The Traitor God

Chapter 22

I yelp and try to flinch away, but for a young girl Charra’s grip is strong as iron.

“Don’t be such a baby,” she chides. With a cloth already stained red she dabs away crusted blood from my mashed lips and swollen nose.

Lynas sits on a stool to the side of the bed, a wry and knowing smile on his face. His knuckles are skinned and raw, but otherwise he’s come through the fight without a scratch. How I always come away worse off I have no idea.

“Is it broken?” I say, peering down at my nose.

She flicks it with a finger. I shriek and scoot back, clutching my face. “That’ll teach you,” she says, faking a scowl. “Did I say I needed saving?”

“No, but–”

“But nothing. I’ve been on the streets all my life.” She glances around the tiny room that consists of nothing more than a straw pallet, single stool and a wobbly table with folded rags stuffed under one leg. “Well, until now.” It barely has enough room to fit all three of us but her eyes still shine with pride. It is her room, bought and paid for with her own coin.

I gingerly pat my nose, wincing at each spike of pain.

“You know I can handle sleazy old men like that,” she says. Her mirth at my bruised face and sheepish expression makes me smile. My burst lips object. That feral child has changed remarkably over the last two years. Somehow without me even realising it Charra has become the practical backbone of our trio. “We both know I fight dirty. Make you a deal: if I ever want your help, then I’ll ask for it. Good enough?”

I nod. “Sorry.”

“What were you thinking? Just charging in like that?” She smiled, knocking a fist against my shoulder. “Idiot. His sort of slime treat women like dirt all the time.” She shakes her head. “You wouldn’t last a week as a woman.”

I grin. “As if you will ever see me in a dress! As for what I was thinking…” I shrug. “You know me, always leaping before I look.” In truth I’m bloody well worried something is very wrong with me, and even Archmagus Byzant’s constant ministrations haven’t convinced me otherwise. Ever since the Forging I’ve grown increasingly cracked in the head – I always need to have that last little needling dig, to stick in a barbed comment at exactly the wrong moment. I’m scared I’ll get myself killed. I’ve been in more fights in the last few months than in the whole two years previous. If I keep going like this I’ll wind up with a knife in my back lying cold and stiff in a gutter somewhere.

Lynas smiles and shakes his head at my foolishness, but he isn’t the same as he used to be either. He’s come out of his Forging a shadow of his former self, and it isn’t only the discovery that he isn’t Gifted enough to become a magus. He is merely going through the motions of living, a puppet dancing on strings of habit. Something deep inside has been shattered.

For once I am the lucky one. For unknown reasons Archmagus Byzant has taken a personal interest in me, listens to all my fears and tells me not to worry, that the world will all be set right again, given time. However, things are getting much worse. Charra can’t possibly understand what we went through, but Lynas and I both know we’ve been changed. Nobody ever remembers their Forging, but each and every Gifted wretch is carried out of that ritual chamber the same way: skin slick with sweat, throat raw from screaming, head bursting with pain and sobbing uncontrollably. I came out a magus, others come out like Lynas: broken. Some don’t come out at all.

Lynas rises and looses a huge yawn. “Better get going. I have to get back to my accounts.” He waves goodbye and leaves.

Charra frowns. “He seems obsessed with numbers lately. He’s never shown an interest in accounts and coin before, but in the last month he’s had his nose buried in ledgers and his fingers are constantly stained with ink.”

“He told me he’s thinking of starting his own business,” I say. “He has a whole bunch of ideas. Keeps wittering on about taxes and tariffs and asking me what I think – as if I’d know anything about all that.”

“I hope he’s well,” she says, looking thoughtful.

I carefully explore my cuts and bruises with fingers that feel like knives. “Take care of him, will you? I think he could use somebody looking out for him right now.”

Her dark eyes study me. “Of course I will. What did those bastard magi do to him up there?” It doesn’t seem to have sunk in that I am one of those bastard magi now.

I shudder. “Nothing good. But that’s all over with now. I’m sure that he just needs time to recover. Something to focus on.” We could hope…

She stares at the door, doesn’t say anything and doesn’t have to. She is as worried about Lynas as I am. I can’t be sure if he is throwing himself into business as some sort of way forward after his hopes and dreams were crushed, or if it was a strange effect of his Forging. Either way, I hope it helps him heal.

It is a huge mental effort to haul my sorry, beaten body up off the pallet. “I’d better head back to my room or they’ll have me washing the privy floors again.” I struggle to ignore the self-destructive impulse urging me to stay longer. “Goodbye, Charra.”

She smiles sadly, her face growing more lined, hair greying. “There’s been absolutely no pleasure in knowing you, Walker.”

A sudden panic shattered the dream memory. My eyes shot open, the world a dull smear of grey, heart slamming, body aching. I jerked upright, muscles screaming in protest. Chains rattled around my ankles and wrists. Crusty blood bunged up my nose and for a moment I was back in my dream with burst lip and swollen nose. But no, that was long gone, being home was just dredging up old memories. Dried blood covered the straw where I’d laid my head.

The sanctor rose from the seat at the bottom of my bed and rapped on the door to let them know I was awake.

I didn’t have much time left and I had to do something right for once: Harailt had to die, and I should have done it long ago. I ground my teeth and thought of Layla. I had to see her safe before there could be any reckoning, but it was impossible to ensure her safety while I was locked away like this. I’d have to be sneaky, have to unbalance the bastards, kick them in the balls and leg it while they were busy puking. I would probably have to do something monumentally stupid, but that shouldn’t be too hard; I’d pretty much refined that to a high art.

The guards came for me again and shovelled a thick and salty broth down my throat. Afterwards I felt strangely improved for having had a few hours’ sleep and some food, which was far from right. My body ought to be completely crippled, muscles seized up and solid as cured ham, much like my left thigh still was thanks to Dissever’s presence there. How had the damn knife even fitted without ripping me to shreds? It had gone fluid, hadn’t it? My memory was somewhat vague. I should not be healing as fast as an elder magus, not at my age. It was not something that could be caused by briefly giving in to the Worm. The realisation washed my grogginess away with a thrill of distilled fear.

I couldn’t bury my head in the sand anymore. A hundred little things over the years piled up into one inescapable conclusion – that something fundamental had changed inside me during the last ten years. The Worm of Magic was burrowing deeper into my flesh, changing me, and it had quickened on the day a god died.

My power was swelling, my Gift grown stronger. I found it much easier to reach into people’s minds than I could ever remember. Breaking into those stolid and unimaginative guards outside Lynas’ warehouse should have proven troublesome and yet I’d cracked them open as easily as tossing eggs at a rock. I healed quicker than I should and as the years ground on I was growing increasingly resistant to alcohol and alchemics. Every magus lived with the fear of change – we had all seen the warped flesh and bizarre mutations, the seeping wounds and howling madness, that resulted from somebody using more power than their Gift could handle. Even if they somehow pulled back from going over the edge it always changed a magus. I was terrified of losing control.

My introspection was interrupted by the door opening. I looked up expecting to see Cillian. Instead my blood chilled at the sight of the wrinkled countenance of Shadea. Whatever horror I felt at my body changing paled in comparison.

“Leave us,” she said.

The guards and sanctor scurried out and secured the door behind them. She eschewed use of the chair, instead stood scrutinizing me with the same passion she might show a corpse splayed open on a table. I was in deep shite. I shivered as her grey eyes judged me and found me contemptible. If the hag wanted to she would take me apart as easily as a snot-nosed pup pulling the legs off spiders, and probably with more curiosity. I had no doubt I would tell her everything she wanted to know. People said they’d take a secret to the grave but they had no concept of what real torture was. Everybody broke sooner or later, and what little I knew of Shadea’s practices was more than enough to give me nightmares.

“To what do I owe a visit from you?” I said, finding my voice.

“Guard your tongue, boy,” she said. “You will show me the respect I have earned.” It was not a demand but a statement of fact. Coming from Shadea, I dared not disagree. Even if I hadn’t been chained I would never dream of attacking her.

She tutted. “I had some faint hope for you once, despite your background. You showed an aptitude for unconventional thinking and a dynamism that the cliques of traditionalists lacked. I wonder if it is the nature of your unfortunate Gift, your base personality, or your lowly upbringing that has led to the situation we must now deal with. What might we have made of you if only the sniffers had discovered you a few years earlier?”

I clamped my jaw shut to stifle the retort. Instead I shrugged, chains creaking.

She caught and held my gaze. “However, I am aware that in the past the Arcanum frequently assigned you to Archmagus Byzant’s service, and I suspect some of the tasks he set you.”

I swallowed, suddenly nervous. Over the years I had done many unpleasant but necessary tasks for Byzant throughout Docklands, the sort of things that were best never recorded in Arcanum records. How much did she know?

“Not that there was ever any proof, of course,” she continued. “But I have known Archmagus Byzant far longer than you have been alive, Magus Edrin Walker. I know him, and I know you, and for that I am willing to delay judgment on your activities pending a thorough investigation of both your recent claims.”

“Did you capture that bastard Harailt?” I growled. “He must reek of blood sorcery.”

“The man passed my own personal testing,” she replied. “He is not corrupted. No magus can do what you claim and show no evidence.”

I blinked, gawping at her. “What? That’s not possible. He is a blood sorcerer and he commanded daemons. Test him again!”

“You are a liar or you are mistaken, Magus Walker. Which is it?”

“Neither,” I said, struggling to escape my chains. “Whatever lurks inside has managed to fool you. I told you, I felt a traitor god helping him! He needs to die, and die now.” I considered trying to use my power to convince her, then quickly discarded such a foolish thought. Even if she didn’t detect me opening my damaged Gift – a vanishingly unlikely chance an adept like her would fail to notice – she was an elder, and I didn’t fancy my chances of surviving after intruding into her mind.

She shook her head sadly. “Ludicrous. The gods of Setharis are all missing and Magus Harailt Grasske has neither the power nor the skill necessary to fool an elder magus such as myself; however, he has been confined to the Templarum Magestus pending further investigation. We agree that something did happen to you in the Boneyards. Councillor Cillian has been successful in persuading the Inner Circle to investigate those warnings. You will be coming with us.”

My stomach clenched and I almost threw up. The Boneyards terrified me beyond all reason. I had to stay calm, act reasonable, then seize my chance to escape and ram Dissever through Harailt’s black heart. He had tried for ten years to kill me and now it was my chance to return the favour.

Somebody knocked on the door. “Enter,” Shadea said.

Old Gerthan hobbled in, cane clacking across stone. He nodded to Shadea and approached me, looking me over with his droopy eyes. His back to Shadea, he gave me a crafty wink. It was nice to know that I wasn’t universally hated.

“No skin contact during the healing,” Shadea ordered. “He is unstable and we will take no chances without a sanctor present.”

“I will not be able to effect a full healing in that case,” Old Gerthan replied. “You understand this?”

Shadea nodded. “Heal him enough to walk but not run. I do not want him capable of fleeing. He has a nasty habit of that.” Her eyes never left me. It seemed she would only allow a single small and calculated risk and not a grain more.

Old Gerthan carefully unwrapped the bandages around my wounds, grumbling over the inflamed and swollen mess of my left thigh. I gasped and bit my lip. I didn’t have to pretend to be in pain, I just had to exaggerate it for maximum gain. Perhaps I could tease out a little extra healing.

“Very well,” he said, stretching a near-skeletal hand out over my legs. “I will do what I can.” He was looking into my eyes when he said that last bit, but Shadea took it as meant for her.

A warm tingle crept from my toes up my legs, washing away pain and replacing it with tiredness as my flesh exhausted itself in quickened healing. He was facing away from Shadea, and she couldn’t see the confusion in his eyes at the discovery my body was not as wrecked as by all rights it should be. I winced as torn muscle knit back together with sparks of ragged pain. And then the tingle reached the wound gouged into my leg. Dissever writhed inside the wound and I shrieked, no longer faking anything.

“What is this injury?” Old Gerthan said, his hand held over my leg. “It refuses to heal.”

I opened my mouth to tell them, but a deeper pain wrenched within my thigh. I screamed as something squirmed inside every muscle of my leg. Idiot, Dissever’s voice rasped into my mind. I will not be caged by ignorant children. I clamped my jaw shut to muffle the screams. Dissever was more talkative than I remembered. No. More awake, it said. It sent a feeling like a tongue lolling over jagged metal teeth. Walker blood has matured well. But your war god’s blood was far stronger. Nourished. Woke. A chill cut through the agony. The secret in my head rattled its chains and mocking mirth was Dissever’s only answer.

Somehow Dissever was hiding inside my body. That should not be possible – it shouldn’t even fit. The exact words of our spirit pact rose unbidden to make me shudder: My blood, your blood. My flesh, your flesh… Now those words sounded horribly literal, it had merged with my flesh, become a part of me…if it wasn’t already. This was no normal spirit-bound object, it was something far more sinister. As it stirred inside me blood welled up from the wound to soak through trousers and bedding.

Old Gerthan grumbled as he tried again to heal Dissever’s cut. “I cannot heal him without contact. That wound is passing strange. I have never seen the like.”

Shadea’s eyes burned with curiosity. “Very well. Heal the rest of him as you think best and bandage that leg up for now.” She would not forget – she never did – and would take great pleasure in exploring one more mystery when this current task was done.

The healing magic bypassed Dissever’s hiding place and the absolute agony subsided to mere abundant pain. I lay limp and moaning while he painstakingly healed the rest of me. Shadea lost interest and stared at the wall, deep in thought, eyes flicking to and fro as if reading texts from memory.

He leant over me as his hands passed over my neck and whispered in my ear. “Be at ease. I shall do my best to see Charra out of here should the opportunity present itself. I can give you a chance, nothing more.”

“What did you say?” Shadea asked.

“Just an old man mumbling to himself,” he replied.

The pain was too much for me to reply, but shrivelled up old prune or not, I could have kissed him full on the lips. By the time he finished the old magus was leaning heavily on his cane. I was physically exhausted, but it felt like I had been healed more than Shadea had wanted. My Gift would take a while to restore itself, nothing anybody could do about that. I coughed, wincing with exaggerated pain. “Thank you,” I said. He looked shattered and I couldn’t help but feel he had fed his own energy into the healing process to reduce the toll on my body.

He grunted, pointedly ignored me and turned to face Shadea, an expression as if he’d just stepped in a mound of horse dung on his face. I wasn’t the praying type, but if there had been a great spirit or a god out there somewhere who wasn’t a complete arse-rag, then I’d have sent my thanks.

“It is done,” he said, then left without another word.

As he exited the room Cillian marched in wearing cerulean robes so heavily woven through with metallic wards that soft clinks sounded with every step. The sanctor came in behind her and I could see the shadows of others lurking in the hallway. They were here to force me back down into the Boneyards and they would collar and leash me like a feral dog if they had to.

As the guards removed my chains and began dressing me in clean clothes and new boots, I decided it was time to play the con man again, to take every edge I could get. I groaned and exaggerated the damage to my body, tried to walk, failed and slumped back down on the pallet, face twisting in pain.

“Stop faking, boy,” Shadea said. “You are well enough to walk.”

Cillian glared at me, then looked to the sanctor. “Martain, stay close to him. He is as slippery as an eel and we still have many questions that need answering.” Her eyes warned me to behave. Even if I did what they wanted then I had a hunch that somebody would see to it that I didn’t survive captivity for long. It would be arranged to look like suicide – just another cursed tyrant putting himself out of his misery. It was a crying shame I’d have to find a way to disappoint all these fine magi.

My hands were pulled out in front of me and Cillian fastened cuffs around my wrists. “Oh my,” I said. “In public too. How lewd. You might have asked me first, Cillian, but I’m fine with you being in charge.” She didn’t show any emotion on her face, but did pull away to fuss with her hair. I didn’t imagine many people had enough of a death wish to speak like that to a member of the Inner Circle. Shadea looked more murderous than usual.

Martain punched me between the shoulder blades. “Do not speak to her that way, you viperous mongrel.” I noted he wore gloves now.

I stumbled forward, then turned to smirk at him. He seemed overly protective of Cillian, and from the way he glared at me he probably knew we had once been involved. Angry people didn’t act with forethought, and that I could use. “Viperous mongrel? Is that really the best you can come up with? Why don’t you just piss on her to mark your territory?”

His face went red. He started forward, but before he could do more than growl Cillian snapped her fingers. “Restrain yourself, Martain, don’t dance to his tune – he always was good at angering people.”

Two guards stormed through the doorway, wrapped gauntleted hands around my arms and dragged me out into the corridor where two other magi waited, young men with an edgy, angry air to them that stank of pyromancer. You didn’t as a general rule get old pyromancers. They tended to, hah, burn themselves out quickly.

“Does anybody require anything before we begin?” Cillian said.

I almost asked for a strong drink and a last meal just to be annoying, because I’m the sort of git that likes to rile up serious people for my amusement.

“How about a gag?” Martain said. She seemed to be seriously considering it.

Just because they needed me right now didn’t mean they would shy away from inflicting pain. I had to stay calm, keep my mouth shut, and try to squirm my way out of this midden I’d fallen into.

While I withered under Shadea’s scathing glare somebody in clinking chainmail and creaking leather marched up the corridor to my right.

I turned. Eva started, pretty green eyes widening in shock. She was armoured for tunnel fighting, wearing metal gauntlets with spiked knuckles and a heavy knife sheathed at her hip. Longer weapons would just get in the way down in the Boneyards. I swallowed. Of all people, why did it have to be her? If Shadea or Cillian found out we had spent time together in the evidence rooms it would not be pretty, and she didn’t deserve that.

“Well, hello there, pretty lady,” I said, forcing a sleazy grin onto my face. “Are you my bodyguard? You had better stay very close. What’s your name, my lovely?” She stared in confusion. I turned to wink at Shadea. “You lot really spoil me.”

Shadea was not impressed. “Careful boy, if one more base comment escapes your lips I will sew them shut. If you irritate Evangeline she has my leave to break your fingers. You do not need those to walk.” Her liver-spotted hand slapped into my crotch, held firm. I kept very, very still. “Or perhaps I will take these instead. Anger me further and at the end of this I will have a rarity on my dissection table.” She licked her cracked lips in anticipation.

Eva regained her compose, catching on to my ploy. She was not a good liar, but fortunately all eyes were on Shadea and myself. “So you are Edrin Walker?” she said, scowling with real anger simmering behind her eyes. “I thought you’d be bigger from the way they described you. You look like a lying rogue.”

“Well,” I said. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

If she had thought about coming clean she had just missed her chance. Our mutual secret was safe for now. Eva had guts as well as a bit of a mouth on her. I liked that. Shame about the timing. The unsavoury part of me filed all of this away as possible leverage to use later – after all, she had far more to lose than I did.

“Enough delaying, Edrin,” Cillian said. “It is time to begin our descent.” The guards dragged me forward and there was nothing I could do to resist.