Page 14 of The Malevolent Seven

‘Why bother wasting time on him?’ asked a third voice. Nobody knew if ‘Locke’ Fandaris was his real name, but if it was, then the universe loves coincidences, because all of his magic came from the bandolier of intricately shaped keys he wore across his chest. Each one could open a door in the air that led to some far-off place. Of all my fellow wonderists, Locke Fandaris was the only one whose magic made me jealous. Also, I think he had a crush on me.

‘I’ll just open a door to a lava pit and we can push him through and be done with him,’ said Locke.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t so much a crush as slightly less antipathy towards me than the others.

‘We should make an example of him,’ Narghan insisted. ‘I’ll float him to the centre of camp, slit his throat and we can each perform a ritual desecration on his corpse.’

‘Why would we go to all that bother?’ asked Lady Smoke.

‘Because it will show the Ascendant that he can trust the rest of us,’ replied Narghan. ‘Also, it’ll be fun.’

Several other voices piped up with their own opinions on the matter. It sounded like there might be a dozen people in all, so I guessed Corrigan must have assembled every wonderist in Lucien’s war coven for this little trial. My colleagues were enjoying themselves, discussing the possible sentences to punish me for a crime I hadn’t yet committed. I still couldn’t believe Corrigan had sold me out.

I was getting increasingly dizzy hanging there. The tether spell behaved a lot like regular rope, which meant I couldn’t stop myself constantly swinging around. When I finally managed to catch Corrigan’s eye, I whispered, ‘You ratted on me to the others before I even got to him.’

‘This isn’t about your little temper tantrum,’ he whispered back furiously. ‘So keep your mouth shut, try not to panic and pray I can get you out of this with a couple of your limbs intact.’

He turned to the others and unleashed his big booming baritone on them. ‘Listen, brethren, nothing’s happened yet. For all we know, the Glorians are just here as insur—’

‘Glorians?’ I blurted out. Now Iwaspanicking.

‘Eleven of them,’ Skanda confirmed.

Skanda Ruzik was the chiropteranist who’d likely traded Corrigan the bat charms he’d used to lure me here. She was short and stocky, with a pretty smile and green eyes that were entirely captivating– so long as you could ignore the huge bat-head cowl she wore over her grey fur coat. This is what I mean about Totemicists being weird.

‘One of Skanda’s familiars was flying the perimeter of the camp when it noticed a band of white-cloaks camped out a mile to the south,’ Corrigan explained.

Now I understood why he was so pissed off at me, why he’d wanted to make sure I didn’t get the chance to murder Ascendant Lucien. The Glorians are to faith and duty what wonderists are to not giving a shit about anyone but themselves. Their magic is entirely Auroral in nature, which isn’t all that unique, as many wonderists draw on a little Auroral magic here and there. But the Glorians are different: their minds are transfigured and transmuted by their devotion to a single Lord Celestine. They’re kind of like the preachy neighbour you avoid at parties, assuming your neighbour would burn you at the stake for offending his religious views– you, along with your extended family, including the third cousins you barely knew existed.

‘Which order?’ I asked.

Please say the Glorians of Mercy. Please say Glorians of Mercy.

‘All my bat could catch was muttering, lots of muttering, which I assume were prayers,’ Skanda replied. She closed her eyes as if trying to draw on someone else’s memories. ‘Oh, but they all had golden gloves attached to their right shoulders, like funny epaulets. Does that mean anything?’

Yeah,I thought.It means I’m well and truly screwed.

The Glorian Justiciars are the order devoted to the Celestine of Law. They’re incredibly powerful, inhumanly disciplined, and when called to investigate a crime that violates one of the Celestial Edicts– like, just as an example, trafficking in Infernal magic with a diabolic– they always,alwaysget their man.

Corrigan, clearly intent on keeping everyone calm, said, ‘We figure Ascendant Lucien must be keeping them nearby in case any of us get out of hand. He’s always been paranoid about wonderists, no matter how badly he needs us to do his dirty work.’

‘Youfigure that,’ Narghan said, fingers playing with the waxed knots of his beard. ‘The rest of us are wondering why any time we do a job with Cade Ombra, the fucking justiciars come sniffing around.’

Eleven Glorian Justiciars– that’s enough for a Court Auroral, enough to conduct a trial for heresy and be damned sure they had the firepower to enforce the verdict, no matter how many friends the accused had willing to fight on his behalf. Not that that was looking like it would be much of a problem in my case right now.

‘Look at him,’ Narghan sneered. ‘The sneaky bastard knows he’s to blame for this.’

Corrigan was trying to keep himself between the others and me. ‘Back off, Narghan. We don’t know if Cade’s to bl—’

‘Quit protecting him, Corrigan.’ The incarcerationist sidestepped him, got in close and jabbed a finger against my forehead, surreptitiously hitting me with a minor clenching cantrip that caused my tongue to curl back painfully into my throat. ‘You think they won’t use whatever crime he’s committed as an excuse to condemn us all?’

The clenching cantrip was making it hard for me to breathe, and dangling upside down was making me so dizzy I couldn’t summon the concentration to counteract the spell. Maybe Narghan was hoping I’d asphyxiate and save everyone the trouble of a formal execution.

Here lies Cade Ombra, who had been planning on delivering a scathing eulogy over Ascendant Lucien’s corpse and instead ended up choking to death on his own tongue.

My vision was seriously starting to blur when I felt Corrigan’s thick fingers pry my mouth open and forcibly uncurl my tongue. Air rushed into my lungs and I would have been even more grateful to him if his fingers hadn’t smelled of the bat guano he’d needed to activate Skanda’s charm.

The others had already resumed the debate over the extent of my blame for the presence of the justiciars and how best to punish me. Their suggestions ranged from ‘utterly horrific’ to ‘utterly horrific with more than a dash of perverse sexual abuse thrown in’. It’s amazing what you can learn about your co-workers in a situation like this.

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