Of the Abyss (3 page)

She was numb.

She had a hilt jutting out of her stomach, marking the spot where several inches of blade had pierced her body.

The Quin started to turn toward her
.

If they saw her, they would try to bring her into the Cobalt Hall so their healers could tend to her. The Hall would reject her, and they would know what she was.

She stumbled back as the pain hit her. Leaning against a building, she slid to the ground with one hand on her stomach bracing the hilt of the knife, and the other fumbling in her pocket for something she needed.

Desperately, she tried to conceal herself and to use her power to control the bleeding as she started to pull the knife out of her guts.

The blade moved maybe an inch before the pain became intolerable, and her stomach heaved, wanting to throw up and in the process shredding itself more.

Help,
she prayed, as her hand closed around an etched silver tablet. The Numini did not like bloodshed, but this wasn't her fault. They had to help her.

I did what I can,
was the only message she received, as her mind drifted at the edge of unconsciousness.
You do the rest.

 

CHAPTER 3

C
admia jumped as the door to the temple squeaked behind her. Her first thought was a guilty one—­she had been failing to meditate, and had a feeling she had actually dozed off—­followed by,
I need to have someone wax those hinges,
and only then by the question,
What is a soldier doing in the Cobalt Hall?
The Cobalt Hall was part hospital and part holy sanctuary, and was the home and workplace for initiates in the Napthol Order.

The man who entered the room, escorted by one of the Order's youngest initiates, was dressed in the black-­and-­tan livery of a soldier of the 126, including a sword at his belt. He was probably in his midtwenties, tall and broad-­shouldered like most professional soldiers, with dark hair worn short and brown eyes set in a face that seemed undecided as to whether it should be pretty or rugged. He was pale and looked exhausted, adding to the latter impression, but he lacked the agonized twist of doubt and despair that marked many ­people who entered this place. Instead, his expression was tired but gentle.

The softness was probably directed at Pearl, his guide. The seven-­year-­old had been taken in by the Order of the Napthol after her mother abandoned her on their front step four years ago. She had few official duties at her age, but delighted in taking snacks and warm drinks to the soldiers assigned to guard the marketplace and the doors of the Quin Compound.

Pearl's face was set in a determinedly solemn expression, as if she wanted to smile at the man with her but knew her responsibilities were serious.

“Sister Paynes,” Pearl said formally, “Lieutenant Hansa Viridian of the One-­Twenty-­Six has come to request your counsel.”

Cadmia rose, smoothing down the violet robes of her office and schooling her face to patience. Anyone had a right to come to the hall for healing or spiritual guidance, but if Hansa had come for that reason, he should have come as himself, not as a soldier.

“I would be happy to meet with Hansa Viridian,” she said firmly, “if he returns in civilian clothes, unarmed.” Cadmia didn't normally work with soldiers, but knew Sister Marigold, who specialized in granting them counsel, refused to let them into her office while they were in uniform.

“I haven't come for myself,” Hansa explained. “A prisoner has asked to see you.”

She raised a brow, intrigued. Normally a courier from the justice department brought news her ser­vices were needed.

Cadmia's cohorts generally thought it odd that, out of all the more illustrious opportunities her years of study and hard work could have earned her, she had decided to specialize in offering guidance to the dredges of Kavet society. Even the older ones, who knew what a checkered history had preceded her vows, didn't really understand. Thankfully, she now had a high enough rank that she didn't need them to understand or approve.

She almost asked why a man in such an elite position was in charge of delivering this news before the obvious answer came to her.

“Is this the mancer who was arrested last night?” She had not witnessed the scene in the marketplace, but she had heard about it from Pearl and the other novices who had been minding her.

“It is,” Hansa answered. She couldn't think of him as
Lieutenant Viridian.
They might have been the same age, and he must have been good in his field to have achieved the rank he had, but guards in the 126 always seemed young to her. It was the idealism, she supposed. “If you wish to refuse, I understand.”

She shook her head. “If he has asked for counsel, he has the right to it.” She meant the words, even though the concept of trying to provide guidance and solace to a sorcerer chilled her.

“Hansa will keep you safe,” Pearl chimed in, her tone nervous and her mismatched blue and green eyes trained on Hansa as she added firmly, “Right?”

Hansa ruffled the girl's hair and gave her a tired smile, saying, “That's my job.” To Cadmia, he added, “He has been disarmed and branded. I cannot guarantee he is
harmless,
but he is powerless.”

Without his magic, he should be no more dangerous than many men she had counseled. Drunkards, abusers, murderers, thieves; Kavet's laws gave them the right to be heard.

“Lead the way, Lieutenant,” she said. “Pearl, thank you for bringing Lieutenant Viridian to me.” The novices and other initiates all knew to funnel requests from criminals and other disreputable sorts to her, but Cadmia was impressed that Pearl had been astute enough to bring Hansa to her and not to Marigold.

Pearl nodded, ducking her head shyly.

Without delay, Cadmia followed Hansa across the street and into the Quinacridone Compound, wondering why a mancer had asked for a representative from the Napthol. Maybe he was just trying to stall his execution by a few minutes, but maybe he genuinely wanted forgiveness. Maybe he wanted to tell them something.

Though she had been to the sections of the Compound that served as Kavet's main government building many times, she had never taken the rough stone staircase that led downward to a row of cells, evidence of the building's darker past.

“Why keep such a dangerous prisoner so close to the President?” she asked. Winsor Indathrone's living quarters were upstairs in this building.

“The cells are warded,” Hansa explained. His voice dropped, as if he knew from experience that the stone walls would make his words echo unpleasantly. “They dampen a mancer's power. The forge we use to create the brands is built into the wall down here, too. It can't be moved.”

“How does the warding work?”

Hansa glanced back and gave her a puzzled look, as if wondering why she asked. “We don't know,” he said. “We think the royal house must have had some connection to sorcery before the revolution—­some say they were in charge of controlling it, but others say they were overthrown partly because they were enabling it. Either way, the tools they left behind are the only ones we have.”

Cadmia shook her head, making a mental note to see if she could find more information. She was highly enough ranked in the Order that it seemed like she should have heard of these indispensable tools before now; that she hadn't might just mean the information wasn't widely shared, but she feared it could mean there was no more knowledge to be had.

Quin in general weren't encouraged to ask questions, and soldiers in the 126 were given only the information they needed to do their jobs and warned that too much curiosity into the nature of magic could put them in danger of becoming the sorcerers they hunted. If they ever had trouble with the indispensable tools they needed for that hunt—­these cells, the brands, and the poison used to apprehend mancers—­they would come to the Order of the Napthol for help. If at that time no one had the answers, it could spell disaster.

At the base of the stairs, the hall was lined in dark stone, and bone dry despite its proximity to the coast and elevation below sea level. The air, which was neither hot nor cold but seemed flatly odorless, left a chalky sensation on Cadmia's skin and a bitter taste in her mouth.

As they neared the first cell, she caught a brief whiff of . . . something, like frying meat.

Hansa must have smelled it at the same time. He paused and drew his sword, and approached the cell cautiously.

Cadmia followed closely. The mancer had been left a candle for light, and he was sitting at the table with one of his palms just above the flame. He held his hand in place, not flinching, despite his own skin cooking, charring.

“Stop that!” Hansa barked, obviously unnerved.

The mancer looked up, but his pain-­darkened eyes did not focus on Hansa. He moved his hand away from the candle flame with dreamlike slowness. As he did so he shivered, and Cadmia noticed every bare inch of skin was covered in goose bumps.

“Let me in,” she ordered. Mancer or not, the man before her was in agony—­not from the burn, but worse, so bad the burn itself had been
nothing
but a way to pass the time.

“Are you sure—­”

“Open it.”

Technically, she was speaking to one of the few individuals in the entire country of Kavet who could unilaterally overrule her. Citizen's Initiative 126 gave these guards the authority to make any decisions they deemed necessary to protect the populace from mancers, but they were trained to defer to the expertise of the Cobalt Hall, so Cadmia didn't expect Hansa to argue.

Hansa asked, “Do you want me to bind his hands first?”

She shook her head, and he unlocked the cell.

“I'll stay near,” he said, and in those words she heard a firmness that said he
would
object if she tried to insist the meeting be private. In truth, she was relieved.

The mancer did not look threatening as she approached, but then again, they didn't have to be physically menacing. Their magic did the damage.

“Cadmia,” he said. “I hoped it would be you.” His voice was dry, hoarse, but the water pitcher he had been left was still full and the mug next to it unused, so if he felt thirst he had not chosen to alleviate it. “Do you remember me?”

She did not allow the familiar greeting to unsettle her, but tried to search his face. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Have we met?”

“Fifteen . . . twenty years ago?” he said. “My—­” A compulsive shiver took him, severe enough that Cadmia feared he was having a seizure, but when she moved forward he waved her back. “My father used to visit with your mother.”

The list of men who used to visit Scarlet Paynes, initiate of A'hknet, was very,
very
long. The list of boys who had come with those men was much shorter.

“Baryte?” she asked. Did she recognize somewhere deep in this sorcerer's eyes a child she had played with while her mother worked?

The mancer sighed, and nodded. He reached toward the candle flame again, then jerked back, clenching his hand into a fist.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

Baryte frowned, as if he had no idea what she was asking. When he followed her gaze to his hand, he opened his fist and turned upward a blackened, blistered palm. Cadmia swallowed to keep from gagging.

“No,” he said, “it doesn't hurt.”

He reached up with fingers that trembled a little, and began to undo buttons on his shirt. Cadmia waited quietly, ready to protest if he went further than his shirt. If there was something he needed to show her, it was her job to see.

Beneath the shirt were bandages covering most of his ribs and much of his arms. The brand was visible on his left forearm, a coin-­sized burn from which black lines like blood poisoning seeped.

“What are you doing?” she asked, concerned, as he started unwrapping one of the bandages on his arms.

“Worried I'll bleed to death, or get an infection?” he asked, his voice now sharply derisive. “Thank you for the concern, but it's rather irrelevant. I'm a convicted mancer, with sorcery and murder to my credit. They will execute me as soon as you have been dismissed.”

“Murder?” she asked, almost hoping he would deny it.

He looked up at her with a gaze gone flat and ugly, with no hint inside it of the boy she had once known. “The power gets hungry,” he said, utterly unapologetic, as he removed the last of the bandage he had been unwinding.

The wounds beneath were a set of parallel cuts that could have been made by a blade—­but Cadmia suspected not, given who and what the victim was. They were claw marks.

The cuts had been stitched closed, though blood still crusted the surface.

“I wouldn't be here, but it got in my head and wouldn't let me defend myself,” he said.

“Who?” she asked.

“The black Abyssi,” he said. “Talking to him did this to me. Cut me open. I had to . . . the things I had to do to crawl back up from that . . .” He shuddered, and closed his eyes.

“Are you saying you were forced to do what you did?” Cadmia asked.

The condemned often tried to explain why they were not at fault, but even if this man had once been an innocent child, he had admitted he was a murderer.

“I'm
saying
,” he snapped, “that he wanted me to get caught. Even in the market, once he woke me up, I could have escaped. I was armed. I could have slit the throats of the two guards next to me and disappeared before anyone else could touch me. But he made me throw the knife away.”

I could have . . .
Again, his voice and face held no guilt about having contemplated two additional murders. Mostly, he sounded angry.

“You asked for my counsel,” Cadmia said, somewhat sharply, as she began to wonder whether the mancer might have had no goal but to unsettle her. “Most ­people who call for me want the Napthol's blessing, but you—­”

Unsurprisingly, the Abyssumancer started to laugh. “Don't waste your blessings on me, Sister,” he said. “We all know the Numini will never let me into their realm. I asked for you because the Quin will ignore me, but it is your duty to listen, and to meditate on a man's last words.

“Abyssi are creatures of heat, lust, impulse, and hunger. As a rule, they do not
plan.
But the black Abyssi is planning something important enough that he was willing to—­”

He stopped abruptly, and his burned hand went to his throat. He coughed wetly, and droplets of blood and blackish bile spattered from his lips.

“Hansa!” Cadmia called. She didn't know what to do as the mancer continued to cough, falling out of his chair, shaking and desperately trying to draw air.

Soldiers streamed into the room, with Hansa at the forefront, but what could they do? The fit might be a trick or might be magically induced. Either way, none of them dared touch him as it ran its course. A few minutes later the mancer lay on the stone floor, still and silent.

Baryte
, she told herself. She had distanced herself mentally from a man who had chosen a life of sorcery and violence, but now she forced herself to think of him by name because the man had once been a boy and perhaps that boy had been innocent. Cadmia had been taught that mancers started on their path to sorcery through an unhealthy fascination with the Other planes combined with a selfish obsession with power . . . but she had never been able to find a definitive source to prove it. No one seemed to know for certain how a child grew up to be a monster.