Lynas sits on a stool to the side of the bed, a wry and knowing smile on his face. His knuckles are skinned and raw, but otherwise he’s come through the fight without a scratch. How I always come away worse off I have no idea.
“Is it broken?” I say, peering down at my nose.
She flicks it with a finger. I shriek and scoot back, clutching my face. “That’ll teach you,” she says, faking a scowl. “Did I say I needed saving?”
“No, but–”
“But nothing. I’ve been on the streets all my life.” She glances around the tiny room that consists of nothing more than a straw pallet, single stool and a wobbly table with folded rags stuffed under one leg. “Well, until now.” It barely has enough room to fit all three of us but her eyes still shine with pride. It is her room, bought and paid for with her own coin.
I gingerly pat my nose, wincing at each spike of pain.
“You know I can handle sleazy old men like that,” she says. Her mirth at my bruised face and sheepish expression makes me smile. My burst lips object. That feral child has changed remarkably over the last two years. Somehow without me even realising it Charra has become the practical backbone of our trio. “We both know I fight dirty. Make you a deaclass="underline" if I ever want your help, then I’ll ask for it. Good enough?”
I nod. “Sorry.”
“What were you thinking? Just charging in like that?” She smiled, knocking a fist against my shoulder. “Idiot. His sort of slime treat women like dirt all the time.” She shakes her head. “You wouldn’t last a week as a woman.”
I grin. “As if you will ever see me in a dress! As for what I was thinking…” I shrug. “You know me, always leaping before I look.” In truth I’m bloody well worried something is very wrong with me, and even Archmagus Byzant’s constant ministrations haven’t convinced me otherwise. Ever since the Forging I’ve grown increasingly cracked in the head – I always need to have that last little needling dig, to stick in a barbed comment at exactly the wrong moment. I’m scared I’ll get myself killed. I’ve been in more fights in the last few months than in the whole two years previous. If I keep going like this I’ll wind up with a knife in my back lying cold and stiff in a gutter somewhere.
Lynas smiles and shakes his head at my foolishness, but he isn’t the same as he used to be either. He’s come out of his Forging a shadow of his former self, and it isn’t only the discovery that he isn’t Gifted enough to become a magus. He is merely going through the motions of living, a puppet dancing on strings of habit. Something deep inside has been shattered.
For once I am the lucky one. For unknown reasons Archmagus Byzant has taken a personal interest in me, listens to all my fears and tells me not to worry, that the world will all be set right again, given time. However, things are getting much worse. Charra can’t possibly understand what we went through, but Lynas and I both know we’ve been changed. Nobody ever remembers their Forging, but each and every Gifted wretch is carried out of that ritual chamber the same way: skin slick with sweat, throat raw from screaming, head bursting with pain and sobbing uncontrollably. I came out a magus, others come out like Lynas: broken. Some don’t come out at all.
Lynas rises and looses a huge yawn. “Better get going. I have to get back to my accounts.” He waves goodbye and leaves.
Charra frowns. “He seems obsessed with numbers lately. He’s never shown an interest in accounts and coin before, but in the last month he’s had his nose buried in ledgers and his fingers are constantly stained with ink.”
“He told me he’s thinking of starting his own business,” I say. “He has a whole bunch of ideas. Keeps wittering on about taxes and tariffs and asking me what I think – as if I’d know anything about all that.”
“I hope he’s well,” she says, looking thoughtful.
I carefully explore my cuts and bruises with fingers that feel like knives. “Take care of him, will you? I think he could use somebody looking out for him right now.”
Her dark eyes study me. “Of course I will. What did those bastard magi do to him up there?” It doesn’t seem to have sunk in that I am one of those bastard magi now.
I shudder. “Nothing good. But that’s all over with now. I’m sure that he just needs time to recover. Something to focus on.” We could hope…
She stares at the door, doesn’t say anything and doesn’t have to. She is as worried about Lynas as I am. I can’t be sure if he is throwing himself into business as some sort of way forward after his hopes and dreams were crushed, or if it was a strange effect of his Forging. Either way, I hope it helps him heal.
It is a huge mental effort to haul my sorry, beaten body up off the pallet. “I’d better head back to my room or they’ll have me washing the privy floors again.” I struggle to ignore the self-destructive impulse urging me to stay longer. “Goodbye, Charra.”
She smiles sadly, her face growing more lined, hair greying. “There’s been absolutely no pleasure in knowing you, Walker.”
A sudden panic shattered the dream memory. My eyes shot open, the world a dull smear of grey, heart slamming, body aching. I jerked upright, muscles screaming in protest. Chains rattled around my ankles and wrists. Crusty blood bunged up my nose and for a moment I was back in my dream with burst lip and swollen nose. But no, that was long gone, being home was just dredging up old memories. Dried blood covered the straw where I’d laid my head.
The sanctor rose from the seat at the bottom of my bed and rapped on the door to let them know I was awake.
I didn’t have much time left and I had to do something right for once: Harailt had to die, and I should have done it long ago. I ground my teeth and thought of Layla. I had to see her safe before there could be any reckoning, but it was impossible to ensure her safety while I was locked away like this. I’d have to be sneaky, have to unbalance the bastards, kick them in the balls and leg it while they were busy puking. I would probably have to do something monumentally stupid, but that shouldn’t be too hard; I’d pretty much refined that to a high art.
The guards came for me again and shovelled a thick and salty broth down my throat. Afterwards I felt strangely improved for having had a few hours’ sleep and some food, which was far from right. My body ought to be completely crippled, muscles seized up and solid as cured ham, much like my left thigh still was thanks to Dissever’s presence there. How had the damn knife even fitted without ripping me to shreds? It had gone fluid, hadn’t it? My memory was somewhat vague. I should not be healing as fast as an elder magus, not at my age. It was not something that could be caused by briefly giving in to the Worm. The realisation washed my grogginess away with a thrill of distilled fear.
I couldn’t bury my head in the sand anymore. A hundred little things over the years piled up into one inescapable conclusion – that something fundamental had changed inside me during the last ten years. The Worm of Magic was burrowing deeper into my flesh, changing me, and it had quickened on the day a god died.