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I sat down cross-legged on the dirt road and took out the pipe I’d found on the floor of Galass’ cottage. The bowl was cracked but intact, and the stem was broken off near the end, but you could still suck air through it. The previous resident had thoughtfully left a little satchel of the local pipe-weed that hadn’t looked too mouldy. Now I just needed a light.
‘Would you mind?’ I asked Tenebris.
He looked down at the pipe from where he floated inside the circle. ‘You know I can’t cast spells on your world from here, Cade. I can only grant them to you.’
He was expecting me to ask for a flame spell for free, but instead, I reached out a finger and brushed a line in the sand, creating a one-inch gap in the outer circle. Tenebris gasped– which, interestingly, in a demon creates a truly disturbing sound. In all the years he’d been my agent, I’d never once broken the barrier between us without a deal in place to ensure my protection.
‘Cade, buddy,’ he said, ‘I’m touched.’
I stuck the bowl of the pipe up to the gap. ‘Spare a fellow a light?’
He extended a clawed finger and a tiny flame erupted briefly inside the pipe bowl. A second later it settled into a pleasant little plume of smoke. Corrigan always claimed demon-fire was the best way to cook a steak for the most flavour. I was hoping the same applied to mouldy pipe-weed.
‘Aren’t you scared I’ll use this little portal you’ve given to have my way with you?’ Tenebris asked. ‘There’s no rule that says I can’t cast a recruitment spell on you and make you my unwilling slave.’
‘Funny you should bring that up.’ I sucked in smoke through the broken stem of the pipe. It wasn’t bad– it reminded me of being in an old-growth forest just after a storm,or some other stupid metaphor like that. ‘You and your pals have already screwed me over pretty thoroughly,’ I went on, letting a blue-grey cloud of smoke escape from my lips. ‘Which means there’s not much more you can do to me.’
‘Never took you for an optimist, Cade.’
‘No, but you did take me for a fool.’
‘Hey now—’
I waved away his objection with the pipe, wisps of smoke flittering from the bowl as if it were a censer and I a holy man. ‘Not as big a fool as Ascendant Lucien, of course. Can’t imagine what the Celestines you’re secretly working for had to promise that pompous arsehole to get him to declare he was going to massacre the surrendering soldiers, just to get me to come to you and ask for an assassination spell.’
‘AndIrefused to sell you that spell, remember?’
I nodded as I sucked in another mouthful of smoke. On second puff, the stuff was actually quite foul. ‘You needed me for other things, though, which is why you suggested to the Lords Celestine that they order Ascendant Lucien to make sure I took two of his pleasure slaves with me, knowing I’d have to have them in the tent when I summoned you.’
Tenebris gave me his sincerest fake chuckle. ‘Just because two kids see you summon a demon doesn’t necessarily mean one of them is going to follow suit and sell their soul the second you leave your tent.’
‘That’s what I thought, too. For a while.’
‘And?’
I figured I’d give the pipe-weed one more try. Add that to the long list of bad decisions I keep making. ‘And then I remembered the horrors those two kids had already lived through. Given the chance not just to escape those awful lives, but to actually be given even an ounce of power over others? Who in those circumstances could turn that down?’
I flicked away a little of the excess weed in the bowl, in the hope that it might lighten the increasingly unpleasant fragrance a little.
‘The girl didn’t try to summon me,’ Tenebris argued. ‘She tried to stop the boy.’
‘Galass is different. Shewasdifferent, anyway.’
Tenebris folded his arms across his chest. He wasn’t above shows of petulance if it was in service to a lie. ‘The problem with your little conspiracy theory, Cade, is that very few humans have the ability to work Infernal magic, which means—’
‘Which means Lucien was a better actor than I would have expected, and his slavering over Fidick– which was what made me pick the boy as one of my prizes in the first place– was also part of the act. But you knew all that, Tenebris, because you were the one pulling Lucien’s strings. The Lords Celestine owned him, but they’re not nearly subtle enough to have played me so smoothly.’
I tried one more draw on the pipe, decided there were faster and more pleasant ways of killing myself. I flipped the bowl over to bang it against the hard ground, sending tiny embers of still-burning weed skittering along the ground like wingless fireflies. Tenebris was watching me. The uncertainty in his gaze might as well have been a book of all his most intimate thoughts.
‘They didn’t understand you, Cade,’ the diabolic said, almost affectionately. ‘Not the way I do. They think you betrayed the justiciars because you couldn’t hack the job. They thought you lacked. . .’ He paused and thought for a moment, one long claw tapping his lower lip.
‘Faith?’ I suggested.
Tenebris snapped his fingers. ‘That’s the one. All they saw was a young justiciar corrupted by a bitter old paladin slowly going deaf to the Auroral Song. The Lords Celestine never understood that beneath all your self-hatred and cynicism, the problem wasn’t that you weren’t pure enough for them, it was thattheyweren’t pure enough for you.’
‘But you saw through to my shining golden soul?’
Tenebris didn’t laugh, didn’t smile. ‘That’s the only reason why I was able to manipulate you into coming here, Cade, to take on this fight that no one else alive could win. I had faith in you. Ihavefaith in you.’
