Page 73 of The Malevolent Seven

‘The fallen one,’ Fidelity spat. To be fair, she might have been trying to get the dirt out of her mouth so she could greet me more gracefully. ‘Would that I could rise from this foul grave to desecrate this already profane soil with your blood.’

Guess not, then.

‘What happened to you?’ I asked them, digging lower with my fingers until I discovered there was nothing left of them past the grizzly viscera of their severed necks.

‘We were to be the vanguard against the Seven Brothers,’ Dignity replied, weeping tears of such sorrow you almost didn’t think to wonder where they were coming from since he was basically just a buried head. ‘The others were to—’

‘The Lords Celestine and Devilish sent a bunch of mercenary war mages to distract the brothers so you could very honourably sneak in and slip a blade in the enemy’s back.’ I didn’t bother making it a question.

‘This was a holy quest,’ Fidelity insisted. ‘We were—’

‘Save it,’ I said. I stood up and glanced back at the fortress. ‘What the hell prompted your bosses to go to all this trouble, only to sendtwojusticiars to fight seven wonderists so powerful they mowed through forty-two war mages without breaking a sweat?’

‘Um, Cade?’ Corrigan said, tapping me on the shoulder.

He pointed to Mister Bones, who was running from another patch of soil where he’d been digging to start afresh on the next. The little jackal had got the hang of it now, and was making swift work of it. He’d revealed several more beheaded Glorian Justiciars.

‘In the name of. . .’ Galass faltered. After all, who do you pray to when you’re standing on the corpses of the purest, most powerful fighting force of Celestine-blessed warriors ever conceived?

‘Guess you won’t have to worry about justiciars hunting you any more,’ Corrigan murmured.

You’d think at least some small part of me would be relieved. Of all the things I feared in this world– and believe me, there were a great many– topmost was being captured by my former comrades, which I knew was as inevitable as the sunrise. Freed of any restraints, they would have tortured me in ways that would make a diabolic bury his face in his hands and weep.

Somehow, I didn’t feel relieved.

‘Cade,’ Dignity said again. His handsome, otherworldly features were contorted with pain and horror. I’m not sure he’d been aware of what had happened to him until Mister Bones dug him up.

I turned to Shame. ‘Can you and Galass do what you did for the baron? Can you give them a proper death?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, looking so sad it was as if she’d transfigured all her features solely for that one expression. ‘There are so many, and if we—’

‘Fuck this,’ Corrigan said. ‘We came here like you wanted, Cade. We made the best deal we could for the townsfolk– not to mention ourselves. Now it’s time to get the hell out of here.’

‘I can’t leave them like this.’

He clamped a hand on my shoulder. ‘You can, and youwill. The brothers clearly want them to suffer– which I’m fine with, by the way.’

‘Cade!’

I looked down at Dignity, who was still shouting at me.

‘What is it?’ I asked, kneeling.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone so torn between misery for themselves and mortification over what they were about to say next.

‘You must take up our mantle and fight in our name,’ he said to me.

‘Fightthe brothers? The seven guys who just killed every wonderist I’ve ever metandan entire division of Glorian Justiciars?’

‘You have to fight them,’ he repeated stubbornly. His jaw clenched tighter. ‘Cade Ombra, Renegade Exile of the Glorian Justiciars, by command of the Lords Celestine and the Auroral Voice, you are hereby recalled for duty and promoted to the rank of Paladin Justiciar. You are to—’

He stopped talking then, mostly because his face was blown off by Corrigan’s bolt of black and red lightning. It proved to be a futile gesture, because Fidelity took up the call.

‘Cade Ombra, Paladin of the Glorian Justiciars, you mus—’

Corrigan blasted her, too. I guess the Seven Brothers didn’t care about keeping them suffering as they had the baron, because her flesh didn’t instantly reform. So that was promising, at any rate.

Unfortunately, it turned out that there were dozens more justiciar heads buried just inches beneath the soil, and Mister Bones was doing an excellent job of digging them up.

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