THE PRISONER IS CONTAINED, Inquisitor,” said Vigil. “I’m afraid I made no progress with the interrogation.”
Qanwa Zhiyouri made a dismissive gesture. “I’m not particularly interested in anything she’d have to say for herself. Had quite enough of that in Tlaanthothe. It’s too bad we couldn’t take her immediately, but I do not desire Belthandros Sethennai as an enemy. And you would have missed out on the fun of closing the trap.”
Vigil nodded. Zhiyouri didn’t know whether a Quincury could actually have fun, but she had certainly enjoyed planning the operation: making sure the old sally port was clear, reducing security without tipping off the intruder that something was wrong, and ensuring that she found her way safely to the old prison level where Vigil had set up its lobster pot.
“Let me know if she does say anything,” said Zhiyouri. “I don’t think she’s got what you’d call a very developed psyche, but she might be more forthcoming now she’s outside Sethennai’s protection.”
She dismissed Vigil, called for a fresh pot of coffee and some biscuits, and summoned Shuthmili to her office. Best to give her one last chance to see sense.
“Please,” said Zhiyouri to her niece. “Take a seat. Help yourself to a biscuit. They’re made with honey from the Qanwa estate, you know. You must be hungry.”
Zhiyouri knew this, since she had been the one who had ordered the Wardens to reduce Shuthmili’s rations. If Shuthmili was determined to be difficult, she was not going to be comfortable.
“I am fine, thank you,” said Shuthmili, though Zhiyouri noted her eyes were fixed on the plate of biscuits.
“Just between the two of us,” said Zhiyouri, “don’t you think it’s time we sorted out this silly mess?”
Shuthmili blinked, folding her hands demurely in her lap, well out of the way of the biscuits. “I’m afraid I’ve lost track of time a bit. Is there a rush?”
Most mages out of the School of Aptitude were shrinking things, quiet and eager to please. Zhiyouri found Shuthmili’s assurance distasteful, but she forced a laugh.
“Well, no real rush, I suppose,” she said, “but we’ve already wasted a certain amount of time retrieving you from various scrapes, haven’t we?”
No response.
“I know you have your doubts about the Quincuriate, but I assure you it is no bad thing to have a vocation,” said Zhiyouri. “It’s a gift to know that you are where you’re meant to be, doing what you’re meant to do.”
“Is that how you feel about the Inquisitorate, Aunt Zhiyouri?” said Shuthmili sweetly.
“Of course,” she said. “The work, that’s the thing. You would be much happier if you had proper work to do. I certainly always am.”
“You don’t really believe that, though,” said Shuthmili. “You don’t think you’re like me.”
Shuthmili evidently did not recognise that Zhiyouri was paying her a supreme courtesy by implying that they were, in any sense, equals. Zhiyouri felt a growing urge to slap her. Instead she smiled, as if entertaining a child’s joke. “Well, not in all respects,” she said.
“It would be simpler if I were to enter Archer Quincury, wouldn’t it?” said Shuthmili. “Not a single mage in four hundred years of spotless genealogy, and now me. It makes life difficult. I can see that. If I become Archer Five then you can erase my name from the Qanwa record.”
“I think that’s rather unfair of you,” said Zhiyouri. Not to mention rather self-centred. “In the Quincuriate you would be contented and successful. It is a position of honour. At the moment your position can do nothing but damage to the house, and you are plainly miserable.”
“Yes. You only want what’s best for me,” she said. “So I’ve heard.”
“I want to help you,” said Zhiyouri. “I understand that you are young and it is never pleasant to make decisions that will alter the rest of your life. But you would make an exceptional Quincury Adept, according to every possible assessment. It is an insult to the Nine to waste that kind of talent.”
“Careful,” said Shuthmili. “It isn’t a talent. Neither a blessing nor a curse, but a duty.”
“Semantics,” said Zhiyouri, snapping off the word. It was a bit late for Shuthmili to turn pious now, but two could play at that game. “In any case, shirking a duty is also an affront to the Nine.”
“If the Nine cared what we did, people would behave better,” said Shuthmili, with a smile as thin as the sheen on a beetle’s shell. “It wouldn’t bother you, would it, if I had turned fully heretic? You’re so desperate to get me safely into the Quincuriate, it doesn’t matter what kind of corruption I might take with me.”
“And what kind of life do you think you’re going to have outside the Quincuriate?” said Zhiyouri. The fact that Shuthmili was right made her angrier—Zhiyouri’s private view of religion was that it was useful for some purposes, and otherwise tiresome, but that wasn’t something one could admit to in polite company, and it was uncomfortable to be seen through. “You can’t think they’ll ever let you out again. No more jaunts with the Survey Office. What does that leave? Tutoring in the School of Aptitude? You’d be a glorified governess and you’d die of the mageblight. Is that really what you want?”
“I suppose so,” said Shuthmili. “Or there’s always ship service, not that it really solves the mage-blight issue.”
Zhiyouri had to assume this was a joke. Ship service would be an obscene waste of Shuthmili’s talents. “Do you really think you’d enjoy life as part of a warship?”
Shuthmili shrugged. “Well, I’m sure my superiors will determine the best placement.”
Zhiyouri bit down on a snarl and willed herself to be calm. She held all the cards here. Let Shuthmili have her fun now, and learn later that it did not pay to antagonise Qanwa Zhiyouri. “Don’t you see that they already have?” she said, mildly.
“Oh, yes,” said Shuthmili. “I’d be an excellent Quincury Adept. I do know that. But it’s the only placement I have the capacity to refuse, and I find I’m quite enjoying the experience.”
“Yes,” said Zhiyouri. “You know, I did think you might be.”
You could let your quarry believe that she had managed to conceal her pitiful secrets, that she had won, that she was safe. But the Traitor’s Grave had many cells, and Zhiyouri had many strategies, and Shuthmili had no notion what was locked away in any of them.
Csorwe lurched into wakefulness, feeling as though someone had driven nails into her skull. She wasn’t tied up, but a heavy fog of weakness pressed down on her. She couldn’t move, nor could she see anything more than a diffuse day-brightness. Her ears felt tight, as if she had sunk to the bottom of a deep pond.
All around her was the sound of wind grating on concrete. Gradually, she began to hear voices.
“—brought me up here?”
It was Shuthmili. She was here! Csorwe’s heart leapt, despite it all. She tried to uncurl and look for her, but she couldn’t make her limbs behave, or even open her eyes. Whatever they had done to her, it was taking a long time to wear off.
“I thought you might like some air,” said a woman. It took Csorwe a moment to recognise this as Qanwa Zhiyouri.
“How thoughtful,” said Shuthmili.
“Well,” said Qanwa brightly. “We don’t make good decisions when we’re cooped up inside. And I like the sea, don’t you?” Qanwa added. “I hold my faith in the Mara, from whom all things derive.”
“From whom all things arise,” said Shuthmili. Csorwe had never been so glad to hear someone being an awful pedant. She tried again to open her eyes. No luck.
Qanwa laughed, not pleasantly. “It’s been a long time since my Inquisitorial exams.”
The wind never let up. Csorwe could taste the sea in the back of her throat. She kept trying to move. If she could only get to Shuthmili . . .
“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” said Qanwa. “You think that you have some kind of choice vis-à-vis the Quincuriate. I understand that you have had some fun keeping us all hanging. I have now reached the end of my patience, and it’s time that you understand the situation.”
“I understand the situation perfectly,” said Shuthmili. “You haven’t had any luck cajoling me into the tether, so we’ve reached the part where you threaten me. But if you kill me I’m useless to you. You can’t give me anything I want, and you can’t take away anything I mind losing. Surely this conversation has to end sooner or later.”
“I think,” said Qanwa, “that you will want to hear me out.”
Csorwe heard footsteps on concrete nearby, coming down toward her.
“Thank you, Vigil, if you don’t mind . . .,” said Qanwa.
Csorwe was lifted and carried up what seemed like a short flight of stairs. Two people, at least. They weren’t deliberately rough with her, but they might as well have been delivering a bolster.
“And start waking her up, I think,” said Qanwa. Csorwe’s eyes and ears cleared, as if a wax seal had been peeled away. She could see where she was, not that it was much of a blessing.
They were on the roof of the Traitor’s Grave, a flat grey expanse high above the flat grey expanse of the sea. The wind was even louder here, and colder, biting through Csorwe’s shirt to nip at her skin. Two Adepts of Vigil Quincury were holding her up under her arms. The grip felt like two steel vises pinning her upright by the ribs.
Qanwa Zhiyouri leant against the parapet. The collar of her surcoat was pulled up high against the wind. Beside her, looking frighteningly neat and tranquil and ordinary, as if she had accompanied her aunt on a trip to the seaside of her own free will, was Shuthmili.
Csorwe tried to call out to her, but her mouth wouldn’t open. Shuthmili’s eyes widened, but her expression didn’t change from what it had been: a waxen mask of distaste, belonging to someone who had not only seen a maggot, but who was resigned to seeing maggots every day, and had begun to be disappointed in their quality.
“I know the Inquisitorate is your vocation, Aunt,” said Shuthmili, “but did you ever consider a career in theatrical production?”
“If your father knew how ill-mannered you’ve become, I’m sure he’d weep,” said Qanwa, not sounding particularly offended. She advanced on Csorwe and the Vigil Adepts, and peered at her as if examining a piece of fruit for bruises before purchase.
If Csorwe could have bared her tusks at Qanwa, she would have, but her body remained totally inert. Her heart wandered sleepily on. The wakeful part of her mind was screaming and hammering on the bars, but her body couldn’t feel enraged, or even particularly frightened.
“What is the point of this?” said Shuthmili. She didn’t come any closer—didn’t move, in fact, from the parapet where she was standing.
“She tried to break into the Grave,” said Qanwa. “I’m trying to make up my mind what we ought to do with her.”
“Ah,” said Shuthmili. “I see.”
“I’m glad you see,” said Qanwa, strolling back toward Shuthmili. “There’s no reason this has to be at all unpleasant. All I ask is that you consider my points.”
“And if I don’t, that’s when things become unpleasant,” said Shuthmili. “You really are a woman of god, aren’t you, Zhiyouri?”
“I have been called to serve as befits my abilities,” said Qanwa, piously. Then she turned and Csorwe saw her grin like a jackal. It was the expression of someone much younger, someone who hadn’t learned that you shouldn’t let your enemy know they were beaten.
Shuthmili laughed, angrily. It sounded like icicles shattering. “Let me see if I’ve got this right, Aunt. If I do as you ask, and choose the tether, and serve my country, and clear the family name, then you’ll let Csorwe go?”
“Of course,” said Qanwa. “She’s done no lasting harm. There’s no need to be vindictive.”
Csorwe could see, with bleak clarity, where this was going. It’s all right, she said to herself. It’ll be all right. I always knew this was temporary. You could only borrow so much time.
“And if I decide to be stubborn . . .,” said Shuthmili.
“The Inquisitorate has never looked mercifully on those who corrupt our Adepts,” said Qanwa. “And you were so very promising. Such a shame.”
“If I don’t do what you want, you’ll hurt her,” Shuthmili translated.
“As you pointed out, it would be self-defeating to hurt you,” said Qanwa. “In any case, you are my niece. But I don’t believe you’re quite as detached from worldly matters as you’d have us all believe.”
There was absolutely no chance that Qanwa would ever let Csorwe go. She didn’t even have to wonder about that. Even if Shuthmili caved right away, it was all over for her. She could just about raise her head by now, and she tried to catch Shuthmili’s eye, willing her to understand it.
“You seem to enjoy having a choice,” said Qanwa. “This is the nature of the choices that we have to make, as adults, in the real world. I can give you some time to think about it, if you like.”
Don’t listen to her, Csorwe thought. Don’t do it. She’s lying to you.
Shuthmili didn’t take her eyes off Qanwa.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Shuthmili. Once she’s got you tethered she can do whatever she wants to me and you won’t care enough to try and stop her.
“That’s all right,” said Shuthmili at last. “I’ve made my choice.”
Qanwa unclenched her hands, relaxing minutely into her victory. Perhaps she didn’t see the set of Shuthmili’s jaw, or didn’t recognise what she was seeing.
“I won’t,” said Shuthmili. “I’m sorry. I will not.”
The relief felt, to Csorwe, like being dipped into a hot bath. At last the joints of her fingers and toes began to loosen.
“She promised she would help me, and she left me,” said Shuthmili, matter-of-factly. “I was happy before I met her. I never thought of anything else. She convinced me to leave, and then she left me behind. She ruined my life. I owe her nothing.”
It stung. But it was true. Csorwe’s promises and good intentions meant nothing. When the time came she had abandoned Shuthmili out of pure selfishness, chasing down Belthandros Sethennai’s dream of power. She had left Shuthmili worse off than before.
Hate me if you hate me. Just don’t give in, thought Csorwe.
Qanwa watched her. “If that’s the case, then . . .” She made a gesture, and the Vigil Adepts hoisted Csorwe up, holding her high, and carried her toward the parapet. Csorwe couldn’t so much as wriggle. The most she could do was claw her fingers at them.
“I suppose we may as well drop her over the side,” said Qanwa.
The Vigil Adepts walked her out to a gap in the parapet, where the roof of the Traitor’s Grave dropped away into the sea.
“I don’t want her to suffer,” said Shuthmili. Csorwe couldn’t see her face any longer, but her voice hadn’t changed. “But if that’s what you’re making me choose, then I prefer to live.”
Csorwe dangled like bait on a hook. Her pulse was starting to race, as though her heart had finally caught up to the situation. The fog was finally lifting. She could move her wrists and ankles, not that it was going to do her much good. All that Qanwa had to do was order her Adepts to open their hands, and that would be the end of her.
Csorwe had always imagined she would die in a panic, in some kind of fight, and she had always hoped that she wouldn’t know at the time what was happening. But this wasn’t so bad. It really wasn’t. Eight stolen years and one short drop into the abyss.
“Shuthmili,” said Qanwa. “On some level I admire your stubbornness. I really do. But you’ve been saying this girl’s name in your sleep for weeks. Are you really going to let this happen?”
“Do you ever think you ought to find some kind of hobby outside work?” said Shuthmili. “It sounds as though you need an outlet. You’re beginning to see conspiracies.”
The Adepts dragged Csorwe back from the edge, brought her over to where Qanwa and Shuthmili were standing, and dropped her on the ground. Her legs collapsed beneath her immediately, and she fell back on the concrete.
Qanwa looked down at Csorwe, and prodded her shoulder with the toe of her boot. “You know the choice you have to make, Shuthmili.”
“And you know my answer,” she said.
Qanwa sighed. “You make life very difficult for those around you,” she said. “You say that you don’t want her to suffer. Vigil.”
One of the Vigil Adepts loomed into view. The mask looked like a hole in the sky.
All at once, as though a blanket of numbness had been lifted, Csorwe could feel all her limbs again, but she couldn’t get up. She was bound in place, but not by ropes. Something looped and scuttled around her wrists and ankles, and where its barbs cut her skin, she felt the beginnings of the numbness returning. The crawling thing coiled around her neck, pinning her head back against the concrete.
“Stop it!” Shuthmili was saying. “Tell them to stop it!”
“Are you prepared to reconsider?” said Qanwa.
“Go to hell,” said Shuthmili.
“Shuthmili,” said Csorwe, struggling against the crawling thing and the panic as if they were one substance. “Don’t—”
Inquisitor Qanwa peered down at her, a misty silhouette against the sunlight. Csorwe growled through clenched teeth.
Nobody was coming for her. And Psamag had showed her exactly how long this could go on.
Qanwa nodded to the Vigil Adept. “Again.”
Csorwe felt something wriggling in her throat, something extending legs and feelers as though breaking out of its chrysalis. She gagged, struggling for breath, and felt the thing begin to crawl upward, scrambling toward her mouth. Vigil stood and watched her choke.
Csorwe’s breath began to fail and her vision darkened as the crawling thing scuttled out between her lips. Then it was gone, wriggling away across the concrete, and she gasped for air.
“Try something else,” said Qanwa.
One of the Vigil Adepts knelt beside Csorwe, and laid a hand quite gently on her forehead.
Csorwe took a deep breath. The cool air stung her mouth. Don’t listen, she thought, as if Shuthmili could hear. It’s not worth it. Remember how I left you. She was terrified to speak. What if Shuthmili thought she was begging for mercy, or for help . . .
Then the pain swallowed up the world in a terrible radiance. Csorwe was eyeless, voiceless, nameless, a single unravelling skein of awareness, flayed open and dissolving in fire. She was dying—she was already dead—no mortal thing could survive this kind of pain.
All she could see was the mask of Vigil, like a single gigantic eye, and then the world blurred into smears of ash.
Csorwe heard herself screaming. Flat against the ground, limbs splayed as though she had been pinned for display.
When her vision returned, she saw that Vigil was holding the crawling thing in its hands, something jointed but sinuous, like a great centipede. It struggled in Vigil’s grip, curling and uncurling. Its front parts had feelers like little bent horns. The Adept pinched them in gloved fingertips, first one then the other, and twisted them away, quite casually.
“Shuthmili—” she said. As she spoke she felt another crawling thing, ridged and spined, tighten around her neck, cutting off her voice.
Qanwa strode toward Shuthmili. “If I’m wrong, and you’re not lying to me, and she means nothing to you—then why is she here?”
“I have no idea,” said Shuthmili. This had the ring of truth. “She must have come to look for me of her own accord,” she went on, and faltered for a moment. “Aunt. She hasn’t done anything wrong. There’s no reason to do this.”
“That’s entirely up to you,” said Qanwa.
“Zhiyouri,” said Shuthmili, with perfect self-possession. Her eyes were very dark. “Let her go.”
“You know what you have to do,” said Zhiyouri.
“Fine,” said Shuthmili. “If that’s how it is.”
Down at her side, out of Zhiyouri’s sight, Shuthmili made a slow gesture in the air, her fingers curling and uncurling, tracing a pattern like smoke, and clenched her fist.
Then she moved. She swivelled on her heels, reached into the air, and out of nowhere drew a blade of silvered glass, as though breaking off a piece of the sky. Light flashed on the blade like a spray of water—and with impossible speed she thrust the sword into the chest of one of the Vigil Adepts. It wriggled for a moment, audibly gasping for breath, and then fell still.
The other Adept screamed like a wounded horse and stepped back, clutching at its own chest as though trying to pull out the blade. Then its white robes darkened: white to red to a livid grey, like ink spreading through water, black and translucent. Then it was nothing more than a statue of grey crystal, fixed in position.
Shuthmili drew her sword from the chest of the dead Adept, then turned, blank as a sleepwalker, and made a sweeping motion with her other hand. The statue shattered.
All this took perhaps a second. Directly overhead the sky seethed and coiled in a closing spiral. Clouds swarmed toward the epicentre, as though scenting blood. The surface of the sky began to pucker and twist.
“Shuthmili—” said Qanwa. “What are you doing—”
Csorwe had seen carnage before, in its aftermath and in its full rage. What followed was like a dream of butchery, an illuminated vision, a howl of agony at the edge of fever. She couldn’t make sense of it. High Inquisitor Qanwa’s tongue became a crystal pendulum and pearls discharged themselves from her eye sockets. Shuthmili’s glass blade slashed open her belly in a single stroke. Each living organ became a gleaming lump of precious stone, tumbling from the torn flesh under its own weight.
It was hard to say at what point Qanwa Zhiyouri died, or whether she died at all. Her body was racked by tides of transformation. If Shuthmili’s expression had been anything other than bland, this would have seemed horribly playful. Dark coils flashed and flickered in the air around her, and Csorwe remembered: Zinandour is trying to find her way back to the mortal worlds. I could be the gate through which she returns.
Csorwe didn’t care about the dragon goddess, but that didn’t sound like something Shuthmili could survive. Despite her screaming nerves, she managed to tip herself over onto her stomach and prop herself up. She had no sense of how long this took, seconds or minutes or hours.
At last Qanwa was done with dying. The corpse lay unrecognisable on the flagstones, laced and encrusted with jewels, wounds inlaid with gold. Shuthmili stood over her, perfectly still but breathing hard. Her glass sword lay discarded on the concrete; at some point she seemed to have decided that she preferred to use her hands. She was surrounded by a halo of shadowy tendrils that writhed whenever she moved.
Csorwe sat up, willing Shuthmili to turn toward her, to say something—even just Go away, Csorwe—anything at all to prove that she was still herself.
At last Shuthmili opened her mouth, half formed a word, but said nothing. She was trembling. When she spoke at last it seemed to be a prayer.
Csorwe managed to get to her feet. As she did so, she saw movement on the other side of the roof. Someone was coming up the other stairs. White robe, black mask, blue sash—another Vigil Adept.
“Shuthmili!” she called. “Look out!”
Shuthmili’s eyes darkened, perhaps in recognition, and she readied herself again.
Csorwe lunged for the glass sword, and rose with it in hand. She could almost keep her balance now. She couldn’t lie there and let Shuthmili fight alone, even if there was nothing she could do against such an enemy.
“Traitor,” said the Adept, in a voice distorted by unimaginable pain. It walked unevenly, one hand clawed to its chest in memory of the wound.
As it spoke, Qanwa’s mutilated body began to stir. It came crawling across the floor toward Shuthmili—faster than Csorwe could have imagined was possible, bending its limbs in ways they could never have moved in life—and dragged itself upright, trailing ropes of pearls like guts.
“I’ll take her,” said Csorwe, and stumbled into the fray.
At least this was a fight that she understood. Her body ached, and the shape and weight of the glass sword was bizarre, but here was an enemy who could be struck, knocked back, beaten down. The revenant was slow, heavy, and half formed, and Csorwe couldn’t be certain that it would even stay dead, but at least she understood what she was doing moment to moment. It was nothing to the fight between Shuthmili and Vigil.
Csorwe had seen a wizards’ duel before, but Sethennai and Olthaaros were politicians, and they’d had an audience. Nothing about this fight was ostentatious. Neither of them was trying to persuade anyone of anything. They faced one another, not speaking, scarcely moving, never breaking eye contact. No retreat was possible. The slightest weakening meant death.
There were two other Vigil Adepts out there. Csorwe and Shuthmili needed to end this before they could arrive, or else before the effort drove Shuthmili over the edge.
Csorwe struck Qanwa’s shoulder. The blade struck a plate of mother-of-pearl at an odd angle, and as she tried to recover, she felt a blow to her midsection, and heard Shuthmili cry out.
Qanwa’s corpse had punched her in the stomach. Its hands were golden claws, as sharp as knives. The corpse withdrew the claw, shining with blood, and drove it in once more. She felt the pain remotely, dully, and her head began to spin. She struggled, slashing wildly with the glass sword, but the world was receding—her vision darkened—her hand slackened—the sword slipped from her grip, and she fell.