My head throbbed from the poor bastard’s ordeal, and I turned my back on them to study the walls until Cillian was done torturing him into unconsciousness. The artificer’s machines had done their work for the day and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy – he had no idea the needles and bottled lighting were only the first of three sessions. A wave of nausea washed over me: I had been through this myself and knew what horrors were still to come. In the morning he would be dragged back in kicking and screaming to undergo an even worse set of procedures.
The brown-robed magus wheeled the unconscious patient out and the artificers filed out after her, leaving me alone with my old friend and ex-lover. It was only slightly awkward now that she was one of the seven members of the Inner Circle in charge of basically everything, and could order me tossed onto a pyre if she deemed it necessary.
The pretence of dispassionate control dropped away from Cillian and she sagged into a chair in the corner, ripping off her circlet to release her hair and taking a deep and ragged breath. “I hate this.” She bowed her head and hid behind a dark and curly veil. I didn’t play the game of politics, which made me one of very few people she could relax around.
“Don’t do it then.” My sage advice was not overly helpful to her. “I don’t order something done unless I could stomach doing it myself,” she snapped. “But it must be carried out. We have all seen the havoc a rogue magus can cause, and there are only a few of us with the skill necessary to enact the Forging with a minimum of pain caused to new initiates. All must take their turn and share the burden, even a member of the Inner Circle.”
Fair. “How are you doing? You look…” I didn’t want to say ‘like shite’, “…worn out.”
She sighed and her eyes drooped as if she would like nothing more than to sit on that chair and drop off to sleep. “As are we all. We must all do as much as we can for as many as possible. There is a mountain of issues that need attending to every single day.”
This was why they put people like her in charge and not people like me. I was selfish, and after a day like hers with all that heavy responsibility I would have pissed off to a tavern and gotten ratarsed on gutrot booze. I was far from the reliable type. Not her, she would be up at the crack of dawn and working before I fell out of my blankets with a hangover and a bad attitude.
“So why have you dragged me here?” I asked.
She swept her hair back to look me in the eye as she pulled a folded parchment from a pouch on her belt and tossed it over.
“Archmagus Krandus is in agreement.”
I opened it and examined the wax seals affixed to the bottom: the seven stars of the Inner Circle and the griffin rampant of High House Hastorum.
Magus Edrin Walker acts under my command and with my full authority. Give him whatever aid he requires and impede him at your peril.
Cillian Hastorum,
Councillor of the Inner Circle,
Seat of High House Hastorum
My eyebrows climbed and I whistled in appreciation as I noted the details of the writ. They were astonishingly brief and all-encompassing: I could legally kill people with this. “Are you cracked in the head? Must be if you’re authorising this.”
“Don’t abuse it,” she said, reading my mind. Not that it was difficult on this occasion.
I nodded and tucked it away inside my coat. “The hunt is on then?”
“Yes. You have identified three other magi possibly infested and controlled by Scarrabus parasites. Do not take any unnecessary risks. Investigate and report and I will do the rest. Should things go wrong you are ordered to capture them if you can and kill them if you can’t.”
I grinned. It was about fucking time to dish out some payback. She yawned and rubbed tired eyes. “Any questions?”
I thought about it, and the longer I did the lower her eyelids drooped. Her head bobbed up and down, and finally settled on her shoulder. I carefully and silently retreated. By the time I reached the doorway a soft snore came with each breath. As I left the Forging Room another magus and two scribes moved to enter bearing armloads of scrolls. Yet more work for Cillian. I barred their entry with an arm across the doorway.
I glared down at the young magus, barely out of Collegiate training probably. “The Councillor is not to be disturbed. She is attending to a vital issue.”
“But…” she withered under my glare. The scribes swallowed and backed away. The two armed wardens were still waiting for me, and they approached wearing their serious faces, hands wrapped around the hilts of swords.
I waved Cillian’s writ in front of their noses. “See this? You two are to guard this doorway for the next two hours and let nobody else in. The rest of you can turn right around and go do something else for a while.”
Their eyes flew wide and they leapt to obey me with a level of respect that I didn’t think I’d ever experienced before. Cillian would be furious when she found out I was letting her sleep. Not two minutes had passed since she had asked me not to abuse my new powers, but oh well, at least she would be a better-rested angry councillor. Besides, she had said I could do whatever I wanted to whoever I wanted.
I loved this writ already.
Cillian was exhausted and I was rapidly getting there myself, but I had an appointment at another hospital up in Coppergate that I refused to miss. After that my real work would begin – in the deep of night I would finally wrest some answers from the Scarrabus parasites that had tried to orchestrate the destruction of Setharis.
CHAPTER 3
A couple of hours later, I was freezing my arse off hurrying halfway across the city to get to the hospital on time.
Winter’s grip on the ancient city of Setharis had broken, causing her cloak of pristine white to slump into piles of dirty grey slush. Her disrobing exposed the brutal scars of last autumn: the blackened ribs of burnt-out buildings, ruined streets and tumbled monuments, and worst of all, the frozen corpses of her murdered children. Far too many of them.
I splashed through reeking pools of corpse-melt and trudged up Fisherman’s Way passing patrols of armoured wardens and work-gangs of diggers carting away rubble in a long and gruelling attempt to return a measure of order to the streets. The wind bit at my skin and I tugged my sodden greatcoat tighter, for all the scant good it did. The ragged scars that cut from the corner of my right eye to my jaw and trailed off down my neck pulled tight in the cold, left unprotected by the absence of the forest of stubble which sheltered the rest.
I was bone-tired and half-starved but still had one last obligation before my hunt could begin, something that even morally bankrupt scum like me couldn’t bear to shirk. I always repaid a favour – good or bad; well, to people that mattered anyway.
The street led me uphill towards the Crescent and the Old Town and in my weary state it felt like a mountain beneath my aching legs. My belly rumbled, but I could only ignore it. Food was scarce right now – even for a magus – and our paltry rations never stretched far enough. With most of the grain stores torched and the fishing fleet wrecked we were barely surviving by stripping bare the farmlands and towns beyond the city walls. I was sick to death of fish, pickled cabbage, and turnips. Still, things could have been worse: the self-obsessed Arcanum magi and the High House nobles, safe in their mansions perched atop the high rock that loomed above the lower city, had opened their stores to the war-ravaged Docklanders below them. I… had not expected that from their sort, even given the horrors of Black Autumn. The cynical side of me suspected that Archmagus Krandus had threatened to seize it by force if they hadn’t taken the opportunity to flaunt their magnanimity.
As the edge of twilight approached and the sky began to darken, I paused to catch my breath and as always my eyes were drawn to the vast crater in the centre of the lower city that had once been the snarl of crooked lanes that made up the human cess-pit of the Warrens. Where I’d grown up. Where Lynas had been murdered. Much of the Docklands area had been spared complete devastation by the Magash Mora, instead bein
g merely ransacked by Skallgrim raiders or subjected to fire’s voracious hunger. The people of the Warrens had suffered a far darker fate than axe or flame. I shuddered at the memory of that mountainous creature of stolen flesh and bone erupting from beneath our streets and lanes. It had been a thing of nightmares, and visions of it plagued my nights; I was lucky if I ever managed more than a few hours of undisturbed sleep.
An old man in rags with a long straggly beard shuffled towards me. “Got any food, friend?” There was little hope left in his voice, and just enough desperation to speak. His nose was red and his lips were blue, not good signs. A duo of corvun lingered on nearby rooftops, the great black birds waiting for him to drop dead so they could feast on his warm innards.
I went to turn away and resume my journey. I meant to. But some small voice lingering in the back of my head spoke up ‘What would Lynas do?’ My best friend had ever been my conscience in life, and in death his memory tried its best, but it was failing. I had always been selfish, but these last few months had wrought changes in me, and not for the better. You could not go through what I had and come out unscathed; mentally, magically and especially physically.
I sighed and dipped a leather-gloved hand into my money pouch. A couple of silvers left. Enough for scraps of food and warm lodgings on a few frozen nights. I dropped them into his shaking hand. “On me, pal.” It wasn’t like I was going to die from missing a few more meals. Magi died hard, and after recent events I would die harder than most. My flesh was changing, and that was more terrifying to me than any hunger. I flexed my right hand, skin and leather creaking. The taint was making it increasingly stiff and painful, but under that glove waited worries best left for another day.
As I left the old man behind I searched inside myself for any sign of satisfaction, any hint of taking pleasure from doing a good deed as I had felt in the past. Nothing. Just an old friend’s voice blowing away on the breeze.
Resuming my trek up the hill, I passed through palls of smoke and steam. The pyres burned day and night, sending columns of black smoke and funerary prayers up to writhe around the five gods’ towers that reared up over the Old Town on its high rock, slick black serpents of stone twining around each other until their fangs pierced the clouds. The towers remained dark and silent, our gods still missing, and in one case, dead. The Fucker. I only wished I could murder that traitor god all over again! You know, without all the writhing in agony and torture I’d experienced – he had not been in his right mind and I’d still only survived through crude cunning and blind luck.
I passed over the worn hump of Carr’s Bridge into the largely undamaged streets of the Crescent, slogging through rutted piles of slush towards what had been a fine inn for wealthy travellers with a gleaming copper lion rearing over the doorway. It had served mouth-watering spiced meats and fine ale, and now it served up bandages and medicine. A line of the diseased and destitute stood outside waiting for hand-outs of stale bread, smoked fish and, if they were lucky, a morsel of preserved fruit.
The burning sun dipped behind the city walls and the bells of the Clock of All Hours rang the day’s last. Lanterns and candles came to life all across the city, a tide of flickering flame. I was too busy looking up to watch where I was going; my boot came down on black ice and went right out from underneath me, pitching me down on my arse. My back and side shrieked in pain from where that corrupted god had shattered my spine and torn out a rib to prove a point before putting me back together in order to start all over again. It had never fully healed, despite the best efforts of the Halcyon Order. I tried to lever myself up but my left hand flopped beneath me, taking another of its trembling fits.
“Fucking useless lump of meat, work damn you!” That damage was all of my own making, but you couldn’t fight a god and come out intact. The fear that both of my hands were becoming useless was inescapable.
Anger and frustration were futile, but when did that ever stop anybody from feeling it? I’d likely never be free of pain and disability: magical healing just didn’t work that way. It could only heighten what the human body could already do for itself and even a magus like me couldn’t suffer what had been done and walk away. It was, I suppose, a small price to pay for survival.
I staggered to my feet, bones clicking, and kicked a wall to knock the slush from my boots before shoving open the door to the hospital. Inside, the smoky, sawdust-floored room was packed with wounded being attended by chirurgeons and nurses. I wrinkled my nose at the sour reek of sweat, sick and putrefaction. It was a scent I was still to get accustomed to. As I stepped inside I ran head-first into a wall of agony, my every nerve raw and burning. Gritting my teeth, I shoved it to the back of my mind and hung my coat from a hook on the wall, in its place donning a stained leather apron.
That’s one problem with my sort of Gift: unlike the vulgar elemental magics – summoning otherworldly flames and the like – mine is a double-edged sword. While others called my mentally manipulative kind tyrants because we can get into your head and rearrange things, the men and women in this hospital could now affect me as well. My Gift had been abused and torn during the carnage of Black Autumn and I could no longer shut out all their fear and agony.
Old Gerthan looked up from the patient moaning atop his work table. His aged face was gaunter than ever, eyes red and watery, and his beard wispy and stained. “About time,” he said wearily, “I’m taking this man’s arm off.” He stabbed a thin dagger into the glowing coals of a brazier and took a bone-saw from the hands of an apprentice chirurgeon with a wine-stain birthmark across her cheek. She gave me a nod of greeting and then busied herself setting out needle and thread and other instruments.
Old Gerthan tested the saw’s teeth with a finger. He grimaced, then shrugged.
The emaciated young man on the table complained feebly and tried to sit up. The magus firmly pushed him back down – Old Gerthan might be cursed with permanent old age but his withered flesh still coursed with potent magic. I took his place holding the man down and studied the angry red and ominously black threads of infection running up the poor sod’s arm and shoulder from a festering wound in his forearm. His other arm was afflicted in a lesser way. I raised a questioning eyebrow. I’d seen them heal far worse.
“I have been here for ninety-six hours,” the old magus replied. “Assuming I haven’t missed an extra day.” He didn’t need to elaborate. There had always been too few magi with the Gift of healing in the Arcanum. And now? That number was hopelessly, laughably, inadequate. Countless Setharii had already felt the touch of his healing Gift, their flesh purged of infection and mending with eerie swiftness, but now he was exhausted and strained, teetering on the edge of losing control. And if a magus lost control they were destroyed like rabid dogs. A Gifted healer like Old Gerthan was far too valuable to take such risks.
Only the very lucky came back sane after ceding control to the Worm of Magic, and even then only if quickly caught and disabled. Nobody ever came back unscathed – I was a living example. My damaged Gift throbbed with remembered pain.
It had been ecstasy to be filled with such power. I was only too aware of the new and gaping holes in my self-control left from one moment’s madness necessary to save a friend.
I reached into the patient’s mind to tinker with his awareness of pain, dulling and diverting the flow of sensation until all he felt was vague warmth.
At my nod, Old Gerthan tightened a tourniquet around the man’s upper arm and used a sharp knife to peel back flaps of skin before setting the saw to his swollen flesh. I shuddered and looked away as the saw bit through muscle and then began rasping through bone. I had never been squeamish, but it reminded me of far worse horrors. Thirty seconds later the man’s arm thudded to the sawdust and Old Gerthan swiftly tied off his arteries and blood vessels with thread. Then he pulled on a thick blacksmith’s glove and retrieved the dagger, the blade now cherry red. He pressed it to the other wounds. Flesh sizzled and steamed, but thanks to my ministrations the man on the tabl
e barely twitched. The apprentice chirurgeon applied pitch to keep the wounds clean but still allow fluids to drain, and then it was done. The nurses quickly set another man in his place.
There were always more in need of my numbing touch: today brought four amputations, three surgeries, and one painful investigation of post childbirth complications. It was a long and tiring day and Old Gerthan must have had inhuman willpower to do this for days on end. All magic had its limits where our bodies and sanity were concerned, even for canny old magi like him. I was a wreck after only one day here and there, but I owed the Halcyons: they had done all they could for my friend Charra and made her last days of illness as peaceful as possible. My streak of black bastardry was thick and rotten, and my friends had been all that was important to me. And now that they were dead and gone? What now? Lingering memories and half-baked promises to protect Lynas and Charra’s daughter Layla…
It was late and most of the hospital staff were finishing up for the day. They washed all the bloodied tools and bandages with boiling water and vinegar and left them out to dry for use in the morning. Tomorrow always brought more to fill up the hospital beds. Old Gerthan took me to one side and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “How are you doing, my boy?” He sagged with crushing weariness. He had been a loyal friend to Charra and that earned him as much respect and assistance as a wretch like me could offer. He’d readily cashed that debt in.
“Better than you, old man. You are dancing on thin ice. You need to rest.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I’m in total control.” “For now.” I tapped my temple. “Who are you trying to fool? I’ve plunged into that icy abyss, remember? Let me take a wild guess how it’s getting to you?” I cleared my throat. “Imagine how many more you could save if only you had more power. Just open yourself up to the Worm and burst that dam, let magic pour through you…” His face grew stony “…you could do so much good if only–”
“I take the point, boy.” “Do you? I’m surprised you can string two words together you’re that knackered. When did you last eat a proper meal? Do you even remember?”
God of Broken Things Page 2
