The Traitor God

Chapter 15

Soft warm skin brushing across my forehead. Soothing. Stroking my hair. I opened my eyes to Charra’s dust-streaked face. Dank, stale air from the catacombs filled my nostrils. Boneyards. Walls. I was surrounded by walls crushing down on me! I panicked, then shuddered with relief at the sight of the clouds overhead. I was just in a pit, not buried alive. Just a stupid hole in the ground. I sagged, panting, Charra patting my back awkwardly.

Oh Lynas. I couldn’t save you after all.

“I’m so sorry,” Charra said. “The old nightmare?“

“Nothing I can do about it,” I said gruffly. “It happened and it will never leave me. That’s all there is to say.” Old memories of Dissever drenched in blood stirred. “I’m falling to pieces here, chased by daemons, and if the Arcanum discover me I’m in no shape to resist.”

She scowled. “Well you’ll damn well have to keep it together. You’re not the sort of man to whine and go easily. Oh no, you’d spit in death’s eye socket. I’d do the same myself.” Her expression grew serious and she looked away from me. “We’ll figure this out. We have to.”

I smiled for her. The only people who had a chance of being able to help me with my daemon problem were the Arcanum, and they’d rest easier in their beds with me dead. They might even toast sweetroot on a stick over my pyre. The only reason I wasn’t already collared and leashed was that I’d taken great pains to fake my death.

She cleared her throat. “Walker, ah, there is a tunnel. I think somebody has been using it fairly recently.”

I stiffened, palms slicking with sweat at the sight of the rubble-choked tunnel. Footprints were visible in the muddy floor leading down into the darkness. A line of scrapes accompanied the prints, as if something heavy had been dragged through.

“Somebody has been moving goods through the catacombs,” Charra said. “Smugglers perhaps.”

I swallowed and looked at her pleadingly, mentally begging her not to say those next words.

“We need to go in,” she said with regret.

“Only if Bardok the Hock and the Harbourmaster can’t give us answers,” I said hoarsely. One way or another I’d make them talk. Anything was better than going back down there. But if I had to, I would. I owed Lynas everything.

We hauled ourselves out of the pit, dusted ourselves off and headed for Bardok’s shop.

The Warrens are the rocky shore that a tide of diseased and decrepit humanity washed up on when they were shipwrecked by life. Anybody that made any real sort of money would be out of there quicker than a whore could lift her dress for a high lord, if they didn’t squander it all on gambling, drink or alchemics first of course. As strange as it seemed to me, some folk took to the squalor like rats to refuse, revelling in lawlessness and decay. Bardok the Hock was typical of that sort.

He still kept shop in the cellar of one of the older and sturdier tenements that had somehow survived fire and neglect, a full four storeys of solid stonework located northwest of the ruined temple and almost half way to the wealthier streets of Westford. The slimy worm had holed up in there seemingly forever, a touch of the Gift granting him rude health well into his old age. After my father’s death I had sold him more than a few items of dubious origin to fund my way through the Collegiate years.

Under a cracked sign painted with the golden globes of the hockers’ guild, I pounded on the heavy door. Nobody answered but we knew he was in there; he always was. Charra kept watch while I struggled to pick the shiny new lock. After a few minutes of my fumbling she nudged me. “Want me to do it?”

I scowled and pulled out Dissever. “I’m good.” The knife carved through the wood and steel as easily as flesh. Not exactly subtle, but I was past caring.

We descended the steps into Bardok’s dimly-lit, cluttered shop and discovered that it was as much a mess as it ever had been. Black and green mould carpeted one wall and the room smelled of dust and rotten wood. We wove past heaped baskets of hocked chisels, hammers, tongs, spades, tools from every sort of trade, past shelves of pottery and cheap jewellery. I paused at a mound of coats to finger a carefully repaired slit in the wool where a knife had gone in. The brown stain was barely visible in the seams. Pots and pans hung from hooks on the walls and chests of brass fittings, fire pokers and old locks clustered next to the door to his back room.

Charra volunteered to take the first bash at trying to get the old goat to talk. She went in alone armed with the blunt force approach of bribes backed up by threats and intimidation. After a few minutes of eavesdropping it became apparent that there was bad blood there, Bardok having declined her protections recently. Maybe his new benefactors had given him the brass balls he’d never had back when I had dealings with him. Charra began dropping curses every third word and her threats were getting inventive. I amused myself by tampering with the magical wards that somebody had set up for Bardok. Sloppy but potent work, as if somebody both powerful and skilled had set them up in a hurry. They were designed to be activated remotely in the same manner as the city gates and Bardok would have a similar activation crystal on him. As I broke the wards I smiled at the thought of his face if he tried to use it on us. The stored magic now leaking out to fill the shop also served to mask any trace of my own Gift.

“Is that your last word?” she said loudly after they had both been silent for a few seconds.

“Away and fuck a dog, you braying donkey,” he snarled, making little sense, but being admirably offensive all the same. “Get out of my property, you saggy old whore.”

I thought I’d better get in there before Charra killed him, so I shoved open the door and sauntered into a room lit by a miserly single oil lamp on his desk. His room was stuffed to the gills with scrolls, books, sheaves of parchment and artefacts from around the world. On the walls hung a variety of exotic weaponry: a beaked Skallgrim war axe etched with angular runes, an ornate Esbanian gladius, an Ahramish khopesh, and an acid-etched Clanholds broadsword, as well as others unknown to me. Small stone dragon skulls and assorted bones were propped up on a table at the back by a clay tablet carved with the flowing text of distant Ahram. One small statuette of a jackal-headed human was of Escharric origin, hideously expensive and almost certainly smuggled in illegally from a dig site. The old goat would wear clothes until they fell apart but didn’t mind splurging coin on his precious collector’s items, and undoubtedly cared more about them than people.

Charra had risen from her seat, short sword naked in her hand, and was leaning over a wide desk cluttered with odds and ends, scraps of parchment and old crumbs of food. She settled for scowling at Bardok, who had pressed himself back into an oversized red leather chair. He looked old and cadaverous, entirely bald now, the lines of his face set into a permanent scowl.

I slipped on my nastiest grin. “Well, well, if it’s not Bardok the Hock. So good to see you again.”

It took him a moment to recognize my face and the voice. Then his watery eyes goggled and the blood drained from his face. “Oh shit,” he whimpered. “I thought you were rat food.”

Charra remained standing as I eased myself into the creaking chair in front of his desk. “That’s what I wanted folk to think.”

I wasn’t exactly a big fish in a little pond, more like a fat minnow covered in huge and venomous spines that you would do well not to aggravate. In my own element I was as dangerous as any magus in Setharis. “So…” I said, stuffing a smoke between my lips and lighting it from his lamp. I took a draw, then blew the smoke right in his face. “Go fuck a dog, you say? Braying donkey, was it? And we mustn’t forget saggy old whore. Quite the muckspout today.” I looked at his cherished collector’s items on the walls. “It would be a shame if I had to start breaking things.” Sweat burst across his face and he looked ready to throw up.

Amidst the hodgepodge of objects on his desk a brass cone the height of my thumb caught my eye. For a second utter horror overwhelmed me. I suppressed the shudder before he could notice. The fool had an alchemic bomb sitting right there on his desk!

There couldn’t be half a dozen people in the world that had ever seen one: as a Collegiate initiate I’d been earning coin running errands for an artificer magus named Tannar who was conducting unsanctioned experiments with alchemics. His workshop had been a thing to behold, full of strange smells and bubbling liquids in glass alembics, and it was not every magus who could claim to have ventured into an artificer’s innermost workshop. The trouble with the Arcanum, Tannar told me, was that they had spent the last thousand years trying to rediscover the glories of ancient Escharr instead of actually using their brains to invent something new. That sort of opinion was anathema to the Arcanum, so of course that endeared him to me.

He had come up with the idea of blowing holes in mountains to get at seams of ore, and had made a dozen or so alchemic bombs to be tested during an initial mining expedition. Unfortunately that expedition never departed, but his inventions must have been a success in a way since his workshop had turned into a smoking crater overnight. And here Bardok was using one of the bloody things as a paperweight!

He quivered, about to buckle, then suddenly flipped to anger. He glared at me with a surge of aggression I hadn’t thought he’d had in him. He slammed a fist down on the desk, making the bomb jump. I almost soiled myself, but couldn’t let it show or I would compromise my position of power. “Get out of my shop,” he said. He spat on the floor, not seeming to care that it was his own. “You still owe me money, you cur. Think you can step all over me? You don’t know who you’re dealing with now.” He sneered as his hand reached for the underside of his desk, pressed his thumb against the activation crystal embedded there. He pressed it again, eyes darting down, then up to look at me in shock. His expression was everything I had hoped it would be.

“Something wrong?” I said, slouching back with a mocking smile plastered across my face, trying not to look at the bomb sitting three feet away from me.

He swallowed, stood, pointed towards the door. “If you are not here to buy something then get out,” he said. “I have friends in high places. You have no idea–”

“Sit,” I said.

And he did, slumping back into his chair and deflating into the weaselly coward I’d known and hated. “What do you want?” he said, rubbing his forehead with one hand as if we’d given him a headache.

“Lynas Granton,” Charra said.

I watched his expression change. Not guilt exactly, but he was definitely hiding something. “Who?” he said, fooling nobody. His reactions were too rapid, his emotions changing too quickly, like he had taken an alchemic.

“Bardok, Bardok, Bardok,” I said, wagging a finger at him. I leaned forward and patted his hand. “Don’t make me hurt you.” He knew I was alive now, so there was no point in my holding back, and nobody who mattered would lift a finger to help scum like him anyway. I eased open my Gift and reached for his mind, only to find myself plunging into a churning maelstrom of alchemically heightened emotion and magic. I flinched back in confusion and pain. Mageblood. I was certain of it.

Somehow he felt it and laughed at my suddenly queasy expression. “You think you are so dangerous with your petty magic tricks. You have no idea what real power is.”

Fine. I was in no mood to play. I tried again, forcing my way in past the pain. “Slap yourself.” His hand snapped up, cracking hard across his face. “Harder.” Smack. The next slap bloomed as a red hand-print across his face. He would tell me everything he knew, anything that meant I didn’t have to enter the Boneyards. I smirked, not showing the strain I felt invading his alchemic-addled mind. “And aga–”

“By the Night Bitch, stop it!” he cried.

“Lynas Granton,” Charra repeated.

“Fine!” Bardok said, rubbing his cheek. “Look, I don’t need the trouble. It’s got nothing to do with me. He was importing some goods for a client, that’s all, I swear.”

“Which client?” Charra asked.

He shrugged. “You think I ask for names in my line of business?”

“So what did he wear then?” she snarled. “Height? Accent?”

“Didn’t see his face, hid it under the hood of his robes,” he said. I exchanged glances with Charra. “Medium height, slim build, bad fake accent.”

“Fake accent?” Charra asked.

Bardok nodded. “Trying to sound like a Docklander, but he wasn’t. Was one o’ those rich slicks from the Old Town.”

I mulled that over for a few moments. “What was Lynas importing for you?”

“Expensive wines,” he said. I glared, so he swallowed and continued. “Leastways it came in big jars. Just a normal shipping contract, but it were right queer the way it was collected. I swear I don’t know more. The Harbourmaster – he’s the one who’d know where the things came from.”

“Is he also where you got the mageblood you’re on?” I asked.

He licked his lips, nodded. “I… yes. He’s the only one that has any supply in the whole city. He has contacts abroad.”

I frowned. “So what happened when these jars arrived?”

“Lynas came to notify me he had them in stock.”

Charra’s eyes lit up. “And then you contacted your client to pick it up?” she said. “Where?”

Bardok shook his head. “You got it wrong. He always contacted me after Lynas had been and gone. Guess he wanted a middleman for some reason.”

“How did he know they’d arrived?” I asked.

“Fuck knows,” Bardok said, scowling. “Ask all the godsdamned beggars. Somebody had eyes and ears on me. Now get out of my shop unless you are buying something. That’s all I know.” He was telling the truth for once, so I gladly pulled out of his cesspit of a mind.

“One last thing, Bardok,” I said. “When was the last time you saw this client?”

He scowled, hands twitching. “Not since the fat bastard got himself skinned.”

I went for him, but wasn’t nearly quick enough. Charra’s fist rammed into his face, flipping him and the chair over to crash to the floor. His feet rattled off the desk, sending his lamp and collection of objects spilling to the floor. Heart in my throat, I leapt forward to grab the alchemic bomb as the brass cone wobbled, then fell. I caught it with my fingertips and held the damn thing at arm’s length, sweating. Charra was oblivious to my terror, her boot pressing down on Bardok’s throat. He choked and scrabbled at her leg as his oil lamp teetered on the floor next to a pile of browning papers.

“If there’s something you haven’t mentioned, now is the time to tell us,” she said.

He choked a negative. She sighed and removed her foot from his neck.

I had everything I needed from Bardok, so now it was time to kill him. He had facilitated Lynas’ death, even if his hands were clean of the actual deed. I couldn’t afford to leave him free to spread tales of my death being greatly exaggerated, and he wasn’t worth the risk of using more magic on. Once I would have felt Lynas in the back of my mind urging mercy. I listened for it, but now there was nothing. I reached for Dissever, intent on slitting his throat. His eyes flew wide as he saw death bloom in my eyes.

Charra’s hand latched onto my wrist and refused to let go. “He’s not worth it, Walker. Leave him be. For now.” She stared me down until I reluctantly let go of the knife. As we made to leave I held the bomb ever-so-carefully in one hand and tossed a few silvers onto Bardok’s desk. “See, we did come here to buy something after all. Let’s hope we don’t need to come back for a refund.” I glanced at Charra. “You should be thanking her.”

He shuddered, nodded.

“We were never here,” Charra said, lifting two unlit oil lanterns off hooks on the wall, both sloshing with full reservoirs of oil. She didn’t offer him any coin.

He swallowed, grimaced, and clutched his bruised throat. “I beg of you, please fix my wards. They’ll kill me without them. Somebody is out to get me.”

I ignored him, and it felt good to slam the door behind us and leave that mouldy dungeon behind. I really didn’t do well in dark enclosed spaces below ground. It was surprising that Bardok was still alive. With Lynas dead surely his client had no more use for the greedy old weasel? Perhaps he’d thought Bardok didn’t know enough to implicate him, or maybe he hadn’t got around to ending him yet. I carefully slipped the alchemic bomb into my pocket. It was wildly dangerous, but something like that might prove useful.

“You’ve grown too cold, Walker,” Charra said. “You would have killed him if I hadn’t stopped you.”

I shrugged. “And?”

“It doesn’t suit you. I know the Forging does something to you all, changes a magus’ mind in subtle ways to make you loyal, to resist…”

“Losing control,” I supplied. “It makes us less prone to emotional instability, amongst other things.” Or it breaks you, like it broke Lynas.

She nodded. “Nobody will ever believe anything a rat like Bardok the Hock says, and in any case, I’ve never known you to kill in cold blood like that.” Oh, but I have, Charra. I killed for Byzant on several occasions. And you have no idea what I did to survive before meeting you and Lynas.

She looked up at the gods’ towers looming over the Old Town. “Lives are meaningless to alchemic dealers and most of those Arcanum bastards up there. I know you spent ten years on the run, and I do know what it’s like being forced to look out only for yourself in order to survive, but be careful you don’t end up as heartless as they are. You are better than that.”

“I can try to be,” I said. It was all I had to offer. Had I really changed that much during the years we had been apart? I had killed six men in the last ten years, mostly for good reasons, and I didn’t feel a shred of guilt at the thought of killing Bardok either. Perhaps I was becoming more like those stony-hearted elder magi than I had ever suspected. It was an unsettling thought.

Charra coughed. Then she leant against a wall, hand over her mouth as a full-on coughing fit erupted. When it subsided she cleared her throat. “How he can live in that mouldy slime-pit I don’t know. The damp and dust would drive me mad.” She cleared her throat again and spat in front of his doorway. I eyed the glob of red-speckled spit and my stomach lurched. It was the same as ten years ago, when she had been ill. I said nothing for the moment, praying I was being paranoid.

We’d both lived in worse places, but I took her point. He had more than enough money to do better than live in that midden, but some people knew where they truly belonged.

She straightened her clothing and started walking toward Pauper’s Docks. It was time to roast the Harbourmaster over hot coals.