Page 33 of The Malevolent Seven

I guessed that ruby was probably a good thing, although for all I knew, he’d just informed us we’d be doing our rutting in the toilets.

Unbidden, but clearly not unwanted, the voluptuous woman who’d been trading looks with Corrigan came to his side.

Several of her colleagues looked to me, but I shook my head. ‘Not for me tonight,’ I said, and turned to the major domo. ‘I don’t suppose you have a library on board?’

‘We keep a small collection of books,’ he said, disapproval evident in the pursing of his lips. ‘Erotic love poetry, mostly.’

‘That’ll do.’

Aradeus, already arm in arm with a young couple who surely had to be brother and sister, shot me a look that said my taciturn demeanour risked raising suspicion about our purpose here. I shot him a look that told him he could fuck right off if it bothered him. There were far too many lines in my life I’d had to cross lately. I planned to hold to those few I still had some say over.

‘And for the lady?’ the major domo asked Galass.

‘She also prefers to read on deck,’ I started. Speaking for another is rarely good form, but given her previous status as a monastic pleasure slave in the Ascendant’s collection, I knew she’d never—

‘I’ll take that one,’ she said, pointing to a young woman of seventeen or so, close to her own age.

‘You don’t have to—’

‘That one,’ she repeated, and her glare at me made it clear it wasn’t the major domo’s offer that had affronted her. ‘I’ve only ever known what it is to be another’s plaything,’ she said. ‘Who are you to tell me I can’t, for once in my life, experience what it is like to hold that power myself?’

Her words shook me, not because they offended my sensibilities, but because they took me back to another night on a different boat some years ago, and the warning given to me by a woman I’d admired beyond all others just before she’d torn the gold cloak from my shoulders and expelled me from the only life I’d ever hoped to lead.‘You don’t understand the ways of ordinary people, Cade. If you did, you’d despise them, and with your despite would come a reckoning I cannot allow.’

The girl Galass had selected drifted over to her and started stroking the line of her collarbone. ‘I am yours,’ she said.

‘You are mine,’ Galass agreed, somewhat more tentatively.

‘Then it appears I may turn my attention to my other guests,’ the major domo said, indicating the deck below. ‘Your companions will take you to your rooms, and I will have someone bring up books for Silord Ombra’s more. . .privatepleasures.’

Yeah, you heard that right; he just implied I was planning to masturbate on deck to a book of erotic love poems.

‘Oh, and before I forget,’ the major domo said, as if he hadn’t been planning on ending with this all along, ‘you need have no fears whatsoever for your security aboard our vessel. We happen to have a number of special guests aboard this voyage who, like yourselves, are heading north in pursuit of riches. They have offered to provide additional security for the prince’s vessel during their time on board. Should anyone attempt to interrupt your evening– or that of any of our guests– they will quickly meet with the displeasure of our stewards.’

As if on cue, the remaining prostitutes instantly cleared the decks, giving way to a group of nine men and women whose faces I didn’t recognise but whose professions were obvious from the raw heat of the magic emanating from them.

‘Nine wonderists?’ Corrigan whispered to me. ‘Who the fuck can affordninewonderists to guard a whoreship?’

A prince, apparently.

How many other wonderists are chasing after this same job in the Blastlands?I wondered.

But it wasn’t the competition or their superior numbersthat was sending a chill down my spine. Seven of them were dressed much as we were: tailored silks, satins and velvets with subtle runes and sigils embroidered in rich metalic threads on collars and cuffs; ruffled ascots and colourful cravats for both men and women; and a few bejewelled silver or gold arm rings too, like the ones Corrigan wore to make it clear he didn’t work cheap. But I was studying the two wonderists who were ever-so-slightly less ostentatiously dressed than their comrades. Their hair, tidily trimmed but unstyled, was a distinctly unimpressive brown– and almost certainly dyed that colour. They sported no braids nor ribbons, no jewels, no make-up of any kind. It was almost as if they weren’t entirely comfortable being among such lecherous company, but some greater duty demanded it.

I jabbed Corrigan with my elbow while the major domo was rattling off the almost certainly invented names of the prince’s nine protectors. ‘Those two,’ I whispered.

‘The frumpy twins? What about them?’

‘Glorian Justiciars. Both of them.’

Corrigan frowned. ‘How can you be sure? They look—’

‘They look like how justiciars look when they’re trying not to look like justiciars.’

‘You think they’re here for you?’

‘Can’t be. The way the other wonderists are acting around them, it’s too casual, almost companionable. They have to have been on this boat long enough to allay suspicions about their motives for being here, which means they’d have had no way of knowing I was coming this way.’

The typical motive for a Glorian Justiciar to board a pleasure barge, in case you haven’t figured this out yet, is to set fire to it in the name of the Auroral Sovereign.

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