She sighed. “For once in your life do not make things worse for yourself. You will see her only when I am satisfied with your answers.”
I ran my tongue over dry, cracked lips. “Cillian, fuc… uh, the gods know you have no reason to trust me, but you can’t afford to dick about on this one. You need to know this, and you need to deal with it right now. Let me see her.”
She shook her head, moved to leave.
“Then on your head be it, Cillian. Go right ahead and open that door if you really don’t want to know about the monster that grows beneath your very feet, the monstrous creation of blood sorcery that will be unleashed tomorrow.”
Her hand paused on the latch. “Oh, very well,” she said. “But if it is not worth my time then you stay chained. As will your friend.” She turned back to me, eyes cold and calculating like the politician she now was.
It was hard to concentrate through the pain: Gift and muscles torn, bones aching, bruises throbbing, leg and shoulder wounds burning.
“Can I have a drink please?” I was frustrated by my own weakness.
She picked up the jug on the table, poured me a cup and carefully tipped it to my lips. Up in the Old Town the water was always pure and crystal clear. A chill balm soothed my lips and raw, parched throat.
“Thank you,” I said. So how to spin this… “How much blood magic has been going on lately?” Her lips tightened. “Let me guess: my friend Lynas Granton’s murder wasn’t investigated properly because there was a damn sight more going on than the Arcanum will ever publicly admit to?”
Her silence was answer enough. I cleared my throat and continued. “I followed the Skinner’s trail down into the catacombs.”
She looked at me incredulously. “And just how exactly did you find his trail?”
The pain was distracting and my head was thumping, making it difficult to manipulate truths and think up believable lies. I almost blurted out the actual truth, but the last thing I wanted to do was sully Lynas’ name by telling her that had been importing mageblood. Instead I said, “Because I actually give a shite about Docklanders.”
“As foul-mouthed as ever, I see.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I find it difficult to believe that you would go back down there after what happened to you in the past.” At least she believed me.
“For Lynas, Charra and Layla, I would.” The sooner this was over with the better.
“Who is Layla?”
Damn – I had to avoid any mention of their daughter. If they investigated and noticed the Forging rite papers for Layla had been falsified then they might start linking it all up to whatever deal I’d made ten years ago to haul everybody out of the fire. I was in no condition to attempt to match wits with Cillian. She was dangerously intelligent and had no doubt acquired a goodly dose of cunning if she’d risen this far this quickly.
“Charra’s daughter, not anybody you would know.” Fortunately she seemed to accept my answer. I proceeded to detail our encounter with the living idol and then my discovery of a magus blood sorcerer, the one that I suspected had a god inside him, and something else truly alien. She went ashen-faced as I described what he was growing in that pool of mageblood, the thing that ate magic.
She thumped down into the chair at the foot of my bed, her eyes burning into me. “Go over that again. Every single detail.” When I was done she looked ill, her face pale and sweaty. She had some idea of what that creature was. If a member of the Inner Circle was this scared, with all the arcane might at her disposal, then I found that downright terrifying.
“What was that thing in the pool?” I asked.
“None of your concern. You will not mention it to anybody.”
I was exhausted and in too much pain to put up a fight. “Please take me to Charra. Then you can go and poke about in your beloved book stacks.”
When we were more than friends she had spent most of her spare time with her nose buried in dusty books, Escharric scrolls and stone tablets, pouring over obscure histories and ancient texts written in dead languages of long-vanished civilisations I couldn’t even name. I resented it at the time, wanting her to spend more time out carousing with me than curled up with her beloved books. And who had done well for themselves in the end? Not me. Never me.
Absently, Cillian nodded. She chewed on her bottom lip, something she had always done when worried, and a habit I suspected she had tried hard to eradicate. Without a word she turned and wandered from the room, deep in thought.
“Come back here,” I croaked.
She didn’t.
Chapter 21
An age passed before three men entered the room: two muscular guards in chain and leather and a tired-looking young man in dust-streaked travelling clothes with a pack still slung over his shoulder. I didn’t recognize him, but from the sour expression he knew exactly who and what I was.
A strange dislocation washed over me. My Gift felt fuzzy and distant. A thrill of instinctive fear ran through my abused body – he was a sanctor, a magus-killer. I wasn’t in any condition to try to use magic, but they considered me dangerous enough to deny any chance of that.
“A damned tyrant,” the man groaned, hand clutching his head. “You are in my charge now that you are awake.”
The two guards carefully donned thick leather gloves before unchaining my ankles. It seemed the Arcanum still thought I could only use my power through skin contact. With the tyrants before me all dying so young they had little else to go on but what I had previously told them. The fools. Did they not know I was a liar?
“I’ve been accused of bringing on headaches before,” I said, “but never so quickly. Has to be a record even for me.” The sanctor looked at me like he’d happily stab me in the face. Luckily I was on familiar ground there. I tried to engage him in conversation but he found the bare walls far more interesting.
The guards hauled me to my feet. My legs were locked into a solid mass of cramping muscle. I gritted my teeth and ignored it. Pain belonged to somebody else. The numb stiffness in my left thigh made it difficult to walk; it felt like somebody had rammed an iron rod through the muscle. Blood seeped out to stain the bandages as they dressed me in plain grey tunic and trousers, no modesty spared.
They half-carried me down a deserted wood-panelled hallway with guards posted at every door, the sanctor never more than three paces behind me. I wondered if he kept his distance out of habit, or if he too feared my touch. Ah, if only – the things I could do with an enslaved sanctor! It would be so simple to control the Inner Circle then; to shut down their Gifts and beat them unconscious, to dominate them while they slumbered. In a month I would control the core of the Arcanum. In six, the city. Everybody who mattered anyway: peasants swarmed like vermin in the lower city, far too many to take them all. Then I would have the power to change everything. The only problem would be… My thoughts crashed to a stop. Peasants as vermin? This wasn’t me. I looked deep into myself, scrutinized my own mind. The Worm of Magic stared right back out at me, larger and more cunning than ever.
If I wasn’t who and what I was then I didn’t think I’d ever have noticed the taint to my thoughts. There was no way to know how much the magic had altered me in body or mind. I shuddered, horrified, fighting the urge to vomit. When a magus gave in to the Worm it didn’t create something that wasn’t already there, it was far more insidious than that: it took what already existed and twisted it, stretched it out in obscene directions. Those thoughts were horribly, and entirely, the darkest whispers of my own mind.