Honor among thieves

Chapter One Hundred Five

Malden ordered Velmont to search for other survivors in the university cloister and organize teams of bucket-bearers to put out the fire. He picked Slag up in his arms and carried him away from the rubble. The dwarf’s body was no great burden-dwarves were slender creatures to start with, and now, missing an arm, burned over so much of his body, Slag felt as light as a child.

The dwarf spoke no more as Malden staggered through the snow-clogged streets. Before they had gotten properly out of reach of the dizzying fumes of the fire, Slag had fallen unconscious in Malden’s arms. It was quite likely he was already dead.

Malden did not have the heart to find out for sure.

He did not know how far he walked, carrying that slight burden. He was not aware of where he was, exactly, when Cythera found him. He heard her speaking and saw her mouth move, but her words entered his brain and got lost there in the same maze that had confounded his own thoughts. He realized suddenly that she was trying to take Slag away from him. He resisted her, though he could not have said why.

Cythera gestured for him to follow her. She went to the door of the nearest house, the mansion of some great merchant. The door was boarded over but all the windows on the second floor had been smashed in-probably by thieves, back when there was still something to be looted in the Golden Slope. Malden started to climb up the side of the house but couldn’t get far with Slag in his arms. Cythera shook her head. Then she lifted a hand and the boards across the door creaked and their nails glowed red hot, then dripped like candle wax. The boards clattered into the street.

Her witchcraft was weak, she had said. Her powers still untested. He wondered what marvels she would perform when she had learned some more.

Inside, the house was cold and empty and silent. They went into the kitchen and Cythera convinced Malden to lay Slag down on an oak table there. She pointed at the fire, and a small flame leapt forth from the cold ashes. “Get fuel, or it’ll go out again,” she told him. She had to repeat the instruction three times.

Malden went and fetched the boards from where they lay in the street. He fed them to the fire. When they didn’t catch right away, he found an expensive-looking chair in the front room and smashed it for kindling.

By the time he had the fire going properly, Cythera was already at work on Slag’s broken body. She washed the soot and blood away from his many wounds, and for the first time Malden saw just how badly Slag had been hurt. He had to look away. He couldn’t breathe.

“It’s… it’s bad,” Cythera told him. Her voice was thin and ready to break. “He lives, but his heart is fluttering like a bird in a snare. He has perhaps a few minutes left. He’ll stop breathing soon, and then he’ll convulse, and eventually he’ll just… stop. Ah. Oh, Malden. It’s happening. He’s dying.”

“Please. He’s my friend. There must be something you can do. Maybe-Maybe just make him comfortable. Take away his pain.”

Cythera stared at Malden with desperate eyes. He didn’t understand-she was wasting time, time Slag didn’t have.

“You’re a witch now. That has to count for something,” he begged.

“It counts for a great deal. And it’s why I can’t-”

“Stop this! I can see in your eyes that you have the power,” he said. “Don’t you care about Slag? How can you look at him like this and not help him?”

“I’m supposed to stay detached,” Cythera said, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

Malden had no idea what her words meant. He didn’t care. “Don’t you love me anymore? Do this for me, Cythera. Save him because you love me!”

“You have no idea what you’re asking.”

Her words were defiant but he knew he’d moved her. She would do it, he was sure of it. He opened his mouth, intending to renew his entreaties, but something in her countenance warned him not to speak. Eventually she broke his gaze.

“This is it. The moment Mother foresaw, when I break my promise to her,” she said. The words were not for Malden, so he did not question them. “I thought it would be easier to resist. But some temptations are bigger than us, aren’t they?”

“Cythera,” Malden moaned. “He’s dying.”

“Yes,” she said. “Even Coruth couldn’t save him now.”

But then she began to incant, speaking words that didn’t sound human at all. Malden smelled a sudden reek of brimstone, and red light played across the walls. He felt something move in the room behind him and he turned to look, expecting-well, he didn’t know what to expect. There was nothing there, of course. He started to turn back to face Cythera and Slag but the air felt like it had frozen solid and he could barely move.

“Don’t look at me,” Cythera commanded, and he might as well have been made of marble. His neck wouldn’t turn at all. He could only stare at the red-lit walls and wonder what was going on.

“Cythera-” he tried, but she interrupted him.

“I’m going to save his life. But there will be a price to be paid.”

“Anything,” Malden told her. “Do you need gold? Rare medicinal herbs? The powder of crushed diamonds? Tell me and it’ll be done.”

“It’s not your price to pay,” she said in a voice that was almost gentle. “Malden-is it wrong to heal? Is it ever wrong to heal?”

“I don’t think so,” he told her. “What is the price?”

She wouldn’t answer his question.

“I can do it,” she said. “I can.”

She worked for nearly an hour. Malden stayed frozen in place the whole time. He heard… things, unguessable, unspeakable things moving about the room. He heard them whisper utter foulness to Cythera.

He heard her answer them back in kind.

As impossible as it seemed, as terrified as he was, Malden started to drift off into a kind of doze before it was done. Yet when she finished, he snapped instantly awake and realized he could move again. He spun around and found her slouched over the table, leaning close over Slag’s body as if praying over the dwarf. Her back heaved as though she’d been drained completely of her vigor.

“I had to call on certain… spirits. Creatures that haunt the ether, always looking to enter our world, to find any way out of their prison. It is forbidden to open a way for them.” She was silent for a while. He heard her gasping for breath.

“Did you let them in?” Malden asked. He didn’t care if she had, though he had begun to understand what she’d done. If there were anything less than Slag’s life at stake, it would have been unforgivable. The spirits she spoke of were demons, he was certain. Denizens of Sadu’s pit of souls. The creatures Croy was oath-bound to fight against. The demons Acidtongue had been made to slay.

“No,” she said, though it sounded like she wasn’t entirely sure. “I needed their knowledge, not their physical forms. I was able to convince them to tell me what I needed to know without freeing them.”

“Then you did the right thing,” Malden assured her.

“It was difficult. The dwarves spurn all nature of magic,” she said, her voice the whisper of a page in a book being turned by an index finger, nothing more. “The… spirits were loath to help. I didn’t have the strength to convince them. So I compelled them. I compelled them, Malden. A witch does not compel. A witch bargains, cajoles, begs, tricks, cheats-never compels. Mother taught me that much. She didn’t teach me this.”

Malden understood only a little of what she was saying, but he knew she was distressed by what she’d done. He placed a hand on her back, intending to comfort her.

She flinched away from his touch.

Then she turned to face him. He saw that a streak of white had appeared amidst her sable hair.

He had seen practitioners of magic-sorcerers, not witches-deformed by congress with demons. Their faces and bodies had been distorted to perversions of the human shape. This was a very mild alteration compared to some he’d seen. Yet he understood. These slight changes were only the beginning. The process was gradual, but irreversible. Every time she used this kind of power, the changes would become more salient.

“I had a father to teach me as well,” she said.

Malden remembered holding a dagger against her naked breast. He remembered Coruth’s command, that Cythera must be slain if she chose the path of sorcery instead of the path of witchcraft. Her father’s path, rather than her mother’s.

He remembered the words Coruth had whispered to him, after she and her daughter fought off the barbarians scaling the wall. Coruth had tried to warn him that Cythera might follow her father’s path. And tell him it was not too late, even now, to put that knife through her heart, to stop her from becoming like Hazoth.

“Cythera,” he breathed.

“Do you still find me beautiful, Malden?” she asked. “Can you even look me in the eye?”

Her voice was so harsh Malden was fearful that maybe he couldn’t-that maybe even meeting her gaze would kill him on the spot. He forced himself to take her by the shoulders and look into her face. He saw nothing diabolic there, nothing dangerous. She was still Cythera. Still the woman he loved. “You’re as beautiful as ever,” he said, and he meant it.

She gasped as if he’d utterly surprised her. Then she turned away and shook her head. “Soon I’ll have to start wearing a veil,” she told him. Veils were the traditional garb of sorcerers. Her father had worn one.

“No. Just promise me you’ll never use that power again.”

“What if it had been you lying on that table? Or Croy? I wouldn’t have hesitated. I won’t, when your time comes.”

Malden looked past her, to see Slag lying in a peaceful sleep on the table. His burns were still pink and tender, the color of fresh scar tissue. Many of his hurts were gone altogether. His skin was pale white, the color of a corpse-but that was just the skin tone of a healthy dwarf.

Where his left arm had been, where there was only ragged meat before, there was now smooth flesh, free of scars or blemishes. It looked like he’d been born with only one arm.

“You did what you had to do,” Malden said. “You did this because I asked you to.”

“He’s my friend, too,” she told him. He tried to hold her but she pushed him away. “Look,” she said.

Slag’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment they remained unfocused, and Malden thought the dwarf would lapse back into unconsciousness. Then a weird vitality seemed to wash through him, all his muscles jumping at once, his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. His lips pressed together, then opened again. He sat up and started to babble.

“The vessel, it’s cast but-but I didn’t have time to sound its impurities, it could shatter under the stress. And no time to make the projectile, I’ll have to use-but the overpressure-wadding, maybe, perhaps a striking plate, except-except-the tunnels! We have to check the tunnels!”