journals full of invaluable alchemic research. It would be a real shame if anything happened to them.”

They got the idea.

All signed on and I requisitioned clothes and weapons from the prison’s armoury. I really loved Cillian’s little scrap of paper and it was so very tempting to have a lot more fun with it before I marched off to almost certain death, or at least a good maiming and being abandoned in a ditch if I was thinking positively. We made one last stop before leaving, a wing of cells containing Skallgrim prisoners.

“I’ve come for my boys,” I said.

The jailor scratched his head skeptically as he looked at the cells. Two filthy, bearded and emotionless faces stood staring at me where there had once been three.

I made them clang against the cell door in front of us. “Them idiots?” he said. “Those are no use to anybody. Feed and water themselves and that’s all they do. Don’t even talk. Rats bit one’s leg and it rotted right off; he didn’t even make a sound.”

“They are coming with me.” I glanced back at my newly formed coterie. “These two are not idiots, just broken. They tried to kill me during the stinking Black Autumn. I broke their minds and enslaved them to my will.”

Fearful silence spread and deepened. “Harsh,” Jovian said, finally. “I would prefer death.”

I felt the same, but put on a show of sneering at them all. “I don’t need you intact. Are we clear?” We were very clear.

My coterie had swelled to ten, the traditional number assigned to guard a magus. They were now my shield, freeing me to be the sword.

Out on the streets, my pale and filthy conscripts were overjoyed at seeing the sun again and I couldn’t resist having a little more fun on their behalf. We walked up to a group of wardens and I essentially stripped them and stole all their equipment. They protested vehemently of course but Cillian’s wonderful little writ left them with no option but to complain to their captain later. Very satisfying it was to send them scampering off up the street in their undergarments. I settled Jovian and the rest of my coterie into the back room of a tavern to sort out all the armour and weapons for themselves. I slid over a small bag of coin and they all eyed it like corvun on a cat.

“Best buy warm winter clothes and boots two sizes too large or your bits will snap off like icicles.”

Jorvan pursed his lips at the comment on boots. “I am missing something, yes?”

“I doubt you’ve experienced a Clanholds winter. It’s a frozen wasteland up there. Stuff your boots with wool and you might not lose your toes.”

He nodded in appreciation. “Toes are useful things.”

On my way out I paid the innkeep for a mound of meat and two rounds of ale – and strict orders to provide only two, though I’d no doubt they would find ways around that. Still, it would hopefully serve to minimise the damage – and then began the long slog uphill to West Docklands and to Charra’s Place. I took

Fisherman’s Way, curving west along the path of the city walls rather than cutting through the devastated Warrens. I had no desire to be reminded of that yet again.

It was early afternoon by the time I arrived at the brothel. Layla hadn’t seen fit to change the name, or seemingly find the time to repair the churned up gardens and trampled moonflowers. The two hulking tattooed clansmen, Nevin and Grant, still guarded the doorway. These days they wore heavy chain and carried spiked axes instead of cloth and clubs. Nobody had time for the old armament laws and everybody from old women to the more sensible children were allowed to roam armed and dangerous.

“If it ain’t Walker,” Nevin said. “The big ugly tyrant himself.” “Shut yer trap,” Grant said to him, opening the door for me. Seems there was still bad blood there. “Been told to expect you sooner or later.”

“Wish it were later,” Nevin said as I passed into the sumptuous interior with the tinkle of a bell to announce my entry.

Grant was having none of his brother’s lip. “See you, I’m gonna–”, his words were cut off as the heavy door slammed shut, leaving me to admire the fine oil paintings until Layla herself appeared, dressed in a soft grey silk dress and silver necklace studded with sapphires instead of her usual more functional garb. Her hair was short and spiky and showed off the silver hoops in her ears nicely.

I whistled softly. “Entertaining are we?” “None of your business, you disgusting old letch.” She gave me a twirl. “How do I look?”

She looked better than I dared admit. “Beautiful. Who is the lucky git? What do they do for a living?”

“It really is none of your business,” she replied. “You don’t have the right to take the protective uncle stance with me.”

I held my hands up in surrender. “Fair enough. I’m just here for my chest.”

She slipped the key into my hand. “I assumed so. Help yourself. Good luck up north.”

“Seems everybody knows now. I guess bad news travels fast.” She smiled and patted my shoulder. “If all Clansfolk are half as troublesome as Grant and Nevin then you’ll need it.” I pulled a face and she laughed.

“At least keep a weapon handy,” I said. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

She smiled again, but this time it didn’t touch her eyes. “I am a weapon, Walker.” With that she waved me onwards and climbed the stairs to return to her man, or woman come to that. I realised that I didn’t have the faintest idea about her personal life. I suffered sudden and extreme curiosity: what sort of exceptional person had raised such emotion in Layla of all people? And should I threaten to hurt them if they stepped out of line? Huh, feeling protective were we? Interesting. If I still cared about a few things then I was not completely lost.

It was mightily tempting to meddle and go find out, but I bested it and descended to the cellar instead. I was just jealous of her happiness, needled by the knowledge I would probably never have that myself. Still, life goes on despite all the crap the world throws at us. I dusted off my old heartwood chest and examined the arcane wards I’d set to protect it. They were already decayed and useless, their intricate arcane structures eroded away by the raging power contained inside. I cracked the chest open and white light flooded the room, a liquid spilling of magic that seduced my Gift and sizzled against my mind.

Inside the chest lay a blinding shard of crystal that beat with the most potent magics imaginable – a god-seed, ripped from the living heart of a corrupted god. My gloved hands trembled as I picked it up and gazed deep into the faceted depths. I had almost forgotten how right it felt to hold this. My whole body itched and sparked with stray power, and the Worm of Magic urged me to take it, to subsume its power and ascend to godhood. My hands trembled on the edge of stabbing the shard directly into my heart.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And be chained here forever? Sod that. Bloody gods and their stinking arrogance.”

I slipped the shard into the inside pocket of my coat and gave it a pat. There must come a day when you grow weary of the world and just want to sleep and never wake, but from what I’d gleaned of the gods of Setharis there was some horrible, endless duty involved meaning no time to relax and enjoy all that lovely power. I wasn’t all about the duty. I was a lazy bastard at the best of times. This power and this responsibility were not meant for the likes of me, but nor could I leave it lying about for any old piece of pond scum to pick up and wield. The god-seed wanted to be found and needed to be used, it would find somebody sooner or later. That was probably how a rat-hearted bastard like Nathair had got a hold of it in the first place.

I couldn’t protect the god-seed while I was away, or if I died, and I dared not risk taking such a potent artefact anywhere near the Skallgrim and Scarrabus. Which left me only two choices.

To become a really crappy god myself, or to choose somebody experienced that might make a half-decent one. Only two sprung to mind, and I reckoned Old Gerthan was too focused on healing people to want any other job. Which left somebody that I really, really dreaded becoming a god. Even being mostly dead, she still scared the piss out of me.

Here it was, the point where that sliver of trust I had earned with the Arcanum was torn up and burned before my eyes.

I stood before Shadea’s black metal tomb and searched again for any sign of thought inside. Nothing that I could sense, and yet there was still an odd vibration in the aether. Elder magi did not die easily, and she was one of the most potent to ever live.

I was never one for pointless ceremony. I yanked the shard of pulsing crystal from my pocket and stuffed the god-seed deep into a crack in the metal shell, then hammered it in further through metal and strands of flesh. The room filled with stray magic that began lapping across the entire foundation floor of the Collegiate. It wouldn’t be long until the other magi felt it, and already those with the seer’s Gift would know something was amiss down here.

I hadn’t dared tell the Arcanum what I was up to of course; they would never let something this powerful out of their hands, not until some power-hungry prick stole it. As they would. Such power was far too tempting. The Arcanum’s previous archmagus, Byzant, was a living example of that – that fucking Hooded God… I’d happily kill him too if I could.

“Come on Shadea. Wake up and absorb the damn crystal will you! Think of what you can learn, eh, lots of juicy secrets beyond the ken of mere mortals.”

A door opened and worried voices trooped into Shadea’s quarters. I booted her metal tomb. “Hurry up, you ugly old hag! Want me to go piss on all your scrolls and take a great steaming shite on your antique mahogany desk? I swear I’ll do it.”

I turned at an intake of breath to see a pack of armed magi racing towards me. I fumbled for Cillian’s writ, “Er, I can explain everything.” Sometimes a paper shield was just paper.

At which point an irresistible force picked me up and slammed me face-first into the wall. Oh shite, it’s happening. Shite shite shite… The other magi stumbled back and erected walls of stone, water and air as raw magic blazed white-hot against my Gift. Enchanted black iron that had resisted repeated blows from the most dreadful creature ever known to man cracked like an egg and ran like molten wax to sizzle on the floor, revealing a nightmare amalgam of flesh and metal inside.

I could only glimpse it from the corner of my eye, but whatever was left of Shadea was not even remotely human. Shreds of flesh and steel, bone and cable, blood and lubricant churned in a sphere around a human skull pierced by a halo of golden wires.

Her voice rang and reverberated, metallic and inhuman. “Boy.” “Shadea?” “Dare to ruin my research and I will rip your lungs from your body.”

I laughed, a wheezing gasp. “I feel the call to duty,” she said. “Power. So immense. Such… effort. The chains that bind. Ah, Byzant, we shall have words, you and I.” Her attention focused on me like I was an insect and she a glass lens held up to the sun. “I feel you, Edrin Walker…and your pacted daemon. When the time comes do not run from the joining. Fight or be consumed.”

That small place in the back of my skull where the last part of Dissever still lurked throbbed in response. Something passed between nascent god and fragment of deadly daemon.

I grimaced. “I don’t understand.” “You never did.”

Flesh and metal began to coalesce into a semblance of human form, her bare skull growing a long mane of gold hair and shining metal orbs for eyes, steel wire and pulsing veins writhing through the jawbone to form cheeks and a tongue. A smooth steel face bubbled into place showing a likeness of Shadea as she might have looked in her younger days, as her self-image evidently still was. She floated naked and metallic a foot off the floor.

“What have you done this time, you foolish boy?” she said, her voice only a little more human.

“What I had to,” I gasped. “Can’t have another Nathair disaster can we? Had to have somebody trustworthy this time around, even if it’s you. Or would you rather it was me?” The unseen force let go and I dropped to the floor to sit gasping, my Gift blinded by the god being born before my eyes.

Her metal orbs scrutinised me. “You go to war and could not leave the seed unguarded. I understand and approve of your logic. Arise magus.”

Invisible hands lifted me back onto my feet and dusted me off with meticulous care. She waved at the defensive barriers blocking us in and they disappeared. The gaggle of magi on the other side were shrouded in power and ready to strike – they did not see Shadea, just a magus twisted by the Gift into something monstrous. Fire and lightning and stone spikes blasted toward us. Magic itself twisted as Shadea countered, dissolving and dissipating their attacks.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “You are all very scary and powerful.” The force that had previously held me in place now picked them up and pinned them to the walls of her quarters, carefully positioned to avoid any damage to her specimen jars. “I do apologise but I cannot afford the time to teach you properly.”

She drifted down the corridor towards the stairs up into the Collegiate and I reluctantly scrambled after her. The terrifying thing about Shadea was that she didn’t need any godly power to beat us all down. Elder magi like her made me want to run and hide, but there wasn’t any other way out and being behind her was far better than being in her way.

Somebody stepped into the doorway and a wall of hissing energy blocked her progress, giving even whatever Shadea was becoming pause. Krandus, the Archmagus himself, had come running. I probably should have given them some sort of warning beforehand, but honestly, how could you tell people you were about to make a god without pointed and painful questions being asked. Ones I had no intention of answering.

“Shadea?” he gasped. “I have no time to explain, Archmagus. Only a short time remains to me here.”

“A tower is lit!” Cillian shouted as she pounded down the stairs. “A god has retur…”

Shadea inclined her head.

Cillian blinked. “Oh.” Then her gaze snapped to me and her eyes narrowed. I shrugged guiltily.

Krandus understood immediately and got straight to it. “Welcome back, now how can you help us?”

Shadea grimaced in pain, flesh and steel sparking. “There are things you need to know. I must speak to the Inner Circle while I still can. I have called them to attend us.”

“Clear this floor,” Krandus ordered.

The magi were released from the walls and swiftly fled the room. I made to follow them, back burning under the stares of Krandus and Cillian. Shadea offered me a deadly parting shot, “Give my regards to Angharad.”

I left, bile rising and heart pounding. How? How did she know

that damned name? My scars itched as I pounded up the stairs. Was she mocking me?

Chattering, frightened magi thronged the halls and many turned, questions half-formed on their lips as I emerged from Shadea’s quarters.

“The Iron Crone is back,” I said, taking some satisfaction in the knowledge that the unfortunate but fitting nickname would stick. I shoved through and lost myself in the crowd.

I needed to gather my coterie and get out of this place while I still could. Many in the Arcanum had heard I’d had a hand in killing a god during Black Autumn, but most didn’t believe it, not really. Now, things were very different. Worse than killing a god: I’d been seen making a god, and that meant the hated tyrant really did possess knowledge that others would kill for. I was stronger than ever – more than I had any right to be – but I was still a pale shadow of an elder magus. I was vulnerable, and that stuck in my craw. Amidst the chaos and morass of spreading rumour I made my escape before anybody could think of stopping me.

I wound my way through byways and thieves’ lanes to the tavern where I’d left my coterie. If I could lie low for one more night then I would be able to avoid all those awkward questions and invasive tests. They wouldn’t dare hold up the campaign against the Skallgrim just to interrogate one stubborn bastard. My right hand was another matter. I couldn’t allow them to see the blackness spreading through the flesh – they would never suffer a corrupted tyrant to lead an army under any circumstances. No matter the cost to the war, or to the world.