Page 65 of The Malevolent Eight

He placed two fingers upon a black sigil just below his ribcage on the left side, a frowning mouth overlaid on a smiling one, looking a bit like two crescent moons placed one over the other. As he murmured the incantation, the inky black sigils floated from his body, drifting through the air to inscribe themselves over my mouth. This particular spell was called a Tongue-Wrester and I had to hide a smirk when I felt it insinuate itself inside me. This guy was clearly sick of wasting expensive spells, so he was now pulling out the cheap stuff.

‘Ask him what you will,’ the Infernalist told the others. ‘His darkest truths will be revealed.’

The florinist decided to nominate himself as interrogator, which was unpleasant. Florinists are kind of like cosmists, only instead of mystically covering their entire bodies with nether-space, florinists cover every part of themselves– including the lining of their throats– in a kind of flexible bark. It may be durable and resilient, but they all sound like bits of wood grinding against each other.

‘Have you lost your mind, Cade Ombra?’ he asked.

Ah, I do love an amateur. The Tongue-Wrester is kind of like a verity potion– if they weren’t just narcotics meant to make you blurt out whatever was on your mind. This spell, however, draws not only truth from you but yourdarkest, most embarrassingtruths. Luckily, I’d done plenty of stupid shit in my relatively short life and I was way past embarrassment. Also, the florinist hadn’t asked if my mind was lostnow, only if I’deverlost it.

‘I have,’ I confessed, recalling those first few weeks after I’d left the Glorian Justiciars, got the shit kicked out of me by my former comrades and been cut off from the Auroral Song. It wasn’t exactly a fun memory to relive, but that didn’t mean I couldn’ttry. ‘I am alone,’ I wailed, my tears genuine for once, ‘utterly alone, unloved, unheard– I am nothing but failure made flesh– the worthless remnants of—’

‘We will have to cease his torments,’ warned the cosmist. ‘I cannot bear any more of his madness.’

‘Great,’ muttered the Infernalist. ‘You made me waste yet another spell for nothing.’

‘Let us delve deeper, then,’ said the felinist, coming closer, head tilted to one side like a curious cat.

You getting sweet on me, kitty?I wondered, then recalled that I was naked and covered in smeared faeces and urine, so probably not.

‘Tell us your darkest deeds,’ she demanded. ‘Reveal to us the secrets you keep from even those closest to you.’ She turned to the others. ‘Once his mind has settled, we can use these against him.’

You could,I conceded silently,if any of you amateurs were remotely competent at this job.

Darkest deeds? Entirely open to interpretation. Nonetheless, I rattled off some particularly nasty things I’d had to do in my career– none of which I’m going to reveal here, obviously.

The secrets I keep from those closest to me?Oh, baby, now you’re really making this fun.

‘I once paid an entire military encampment’s complement of prostitutes to pretend they couldn’t feel Corrigan’s cock when he was fucking them,’ I declared mournfully. ‘Almost half my entire fee for the campaign I spent bribing each of the women to keep saying “is it in yet?” until by the end of the fighting season he was convinced that his penis was getting smaller by the day. . . Oh, woe is me!’

‘What the hell does that matter?’ demanded the cosmist.

I couldn’t blame her; they really can’t feel much of anything so she wouldn’t know what appalling behaviour this was.

‘You’re being too vague,’ the Infernalist informed his comrades. He was looking mildly amused by all this– as I said, oddly decent folks to hang around with.

‘Fine,’ said the florinist. ‘Reveal to us your secrets about the Lords Devilish!’

‘They’re all pricks,’ I confessed.

That was the only secret I knew about the Lords Devilish.

‘The Lords Celestine, then!’ the florinist shouted. ‘Tell us everything you’ve hidden from them and your own coven!’

Better and better. Ididin fact, have a secret about the Lords Celestine that I hadn’t shared with my closest companions: something so embarrassing that I’d almost rather die than have Corrigan ever find out.

‘I claimed the night I had sex with the Celestine of Rationality was mediocre,’ I admitted. ‘It was a lie. That night was fabulous– it was magical!’

‘Ennnnouuugh,’ buzzed the Pandoral, evidently as disgusted by the thought of Mortals and Celestines engaging in carnal activities as I would be by the thought of whatever his swarm did when they were feeling randy. Alas for his prudishness, once the Tongue-Wrester has been cast and the question asked, the victim can’t be stopped from giving the answer.

‘I came three times that night,’ I confessed loudly. ‘Three times– I’d never been able to have three orgasms withanyone, not even as a teenager!’ That, too, was sadly true.

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ shouted the florinist, pairing each command with another wooden-palmed slap that threatened to knock me unconscious– which would’ve been good for me and bad for them.

‘He’ll keep answering the question until you ask another,’ said the Infernalist, visibly hiding a chuckle at the plight of his colleagues. ‘He won’t stop until the spell wears off or he’s no longer capable of speech.’

‘Somebody ask a different question, damn it,’ the luminist shouted, but they were all getting confused and flustered now, so in desperation he said, ‘Reveal for us your secret tactics, Cade Ombra!’

‘I masturbate thinking about her,’ I told him. ‘It’s the only way to get her out of my mind sometimes. You wouldn’t think that Rationality was sexy, but damn it all, there are nights when I can’t get her breasts out of my thoughts– I’m not usually a breast person, either. I mean, I like them plenty, but not obsessively, you know? I think perhaps it’s because I still associate them with my mother, who insisted I keep breast-feeding even when I was five years old and—’

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