God of Broken Things

Chapter 8

The thing that hobbles the Arcanum the most when it comes to dealing with people in the less reputable areas of the city is that they love to keep their secrets strapped so tight under their robes that it cuts off their own blood supply. They never trust ‘simple-minded’ wardens with the truth, and their… our members overwhelmingly come from the noble Houses, which also means they have no sodding clue about where to begin looking for miscreants holed up in Docklands. No, they rely on the wardens for that – those very same soldiers they habitually withhold information from. Which meant the fools wouldn’t even tell the wardens why they wanted me.

On the eve of them marching to war and death, the wardens didn’t care a whit about trawling the arse-end of Docklands hunting a single magus on vague reasons and unknown purpose. Understandably, they wanted to spend that precious time with their loved ones. Jovian still knew a few of the wardens, indeed he had trained some of their best, and a bag of coin donated by the late Alvarda Kernas helped them support their families in their absence. It left us free to stuff our faces with the last decent food and booze we’d see this side of the war, and after lingering in prison my coterie needed a damn good feed.

Vaughn still had plans to flee into the night and when I went to drain my bladder he made his move, or tried to. For some reason he couldn’t seem to find the door, running round and round the room futilely pushing and pounding on the walls.

When I returned the others were all laughing at the big, stupid brute. One by one their laughter died as they realised he wasn’t that drunk and he really couldn’t see the door. Then they turned to regard me nervously and I raised a jack of ale in salute. They didn’t seem to want to meet my gaze after that.

As the night wore on I slipped into each of their alcoholmudded minds and twisted their thoughts and feelings to make sure they could never betray me, even Jovian, especially Jovian. He was changeable as the wind, that one, despite his Esbanian sense of personal honour. None of them would ever have any idea of what I’d done, or why they were developing this grudging loyalty to me. Their loyal service for a single season and a little mental manipulation was a fair trade for freedom in my opinion, which was the only one that mattered.

As my last night of calm and comfort drew to a close I had time to sit and think. I nursed the dregs of my ale and pondered the morality of bending these vicious killers to my will. How did I feel about that? Once I would have felt bad. It was certainly a sensible precaution but “because they are scum” was more justification than I needed right now. I didn’t need any at all in truth. They were just tools to me, things to be used and tossed aside when I was done. That’s bloody cold, Walker, too cold. Was it due to my growing power as a magus? Or was that simply being an efficient commander? Or did I just not give a shite about folk I didn’t know and like? I was growing cold and callous and that made me uncomfortable when I preferred to think of myself as a man of the people that cared for my own.

Jovian leapt onto a table and a jug of wine appeared in his hand as if by magic. He began dancing with Nareene, leading the others in an Esbanian drinking song about bawdy wenches chasing bare-chested young men. They didn’t understand the words but quickly latched onto the tune. I didn’t much care for the others but I’d shared wine and crude jokes with Jovian many a time back in the old days. I liked the mad little Esbanian and as a rule I didn’t warm to many people. Mostly, I found them and their unguarded thoughts insulting and irritating.

I would need to watch that callous side of myself carefully. I was growing into the sort of magus I had railed against all my life, those cold and calculating elder magi that were everything I despised in the Arcanum. Or they had been. Now their mindset seemed to be making a lot of sense. The lives of mundanes were fleeting and fragile things and so very limited in scope, but they had fire and passion, and I refused to let that side of me slip away without a fight. But magic changes a man.

“Be ready, we embark at dawn,” I said. Then I took my two Skallgrim thralls and retreated upstairs to a free room, leaving my people to bond without the big ugly tyrant and his broken toys looming over them. I bid my thralls to take turns keeping watch and then collapsed onto the soft bedding.

I was exhausted and at first light my war would begin, but sleep proved a flighty and fleeting prey filled with all my old mistakes resurrected to join forces with the horrors of the recent past.

We were up and boarding a rugged Ahramish sloop named Y’Ruen’s Revenge before anybody could report my presence back to the Arcanum. The surly hydromancer assigned to smooth our ship’s passage through the still-stormy winter sea was scandalised at being forced into close quarters with the likes of me, but he wisely kept his jaw shut. Didn’t stop him thinking about it though. Unlike most magi, his mind was like a leaky bucket, one brimming full of self-entitled shite. I gritted my teeth and suffered the silent insults. For now.

I stared out at the docks watching the passing carriages, waiting for one to stop and disgorge a high ranking magus to deliver my inevitable dressing down. The deck lurched beneath me and my stomach went with it. Fucking ships!

Hot breath on my ear: “Good morning, Edrin.”

I yelped and flinched as Cillian stepped aboard right in the middle of my coterie. Steps formed from water splashed down behind her as blades whispered from sheathes all around us. She looked powerfully official, wearing warded blue robes and a golden circlet adorning her brow.

“Stand down you dogs,” Jovian cried. “Don’t you know a magus when you see one?” They grumbled but did as he ordered. Not that they posed any real threat to Cillian of course.

“I do hope you stay more vigilant when you arrive in the Clanholds,” she said, earning only a grunt from me. “I have come to wish you well, Commander Walker. The others have already set sail for Barrow Hill.”

She lowered her voice so that only I would hear, “Be careful, I have heard whispers that lead me to believe many magi wish you ill and would perhaps kill you should they get the chance.”

I snorted. “Oh really? I had no idea. Are you only just realising this?”

“Before, I think most viewed you as an inconvenient and dirty little problem. What you did during the Black Autumn, and now with Shadea, has driven many towards terror, which breeds stupidity. Some who feel similar may be among those magi and wardens who will accompany you.” She sighed. “Those who play with gods will inevitably get burned. Should you return I will have many, many questions for you.” Then she smiled at my guards as I stood sick and frozen. “I wish you all the best of luck.” She descended the gangplank and entered a plush carriage.

It was a shitty send-off and no mistake, but it was about all I had expected really.

The accursed voyage passed in a blur of nausea and white-capped waves crashing across the deck. Every hour of every frozen, salt-sodden day I wished an agonising death on the spiteful hydromancer, convinced he was making the trip rougher than necessary. We sailed for four interminable days and then spent a night at anchor in a rocky bay sheltering from black waves high as mountains before continuing on. Over the next two days the only human interaction I had was exchanging green-gilled looks of misery with Nareene and Baldo as we leaned over the rails to spew our guts overboard.

After an age, we finally reached our destination. Barrow Hill was little more than a glorified fishing village with crap drink, crapper food and worse people, but it boasted an impressive collection of ancient snow-capped cairns and stone circles scattered across the surrounding hillsides. The stone monuments bore undecipherable carvings that pulled in curious travellers and scholars from all over Kaladon and beyond. Despite the town’s innate and inescapable crapness, on sighting the smoke rising from warm dry buildings Barrow Hill suddenly seemed like a golden summer land of joy and honey. Dry land. Blessed, solid, dry land!

We dropped anchor just before dusk, sodden and shivering bodies greeted by glowing lanterns that beckoned us onwards.

I would have sold my entire coterie for a mug of hot wine, a dry blanket and a seat next to a fireplace. My legs were jelly as I grabbed my pack and lurched down the icy wharf towards the town’s only inn, my arms outstretched for balance like a pup of a boy just learning to walk.

Glorious warmth rolled over us as we staggered into the inn’s common room and stamped off slush and snow. All talk and laughter ceased as our bedraggled group dripped our way over to a sparsely occupied table of locals. Stools scraped backwards as they made way for us. We were not the first Setharii here: three groups of uniformed wardens cast baleful and disparaging looks over our little pack of villainy, and three robed magi sat alone at a fine table by the fire. I left my people to do their own thing and trudged my way over. I wouldn’t have bothered but the magi were next to the fire. That and at least one of them might try to kill me at some point if I didn’t figure out who was against me.

Red–bearded and ruddy-faced Cormac gave me a perfunctory nod of greeting, but the other two didn’t even make that small sign of acknowledgement. One I knew, a balding grey-robed artificer with hooked nose and bushy eyebrows named Granville Buros, a ‘proper nobleman’ and a real stickler for the rules, but superb with all things mathematical and metallic. None of which endeared him to me, but a second geomancer would certainly come most handy in the mountains. He was one of the senior artificers in the Arcanum, and was in charge of maintaining the Clock of All Hours and its associated mechanisms. He was both potent and a giant prick, which made him a prime suspect for trying to knife me in the back given half a chance.

The other magus was a pale woman with delicate features and long dark hair enveloped by an unusual black and white hood -the illusionist who had volunteered during conclave. She sipped nervously at a small cup of red wine. Her eyes flicked around the room and studiously avoided meeting my gaze.

“Good evening,” I said to them, trying to be polite despite my decrepit state. “I hope you had a better voyage than we did.”

“Fair to middling,” Cormac said. “Granville and Secca were already in the north so I suspect they had a more pleasant journey.”

“Granville Buros,” I said by way of greeting. “Edrin.” It was a calculated insult to omit Walker. My legitimate claim to the surname came from my mother’s folk in the Clanholds, but he’d never considered it proper in the manner of Setharii Houses.

I didn’t give him the pleasure of annoying me, instead I ignored him. “Secca is it? I don’t think we have met before. I am Edrin Walker, and I would clasp hands but I think I need to bathe first.” She did look slightly familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place it.

She offered a faltering, forced smile but her eyes burned into me, examining my face. “Well met, commander.” She didn’t offer her own House name, if she had one. Granville and Cormac’s mouths twitched, resisting the urge to scowl. Oh I liked her. “I am an illusionist by trade and if I am honest, I am not entirely sure how I can assist you.” She did look bewildered and out of place amongst armed wardens and older magi.

“I’m sure we will find many ways,” I said. Depending on how proficient she was, I could come up with any number of sneaky, underhanded uses for a magus of light and shadow. That black-clad one-eyed knight could undoubtedly think up many suited to warfare.

Weak and woozy, I exchanged a few more words and then I took my leave to wash and sup a little bland cabbage soup to settle my stomach before collapsing into a pallet of straw up on the second floor of the inn. I lay there curled up in a ball beneath a dry blanket, the ground still undulating and my nausea plaguing me until exhaustion finally claimed me.

I woke with a hollow gnawing pit where my stomach had been, a raging thirst and a pounding head. Somebody handed me a cup of cold water and I gulped it down. “Thank…” my words dropped off as I realised that one of my mind-broken thralls had handed me the cup. I’d commanded him by instinct before I was properly awake. I stared into the bearded husk’s blank eyes for a moment and saw myself through his mind, then shuddered and hauled myself upright. Dangerous, very dangerous. I clenched my Gift tight as I could. Other people were not mere extensions of myself. For a moment there he had been a part of me, a second pair of eyes.

Every tribe and people across the known world had their own myths and legends from the distant age of tyranny, when magi like me ruled. They were misty memories of an age of nightmares, and thousands of years later it was impossible for modern people to really imagine what occurred back then. But now I was beginning to grasp those true histories only too well. They must have been every bit as horrifying as the Magash Mora, and where that abomination had absorbed flesh, blood and bone into a single amorphous monster, those tyrants had taken minds and done the exact same. If I wanted I could take every warden in this inn and enslave them. I didn’t need to leave them in the same completely broken state as my two Skallgrim raiders but they would be mine all the same in both body and mind. Their eyes would be my eyes, their hands my hands. It was not surprising I was considered a nightmare to the Arcanum.

I broke out in a cold sweat – was it any wonder that Alvarda Kernas had wanted to put one of those Scarrabus into me? I was no hero eager to sacrifice myself for fame and a fancy memorial but I vowed to slit my own throat before allowing that kind of atrocity to happen.

Contemplating suicide was a shitty way to start the day. I cheered up by telling myself that I’d just need to have all my enemies slaughtered before they ever got that close.

I got ready and kicked the rest of my coterie awake. By the time we dragged ourselves down to the common room the wardens had been up, washed and breakfasted and were already outside training in a lazily drifting snowfall. The clangs of steel and muted cursing did nothing to help my headache.

After lingering in the Black Garden my guards were more in need of meat on their bones than weapons practice, so I ordered up food and we ate in the dry and warmth watching the other coteries in full mail and gambeson drilling and sparring with shield, spear and dagger.

I frowned. “Where are all their swords?”

Jovian raised an eyebrow. “You are too used to the narrow lanes of towns and cities perhaps. What use would spears be there? In open battle the reach of a spear is superior. Swords are, hmm, secondary weapons you might say. I expect our bows to take the most lives.” He eyed their large and heavy tower shields stacked off to one side. “Excepting magery of course. Most die to magic while we shield you.”

“I see.” My knowledge about battle was pathetic, mostly consisting of brutal knife-fights in dark alleys. Let the knight and the wardens deal with everything around tactics and warfare then, I would do what I was good at – sneaky bastardry and fucking people up when and where they were least expecting it. The wardens were all very competent but I didn’t need more men and women who fought by the book; no, I wanted stealth and vicious cunning. If the Skallgrim and their summoned daemons got close enough to me then a few extra hands wouldn’t matter.

A note from Cormac left with the innkeep this morning advised that a ship bearing two more coteries and the bulk of our supplies had arrived in the early hours but that we were still missing the last ship, delayed thanks to damage from the storm that had caused us to shelter in the bay. I hoped the last magus and their coterie would catch up with us before we marched tomorrow. The odds were bad enough. He had left a whole bunch of other papers with names and lists but I couldn’t be bothered reading them right there and then. I had a whole day to do that, and I wasn’t needed until we arrived in the Clanholds. The Arcanum had already arranged everything and I was just an inconvenient figurehead.

I asked Jovian to begin teaching my coterie some of his dirty tricks after they were all fed and watered. It was a better use of his time than trying to teach them to fight like wardens. He seemed eager to begin, but also insisted on foisting a long dagger upon me, a sheathed Clanholds dirk to replace the puny knife I always kept handy.

“Mighty magus? Yes, yes all very powerful, but so is a blade in the back, no?”

It was hard to argue with that logic, so I let him tie it to my belt and then slid my smaller knife into my boot before climbing the nearest hill to take a look at some of Barrow Hill’s standing stones. I wanted to be alone, and after today I wouldn’t get another chance for months. I’d been through the town twice before during my long exile and I’d thought nothing of them at the time, but after what I’d seen in the Boneyards below Setharis during the Black Autumn I had some worrying suspicions that called for further exploration.

For all her filth and smoke, unique stench, terrible crime and surly big city populace, I loved Setharis. It would always be a large part of my black and battered little heart. But here and now, tramping through pristine white snow and breathing fresh crisp air, I would rather be nowhere else. The town below was overrun by soldiers and every cart, horse and donkey in the area had been requisitioned to carry our supplies. Messengers came and left, carrying reports and orders. The wardens’ thoughts buzzed like a hive of angry wasps in the back of my brain, a constant annoyance. As I climbed higher the shouts and clangs of my small army faded on the wind, and the wardens swarming all around Barrow Hill reduced to dots, the buzzing dampened to a soft background hiss.

I felt cleansed; my pain, despair and loss all scoured away by icy wind. My troubles seemed lessened by distance. I left it all behind and climbed the path to the flat top of the hill and stood alone in the centre of a circle of tall grey stones that predated the town: ancient rocks standing in defiance of rain, wind and ice for years beyond record. The stones were half buried in snow and wore white caps. Three squared obelisks reared larger than the other, rougher stones in the outer circle: the largest to the north, others forming a triangle to the south-west and south-east.

From the centre of the monument, the view over the whole valley was every bit as majestic as I remembered. A slate-grey river serpentined north and west back to its source in the rugged white peaks of the Clanholds, still deep within the clutches of winter. Across the river and twenty leagues directly north along the rocky coast squatted the mining town of Ironport, from where the Skallgrim practiced blackest sorcery and prepared to invade all the lands of Kaladon.

I wondered if they’d left anybody in that town alive after I escaped onboard the last ship out. Did Old Sleazy and his serving girl still serve up fine drink and their lumpy grey special stew? Probably not. The tavern had been aflame and that sour-faced one-eyed git had meant to fight to the death, and as for her, I’d left her face down in the mud with her dress burning into her back.

I sighed and let it go. I had ‘not caring’ down to a fine art, mostly. That was another life, one before I crippled myself to kill a god. I opened up my Gift and let my consciousness spread out, fingers of thought drifting across the whole valley, further than I’d ever imagined possible. In the town below the anxious minds of the wardens churned, and when I focused on the eyes and ears of my two thralls I discovered my coterie plotting and planning how to survive the coming war, and me. An old couple hosting several wardens radiated annoyance at the disruption to their lives. A warden and a local girl behind the stables were having frantic, and probably final, sex.

I was too busy looking into the distance to notice the small, quiet presence until it was right next to me. I snapped back into myself and spun. The black-clad knight present at the conclave cocked her head, single green eye studying me from behind that impassive steel mask. There was something eerily familiar about the way she felt, that mind curled up tight and strong as anybody I’d ever encountered.

A grainy, broken, female voice from behind the mask: “Here to clear your mind?”

“I’m here to examine the stones,” I replied. “You?”

She shook her head. “Didn’t take you for a scholar.” “We haven’t been properly introduced,” I said. “You know who I am, but who are you?”

A dry, rasping, humourless laugh. “I should have expected you hadn’t read your papers. I would hope you might remember me.”

I pulled Cormac’s crumpled notes from my pocket and hastily leafed through them until I found the list of magi assigned to the expedition. Breath caught in my throat. My left hand spasmed and the papers fluttered to the snow, forgotten.

“Eva?”

Impossible. She died! She must have. And yet the name Evangeline Avernus was there, inked by Cillian’s own hand.

I staggered back, tripped and landed arse-down in the snow, staring up at her. Those broad shoulders and green eye, the other gone where Heinreich had burned it away… Sweet Lady Night, Eva was alive! And I had left her there to die.

“How?” I choked out. “I watched you…” The word burn caught in my throat. “It’s not possible.”

“I lay abed for weeks after they dragged me from the street, voiceless, healing and hurting, unable to even say my name.” She placed a gloved hand on one of the great stones. Her voice took on a bitter tone, “A gods-given miracle the Halcyons called it. I suspect that I wanted revenge and my Gift made it so, whatever the cost in pain. I always did have a bad temper.”

Her agony must have been unimaginable. “You saved my life,” I said, skin crawling with self-hate. “You saved all of us. And I left you behind.”

“Whatever is left of me now, Walker, I am still a soldier. I would have told you to go, and I would have left you there had our positions been reversed. If you had stayed we would all be dead. Martain told me everything.”

“Even so, I should have been there when you woke. I didn’t know…”

“We are not here to reminisce and recriminate. Guilt is a useless commodity. We are at war and it is likely we will all die in these mountains. Don’t waste our time.”

I got to my feet and reached for her hand. “I’m still sorry.”

She flinched back. “Don’t touch me.”

I swallowed and nodded. She might be alive but her body would be a blackened mass of scar tissue and exposed bone – her armour had glowed red and run, melting onto the flesh beneath. Even a knight’s magically reinforced body could not have withstood that. I couldn’t imagine what it would do to a person’s mind, and beyond confirming that she was stable and sane enough not to be a liability, I dared not delve too deeply.

“The stones,” she rasped. “Why are you interested in crude rock?” It was a welcome change of subject. I beckoned her over to the largest lichen-covered stone that faced north. “I came through here a few years ago and didn’t think much of it then.” I glanced at her and quickly looked away again, “However, recent events have reminded me of something from my childhood.”

I dug snow from the base of the stone and scrubbed it from the shallow troughs of time-worn markings. A winter morning offered the perfect low angle of sunlight to view the carvings.

She crouched next to me to examine the symbols. Her presence – so close – burned into me. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and shout with joy, and I also wanted to crawl into a hole and hide from the writhing guilt. Instead, I did nothing.

“What are they?” she rasped. “All I see are vague shapes.” “That’s what I thought the first time I visited. But I had forgotten the things I saw in the catacombs of the Boneyards.” That earned me a sharp look. “Just before the Magash Mora emerged you carried me from the river up to the bridge to meet Shadea. Do you remember what she told me I found down there as a pup?”

“Something about ogres,” she said, impassive steel mask revealing no trace of expression.

I took three fingers and made a triangle, pressing them into three tiny pits in the rock. “These are eyes. Three of them.” I traced the surrounding shape. “This represents a sloping head, and here a bulky body like a bear or a great ape from the Thousand Kingdoms. The shape is all wrong for a human. Clansfolk stories call them the ogarim, and I found the desiccated corpse of one entombed beneath Setharis. It’s where I got my spirit-bound blade. And my fear of enclosed spaces.” My right hand itched like it was crawling with ants, making me want to rip the glove off and scrape it on stone until my blood ran free and hot. Anything to relieve the damn itch.

“How old is this circle?” she asked.

I grimaced. “Older than history. Our race’s that is.” “Makes you wonder what happened to them,” she replied. “If they can erect stones they can build houses. If they can build houses they can build a civilisation.”

The corpse I’d seen had been bigger than us and wearing finely crafted bronze armour, warded too if I remembered correctly. “More than likely humans wiped them out,” I said. “We excel at that sort of thing.”

She grunted in acknowledgement. “As commander, do you have any orders for me?”

I shook my head. “We both know I don’t have any fucking idea what I’m doing. I’m commander in name only. I trust you to do whatever is necessary.”

We didn’t say much after that, and nothing to do with the past, just went over a few deathly dull details of tomorrow’s march, logistics and whatnot. The old Eva was gone, and she would never return. It was immensely awkward and deeply saddening to go from brazen flirting and camaraderie with a young, vibrant women to facing this desert of guilt with a tortured human shell. If I’d been faster, more powerful or more intelligent, then I might have been able to do something.

She caught my look and stiffened. “I know pity,” she said. “And I want none of it.” She left me there amongst the stones, alone with the wind and snow and self-flagellation. Did I pity her, or pity my own weakness? I stayed there thinking until my face was numb and my body shivering. By the time I returned to the inn I found myself agreeing with Eva. Had it been me, I’d want nothing to do with pity. Now was a time for anger.

At my coterie’s table I flung my sodden coat down and bellowed for ale. “Right, you pack of mangy curs. Let’s chew on this business of war. How are we going to slaughter these heathen scum and head on home? The fouler the better – you won’t find me squeamish like those prissy wardens.”

Over the next few hours Diodorus and Nareene proved fertile ground for gruesomely effective ideas. I grinned at Jovian: we’d been wise to choose a killer for hire and an arsonist, and I was just the right sort of callous bastard to make full use of their macabre talents.

“Just tell me what you need to make this happen,” I said. “Those fuckers are going to burn.”