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I was, however, tempted to ask how Corrigan, who didn’t traffic with Infernals, had heard about the job. Then I remembered that I didn’t care. I tried shaking the bat off my wrist to end the conversation, but the little beast clung there with its claws, then reared up to glance around the campsite before its head swivelled back to glare at me. ‘Where are you going, Cade?’
‘Bugger off a while, will you?’ I tried shaking off the bat again, with exactly the same result. ‘I’ll come down to the village later and you can tell me all about this dream job.’
‘Looks like you’re headed towards Ascendant Lucien’s pavilion,’ the bat said.
‘Pure coincidence. Just out for a stroll.’
The bat’s claws squeezed my wrist tighter. ‘Whoa, Cade, stop. You’re angry that Lucien lied about ending the battle as soon as the citadel forces surrendered. I get that. He’s a nasty piece of work, okay? You think Archon Belleda isn’t? If the situation were rever—’
I stopped and brought my forearm up so the bat’s face was just inches from mine. Their vision isn’t the best and I wanted Corrigan to see me clearly. ‘You know exactly what I’m about to do,Corrigan,’ I said, using his real name to emphasise how done I was with this conversation. ‘You knew it before you sent this bat of yours to suck my blood and piss all over my plans.’
The bat gave a sigh, which made the little fella almost cute for a second. ‘Yeah, I guess I did. This kind of thing is exactly what makes the other wonderists nervous about you, Cade.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Everybody got paid in advance for the job. I’ll make sure none of this blows back on you.’ I lowered my voice so no one nearby could hear me. ‘You’ve been a good friend to me, Corrigan. Especially considering what an arsehole you are to the rest of the world.’
The bat looked up at me and tried to smile. It didn’t work– the creature’s mouth just wasn’t made for such things. ‘I feel the same about you, Cade. I mean, you’re a moralistic prick who’s never once confided in me as to why you do the things you do, but who knows? Maybe that’s why I look out for you.’
‘Don’t get all soft on me now, Indigo.’
‘Hold off on Lucien,’ Corrigan pleaded. ‘Come for a beer and let’s talk. Maybe we can figure out how to convince him to back off on this massacre thing. Besides, if you kill him now, we’ll just end up with some new piece of shit taking over.’
‘I’m betting I’ll like that piece of shit better. Sorry you wasted a bat charm on me.’
The Ascendant’s tent was just ten yards away and I could see half a dozen of his precioussanctifiedsstanding out front in their gleaming armour, holding their smart, overdecorated swords and crossbows. One guy had a pistol so engraved with holy symbols that I’d lay odds they just ruined the balance. Lucien would have several more guards inside his massive pavilion, of course, along with a pet mage or two– not ours, of course; dumb as Lucien was, he knew better than to put his trust in a mercenary wonderist. Too bad he wasn’t smart enough to have known not to screw with the terms of a mercenary wonderist’s contract.
Infernal magic comes at all kinds of costs, and it’s absolute crap for things like growing crops or healing wounds. But even with the limited spells I still had on me, if I played my cards right, I had more than I needed to kill Lucien and anyone who got in my way.
Here ends the reign of Lucien the First, Ascendant Prince of the Celestine Orders, I thought.Too bad your Auroral bosses never gave you the gift of prophecy.
‘Cade?’ the bat said.
I kept my eyes on the tent. ‘Yeah?’
‘It was two.’
I froze. ‘What?’
The bat tried to speak again but the words got garbled as the blood fuelling the spell faded. With what I thought was admirable dedication, the little beast flapped to my shoulder and managed to cough out Corrigan’s parting words into my ear. ‘I wasted two charms on you.’
I never even felt the bite on the back of my neck, just the warm, soothing tingle as its bile mixed with the magic Corrigan’s second charm had imbued it with and knocked me unconscious.
Chapter 6
The Hanged Man
I awoke– if you could call the nauseous cesspool that constituted my present mental state ‘awake’– hanging upside down with my hands bound behind my back. The headache was easily explained by the blood rushing to my head, the sharp pain in my right knee the result of being suspended by my ankle. I could see no shackles, but there was the faint shimmer of a tethering spell.
My vision was coming back in blurry waves, and after a moment or two, I could make out the dirt floor beneath me and the wooden walls and ceiling. Half a dozen rustic tables and benches filled up most of the room; the rest was taken up by the bar, behind which huddled a very frightened-looking woman of middle years who was washing the same mug over and over while mumbling prayers to what I assumed was every single Auroral and Infernal deity she could name and a few she was probably making up on the spot.
‘He’s awake,’ said a voice that sounded like shards of glass crunching between someone’s teeth.
That would be Narghan, a professional incarcerationist whose pride and joy was his unhygienically long facial hair which he tied and waxed into dozens of intricate knots as advertising for his area of specialisation. He called it ‘custodial wizardcraft’ and could detail its rich history, complexity and tactical advantages at tedious length. The rest of us just figured he liked to tie people up with magic.
‘I can put him back to sleep,’ suggested a feminine voice smelling of those sour, cloying herbs she chewed for her particular brand of magic were enough to make me all in favour of her proposal. She always introduced herself as Somaka, which means ‘aroma of spirit’ in some language nobody speaks any more. Just about everyone else called her ‘Lady Smoke’ because her spells manifest through the exhalation of misty fumes that could produce any number of unpleasant effects on the world around her. She was raven-haired and ebony-skinned and didn’t bother with clothes because the ever-present fog surrounding her protected her from both the elements and unwanted stares. When she wasn’t in earshot, Corrigan called her ‘Lady Farts’.
Lady Farts– yeah, I called her that, too– added something garlicky to the mixture she was mashing between her back teeth. ‘This concoction will give him nightmares so fierce he’ll spend his final hours lying in a ditch, a mumbling, impotent wretch snapping his own finger bones one by one.’
Somaka was considered by many to be a great beauty. I mention this because my old mentor used to insist that you should always find something nice to say about people, even when they’re planning to kill you.
