The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  “A bastard then.”

  “Looks like.” Heath tossed the folio to the floor. “Who do we know at the Lyceum?”

  Sword looked at him. “Maddox?”

  Heath sighed. “Who else?”

  “No, mate…” Sword pointed toward the library at a lean figure shuffling listlessly through the debris. The shoulders were slumped, and his arms swayed at his sides. “Fucking drunk as usual to boot.”

  Heath marched out to the library. He spread his arms wide and offered his dazzling smile. “Maddox! Buddy, what are you doing—”

  The thing that looked at him had Maddox’s face, but the croaking noise that came from its mouth wasn’t human. The skin was pale, and the eyes were milky with the pall of death. His neck looked slashed and tied back together with thick black stitches. The revenant lunged for him.

  Heath’s blades were already drawn and readied, but revenants were fast when they needed to be. The thing slammed into him and knocked him backward as hands scratched and pulled at his clothes. Maddox shook and snapped at him like a ferocious animal.

  They crashed to the floor, Heath’s head exploding with pain as it came down on something hard and sharp. The edges of books and shattered glass poked into his back as the monster on top of him went for his neck like a lover in the throes of passion.

  The wet feeling of blood crept over on Heath’s neck as the revenant gnawed his flesh. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he’d bleed out in a matter of minutes, but the pain was washed away by the rush of battle. He jammed his blades into Maddox’s rib cage. The abraveum sliced through skin into organs, but the revenant didn’t even flinch.

  Sword charged out of the study, his blade in midswing as he leapt toward Maddox and kicked him in the ribs. Revenants were made stronger by necromancy but not heavier. Sword’s blow sent the creature a good couple of feet into the air, with Heath’s bloody flesh still in its mouth.

  Heath scrambled back, desperately pressing his hands against the wound. Light poured from his fingers, its radiance easing his pain even as it drew more of his strength.

  The revenant lunged at Sword again, but he calmly kicked it, square in the head, back to the ground. Sword let out a roar and speared Maddox through his mouth, pinning him to the floor. The revenant bit at the steel, his limbs flopping and eyes darting frantically.

  “Now that’s just sad, mate.” Sword knelt next to Maddox. “Good news is that it looks like he’s already been decapitated and stitched together.”

  “He caught me by surprise.” Heath pulled himself off the floor as he massaged his neck. His fingers traced the edges where his skin had regrown softer and smoother.

  Sword brushed off his hands. “You want to do any last rites or whatnot? He was sort of a friend…I suppose.”

  Heath laughed incredulously. “That fucking sick, manipulative, evil…bitch!”

  Sword shrugged. “He was a bit of a twat, but that’s kind of harsh for a send-off, mate.”

  “I’m talking about Daphne,” Heath growled. “She wanted me to kill him because he’s some kind of immortal warlock. But look at that shit. Does that look immortal to you? She’s fucking with me, Sword. She wanted to see if she could make me follow orders again.”

  “You could…you know, take care of her. It is a rule that the leaders of the Inquisition are all horrible bastards, but they span the multitudinous diversity of ways that people can be horrible bastards.”

  Heath had thought of killing her after what had happened in Reda. Sending him to kill children was a test of loyalty. Sending him to kill someone he knew—that was personal.

  And unnecessary. “Let’s see where the current takes us,” Heath said. “There’s no use dropping him in the river if there’s a price on his head someone’s willing to pay. But now we have another problem: someone killed him before we did.”

  “What luck, right? Three shards, and we’ve bought our way back into the abbess’s good graces practically guilt free. And you go in there bawling like a baby about how hard it was and how you feel nothing but emptiness, et cetera, and she thinks she’s got one over on us. Classic.”

  Sword grabbed Maddox’s hair, which had grown tangled and greasy, pressed his boot on his shoulder, and yanked. The blade pinning the head popped out of the floor, accompanied by a sickening ripping noise as the leather stitches tore from the neck. Sword stumbled backward and let the head slide off the blade onto the floor. The revenant’s body lay still.

  “Someone killed my friend,” Heath said, surprising himself by his use of the word. “This will need to be answered for.”

  Sword cocked his bushy eyebrow. “Will it really, though? I mean, he can’t have mattered that much to you.”

  Heath nodded. “No. Our courtship was a mistake. He was rude, arrogant, clingy, and half the time so drunk he could barely get it up. The world isn’t greatly diminished by the absence of his Light, but…mutilation? Reanimation? I knew him. He was a person, a better one than either of us, if you consider it objectively, and he never in his life did anything to deserve this.”

  “It’s your vendetta. I just like killing things,” Sword acknowledged. “You think Evan Landry’s responsible?”

  “There’s a connection for sure,” Heath said. “It just doesn’t add up yet. But why would he kill Maddox? And why leave his revenant in Landry Manor? Why loot the place for trinkets and not hit the safe?”

  They both spun around at the sound of crunching glass.

  A short, lithe figure in a black cloak crept along the wall, holding a bundle of fabric. The gentle pulsing glow of Archean prismite showed through the cloth. The thief bolted for the door.

  Sword lunged at full speed, aiming to tackle, and probably crush, their unexpected visitor. Sword was Patrean and strong as fuck—when one of those guys ran at you, there wasn’t much to do but get out of the way or brace for injury.

  The thief changed direction and sprinted toward the wall, gaining footholds in the emptied bookshelves. The cloak fell back, revealing a woman with a mane of long multicolored hair. By the time Sword got to her, however, she was gone, and he went crashing into the wall.

  She somersaulted off the wall and landed into a crouching roll across the floor a good ten feet away from Sword. Heath was moving to intercept. Their eyes locked for an instant. She was maybe seventeen. She flashed a grin then darted toward the door to the foyer.

  Heath ducked and unleashed a springblade into the wall, creating a tripwire of abraveum filament at calf level. She cleared it with a flashy midair tuck and roll.

  He extended his other hand and let out a flare of brilliant light. Illumination flooded the room, glaring and bright. He let his other springblade loose, lodging it in the wall in front of her. She didn’t see it, and it nearly took off her head. She caught the wire at chest level and fell back, shrieking in pain. The shards tumbled to the floor, still glowing softly.

  Sword was on top of her, a meaty hand pressed against her neck. “Stay the fuck down, bitch!”

  “Please don’t kill me…I work for Daphne,” she sobbed softly.

  Sword lifted her off the ground and slammed her against the wall. “The fuck you do!”

  “Sword…” Heath retracted his blades until they clucked back into his arm braces. “She’s just a kid. Lay off a little.”

  Sword didn’t lay off. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t gut this cunt right now.”

  It was somewhat of a cliché in interrogations for one party to be aggressive while the other seemed reasonable. And Sword usually followed Heath’s lead. But it already had started. Best to go with it. Heath smiled. “Nice moves. I’m Heath, and this is my associate. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing? Madame Landry perhaps?” He turned to Sword and added, “At least give her enough air to answer questions.”

  Sword let her down but kept his left hand digging into her shoulder. The wince on her face suggested he wasn’t being gentle with her. Her shirt and chest were slashed from her having hit his abraveum filam
ent earlier, but it was a surface wound. It would sting for a few days, but it would heal.

  She pleaded, “I was just looking for food…”

  “Let me provide an alternate explanation, if I may.” Sword slammed her against the wall again. “You’re mixed up in this. You overheard my mate and me having a collegial discussion about internal matters. Then you set your little revenant pet to distract us while you made off with the shards.”

  “Fuck it,” she sneered, dropping the pathetic façade. “Just kill me. I already would have done it myself if I had the guts.”

  Heath rubbed his temples. “How about you just answer our questions? I don’t like torture. In general I don’t like to get my hands dirty. But I just lost a piece of my neck to a revenant, and I just want to go home and take a nice, long, relaxing bath. So let’s start with your name.”

  “Esme.”

  “Now,” Heath said, “as a duly appointed agent of the Inquisition, you were given a pass phrase to identify your rank within the Order. What is it?”

  “Clever.” She smirked. “There isn’t a passphrase. You can find the black coin in my left pocket. Your friend can dig it out.”

  Sword reached into her trousers pocket and pulled out a folded square of parchment and a black disk bearing the seal of Ohan. He tossed the coin to Heath and unfolded the parchment. It was stuffed with green crystal shards.

  Heath caught the coin. It was legit. She still could have come by it through dishonest means, but if she had called bullshit on the pass phrase, she knew enough about the Inquisition to pass. She was thin, a little too thin, but pretty enough to stand out. And if she were a street rat, she’d be prime Inquisition recruitment material.

  Sword dipped his finger into the green crystals, held it to his nose, and sniffed. He shook his head and tipped back a bit. “Fuck! That’s some good shit.”

  “You mind, asshole?” Esme said. “That’s gotta last me all week.”

  “What was your assignment?”

  Esme blew a few stray strands of hair out of her face. “I was infiltrating hedge-wizard circles, looking for evidence of warlocks or pact magic and reporting it back to the church. Daphne wanted me to stay close to this guy…He’s nothing big, but he’s well connected. My job was to stay close, observe, and report.”

  “How did she contact you?”

  “I only met her once.” She frowned. “My last pimp liked to get his girls hooked on dragonfire so he could…” She shook her head. “One of her agents said she could cure my addiction if I worked for her; in the meantime she hooked me up. That was two fucking years ago, so I figured this whole offer was bullshit, but it beat the brothels. Besides hedge wizards aren’t so bad. When I saw the shards, I saw an opportunity—one of those will pay for an education at the Lyceum. “

  Sword added. “Very convenient.”

  “I know who you are, Heath,” Esme said. “You’re already rich. I didn’t think it would hurt to make off with the shards.”

  Heath calmly asked, “Why were you here?”

  “It’s a big empty house full of shit. There’s a lot of them since all the high and mighty bailed and left us to the Harrowers. And the Inquisition hasn’t exactly been paying me.”

  “You ever heard of Evan Landry?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  Sword threw her against the wall again. “He asked you a fucking question!”

  “Sword!” Heath said emphatically.

  He looked at Heath almost in surprise. His eyes glittered with bloodlust. “Oh, for Ohan’s sake…what particular part of this fabricated bullshit are you buying? She’s a fucking warlock, and for all we know she is Evan Landry. These nobles name girls after anything these days. She tried to fuck us, and she deserves to get fucked. “

  Heath looked at her. She was scared but masking it with an attitude of defiance. He searched her eyes; she was hard to read.

  He waved his hand. “Let her go.”

  “The fuck I will!” Sword said. “She’s going to die tonight, mate.”

  “What the hells is your problem?”

  “Gut feeling,” Sword said. “Besides, if she does work for Daphne, which I don’t believe for a second, then she also overheard our little conversation about offing the bitch. And if she was being truthful with us with a minimal amount of coercion, how’s she going to keep that information from a ruthless psychopath with a Veritas Seal?”

  Sword had a point. The story didn’t add up. Even so, Heath reiterated, “Let her go now.”

  “You fucking idiot!” Sword shouted, and punched his hand into the bookshelf behind her.

  Esme ducked under his arm and darted toward the door. Sword lunged after her, but she stopped, crouched, and reached her arms back, grabbing his waist and tossing him over her head. With his force and momentum suddenly turned against him, Sword smashed into the floor. Esme furled her cape back, grinned slightly at Heath, then bolted out to the foyer.

  “The fuck!” Sword gathered a book from the floor, ripped it in half, and chucked the pieces across the room. “You let her get away!”

  “The fuck happened to you?” Heath challenged. “That was unprofessional. When I tell you to stand down, you do it.”

  “You’re a child!” Sword puffed out his chest and stood in Heath’s way. “I’m ancient, and I’ve been fighting for centuries. This body here was crafted as the perfect weapon. I’m stronger and faster than anything on two legs. A little girl shouldn’t have been able to dodge me. It’s impossible.”

  “Easy now.” Heath smiled and leaned into Sword’s ear, whispering, “I have her blood on my springblades. We can find her any time.”

  “You fucking brilliant fucker, you!” He threw his hands around Heath and squeezed.

  Heath continued, “We pretend this never happened, bring Maddox’s head to Daphne, and see what she knows. There’s a fair bit of my blood here, so we need to burn the room. You still remember how to set fires?”

  “Psssh.” Sword waved his hand. “Burning a library isn’t pyromancy. You want to get food after this?”

  Heath surveyed the wreckage, the forgotten shards on the carpet, Maddox’s corpse. “I could eat.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Shoppe

  MADDOX

  I’VE SAT THROUGH 183 sermons in twenty-five temples of Ohan and listened to forty-two priests’ homilies on the life of Saint Juliette. She’s unique among the saints in that her exploits are well preserved in both the Cantos and the dry military logs of the Patreans.

  Saint Juliette was, by general account, a farmer who, in defiance of Thrycean authority, led a brief and ineffective revolt in Fishers Bay, a former settlement in Gorin. The Patrean records objectively tabulate the slaughter of the recalcitrant villagers (127) in a ledger against Patrean casualties (three) to arrive at an invoice for the counterinsurgency.

  We’ve never been given reason to doubt Patrean accounting practices when it comes to death gratuities. Saint Juliette was killed and her head presented to the presiding legate of Thrycea, who proffered a bounty of thirty and thirty crowns for her bones, which were lashed to the prow of the Dragon Wind.

  No serious student of history can lend any credence to the story of Saint Juliette’s miraculous ascension into Radiance as described in the Cantos, while her bones are on display in Thelassus. It isn’t unexpected for the public to believe what they’re told, but priests receive a comparable education to most learned scholars, including those of history.

  Yet never once in all 183 sermons did I hear a single telltale reverberation of deceit, even from men who were well acquainted with the evidence. The Veritas Seal isn’t infallible. While it is sometimes accurate in detecting lies, it is far less so in detecting truth. Particularly in matters of faith. A mage’s own sound judgment is always the final arbiter.

  —MAGUS ARCHIBALD TURNBULL, VERITAS: CERTAINTY VS. COMPLACENCY

  THE WINDOWS TO Badlands’ Philters were boarded shut. The door had been painted with a chalky white face with h
ollow eyes and a mouth frozen in a scream. A parchment with a wax seal hung from the doorway: WRIT OF FORECLOSURE. Maddox pulled his ragged cloak tightly around himself and turned down one of the shop’s alleys.

  Most of Beaker Street was asleep during the day, save for some strung-out-looking shop boys carrying crates of dragonfire to the day laborers who would bring it up to the city. Aside from a mangy, partially mutated stray cat, the alley was clear, although a soupy runnel of opalescent slime had coalesced along the footpath.

  Maddox picked his way across it as best he could in boots that were a size too large for him. Whatever had happened to his boots during his time in the Seven Signs was better left out of mind. The back entrance to the shop was locked and boarded, with a similar writ posted on the planks.

  He popped his hand in a largely unnecessary arcane gesture, and the boards neatly pulled themselves free of the doorframe, floating freely in the alley. The hard part would be remembering where they went back in. Maddox shrugged and let the planks tumble into the disgusting alchemical runoff. He wouldn’t be here long enough for anyone to report it anyway.

  Someone of reasonable skill had warded the lock on the door against tampering. The mechanisms resisted his telekinesis. Maddox started to dismantle the door plank by plank before he remembered Riley had given him a key. It worked.

  The back of the shop was where the ovens and bulk alchemical solutions were kept. The oven was new; one of Magus Aurius’s students had pioneered a new form of convection that was all the rage. The oven wasn’t one of those, but it was a later model, probably a secondhand unit from the Lyceum.

  Maddox searched for the ingredients he needed to make more euphorium. It was a fairly simple recipe, and Dad’s system of organizing hadn’t changed much, but the back had been picked clean of any substance that could even remotely be used to get high. He went to the front to check for more reagents.

  A woman in white church robes sat, legs crossed delicately, in a shabby chair that had been placed in the center of the room. She had dark skin and a mildly amused expression; her hands thumbed idly through a copy of the Doctrines.