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I practically stuttered my next words, so unaccustomed to this kind of affection from her. ‘Me? I’m a second-rate Infernalist. I’m not half the mage Corrigan is – or Aradeus, for that matter. He’s got real skills.’
‘They knew you’d protect her, Cade,’ she said, pulling me in close.
Hazidanneverheldanyoneclose. On some level I knew Hazidan cared deeply for me, as I did her, but neither of us wouldeverhave dreamed of expressing that love by any means other than rude remarks and the occasional–veryoccasional– approving grunt.
That wasn’tourway.
Except here I was, enfolded in the strong arms of someone I’d looked up to more than anyone else in the world.
‘They knew you’d be overwhelmed with guilt over her fate, that you’d watch over her, help her control her abilities. They knew that no matter what, you’d never abandon her the way I abandoned you.’
‘That’s not—’
She squeezed me tighter, mostly, I think, to cut off my breath and shut me up. ‘I told you before: none of us can be damned by anyone but ourselves. I’ve made peace with my sins, although not, I’ll grant you, in a way you’d approve of.’
I pushed away from her, unable to contend with both the warmth of her affection and the cold shiver of my trepidation over what she’d been keeping from me. ‘What’s behind the door, Master?’
She reached out a hand, and without even touching the knob, one of the doors began to swing open. She said something then, her voice low, almost a whisper.
I could have sworn the word she’d uttered wasRedemption.
Chapter 26
The Recruit
Hazidan’s silver-white doors opened on to a gallery overlooking a huge hall with marble floors broken up by sections of polished hickory. One of these was twenty feet long and six feet wide, looking suspiciously like a fencing piste. Another was circular, maybe thirty feet in diameter, the floor within warped in places to rise up as high as four feet or sinking two feet below ground level: Hazidan’s own design, I recalled, for training on treacherous terrain. The twenty-foot-high walls were panelled in a dark oak of almost impossible smoothness. One side was festooned with every type of weapon you could imagine, not to mention a fair few I couldn’t even begin to work out what they might be good for. The other side was shelved with row upon row of yet more books.
At the far end, opposite the double doors, was a single chair with a golden nine-pointed star hanging above it. I didn’t need to get close enough to examine it; I knew every single line inscribed on every inch. Upon that star were the moral tenets Hazidan had once taught me, with the symbols representing those ideas at each point.
I knew this place. A place almost exactly like this had once been my home.
I looked at her in disbelief. ‘You’ve recreated the justiciars’ training hall.’
‘I have.’
‘In Hell.’
‘A lazy word conceived by lazy minds to teach us who to hate, but. . . yes, I’ve recreated the hall of the Glorian Justiciars in Hell.’
I was half expecting a sudden appearance of horns, fangs and claws, which would doubtless be followed shortly thereafter by a surprisingly quick fall over the railing to break my neck on the marble floor twenty feet below us.
It was worse, somehow, that she was still Hazidan, still the great paladin of the justiciars.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘I ambeggingyou, please tell me you aren’t training a host of demoniacs to become some sort of private military force to counter the justiciars. Because if, after all this, it turns out you’re just some bitter old cow who’s been down here plotting a coup d’état against her old bosses, I’m going to be incredibly disappointed.’
She did that eyebrow-raising thing again. It was particularly disconcerting above the empty socket. ‘Now, does that sound like something I’d stoop to, Cade?’
‘It soundsexactlylike something you’d conceive, Master. The only difference is that you’d try to find some obscure ethical precept by which to justify what anysaneperson would agree is a completelyinsane thing to do.’
She laughed at that, her deep, thick-as-molasses laugh rising up from the soles of her feet to fill her entire body. She laughed so hard that she had to put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself, while I braced myself for those horns and fangs and claws to appear.
‘You’re really making me uncomfortable, Master.’
I hadn’t thought it possible for her to laugh even harder, but I really should have learned not to underestimate her.
After a few moments, she settled into a kind of satisfied chortling, punctuated by the occasional snort. ‘Ah, Cade, you always were my favourite student. You know why?’
‘The other apprentices hated you.’
