Page 38 of The Malevolent Seven

‘You have sunk deeper than we believed possible, fallen one,’ Dignity said. He was my height, which wasn’t particularly tall for a justiciar, but I always noticed his hands: they were just a little too big for him, like those statues where the sculptor gets a little drunk towards the end and stops paying full attention to his work. I’m pretty sure he was the one who’d broken my nose.

‘Not all of us,’ Fidelity said. The fingers of her right hand were twitching like she desperately wanted to put on her golden Celestine glove and dish out a little spiritual punishment. ‘Some of us knew all along he was a traitor.’

In stature, Fidelity was even less daunting than Dignity, but she made up for it with an outsized sense of self-importance, which, for a justiciar, is hard to imagine.

‘It’s true,’ I admitted, opening my coat and unbuttoning the top of my shirt so they could see the circles of ebony sigils across my chest. ‘I’m a vile, treasonous outcast who betrayed every single one of our teachings. I wage war for money, consort with diabolics for my spells and have been known to pleasure myself on holy days.’ I leaned in close enough to make it positively painful for them to not rip my throat out and whispered, ‘But at least I’m not a fucking glorified bouncer working some petty princeling’s whoreship.’

Dignity blanched, his jaw so tight I thought he might actually shatter his own teeth. Fidelity tried to put the stare on me, but I resisted; it’s hard to make someone feel morally unworthy when they’ve done the kinds of shit I’ve done.

‘Oh,’ she said, shaking her head without ever taking her eyes off me, ‘when at last we purify you, Cade Ombra, it will make the Infernals themselves weep at your torment.’

Now it was my turn to smile. Up until now I’d figured there was a fifty-fifty chance I was about to meet my maker,a fate I had to admit I really wasn’t looking forward to. But the thing about Glorians is that once given a mission, they cannot deviate from it, not for any reason. Mind you, this doesn’t stop them from smiting the odd heathen along the way, because justiciars are given wide latitude to pursue and prosecute spiritual crimes against their bosses, the Celestines. In case you’re wondering, apostasy– my crime– is right near the top of that list.

But while your average justiciar is happy to spend his or her free time hunting apostates with the rampant, single-minded enthusiasm of a dog chasing a squirrel, the Lords Celestine are more obsessed with the bigger picture, which in their case is moving step by step towards the day when they can at last face the Lords Devilish in battle and destroy their eternal enemies once and for all.

Fidelity’s use of the phrasewhenat lastwe purify youtold me that her current orders didn’t allow for distractions, even getting into a scrap with a renegade like me. Judging by the angry glance at Dignity, she must have caught the relief in my expression. In the back of my head I heard the subtle whisper of the silent voice passing between them. There was a time when I would have been able to make out every word, but even bereft of the sacred tongue, I was pretty sure the conversation went something like:

‘Can we please rip this guy’s intestines out through his nostrils now?’

‘Alas, nay, our mission demands we—’

‘C’mon! This is Cade-fucking-Ombra we’re talking about here. He’s a worthless piece of shit who violated the trust of the Celestines and betrayed our order! You’re seriously telling me we can’t—’

‘Do not let him goad you. Remember always that we walk in the footsteps of the Auroral Sovereign, who instructs us all to blah blah blah blah—’

Okay, maybe that’s notpreciselywhat they said. I might have got some of the inflections wrong. But I’m a hundred per cent sure about theblah-blah-blahpart.

‘The two of you done yet?’ I asked, then gestured towards the door. ‘Because I’ve got an appointment with whoever’s inside that cabin.’

Fidelity sneered venomously. She was exceedingly good at it. ‘Are you mad, Apostate? You think we would—?’

‘The major domo’s granted me an hour with whoever’s inside,’ I reminded her. ‘Given that he represents the will of Prince Stercus, and the two of you have been serving the prince, up until now at least, that means those were part of your instructions from the Lords Celestine, and as we both know’– I poked her in the right shoulder where her Celestine’s glove would normally have been– ‘a good little justiciar always does what she’s told, right up until the moment one of the big bosses countermands those orders through a shining golden falcon or a burning bush or whatever they’re using these days. And that means you and Dignity here are, at this very moment, in violation of the Auroral Will.’

Okay, a lot of that was conjecture, but I’d been in their faces for the past three minutes and I still had all my limbs, with not even a bruise or a scratch marring my unholy body. There was no way the two of them had free rein over their actions right now.

All of which made me wonder what about protective duty on a pleasure ship could possibly be so important to the Lords Celestine.

Dignity’s growl, coming from deep in his belly, would have put Corrigan to shame. He stepped aside from the door and glared at Fidelity until she did the same.

‘You may have your hour, Renegade. And some day, very soon, we will have ours.’

I wish I could say that didn’t terrify me, but it took every ounce of my own not inconsiderable willpower to keep my hand from shaking as I put the key in the lock, and to keep the quaver from my voice when I opened the door and said to my former brethren, ‘Go fuck yourselves. No one else will.’

Petty? Maybe, but pettiness, I promise you, is the least of my sins.

Through that red door was a bare, plain room, with none of the normal pleasure palace décor: no embroidered hangings on the walls to cover the oak boards, no gold-framed erotic paintings, no illustrated engravings of naughty poetry.

There was only her.

The prince’s pride and joy, the girl no one was allowed to enjoy but him and those lucky few upon whom he chose to bestow a once-in-a-lifetime honour, was lying on a simple bed made up with plain white sheets. Every step of the way here, I had been turning over in my mind one question: what kind of woman was so special she warranted nine wonderists to keep her from being taken?

Now I had my answer.

Chapter 20

The Purpose of Angels

The instand I laid eyes on her I understood the allure she held for princes and lords– for anyone, really. No wonder the Lords Celestine had sent two of their finest justiciars to keep her bound here. No wonder the major domo had looked as if I’d demanded the world of him. I had, in fact, asked for very much more.

---