The Traitor God

Chapter 17

Charra’s jaw dropped, as did her knife. Her stomach heaved as if she was about to be sick.

I stepped back to give them space, rubbing my many new bruises. “Want me to release her?”

Charra’s glare could have melted steel, torched entire villages and boiled oceans. I slunk out of the girl’s mind with utmost care, like she was on fire and I was driest tinder. Layla shuddered once, and then rose to her feet, face composed.

“Explain yourself, daughter,” Charra said through clenched teeth.

Layla edged away from her mother. “I disposed of an alchemic-peddling piece of filth. What of it?”

She had a fair point. As damned inconvenient as the timing was.

Charra glanced at the leather mask in my hand, hissed, plucking at Layla’s clothes. “These are not your own. You murder people for coin now? Is this how I raised you?”

“I…”

“I gave you everything I never had: hot food, a soft bed, love, security, education. A chance for a good life. And this is how you repay me? You know what I went through w–” She cut off, glaring furiously in my direction. The view of the distant Old Town suddenly demanded my attention.

“Mother, you cannot–”

Charra lifted her hand, palm up. “Shut your mouth, you stupid little girl. Pretty words won’t cover up what you are.”

Layla’s face froze. “And you haven’t killed people, mother? How can you claim this is any different?”

The crack of hand on skin made me glance back. Layla’s cheek bloomed an ugly red. “Don’t you dare,” Charra said, angrier than I had ever seen her. “I killed because I had to. You think I had any choice?” She caught me looking and cut off what she was about to say next. My eyes fixed on the gods’ towers wreathed in cloud.

“And as for the alchemic dealers,” Charra continued, “they all know my rules. The first time, you get warned not to deal alchemics on my streets, then you get your legs broken. If it happens again, you die. You rape, murder or enslave? Then the Smilers cut you up. Simple rules. Good rules. I don’t go off murdering people in their own homes. Nor do I take coin for ending a life.” Her hands shook with fury. “People’s lives are not commodities to be bought and sold!”

Oh gods, I thought. No wonder this was hitting Charra hard: she had been property.

“And another thing, daughter,” Charra said. “That man was our last solid lead on your father’s murder.”

“What? No. That’s not… I was told–”

“How are we supposed to ask a corpse what he had your father importing?”

“Layla,” I said. Charra shot me a venomous look but I steeled myself and ploughed ahead. “Did you have anything to do with getting rid of an alchemic-dealer called Keran? Or a gang called the Iron Wolves that claimed a part of the Warrens?” She’d also been behind that neatly done assassination in the gambling den, but I thought it better not to mention in front of Charra that she’d been in the Scabs. One scandal at a time.

Her mouth clamped shut, but I could read the answer in her body language well enough. Perhaps not personally, but she was involved somehow. The temptation to pull the information from her mind was powerful.

“Who commissioned you?” I asked.

As expected, she said nothing. She physically couldn’t. The group she apparently belonged to had a magus or some sort of artefact to enforce the silence of their members. I would be able to break through that sort of geas though, given time.

Layla sighed. “I can say that somebody claiming to be an altruist is behind all of this,” she said. “Somebody rich, powerful, and anonymous. They wished to see Setharis cleansed of undesirables and provided a list of criminals for removal.”

“But why the Harbourmaster?” I asked. “Why now?”

Layla glared at me, fingering a knife. She might feel besieged by her mother, but she didn’t really know me or owe me anything. Whatever Charra’s opinion, Layla saw me as a threat. My fault for getting so angry at Charra for sharing my secrets with her. “It took me some time to locate his latest bolthole. He helps the syndicate lords bring in alchemics and slaves from the continent. He profits from pain and flesh.”

“As it turns out, so do you, Layla,” Charra added. “You profit from pain and dead flesh. Just what do you think assassins are? Some merry band of avengers righting wrongs?” She spat at Layla’s feet.

“I think no such thing!” Layla snapped. “I am under no illusions as to what we are. I’m no hero. I pick and choose my own contracts, mother. It’s not the same. I am cutting out the rot.”

“Or so you think,” I said. “They’ve been damnably clever.”

Layla glared at me. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you find it a huge coincidence that you just happen to be killing the very people who might be able to give us answers about your father’s murder? I’d wager good coin that somebody is getting twisted pleasure out of making his daughter dance to their twisted tune. And even better, they have you thinking it’s all your own doing.”

Layla lifted a hand to her mouth, looked like she might vomit. “No, I… I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know.”

Charra’s face softened. “And that’s why you don’t kill for somebody else, Layla. Always make it your own choice, if you must. And then you live with the consequences.”

Layla’s hands clenched, nails digging into her palms and drawing blood. Her eyes went cold, suppressing wild fury. Clearly you didn’t get to be an assassin of her prowess without iron discipline and self-control. I’d felt her mind, and she had barrels of the stuff to spare.

Charra reached for her daughter. “You will come home with me right this second.”

Layla shuddered, then spun and leapt across to the next rooftop, fleeing as fast as she could. Charra started after her but I seized her arm.

“Let her go,” I said. “She needs to figure this out on her own.” Charra tried to pull away, but I held on tight until her daughter was long gone.

She didn’t cry, didn’t show any emotion whatsoever. She felt numb, and didn’t look at me as she descended the ladder.

“Charra…” I didn’t have the faintest idea of what I could say, had no clue how to help.

“Leave it be, Walker. She’s big and ugly enough to make her own mistakes. She doesn’t hang onto her mam’s skirts anymore.” She paused in her descent. “Was she telling the truth or was that all an act? I don’t know her as well as I thought.”

“Layla wasn’t lying,” I said. “She’s not the heartless thing you fear she’s become. Not yet anyway.”

“How can you possibly know that?” she growled.

“I know.”

She said nothing as we made our way down to street level. Charra was in a daze, not noticing the people gathering on the street to stare into the building, or the suddenly hushed chatter from people spotting my bloodstained boots. I was acutely aware that the wrong people might recognize Charra and draw conclusions. This deep in syndicate territory I didn’t have a hope of protecting her if they mobbed us. I brushed a veil of hair across the unscarred side of my face to give me some disguise but resisted the urge to hunch down again – that would get me marked as having something to hide. Instead I stood tall and tried to look at ease. Just another scruffian out on the streets.

Her friendly wardens and sniffer spotted Charra and waved us through without fuss. She didn’t even acknowledge them. We passed through the hubbub of the market, tension rising with every step, and we were halfway up Fisherman’s Way when she stopped dead. A sick feeling rose up my gullet – she was going to discuss what I’d done to Layla, about what I did to people’s minds.

I finally found my voice, tried to divert the subject. “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “At least she can take care of herself. She was more than capable of killing me up there. She went easy on me.” I stopped in the street, a horrible suspicion occurred and somehow I was certain it was true, another flake of that locked-away secret ripped loose. “Charra, Layla is mageborn. After what happened to her father during the Forging, you never sent her for testing, did you?”

She shook her head. “After what they did to Lynas? I would never allow those butchers to lay a finger on my daughter. Lynas took care of it just before you left. He arranged forged papers proving she had already been through the testing.”

No, he hadn’t. Neither Lynas nor Charra had that sort of influence. Their safety was my payoff from the deal I’d made and I’d made him believe it. They had no need to feel any guilt over my exile; that truth I kept for myself.

The Arcanum could not risk magic running wild, or disloyal magi and mageborn working against Setharii interests. There were so many checks and protections in place to prevent such things that even the Archmagus and the High Houses were helpless to interfere. Only a god had the sort of clout necessary to fake that. Thinking about it made my head hurt, literally.

“Walker,” Charra said, sounding utterly drained. “Layla is still a stupid child in many ways, still naive. Promise me you will look out for her when – if…”

“Hey, hey – none of that,” I said. “We both will. I promise to look out for her if I survive that long.”

She gave me a wan smile. “We can hope.” She closed her eyes and loosed a deep sigh. When they opened again it was the old, harder Charra. Her dark eyes nailed me to the wall. I swallowed and prepared to weather the storm.

“Have you ever done that to me? Been in my mind?” she said. “Changed things?”

There it was, the beginnings of fear and paranoia. “Of course not,” I said. “I’d never do that to you.”

“All these years you led me to believe that you were just a swindler with a few clever magic tricks, maybe a little more. You pretended all that raw talent as a magus was wasted on you. You, just a copper-bit trickster? After what I’ve seen today? Hah! Do you take me for a fool?”

I hung my head, waiting for the righteous anger.

“You’re a bloody fool, Walker. I’ve always known that you were so much more than you ever said, and I always suspected you were hiding your real power. Why keep it from me?”

After so long hiding it all away from her I found it difficult to voice. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Did it never occur to you that if I didn’t trust you with my life then we wouldn’t be friends at all?” she said. “You of all people should know that I don’t trust easily. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you will.”

My head lifted. She looked exhausted, worn paper-thin. She patted me on the arm. “You always seemed to live without a care, drinking too much, getting into stupid scrapes and dangerous schemes. It was hard for anybody to see you as anything other than an unreliable, weak-willed, piece of shit on a mission of self-destruction. But that was all just for show, wasn’t it? A grand con. But then you always were good at fooling people.”

She was mostly right. But there was a large and twisted part of me with a scurrilous tongue that constantly urged me to dive headfirst into danger, to endanger my life for no good reason.

“You think I didn’t do some digging after you ran away?” she said. “Lynas’ lips might as well have been nailed shut.” She looked at me funny, as if pondering for a second if maybe he couldn’t have said anything; but no, Lynas was just Lynas, he’d have taken a secret to the grave if asked to.

A moment of pain as part of me reminded myself that he did take them to his grave.

“I knew that other magi distrusted you, thought you were scum barely worth noticing,” Charra continued. “But in truth you are a really nasty piece of work, aren’t you, Walker? Given what you did to Aconia and Layla I’d wager you are far more powerful than anybody ever suspected.” She locked gazes with me. “No tricks, Walker. Cards on the table now – tell me everything.”

Unable to meet her gaze, I studied my hands, wondering if I really knew that myself. “Have you ever heard the old stories of the tyrants who ruled the tribes of man long before the empire of Escharr arose?” I said.

“The enslaver-kings?” she replied, using the old Ahramish name.

I met her gaze, nodded, pointed a finger at myself. “In Kaladon they just called us tyrants.”

It took her a moment. “You?” She snorted. “As if.”

I didn’t say anything more, didn’t need to as my sincerity filtered through.

She swallowed. “That’s what you did to Aconia, and what you were doing to Layla?”

“Exactly. That’s why the grand deception. That’s why I’ve always downplayed what I can do. I told them I could only use my power through touch, but that was also a lie I told for good reasons. The magi don’t hate me, Charra, they fear me. Not because of what I am, but for what I might become.”

She squeezed my hand. “Don’t be a fool. You will never be like that. However much of an annoying prick you are.”

I offered a half-hearted smile. “Uh, thanks. I guess.”

“If you were that way inclined then you wouldn’t have spent half your life penniless and puking in a gutter – you’d be off in some marble palace somewhere living like a lord and drinking yourself blind on fine wine. You wouldn’t be slumming it with a godsdamned lady of sheets to find out who killed an old friend.”

“Charra–”

She waved a dismissive hand. “I own the words, Walker. They can’t hurt me. Other people won’t forget what I was, so neither should I. And I meant every word.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking up at the grey sky as a soft drizzle started falling. Don’t let her see you tearing up like a wee babe. It was such a relief to hear her say that. I had always been adamant that I would never become crazed with power like everybody expected me to, but the lure of magic was so subtle that sometimes I woke in a cold sweat wondering if I’d changed and just didn’t know it, or if some creeping doom was gradually overtaking me. Would I even notice? It was never far from my mind. My first physical changes had been so gradual that it had taken me a year to realize I had developed senses keen beyond normal human ability.

I grinned at her. “Hah, I guess as long as you’re around there is nothing to fear. You wouldn’t be slow in telling me I’m in the wrong.”

She looked away. “True, I wouldn’t.” She seemed to crumple into herself. The whole thing with Layla must have finally sunk in. She cleared her throat and looked me in the eye with a gaze as cold as winter and with just about as much life. “Just so we are clear,” she said. “If you ever do that to my daughter again, I will kill you.” And she meant it.

I swallowed. “Noted.”

She looked me in the eye. “Thank you for finally telling me what you really are. I know it couldn’t have been pleasant.”

“Since we are exchanging secrets,” I said, “how about you tell me what you really are? You’re no lady of sheets and you never have been. You’ve always been too self-assured and much too handy with a knife. We’ve been dancing around secrets all our lives. Let’s be done with it. What does it matter now?”

She smiled coldly, gazing up at the sky. “We both wear masks, it seems. I was six, I think, when my parents died from the Grey Pox.”

I winced, remembering that disease running rampant through the Warrens and the grey seeping lesions that had consumed my aunts and uncles, my cousins and my friends. It was not a swift death.

“A group of alchemic dealers took me in off the streets. There were too many starving orphans after the pox struck for anybody to care about one or two going missing. They trained me to kill. A child assassin can reach places, can cater to certain tastes that adults can’t. I lost count of the lives I took to hide their activities.” When she looked back at me some of that old, wild Charra reappeared in her eyes, a hint of desperation as I now recognized.

“They kept me like a pet. I was sick of watching people living their lives, laughing and playing with friends and family. And then ending them. You have no idea what that does to a child.” She tapped her chest, “I was empty in here. All I had were my kills and serving their so-called grand purpose.”

I swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’m just glad I got out. One night our leader Anders staggered in from the tavern with a girl on his arm. He was so drunk he couldn’t get it up. The girl laughed, laughed in our glorious leader’s face!” She glanced at me, meeting my eyes for a moment before her gaze jerked skyward again. “You need to understand that I’d never dreamed anybody would dare such a thing. Anders snapped her neck and dumped the body in an alley. It wasn’t for any grand purpose, it was just murder. It hit me then, young as I was – it was all just murder. That’s all it had ever been. I think I went a little mad.”

She cleared her throat. “They would never let their property leave, so I waited for them to fall asleep, then cut my way out and made a run for it. I met Lynas and you a few days later and I had thought about covering my tracks afterwards, but I’m very glad I didn’t.”

“Me too,” I said softly. We’d had no idea we were so close to getting our throats slit. She didn’t need sympathy and she didn’t want forgiveness, she just wanted me to finally know what she had gone through. No wonder she had dedicated her life to ridding the streets of alchemic dealers and to helping the lords and ladies of sheets escape the gutters.

She sighed. “I figured that claiming to be a lady of sheets sounded much more wholesome than admitting I cut throats for alchemic dealers. It’s certainly a more honest profession.”

She paused, a hand covering her mouth as she coughed and cleared her throat. I suspected she was struggling not to throw up. “It would seem that the apple does not fall far from the tree,” she said through gritted teeth. “She betrayed everything I went through, but I blame myself for hiring the best fighting masters gold can buy. I’ve been a blind fool not to think that one or two might have been scouting for such a rare talent.” Her eyes met mine again, now filled with rage. “They seduced my daughter right in my own home!”

She shuddered, and drew her cloak tight. “Well that was depressing. Best we head back to that ruined temple. We’re wasting time, and that’s the one thing I don’t have to spare.” She wasn’t in the mood for small talk after that, and I knew she would never speak of her past again.