The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Jeffrey Bardwell

  Devin walked around behind the house. Abigail opened the door and let him into a large kitchen. She gestured to a small table in the corner and sat across from him.

  “You are lucky my father's a sound sleeper,” Abigail said. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”

  “What happened to your mother . . . after that night?” Devin asked. “The night the Black Guards took her away.”

  “People who don't live in the imperial capitol only know rumors of what happens after that,” Abigail shrugged.

  “But you know more, don't you?” Devin pressed.

  “I want a drink. Can I get you one?” Abigail stood and walked towards a large pitcher on the counter.

  “No, thank you. About your mother?”

  “What do you know of the Atrium of Justice?” Abigail asked.

  “Rumors and horror stories,” Devin said. “The Atrium of Justice is a myth, a tale to frighten small children. Be good, or Mommy will call the High Guard and send you to the Atrium of Justice. I used to tell such things to my sister when she misbehaved.”

  Abigail returned with her water and sipped. “When I was twelve, on the fifth anniversary of my mother's . . . abduction, my father took me to see her grave behind the Atrium of Justice. The place is real. The horrors are real. The atrium is where the empire puts mages to die after it breaks them. They dumped my mother's body in a mass grave, a ditch. We brought daffodils, her favorite. We had to walk through the atrium. My father tried to hide my face in his shirt. What I remember most is the smell. The cloying stench of putrid flesh and sewage and burying my face in the flowers to breathe. I could still see the rows of dismembered, living corpses screaming behind the glass, squirming in a pile of their own shit. A man went around with a bucket and cleaned their cages like they were animals. Their eyes begged me to reach inside the air holes and strangle them with my tiny hands.” Abigail looked at her fingers.

  “Did you try to help?” Devin asked. “Did the guards stop you?”

  “What guards?” Abigail asked. “That wasn't a prison: it was a gallery of tormented souls. You think I didn't want to help them? I had to cover my ears with these hands. I still hear their wordless screams when I lie awake at night. And you want to go back? So they can cut off the rest of your limbs? Pull out your tongue? Put you in a little, glass cage? Why?”

  “It's not enough to want to defeat the evil empire who mutilated and exiled me? I'm the empire's mistake. I'm the mage who got away. And Captain Vice is going to strike me down if I don't strike him first.”

  “This fight is bigger than you, Devin. Why not fight for something greater than yourself? Don't just fight for one mage, fight for them all. Free the mages. Break the glass cages.”

  “Why should I? Because you feel guilty you left them to their fate? Abby, by the time those mages are brought to the Atrium of Justice, they're already living death in a glass cage.”

  “Your heart is living death in a glass cage,” Abigail muttered, before she turned and stabbed him with her eyes. “Why are you really rushing to attack the Iron Empire, Devin? What's that reason you keep balled up inside beneath the fears and vengeance? Is this all just to keep yourself from rotting behind glass one day? To strike at those who slighted you? Are you really so petty?” Abigail asked. “Tell me and I will give you the damn bread for your stupid revenge quest. I'll even throw in some pemmican rations, which is what you really need.”

  “There aren't any dried fish bits in pemmican are there?” Devin tapped his fingers on the table and held his breath. Memories of the last time he had to live on field rations almost made him puke. He swore he could feel the cracked, flaking flesh choke down his throat and taste the sharp tang of the salt on his tongue.

  “Of course not,” she said. His explosive exhale made her smile for a moment before she scowled and shook her head. “It's just venison jerky and dried fruits mixed with hog's lard. You'd know that if you bothered involving anybody else in these plans of yours or actually planned ahead with one of your stupid revenge schemes. You've been driving poor Styx crazy.”

  “You want to know why I'm picking a fight with the empire? Would you believe me if I told you I wanted revenge for my foot?” He kicked the table with his steel toes.

  “Would you believe me if I told you the sky was green?” she sneered.

  “Fine. There's no great mystery about it.” Devin crossed his arms and pushed his chair away from the table. He turned his head and looked away. “If you must know, I fight to save Ingeld.”

  “Liar,” Abby hissed, her throat constricting around the words. “You don't believe that any more than I do. I saw it in your eyes. You're going there to crush Black Guards. It's the next step in your own little personal vendetta against Captain Vice. Aside from your total lack of any sort of plan, I even approve. But don't hide your true motivations by pretending to care for this town. Not after what you did.”

  “I do care.” He spread his arms. Why doesn't anyone believe me? Surely, my actions speak for themselves? “Even when everyone here hates me, I still remember that this place gave me a home when my own country kicked me to the gutter. How can I prove that I care?”

  “Hmmm, maybe not destroy the town or chase away our livelihood? You may be half a wizard, Devin, but living here for a year doesn't make you half Corelian. You're still an imp and deep inside that black, iron clad, oil-pumping heart, I think you realize that.” A tear swelled at the corner of her eye. “You think you want to defend the town from a problem that you created by coming here? That's not noble, it's selfish and delusional, and this town will be a . . . better place after you've left us. We can't survive as your refuge.”

  “You don't mean that, Abby.” Devin reached across the table.

  She gulped and jerked her hand away. “I do. Of course, I do. Almost, I could see that shining, golden drake you keep imagining. But you lie to yourself as much as you've lied to me. Dragon Boy: what a joke. Go seek your revenge. How could I be so stupid? You're no majestic wyvern. You're nothing but a lone wolf thirsty for blood.”

  21. THE MAGISTRATE, YEAR 495

  The magistrate watched the warm, red sunlight spill across the gavel pieces on his desk. The wood gleamed and the brass glistened. The man had taken advantage of a light court docket and the bright afternoon to disassemble the mechanism and spread the gears, the springs, all the wooden panels, and the delicate, little screws across a clean, paper void surface.

  The magistrate buried his face in his black-stained hands to try and bask in the familiar joy of assembling order from chaos. But the fragrant oil, diluted with sweat, which used to excite him just smelled musty. The subtle intricacies of the device seemed mundane. The varnish had turned to vinegar. The ordered rows of shiny brass and wooden pieces just looked like a big, greasy mess. His eyes kept drifting towards the cast iron waste basket next to his desk. Something was spoiling the thrill of his old routine.

  The large windows behind his desk not only admitted light, but also sounds from the practice yard in front of the building. Muffled oaths and clashes hammered the air as young men trained to become Black Guards.

  “That's a sword you're holding Private, not your salami. The goal is to eviscerate your opponent, not impregnate him. You grip it good and tight, you hear?” Sergeant Jemmy's voice echoed through the window. “If your opponent can smack the hilt right out of your sweaty, little hands, you will lose more than your virginity.”

  His vocabulary continues to improve, the magistrate thought as Jemmy slipped more and more erudite diction into his own familiar routine. Thanks to the new largesse of the reformed City Council, the local Black Guard company was expanding and Sergeant Jemmy had gaggles of fresh recruits to mold and ample opportunity to polish his speech against their rough edges.

  The sergeant chiseled and formed his men like wood on a lathe until all their youthful fat and innocence lay as shavings on the floor. The shouts and clashing swords of the new recruits echoed off the perimeter walls. Beyond the walls, the gent
le grunts and groans of the city barely registered as whispers on the wind.

  There was nothing to break the magistrate from his perplexity: the office was a veneer-paneled womb insulating him from the world outside and all its wonderful distractions. The magistrate's interactions with the city pulsing at his fingertips was kept at arm's length behind a wall of paperwork. Crimes were documented in reports and affidavits. Violence was capped with a swift pen stroke. Even in the court room, every injustice silenced with a striking gavel was incomplete until he wrote the sentences.

  I would welcome a diversion, any diversion. The magistrate scowled as he brushed the pieces of his gavel into an open drawer. He sighed. I used to keep the Dragon Spleen Rum in here. I don't need that diversion anymore. Good riddance.

  The long awaited commotion began in the practice yard: someone arguing with Jemmy. The men would never argue with their beloved sergeant. The magistrate braced his hands on the lintel and leaned out his window, eyes fixating on the one figure not wearing the black on black filigree steel armor of the guards.

  The magistrate received a flip, jaunty wave for his troubles. Captain Vice was back.

  The captain had managed to lose the two mercenary spies the magistrate had set upon him. He imagined two smelly corpses hidden in the bushes by the roadside before shaking his head. The captain was too masterful at using people to waste his pawns or incur the wrath of the northern brethren. The barbarian tribes looked after their own and dispensed swift vengeance without the need for clutter or courts. Sometimes, the magistrate envied the barbarians' simple notion of justice. He might disapprove more if it were not Vice's head on the block.

  At least, the mercenaries sent a few reports before they vanished. The magistrate thumbed through his mental files. He had a clear idea of the nature of Captain Vice's urgent news and the man's sudden, curious hunger for illicit history books. The northerners seemed to find that amusing. The magistrate pulled a bell from a drawer in his desk and rang it.

  A young page so fresh from the academy he still had ink stains on his fingertips knocked, entered, and saluted in a series of smooth, practiced motions. The boy then stood at attention, almost quivering.

  A secretary then, the magistrate mused, glancing at his own dark fingers. Not a graduate. All the better; he'll know his way around the city. "Private, deliver this urgent missive to the Red Army Generals. If an underling in red armor attempts to bar your path, charge through him like a raging dragon. After you find the generals, bring them to the conference room across the hall as quickly as you can. Here you go. Now run.”

  The private took the scrawled letter and saluted again. Then he gripped his sword pommel to keep the sheath from knocking his legs and sprinted down the hall, armor jangling as he ran.

  Good hustle, the magistrate thought. I need to make a note to discover that young man's name. So, Vice has returned. Why couldn't the Corelians have killed that man properly? I must send the wastrel packing again, before he does any damage and infects the men with his violent brand of loathing and hatred. The cur has no place in the New Black Guards I'm trying to create under the auspices of the good sergeant. For my son . . . for Jemmy to thrive, that villain must not resume his former post.

  The magistrate had the barest sketch of a plan in his mind. How to raise the hero and banish the villain in one fell swoop? Time passed as he followed snippets of the argument drifting through the window. The voices began receding as Vice finally pushed past Jemmy and entered the building.

  Where are the confounded Red Army generals? The magistrate glanced out his window towards the imposing granite fortress a few blocks away. Those crusty old war horses need to reach my office before Vice does.

  The magistrate rang the bell again. He gave another page an urgent message for Sergeant Jemmy. The magistrate wrote this missive in no time at all: Stall him.

  Two arguing voices approached his office. The magistrate caught snatches of the conversation, the verbal warfare, exchanged between the captain and the sergeant.

  “Sir,” Jemmy said, “I was remiss . . . did not mention this before. We've made several changes and modifications . . . ”

  “Yes,” Vice hissed. “. . . see that.”

  “. . . to your office and your torture . . . afraid the magistrate insisted,” Jemmy replied.

  “Did he, really?” Vice asked. “He changed my . . . extraction facilities . . . lacy pillows, no doubt. Well, we shall see . . . as soon as I talk to the man . . . office is down that way, Sergeant . . . did we modify that in my absence, too?”

  “Corporal Irkoff,” Jemmy called. “The captain has expressed grave concerns . . . the state of . . . confession extraction facilities. Escort him . . . the basement and show him the new . . . will you?”

  A fawning, syrupy voice with a slight rural drawl slipped into the conversation. “Welcome back . . . pleh . . . pleh . . . pleasure to see you again, Captain . . . right this way.”

  “This is not necessary . . . horrors I've seen. We must launch an offensive . . .” Vice said. “duty . . . country . . . grave danger.”

  “. . . certain you're right,” Jemmy said as their voices receded down the hallway. “. . . for the magistrate to decide, sir?”

  “No . . . Yes . . . must deliver my report,” Vice protested.

  The magistrate smiled as the clank of Jemmy's heavy greaves and the footfalls of Vice's soft leather boots vanished. Then he began searching his files for recent reports on Corel and tactical maps. He rang the bell, but nobody came.

  I'm out of attendants. The magistrate carried papers and boxes of tacks and pens under his arms, locked his office door, and raced for the conference room down the hall. I need to look like I'm considering all the options, he thought, mentally arranging the maps and reports to the best effect, without having decided anything myself. The strategy must seem to be their own idea.

  May all the five gods bless feckless, new privates, the magistrate smiled. The academy drill to cover their rear was still so deeply engrained, most of these reports spent reams of parchment saying next to nothing with lots of data and simple charts to support their weak conclusions. The reports rarely ventured towards actual tactical analysis and shied away from anything resembling insight or hindsight.

  By throwing the right raw data in front of the generals, the magistrate could steer them how he liked. He had tacked the most damning reports on the walls, circling certain figures and statistics with bold, red ink. As he pushed the last tack into the wall, he mentally thanked Jemmy for giving him the idea.

  By the time the first breathless attendant arrived with a train of four clanking Red Army Generals in his wake, the magistrate had arrayed a dizzying display of maps, tactical plans, and dire reports on the walls. He looked up from the pile of conflicting reports about the local mage menace, standing to greet his guests. In centuries past, the Imperial Army was comprised of a successful partnership between mages and cavalry, a joint force that inspired fear and conquered damn near half the continent. In the wake of the Mage Rebellion, the army fell to ruin even as the Black Guards rose to prominence hunting ex army mages.

  Now it is the Iron Empire who must fear our magic-wielding neighbors. The magistrate snorted in his mind at the vagaries of history. The barbarian north pays us lip service. They need our trade and keep their shamans out of sight beyond the mountains. And Corel? Even with our own mages fighting for the empire, we could never conquer Corel. Dragons in the mountains. Battle mages in the valleys. But maybe I can convince these gentlemen to embark on a glorious, heroic raid . . . for the right stakes and a suitable reward.

  He faced all of the generals in turn and shook their hands as they arranged themselves around the large, oval table. The conference room was uncomfortably cozy with four armored knights and one government official crammed within its walls. Sitting across from the generals, he could count the boils on their faces. The stench of sweat and steel hovered over the room.

  The magistrate rang his bell. “Bring som
e refreshments from downstairs,” he told the attendant. “But before that, squeeze around us and open all the little windows. It's much too dark and stuffy in here.” He examined the generals. Captain Vice's quest for the perfect flavor rawhide always came to mind when the magistrate thought of the generals tossed like four mismatched leather boots into his proverbial backyard: General Goins the Sweet, General Onus the Sour, General Reaper the Bitter, and General Festus the Old Salt.

  “Thank you all for coming on such short notice, gentlemen. I have a reliable agent fresh from the field coming here shortly to give us a full report in person. As you can see,” he gestured to the red-splotched papers hanging on the walls, “the situation is dire.”

  “The situation?” General Goins asked, settling into one of the larger chairs and propping his feet on the table. “Your letter was somewhat vague. What precisely is this situation, my dear fellow?”

  “Haven't you heard the rumors?” As if Captain Vice, the back-stabbing little shit, hasn't been spreading rumors and dissension to herald his arrival in the right ears . . . your ears, gentlemen. Thank you so much for telling me, inter-service rivalries be damned. The magistrate shuffled the reports, passing a small stack to each general. “The local mage menace which tormented South District for two years is now an international threat. An evil wizard threatens us from the east. One of ours, sad to say.”

  “We heard something to that effect from one of your own captains, Magistrate,” General Onus puffed himself up. “Sloppy housekeeping, letting the little rat escape.”

  The magistrate looked down his nose at the short general. “He's not such a little rat these days, General Onus. Destroyed an innocent town. Assembled an army of wooden constructs. Terrorized several very influential, very rich imperial citizens from the capitol. We must protect our civilians, yes? At home or abroad. Sadly, gentlemen, my hands are tied.” He raised his arms.

  “It's a mage problem, Magistrate. Hunting those criminals is your bailiwick, is it not?” Goins asked.