She said nothing more. The silence stretched and deepened while she waited for an answer. On a small table beside the bed a jug of water called to me, my throat dry and rasping, but chained to the bed it was just a different kind of torture for me. I frowned, head clearing slightly. “You can’t blame me for every ill.”
She stared at me, face unreadable. “You claim it to be mere coincidence? If it was not you, then why flee? Who else would we suspect under such circumstances?”
“Byzant would have squashed me like a bug.” Which he would have. Effortlessly. Byzant had been older and scarier than any magus in existence, that old crone Shadea excepted. “My leaving had nothing to do with that, and in any case I left before he disappeared.”
“We only have your word for that, and I am certain it is merely blind coincidence that you leave the very same day a god dies and then you return shortly after the rest of our gods go missing,” Cillian said, voice oozing sarcasm. “You really must forgive my entirely unwarranted scepticism. We have had you tested and the loyalty of the Forging is still in place; without that I would not believe a single word you say.” It wasn’t like she had any cause to trust me, not after the way I’d treated her in the past, but it still rankled. She looked over the scars running down my face and neck. “What happened to you?”
“Bad booze and worse women,” I whispered. “What’s it to you?”
She scowled. Cillian was colder and harder than she had been, but people could change a lot in ten years. You didn’t become a member of the Inner Circle by wearing pretty flowers in your hair and filling out your robes nicely; you got there by power, skill, manipulation and ruthlessness. Time passed, people and places changed. That was the way of things. I pulled at my chains and realized that my arms barely worked, the muscles slow and unresponsive, my body almost completely numb. There was no feeling at all in my left leg where I’d been wounded. I suffered a moment of panic until my toes gave an obliging wiggle. They’d taken the shards of stone out but it was still wrapped in a bloodied bandage.
She shifted, crossing her legs. “I shouldn’t bother. Those chains are unbreakable. In any case, you are lucky to be alive after allowing your magic to overwhelm you. You always were weak and contrary, but I had not thought you to be a complete idiot. You were a survivor, more inclined to scurry off like a rat than stand and fight for something worthy.”
A niggling worry that I was too groggy to understand everything made me ask: “How long have I slept?”
“Two nights.”
A dark and urgent thought reared its ugly head. My tongue juddered over cracked lips and I struggled forming the right words. “Boneyards – Charra.”
“Charra? Ah, so that was your dirty little friend,” Cillian said, a sour expression on her face. “She is alive. For now.”
“If you are threatening her then I’d think very carefully,” I said, with only a hint of a tremble making its way into my voice. Something was wrong with me, my body flipping between hot and cold, some sort of alchemic wearing off.
A look of haughty scorn on her face. “Or you will do what? You cannot even get out of bed.”
Dissever purred from somewhere inside my body, letting me know it could slice through my leg, chains and Cillian herself all with equal ease, but physical or magical threats wouldn’t do any good. I had to hit her where it would really hurt, threaten something she’d dreamed of for so long. “Or you’ll lose your council seat.”
Her brow furrowed in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“How many favours do you think Charra is owed by people of power and influence? How many precautions do you think she’s taken?” I said with a forced smile, futilely straining against my chains. “Those crusty old traditionalists can’t be pleased a young upstart like you sits on the Inner Circle. How many more votes against you do you think it would it take? Do you even have a clue who you are dealing with, Cillian?”
To her credit, she didn’t let her mouth run away with her. She scrutinized my face. I didn’t have to bluff, which was good since if I’d had to lie I didn’t think I’d be the least bit convincing in my current state. I knew fine well that Charra could call in favours – she’d called in Old Gerthan to look at the murder scene after all – and you didn’t get as rich and influential as Charra was without greasing a large number of palms and bartering favours with both the gangs and the nobility.
Finally Cillian nodded. “It would seem that I have underestimated her, in that case,” she said. Her cold and controlled facade cracked, lips twisting into a snarl. It was good to see that some of her old fiery nature remained. “In any case, you arrogant buffoon, I was not making a threat. I simply meant that the healers have purged the poison from her body, but they cannot halt her disease progressing further.”
I went still. “What do you mean?”
Her anger shattered: lips parted, eyes softening as realisation dawned. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” The numbing effects of the alchemic they’d given me was fading fast, draining from my body like I was a leaky bucket, leaving me shaking and bonecrushingly tired. I waited for the pain that would be arriving shortly. You couldn’t do what I’d done, physically and magically, and not reap the consequences, but at the moment all I felt was my stomach dropping away into a bottomless pit. “I have to see her. Please. What’s wrong with Charra?”
“It is not my place to discuss your friend’s health,” she said, silk whispering as she paced the room. “Edrin, do you have any idea of just how much trouble you are in? After ten years supposedly dead you suddenly burst out of a warded entrance to the catacombs with your magic out of control and a dying woman in your arms. There are many questions needing answers, not least your actions on that night ten years ago. You know as well as I do that magi whisper tyrant when they speak of you. However unwarranted.” That last bit she didn’t seem entirely convinced of.
I creaked open my badly abused Gift. A trickle of power seeped through. It felt not dissimilar to plunging my head into a barrel of shattered glass and I couldn’t hold it open. Cillian was fortunately not endowed with senses acute enough to detect that sort of attempt. What she was, however, was potentially the most dangerous magus I’d ever met, Byzant and Shadea included. Cillian didn’t go in for fire and lightning or flashy tricks, nor inhuman feats of speed or strength; her affinity was for water magic. Fire, earth and air, and even the rarer talents such as mine, took a little time to channel the power and weave a magical attack. Hydromancers boasted the swiftest of all Gifts, but even amongst those Cillian was special. She could use her Gift as fast as thought, could stop my blood pumping or burst my veins before I could blink. I had to first break through people’s will to affect them, while she suffered no such restrictions.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll answer whatever questions you have. Just get me out of these damn chains and take me to her.” My head started throbbing and I was burning up, pain finally arriving to kick down my door and fling in an oil lantern. She’d timed her visit perfectly. I didn’t think it a coincidence.
Cillian held up a finger. “Not so fast. Answers first, your friend second. No negotiation and no room for you to wriggle out. That is the way this will happen unless you want to spend your life in chains.”
She held all the cards and she knew it. Well, all but one. “Let’s cut the crap,” I said. “Take me to see Charra, and I’ll tell you what I was doing in the Boneyards, or whatever else you want to know.”