Thurrel, Maserley and Prassel go back a long way. Three kids from the same phalanstery. Teenagers going through basic officer training, picked out by metrics and family to stand over the regular troopers. Training together to be specialists, all the hard sums and complex logic that granted a comprehension of the world’s magical principles. You had to be sound, for that kind of work. You’d be playing with the same universal forces that led less enlightened people to gods and that sort of foolishness. Thurrel had kept a broad church, atheistically speaking. He’d always been up to share a scheme and a bottle with Maserley, just as he and Prassel had swotted together for the end of season tests. Prassel and Maserley had… not. A lot of people these days, seeing only the old and bitter division, conjured some broken romance between them, but really it was just ambition, the old Pal curse. Two young stars vying for the same firmament. Competitors to rivals to enemies as each found the other waiting at every new assignment.
Fellow-Archivist Thurrel was in his hut. The artillery was hungry and the ammunition crates of two battalions were rattling with their last charged tablethi. Every Decanter in the army was draining the dregs of whatever bottom-of-the-barrel trinkets and relics they had been hoarding. He had a rack set up as Maserley strode in. Only a dozen tablethi on a rack made for fifty, which suggested Thurrel was desperately scrabbling for quota. Which meant Maserley was about to become his favourite person in the world.
“If you’re after something to charge up your legal documents, back of the queue.” Thurrel didn’t look round, but somehow knew who it was anyway. He had his thaumatic gauge on, peering through goggles at some shabby little Allorwen charm. After a moment he added a couple of little lead statues to the mix, and another half-dozen tablethi to the rack. “Also, if you’re hoping to watch a master at work then sit right down because I am going to squeeze these damned things until they turn to dust. Nobody thinks, you know? Oh yes, let’s have bigger engines, let’s throw all the death in the world at the Loruthi, such fun! Except someone’s got to make it all go, don’t you know? There’s a whole Company sitting about with nothing more dangerous than a pointy stick because Landwards is almost completely out of baton charges.”
He made the final connections and stepped back. You were supposed to take the goggles off before starting the process, Maserley understood. In fact you were supposed to have smoked-glass screens and warded gloves and probably lead-lined underwear for all he knew. Thurrel played fast and loose with a lot of rules, though. It was one reason he was such a useful accomplice.
Maserley valued his eyes more, and made sure he looked away before the actinic flash and sizzle of transferred power. When he glanced back, the tablethi on the rack had gone from dull pewter to gleaming gold. Or mostly. Thurrel tapped them and grunted in annoyance.
“Perhaps not as much of a master as I thought. It’ll have to do.” With deft fingers he plucked the thumb-sized things from the rack and chucked them carelessly in a box already half full of them. His lensed stare was owlish and disconcerting as he turned to Maserley, disconnected from the cheery grin below. “Now, what is it? Have they cancelled the war? Do say yes. I have reading to catch up on.”
“I understand you’re running low on materiel,” Maserley told him.
Thurrel pushed his goggles up, reuniting the disparate regions of his face in a sour look. “If you came to gloat, do tell me how the demon business is going so well these days.”
The artillery spoke nearby, the ground shuddering with it. Every little piece of tat and idolatry on Thurrel’s shelves rattled. A bucket of his decanting had just been consumed in an instant in the hope that the Loruthi would have a bad harvest of it.
“I can take my bounty elsewhere,” Maserley said, when his words would be heard.
“Oh there’s a bounty? Do tell. Let’s see it. Did you rip someone’s heart out and find it made of gold and covered in rubies?” And you could never tell, with Thurrel, whether he was being fanciful or not.
Maserley called for Caeleen and she came in with Maric Jack’s box.
Thurrel looked at it. “Isn’t that…?” He went very still, then pulled the goggles down again with hands that trembled slightly. “Well, shit,” he said, his normal eloquence deserting him. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”
“I think the words you’re thinking of are ‘I owe you a big one, Fellow-Invigilator Maserley.’”
“I very honestly do.” Below the goggles, tongue moistened suddenly dry lips. “Only ask it. Although preferably not right now, because I’m about to be very busy.”
“Oh I’m afraid I insist. Because the first thing I want you to do for me is let me watch you drain this heathen shrine until there’s nothing left.”
It was impossible to tell what Thurrel thought of that, but the glassy lenses stared at Maserley for several long seconds before he nodded. “I always perform best before an audience. Of course. Least I can do. Can you have your paramour set it down there.” A flick of his fingers brushed off the charm and the two little figures. “Let’s get a good look at it, eh? Let the dog see the magic rabbit. Why, though?”
Caeleen brought the box round, set it where he directed. “What do you mean, why?” Maserley demanded.
“I mean, I appreciate you want to be able to say you saw it with your own eyes. Fine. It’s a fairly routine piece of arcane science. I do it every day, though maybe not on this scale.” Thurrel was refilling the rack, and this time he didn’t leave an empty slot. Then he brought another rack out, and screwed it to his folding desk. “I mean, the man’s just an Accessory. Some witless foreigner. Hardly seems worth it.”
“One day you’ll actually learn what it is to hate people, Thurrel,” Maserley told him. “It’s invigorating. Hating them, and knowing they hate you.”
“Does he, though?”
Maserley shrugged. “He has just enough time before his execution to learn. He’s a priest, Thurrel.”
“And you loathe priests. Priests ate your dog. That priest who spilled your drink that time,” Thurrel murmured, getting another box of spent tablethi out and filling the second rack.
Maserley nearly said something unwise then, something that would give Thurrel ammunition against him. Instead he just shrugged and said, “Aren’t priests everyone’s enemy? Bowing the knee to some tinpot little monster with jumped-up ideas and a book of stupid rules on what to wear and when to eat? Isn’t getting past that half the job of perfection?” And didn’t say, You have no fucking idea what it’s like in this man’s army when demons are your specialty. How everyone looks at you like you’re one conjuration away from corruption. How dealing with the Kings Below looks just like praying to Higher Orders. And so you stamp on every priest’s head that gets dragged down to boot level, just to show them how sound you are. “And it’s Prassel, of course,” he added. “She values him. She’s been protecting him. I had to go get the writ signed myself to have him arrested, because otherwise he’d still be running about doing his disgusting miracles. There are over thirty noncombatant soldiers thanks to him, Thurrel! And those are just the ones we know about.”
“I imagine they stand out a bit given we’re actually fighting,” Thurrel remarked. “You’re going to rub Prassel’s nose in it, then, are you? Use this against her? How you had to step in to correct her department?”
“Is that a problem?”
“To me? No! I imagine it will be to her, but that is decidedly Other People’s Business. Right, let’s take a good look at you, you little devils.” He bent down and examined the box, sliding different lenses in and out. The inspection seemed to last longer than Maserley could believe, so that he was shuffling back and forth with impatience, and the artillery had spoken twice more.
“Well now. This will take a little more prep,” Thurrel said at last. He sounded almost shaken. “What a lot to put in so small a box, and such a skinny Maric to carry it.” He started snatching things off shelves and out of boxes, all based on his usual filing system of ‘remembering where I last saw it’.
“If I’d known it would be this kind of circus I’d have taken this elsewhere,” Maserley growled. Thurrel just chuckled. He had a whole clutter of cords and artefacts and little caskets under the desk now, connected to the box and the racks. “Ah, now, quite ready. You’ll be back to your small print and your fiend-fondling in no time.”
“Just get on with it.”
Thurrel straightened, cast one last look at the box as though still a little worried he’d underdone his protections. “Hey presto I shall now convert three godlings into around nine artillery rounds or a hundred charged batons, and if you can do that, who needs religion?”
He made the final connection and took one long step back, and this time he did tilt his head away, cueing Maserley to do the same. The flash must have had their silhouettes clearly visible through the walls of the tent, and he heard Caeleen whimper as loose crackles of wasted power arced about her. For a fraction of a second the shape he’d given her twisted and blurred, and he had a glimpse of her true nature.
Then Thurrel was regarding the two filled racks of tablethi thoughtfully. Not rubbing his hands with glee as Maserley would have expected, but a little subdued. The big engines thundered once again and the Decanter glanced up, at the tent ceiling, but notionally at the world outside, slipping his goggles up once again.
“Just imagine,” he invited. “Centuries of belief and devotion, sacrifices and prayers. All that banked power poured into these entities we created or elevated or discovered. All that faith. And now it’s just baton-fodder and we’ll spaff it off towards the enemy to kill a few of them, and it’ll be gone into the background of the world until someone puts in the hard work of gathering it up again. Makes you think, doesn’t it.”
“No,” said Maserley. He was staring at the box. It looked as though it had aged a thousand years in that one instant. Thurrel knocked at it tentatively, as though requesting entry, and it collapsed, chunks of friable, worm-eaten wood breaking away.
“Well, there’s still a lot of that debt left. You just let me know what I can do for you,” Thurrel told him. “But later, please. I have a lot of admin suddenly.”
*
Technically, Maserley had his own work to be doing. They’d want another squad of demonic expendables for some tactic or other, and they’d come looking for him. But he had his own priorities right then. He’d earned a nice reward, and it was time to take the first instalment of it. Let Thurrel pay him back in drinks and sleights of hand later. Maserley had some gratification he could take now, and if he left it too long then he’d lose his chance. They were going to execute Jack the moment anyone could take a breath from killing Loruthi, after all.
Perhaps they’d use one of Thurrel’s newly-minted tablethi to do it. That would be appropriate.
They had Jack under guard, because there were always provosts around during a battle. Mostly stepping in should anybody decide they’d rather not take their uniform and baton out to show them to the enemy, but a couple to guard a dangerous Maric seditionist was apparently not too straining on resources. As arresting officer, Maserley got no more than a nod and a step aside.
Inside the little tent was a single stool and a stake driven into the ground. Jack sat on the one and his wrists were manacled to the other, just in case he should try scrabbling out the back of the tent.
He looked up, saw Maserley and looked resigned and a bit miserable, but obviously hadn’t second-guessed the big surprise. Then Caeleen came in, and his eyes fixed on her for a moment, and there was a look on his face. A pathetic look, really. A look that Maserley would normally have taken joy on: someone who’d been lost to the charms of his favourite succubus. He’d ruined more than a few careers with Caeleen, and it was only a shame Prassel didn’t seem to have a libidinous bone in her body. Corrupting her new priest had seemed to be an amusing diversion once he’d understood the man had a set of those behavioural restrictions that primitives still clung to. Except Caeleen had gone ahead and done exactly that, and it turned out Jack’s rules had been more like guidelines and he’d just had a free ride.
And started to make plans. And waves, Maserley was alarmed to discover. Because whatever it was that Jack actually was, it was spreading through the army. Miraculous healing from the point of death, oaths of pacifism. The absolute anathema of the Palleseen mission. A true atavistic hearkening back to older days and ways. And now the man had his sights set on Maserley, because despite having all that power, he was also a sucker for a pretty face and a little demonic glamour.
He had started plotting to free the demon from her contract, and that sort of thing could escalate very quickly. The game had needed to be wrapped up very quickly. And here the man was, trapped, disempowered and soon to die.
But first this.
“I understand you covet what’s mine, Jack,” he said.
Jack, still ignorant, faced up to him. “Things seem to have turned out that way,” he said, in that thick foreign accent.
“You want to own this, I understand. Want her secret name on a contract of your own.”
Jack’s lips moved, eyes flicking to Caeleen. He sighed. “I should say no, shouldn’t I?”
“But you do.”
“I do, yes. I wouldn’t. I own nobody. But I’d be lying otherwise.” Jack dipped his head. “You got me, magister. They’ll hang me. Or shoot me? Or… it’s a tableth to the neck, isn’t it? Humane and quick, I think Banders said. Probably too good for me.”
Maserley knelt down and gripped the man’s chin, forcing Jack to look him in the eye. “They’ll probably interrogate you first. For the names of the others. You’re rot, Jack. We can’t let it spread even when you’re gone. Maybe they’ll make Prassel do it.”
“She’d like that.”
Maserley blinked, momentarily wrong-footed, but apparently Jack assumed Prassel hated him too. Let him believe that.
“Just one thing,” he told Jack. “I want you to know that they’re gone.”
Jack looked at him blankly, and then with sudden panic. “It was just me,” he said hurriedly. “Ollery, Masty, the others, they had nothing to do with it. Please.”
Maserley hooted with laughter despite himself. “You cretin. You can literally do nothing right, can you? Not even understand a little basic inference. Your little friends, you idiot. Your gods.”
“What?” Jack asked.
“Your gods are dead. I made sure of it myself. I’ve just watched my friend Thurrel draw every little dreg of them to fuel the artillery. Listen…” And he was about to say ‘the next great roar you hear…’ except the engineers had a working sense of drama because the engines spoke even then, jumping the ground beneath them, setting Jack’s chains chiming.
“That was them,” Maserley whispered, close enough to kiss. “That was your gods being turned to fire and death and thrown at the enemy. Your gods will be the killing shot spat from batons, and they will be the keys that lock howling ghosts in Prassel’s coppers. They will be a hundred different things to the army and every one of them will torment and kill.” He stood easily. “I just thought you should know.”
“What?” Jack repeated, more raggedly this time. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. “God…”
“Is dead,” Maserley said. “That’s how we perfect the world, don’t you know? Your gods are all dead and you’ll be joining them and I wanted to see your face when you knew, but I had no idea that it would be this entertaining.” And it was. Jack had none of the traditional Pal ability to bottle it all up in front of a superior. He was staring up at Maserley with all that grief and horror scrawled across his face like a five-year-old’s drawing of a monster. Raw and rough and lots of jagged lines.
Jack stood up. Stooped, because of the manacles, but as far as he could. Something happened to his face, and Caeleen stepped back. He was suddenly the ugliest man Maserley had ever seen. Like a fist had closed on his features and crushed them all inwards into the nastiest, angriest expression imaginable.
“I am going,” Jack said, “to destroy you.”
Maserley had heard that before from rivals, enemies and victims. He’d laughed it off each time and remained resolutely undestroyed. But that look on Jack’s face was getting to him. The look of an infinitely mild and gentle man explicitly forbidden from hurting anyone who suddenly didn’t care any more.
“You’ll do nothing,” he said, but Jack was shaking his head.
“You’ll torture me and then you’ll kill me, I know,” he said, and that Maric accent suddenly made his voice profoundly nasty too, a perfect complement for his face. “I won’t let that stop me. I will destroy you if my ghost has to possess everyone in the army to do it. I will make you pay for what you’ve done. You’ve killed God? You killed what I’ve lived for all my life. The thing I’ve been good for since I understood anything. All those years of not striking men like you. All those years of letting you push me around. You’ve killed God? You’ve killed the one thing keeping you safe from me, you ignorant bastard. I will destroy you. I swear it. I will ruin you the worst way possible. And if I can’t swear to God any more, I swear to every other damn thing in the world that I will not rest, alive or dead, until I have made a wasteland of your entire fucking life.”
Maserley laughed. It was a good laugh. A true, mocking peal of delighted mirth at someone else’s misfortune. He even managed to throw a disdainful look into the bargain, before he turned and swanned out of the tent, and got himself out of eyeline of the provost sentries. And then stopped, and felt his heart pound in his chest, his shirt suddenly clammy with sweat because he’d seen people possessed by demons and by ghosts and none of them had been as foreign to themselves as Maric Jack had right then. As if to underline the man’s oath, the ground leaped beneath him again, staggering him, and something vast and flaming struck within the camp, sending smoke, flames and screams all leaping towards the heavens.