Page 42 of The Malevolent Seven

My lips parted, the words and tears long held back threatening to slip from my tongue. I swallowed them back down where they belonged. ‘I realised one day that the voice wasn’t speaking to me, not really. It was talkingatme, as it does to you, as it does to all of us.’

Before she could question me further, I held a finger to my lips. ‘Shhh.I need to concentrate.’

She acquiesced, sitting back down on the bed.

I couldn’t break Dignity and Fidelity’s chains, and if I tried too hard, they’d become aware of my attempts. Instead, I reshaped the space between the angelic and me so that it slid around those unbreakable cords, enabling us to speak to one another as free beings, even if just for a moment.

‘Ahhhh,’ she sighed, her whole body sagging.

‘Are you all right?’

She nodded. ‘I only felt this once before, this. . . lack of purpose. Another angelic had found a way to this state. She called it the “beautiful unknowing”. I am. . . grateful to experience it again, if only briefly.’

Feeling the first brush of the justiciars’ wills instinctively trying to reassert themselves over the angelic, I once again slid the space between us around those tendrils to evade them without their becoming aware of us.

‘Why did you come here?’ the angelic asked.

‘A bargain,’ I replied. ‘I was sent to get you out of here.’

‘So youdoserve another. Who?’

‘That doesn’t mat—’

She sent her own perceptions rooting through my memories. I tried to hold her back but the suddenness of her attack overwhelmed me. A smile came to her lips, one so unexpected and genuine it nearly broke my heart. ‘The swashbuckler,’ she said, not with mockery, but admiration. ‘The Rat Most Valorous.’

I nodded.

The angelic stood up from the bed, her body changing once again. ‘He made love to me like this,’ she said, her body now slimmer, a few years older, perhaps thirty, the black hair streaked with grey. I found her entrancing. I guess Aradeus had, too. ‘The rat mage had done some great service to the prince, who rewarded him by giving him an entire night with me.’ She ran her hands down the curves of her body. ‘He delighted in every inch of me, singing to me as we made love, stopping to write poems about me, of which he desperately wanted my opinion. But at the end, just as morning was coming, I think he finally understood what I was, and then he cried and begged my forgiveness. Isn’t that strange?’

‘It is common decency, so yes, that is strange.’

The angelic laughed, a strange sound for one designed by her creators to witness events through a disinterested haze that separates all of experience into that which conforms to the will of the Lords Celestine and that which does not. That she was able to find mirth in Aradeus’ archaic notions of gallantry was as close to a miracle as I had seen in a long time. ‘A valorous rat swore to free me from my bonds,’ she said, then gestured to me, ‘and here he sends me a knight of heresy to be the key that unlocks the shackles of my faith.’

I rose to my feet and extended a hand. ‘If we succeed, you can spend the rest of your existence in the beautiful unknowing, if that’s what you want. You can be directionless without being lost, for as long as you choose.’

She didn’t take my hand.

‘You cannot,’ she said, and already I could see her retreating into the desires of others. ‘Leave here, Merciful Apostate. You came in good faith and fulfilled whatever oath you made to the swashbuckler. But now that you know what I am, and who binds me here, you know too that you must not free me. The Lords Celes—’

‘Those pricks already hate me. I doubt this will change anything. Now, give me a moment, would you? I need to see a rat about a man.’

I reached into the pocket of my coat to withdraw the furry, not especially pleasant-smelling occupant who’d been snoozing there for the past hour. I held the rat up to my face. ‘I’m assuming Aradeus’ spell still lingers over you, so if you’d be so kind as to—Why, you flea-infested bastard—’

The little fucker had bit my nose, breaking the skin. When I yanked him back there was a drop of my blood between his teeth and a self-satisfied smirk on his ratty face. An instant later, the rat’s expression grew more serious and he spoke with Aradeus’ voice.

‘Cade? What’s happening? There are two justiciars up here threatening the major domo with purification unless he rescinds his gift of your hour with my most honourable lady.’

My lady.Boy, was he ever scrabbling up the wrong tree. In case it wasn’t obvious from all the shape-changing, angelics aren’t male or female or anything between. Gender is all pretty much the same to them.

‘Find Corrigan and tell him to whip up a distraction of some kind– maybe conjure up a Tempestoral haze over the entire barge. He’s lousy at them, but it should keep the prince’s wonderists confused long enough for you to get him and Galass down here.’

The rat gave me a disappointed stare. ‘Infernal mages are known for their subtlety. I’d hoped you might be able to sneak my lady off the vessel with a minimum of unnecessary violence.’

The anger I’d been failing to completely hold back raged through me like a battering ram splintering a castle door. ‘Well, guess what, Aradeus? It turns out the beings that most decent people pray to are bigger arseholes than any of us ever imagined. So I’d say some good old-fashioned unnecessary violence is most definitely called for!’

Chapter 21

The Breakout

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