Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (51 page)

The way the wizard’s jaw clenched angrily made him shrink back slightly. ‘You are confusing two different words,’ Thanates growled. ‘Don’t test my patience.’

Cole stared down at the floor glumly. Then he remembered Corvac had made similar mistakes and a shiver passed through him.

Surely it’s just a coincidence,
he thought,
I got confused, that’s all.

They continued down the long aisles between shelves. Glow-globes in the gently arched ceiling high above provided a soft light. At first Cole had been afraid they were the same as the glow-globes in Newharvest, produced from the tainted magic of the Blight. Thanates had stated that was not the case and the globes had in fact been created centuries ago, much to Cole’s relief. The blind mage hardly needed further provocation to stir the flames of his hatred. It was visible with every flicker of black fire across his body, every crunch of his teeth grinding together. He was a man skirting the edge of a precipice, liable to lose himself to sudden and terrible rage at any moment.

Cole slowed his pace to walk alongside Derkin, who was struggling to keep up. ‘This place is huge,’ Cole observed. ‘I thought there were a lot of books in the Obelisk’s library, but there must be ten times as many here. A hundred maybe.’

‘It is the largest known collection of books in the world,’ said Thanates. ‘Even the imperial library of the Wizard-Emperor cannot compare. According to Isaac, the dwarves of Mal-Torrad once had a collection to rival it – but it went up in flames during their civil war. Isaac’s knowledge of history was astoundingly complete, in stark contrast to your ignorance.’

Cole frowned and kicked up a cloud of dust. Gods, he hated that bastard Isaac. Derkin began to cough and he immediately regretted his act of petulance. He leaned over and slapped his friend on the back as Derkin choked on the dust he’d just thrown up. ‘Sorry,’ he said meekly once the little man had recovered.

‘It’s fine,’ Derkin replied, blinking his mismatched eyes. ‘I got used to it when I lived down in the undercity.’

Thanates stopped suddenly, and Cole had to grab hold of Derkin to stop his friend blundering into the back of the wizard. ‘Here.
This
is what I am searching for.’

The row of books beside them looked much the same as any other. ‘How can you be certain?’ Cole dared ask.

‘Watch.’ Thanates reached towards the shelf before him. Silver sparks immediately crackled into life around his gloved hand and he flinched away, smoke steaming from his scorched fingers. ‘The White Lady warded these tomes for a reason. I could dispel her magic and remove the wards, but it is hardly necessary. Not when I have you.’

‘Me?’ Cole replied uncertainly.

‘Unsheathe your dagger. Place the point against the bookshelf.’

Cole did as he was asked, bringing Magebane hesitantly forward until the tip was almost touching the spot where Thanates had activated the ward. At any moment Cole expected silver sparks to burst into life and fling back him backwards. Instead, all that happened was that the hilt in his palm grew warmer as Magebane absorbed the magic. Just as it had the night he’d assassinated Salazar.

‘As I said,’ Thanates remarked ‘a powerful tool.’ It wasn’t clear if the wizard was talking about Magebane or Cole. ‘That should suffice. Now put that weapon away. If it should happen to touch my flesh while you are holding it, the consequences would be disastrous.’

Cole sheathed his dagger and moved out of the way. Thanates ran his hands along the spines of the ancient tomes for a moment and then pulled out a large green volume. ‘This one,’ he said. ‘What does it say?’

Cole peered at the spine. ‘
The Dalashran
.’

‘Open it.’

Cole suppressed a sigh and thumbed the book open at random. ‘It’s a history of some place called Dalashra,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look very interesting. Wait, what’s this? There are some illustrations.’

‘What do they depict?’

‘Men. Kings seated upon their thrones.’ Cole squinted. ‘This… this one looks like you. He’s younger and well, he doesn't look blind, but… Yes. It
is
you.’

Thanates nodded and turned to Derkin. ‘Can you read?’

‘Yes,’ Derkin said proudly. ‘My ma taught me how. We only ever owned three books but I read them cover to cover more times than I can count.’

‘I want you both to pull out every book on this shelf. Find anything that relates to Dalashra or the White Lady’s personal life. Anything that documents events in and around Thelassa in the time leading up to the Godswar. I want to know who I was. I want to know why she did this to me. Why she stole my memories and extinguished all hope from the world.’

‘There are a lot of books here,’ Cole said doubtfully.

‘Then you had best get a move on,’ the wizard replied.

She squinted through the rain and the tears that blurred her vision. The palace was just ahead.

Screams and shouts tore through the city as she walked unsteadily down the broad avenue in which the Seeding Festival had taken place months earlier. Soldiers streamed past, the cloaks they wore as white as the wet powder smeared over her nose. No one made to stop her. If they tried, she would kill them. She had killed before, on the battlefield outside Dorminia’s gates. Put a sword right through a man’s face. The image had kept her awake sometimes. It wouldn’t any longer. There were worse fates than an honest death to cause her sleepless nights now.

In her mind she saw the nightmarish visage of the woman in the tank, her mouth yawning open, tortured scream swallowed up by the putrid blood surrounding her body. She saw again the tiny body of an unborn child scraping against the glass. She wondered if the woman tied to the chair in Fergus’s laboratory might have been its mother.

Sasha thought she heard the cruel
snip
of scissors then and looked around wildly – but no, it was just the clank of a Whitecloak’s sword as he hurried by.

One face above all was fixed in her mind. It was achingly beautiful, with bewitching violet eyes and perfect skin, and she wanted to smash it apart, shatter the lie it told, tear away that outrageous façade of benevolence and expose the ugly truth for the world to see.

The White Lady’s servants would stop her before she reached the Magelord, she knew. Maybe her own sister would be the one to do it.

Sasha didn’t care. Ambryl was a monster too. There was no point lying to herself any more. There’d been enough lies. This entire city was built on lies.

Somehow she reached the stairs leading up to the palace gates. There were no guards on duty; whatever chaos was unfolding elsewhere in the city had drawn them away. She pushed open the gates and strode through the entrance hallway, ignoring the rainwater that dripped from her soaked clothes, the muddy footprints her boots left on the lustrous marble floor. She wanted to smear the whole palace in filth. Everything was so damned clean in Thelassa, so pristine. It sickened her. She had never imagined she would miss Dorminia, but at least there was no pretence in the city of her home. No demons wearing the faces of angels.

Her nose burned. She wiped it with the back of her hand, glanced at it and saw that it was smeared with blood. She’d snorted the entire bag of
hashka
back in the alley. Inhaled it right there in the rain, desperate to take the edge off the horror. The silver powder had chased her terror away… but now that the fear was gone, only anger remained.

She approached the pair of gilded doors that she knew must lead to the throne room. There was a guard standing before them, one of the White Lady’s handmaidens.

One of the Unborn.

The pale woman moved to intercept her, but Sasha didn’t slow. She wasn’t afraid of these creatures any more.

‘You are not permitted to be here,’ the Unborn stated in her emotionless voice. The woman’s colourless gaze met her own. That gaze that had once filled her with dread now brought only pity.

Sasha didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward and embraced the White Lady’s handmaiden. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry for what they did to you.’

The Unborn seemed to flinch. It could have flung her away as if she were a leaf blown in by the wind. Could have broken her in half like a stray twig. But it merely stood there unmoving as Sasha pulled the gleaming dagger she’d stolen off Ambryl from her belt and drove it through the back of its skull. She gave the hilt a twist, heard bone crack. Black blood ran over her hands. The sudden stench of rot and decay and death filled her burned nostrils, but she ignored it, resisting the urge to drop the body and reel away gagging. Instead she lowered the shuddering creature to the floor as if it were a child.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. There was something in the handmaiden’s expression that brought tears to her eyes, something very much like gratitude.

Sasha’s anger returned, fiercer than before. The dagger she clutched still dripping with black blood, Sasha kicked open the doors to the throne room and stormed through to confront the Magelord of Thelassa.

The object of her fury was sitting on a delicate throne carved of ivory on a dais overlooking the chamber. Overhead, a mosaic of heavenly figures stared down majestically from the vaulted ceiling. Directly above the throne itself, a large circular window set into the ceiling revealed a violent blue-grey sky beyond. Streaks of rain crawled down the glass as the tempest continued unabated above the city. As Sasha marched towards the Magelord, a flash of lightning lit the chamber and the White Lady’s head shot up. She fixed her with those violet eyes. Despite the numbing effect of the
hashka
and the cold, hard anger knotting her stomach, the weight of that immortal gaze stopped Sasha in her tracks.

‘Sister?’

She was only distantly aware of Ambryl’s astonished voice amongst the crowd of attendants seated on the benches arranged before the raised throne. A devastating tide of hopelessness swept over her. The utter contempt on the Magelord’s face dug up old memories; painful memories she’d sought to bury with moon dust and devil’s breath and anything else she could get her hands on. Always the memories returned, fiercer than before, seeking to drag her down to a place where she was worthless, barely human. Hardly a person at all.

The White Lady rose from her throne with consummate grace. She raised a flawless hand to halt the pair of Unborn that had melted from the statues beside the dais. The Magelord’s voice was curious. ‘It is forbidden to bring naked steel into my presence, child. You test the limits of my forbearance. Explain yourself.’

Sasha opened her mouth, but despite the anger that had driven her this far, no sound emerged. She was once again helpless before the ruinous sight of the ruler of Thelassa. A girl once more, knowing she was too weak to fight back. Too weak to do anything except squeeze her eyes shut and hope it would soon be over.

‘Mistress.’ Ambryl hurried over to her sister. ‘Please, forgive my foolish sister. She has lapsed again. Allow me to escort her away from here and I promise to fix her.’

Fix me? You can’t fix me. I’m broken.
The dagger quivered in Sasha’s hand.

With supreme elegance, the White Lady descended the handful of stairs leading from the dais and approached the two sisters. Her purple eyes lingered for a second on the bloody blade Sasha carried. ‘You claim your sister is weak, and yet somehow she slew one of my Unborn.’

The White Lady gestured and the dagger was torn from Sasha’s grasp. It floated slowly towards the Magelord, murky droplets of putrefying blood rolling off the steel blade to hang suspended in the air. ‘The punishment for destroying my property is death,’ she finished calmly.

‘Your property?
’ Sasha managed to whisper, aghast. ‘That was a person once. A… a baby.’

‘Mistress,’ said Ambryl. ‘I beg you. Don’t hurt her.’

Sasha stared at her sister. For the first time since they’d been reunited, she had heard a glimmer of the old Ambryl. The Ambryl who would fix her hair and joke with her about boys and comfort her during a thunderstorm.

The White Lady tapped the dagger against her perfect fingernails and frowned down at Sasha. ‘You know too much. I could have you taken for correction. Some, such as Cyreena here, see the light with their eyes wide open. Others require… encouragement.’

‘No,’ Ambryl gasped, white-faced. ‘Please. Not that.’

The Magelord reached out a hand and laid it upon Sasha’s brow. ‘Bow before me, child,’ the White Lady said serenely. ‘Swear to serve me and you shall arise as one of the Consult, your indiscretions forgotten.’

Sasha looked up at the ceiling, at the assorted gods depicted there – deities murdered by the wizard whose hand was upon her head. She thought of the poor and starving on the streets of Dorminia, of the families torn apart as husbands and wives were forced to board ships to the Celestial Isles because of a crisis the White Lady herself had engineered. She thought of mothers and fathers so heavily drugged they couldn’t recall the horrors that had been visited upon them. Couldn’t even remember what it was they’d lost.

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’ The White Lady withdrew her hand. A terrible anger flared in her purple eyes. ‘I saved the world from the depredations of the gods. I overthrew the tyrant that ruled your city. I am the light that keeps the darkness at bay! And yet you, you worthless little junkie, you stand before me and refuse my patronage?’

‘Yes.’

‘
Why?
’ The Magelord’s voice was a deadly whisper.

‘Because…’ Sasha met the White Lady’s gaze and her courage deserted her. She looked away.

Looked away to see the two Unborn by the throne. Remembered the tiny body in the tank and the woman tied to the chair, blood pooling around her ankles.

‘Because you’re an evil cunt,’ she snarled. Her hand shot up and caught the immortal wizard a stinging slap across the face, the sound reverberating through the chamber like the dying breath of a god.