Page 33 of The Malevolent Eight

‘Has not each of us secretly suspected interference in our preparations for the Great Crusade?’ Rationality asked. ‘Beyond, of course, that perpetrated by. . . familiar sources,’ she added, briefly glancing back in my direction.

Okay, that time she definitely winked at me. On the positive side, it turns out Shame was right about the Celestines refusing to admit we were any kind of threat and thus not needing to exterminate us for having threatened them.

‘Is it so high a price to afford this Fallen Justiciar a moment’s return to what he readily admits was his failure and not ours?’ Rationality went on, gazing up with uncharacteristic meekness to the Celestine of Justice. ‘Sister, let the sanctity of our Crusade against the Infernals, if not affection for your former servant or the simple logic before you, dictate that you accede to this trifling request.’

‘Why, Sister, does Rationality come begging a favour from me?’ Justice asked, a hint of a smile breaking the sternness of her customary glower.

In case the innuendo wasn’t obvious, Rationality traditionally considered herself the strictest of virtues, and thus did no favours for anyone.

Again, however, she looked back at me. ‘A. . . small favour, perhaps.’

Was that a jab at my—?

Corrigan poked me in the back and whispered in my ear. ‘Brother, remind me to give you some lessons in lovemaking. Sounds like the big lass will be expecting payment once this business is done.’

Seriously, it was only one night. I barely recall the act itself. Then again, failing to remember specific events from my time as a Glorian was what got us into this predicament in the first place.

The Celestine of Justice descended from her throne to embrace her sister. ‘Let it be thus, in the name of the love between us.’

‘Say,’ began Corrigan, ‘do you suppose the two of them ever—?’

‘Shut up, shut up,shut up!’ I hissed at him.

Justice approached us and for a moment, I feared Corrigan’s lecherous tongue was finally going to be the end of us all. Instead, the Celestine opened her long brocaded coat and from inside her being a golden fog seeped out to envelop me. ‘The Glorian Archives have opened to you, Gallantry. Witness what you will, but I fear whatever supposed crime you committed in my service will pale before the revelation of how far you have fallen since leaving me.’

Spurred on by those words of encouragement, I stepped inside the Auroral Haze. The gleaming armour of a Glorian Justiciar wrapped itself around me once more. I became taller, stronger and more certain of myself and the world around me than I’d felt in more than ten years.

I was Gallantry once more.

Turns out, I too had been a right prick in my day.

Chapter 17

The Glorian Justiciar

I’d forgotten what it felt like to wear the armour. As a boy watching Glorian Justiciars stride into the gang-ridden slum where we cowered in terror every day before whichever third-rate wonderist had been hired to shake down the poorest families for every pitiful coin we’d scraped together, those shimmering suits of golden armour looked so grand, so indomitable, that I’d assumed they must weigh almost as much as the tall, broad-shouldered men and women wearing them. Years later when, as a youth of seventeen, I was first inducted into the order, I discovered that a Glorian’s armour weighs hardly anything; after all, it’s nothing but rags stitched together with fraying thread. Each recruit has to wander the streets, begging strangers for scraps of cloth, until they have enough to sew those worn, filthy castoffs into shirts and trousers so ill-fitting and unseemly that the proudest warriors would have hung their heads in shame to be seen in them.

That was, of course, the point.

Any true Glorian, be they Justiciar, Ardentor, Exemplar, Pareval or any of the other orders, needed to remember that no matter how great our power over our fellow Mortals, we, too, were made of flesh and sin.

That was an easy lesson to forget when at last I’d been deemed worthy to stand before the Celestine of Justice and her blessings filled my rags with radiance, reshaping them into breastplate, pauldrons, greaves and all the rest: stronger than steel, as proof against a blazing inferno or the coldest ice storm as swords, arrows and cannon-fire. A Glorian’s armour was wondrous to behold, yet the rough sensation of the tatters from which it was made remained against our skin, a constant reminder that we were no better than the least among those we were called to protect, to judge and sometimes, to kill. . .

‘Please!’ wept the girl hiding in the cave. ‘Please, I don’t belong here. I didn’t mean to. . .’

I couldn’t hear the rest of what she said. The Auroral Song filled my ears with the serene certainty that my mission to capture this creature of deviousness, to cauterise this infection before it could poison humanity, was an act of sublime righteousness.

‘Look,’ she cried, holding out her arms to us. ‘I’m not a demon! I don’t even know what a wonderist is, or any of these other things you’re—’

There was something around her arms: tattooed bands of sigils of some sort? I couldn’t see them properly, because my eyes saw only the pristine beauty that was everywhere in Creation, save for where sin stained its perfect pattern.

‘Abomination,’ I deemed her.

‘Abomination,’ the eleven Glorians with me agreed.

Now was the time when a Glorian Arbitrator would be called to hear the facts of the case as we’d uncovered them and render a verdict upon the defendant. But we were far from any of our sanctuaries, which meant transporting a potentially dangerous suspect through populated areas. Under such circumstances, a senior Justiciar could be temporarily elevated to the rank of Arbitrator. The natural choice was my comrade Fidelity, a woman whose devotion made her physical beauty pale in comparison to her bright, shining spirit. It was she who turned to me unexpectedly.

‘You found her, Gallantry, when her filthy spells hid her from the rest of us. You defeated her bindings when she attempted to shackle our minds. It is you who should now serve as Arbitrator and determine her sentence.’

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