“You knew what would happen when you brought the Guides here.”
“Of course not. They exist outside the Grand Design.” Achelon shrugged. “They were the only thing I couldn’t predict. The only way to deny the seal is to invite uncertainty.”
“Nice job,” Maddox declared. “You’re the most hated warlock ever. Seriously. Not one of the histories has a single good thing to say about you. And the people who do praise you are fucking lunatics who make Harrower pacts.”
“How will your legacy read, Maddox of Rivern?” Achelon sighed, waving his hand. “You gained your power by repeatedly inducing your own death through the willful overconsumption of deadly contraindicated intoxicants. I don’t envy the poet charged with writing your epic.”
Maddox smiled broadly. “I think the whole rising-from-the-dead thing gives me a lot more fruitful material to work with. It worked with Ohan’s Luminaries.”
“And you have no idea why or how that particular trick works and even less of a clue what it means.” He shook his head.
“Then why don’t you fucking enlighten me, oh, great one?”
Surprisingly Achelon answered the fucking question. “You were born with the ability to store and channel large quantities of raw theurgy, much like men who are endowed with exceptional memory or a penchant for music. Only one or two individuals in a generation of all living men are born with your gift. None have ever been fortunate enough to enroll in the study of magic until you. Without your gift you’d be unremarkable—a bitter, drunken shell of a man with tenure in the alchemy college who drowns his sorrows every night and spends his coin on whores.”
“At least, in your worst-case scenario, I have money to drink, and I’m getting laid. If you want to offend me, you need to try harder.” Still what Achelon said pissed him off.
“I’m merely illustrating a point, if you’ll allow me.” Achelon considered his next words. “The Principia Arcana contains the laws of magic, does it not?”
Maddox looked at him blankly and folded his arms. The question didn’t dignify a response.
Achelon rolled his eyes. “A student is never too advanced to engage in a disciplined inquiry, but clearly you’re impatient, so I’ll summarize thusly: there are no laws of magic. None whatsoever. Magic is power in its purest form, able to act without limit. The Principia is merely a set of guidelines to keep inexperienced mages from killing themselves. The true limits of theurgy are whatever you can get away with.”
“Like coming back from the dead.”
Achelon shook his head. “That’s a perfect demonstration of the kind of contortions someone with your ability can inflict on the cosmic order. You see that this is dangerous, yes?”
“In the wrong hands”—Maddox nodded—“surely.”
The Desecrator continued breezily, “If you could choose anyone in the world aside from yourself to have that kind of potential, who would it be? Perhaps the associate you name Riley. He seems a friendly sort, not given to spite.”
“Fuck no!” Maddox said. He thought for a long uncomfortable minute about the people he knew: his abusive father, his feckless aunt, his emulous mentor, the shifty band of scoundrels. “I don’t know who I’d choose. People are all pretty much dicks, at least the ones I know.”
“They are most often, if I understand your vernacular…untrustworthy, yes? So imagine for a moment that the gift is handed out randomly, with no greater cause than an accident of breeding. There’s no ‘Grand Design’ in nature, just simple probability that one day a person with the right gift will discover the wrong Lore.”
Maddox opened his mouth to challenge the Desecrator. The world was lucky to have him instead of Riley or, Guides forbid, Esme. But if he had to take a completely candid look at himself, there were probably one or two better candidates out there. At last he said, “The Guides…they chose me.”
Achelon laughed. “You mean the Lights? The Guides are beings beyond understanding—you couldn’t witness one with your limited senses except in dreams. The Lights are a manifestation of your own power. Your people really misinterpreted the Principia.”
“Fuck you!” Maddox kicked over an end table, sending a bowl of fruit clanging against the floor, disgorging apples in all directions. He regained his composure. “Okay. We’re all fucking idiots. Someone—not naming names here—destroyed every record of the old magic and left us to scrabble in the ruins of the Second Era to piece together some semblance of discipline from thirteen barely intact drawings. So I find it highly inappropriate for you to find humor in that.”
Achelon flinched, and for a moment, Maddox saw something like pain and remorse in those impossibly blue eyes. “Know that if I hadn’t done what I had, your people—or some eugenically cultivated version of them—would still be in those tunnels.”
Maddox shuddered; the horror of the incubation chamber flashed through his mind, only this time he was the infant ripped from the belly of his mother and consigned to the soul engine.
He looked around. The edges of the world were growing fuzzy. Bits of stone were slowly breaking away from the floor and pillars, drifting off into trails of wispy dust. His physical body was shutting down. He felt the vibrations of his heart pumping frantically as it struggled to cling to life.
Keep it down, asshole. We’ve done this dozens of times now.
“It seems our time together has ended,” Achelon said without emotion. “The way here won’t be open to you again until you’re ready to face me as an equal. You’ve seen the Grand Design and the Seal without Name. Only use them if…”
Maddox tried to hold on, but the vision was falling apart.
I spent the whole time arguing with this fuck when I could have been getting answers.
He tumbled toward the floor, his astral representation falling back into his flesh. He braced for darkness.
“Surprise!”
Maddox nearly fell backward out of his chair. He was sitting in a restaurant with red wallpaper and an elaborate chandelier that glittered with crystal shards that seemed to glow within. At a large table in the center were the members of the House of the Seven Signs. Around them a crew of liveried servers stood with pitchers and serviettes, watching expectantly. The rest of the lavishly appointed dining room was empty.
“’E’s awake!” Riley cheered beside him and slapped him hard across the back. He sported a slick hairstyle with freshly shorn sides, giving an angular configuration to his face that was almost handsome. He wore a lord’s coat, complete with ruffled collar.
The entire crew was present. To his right sat Esme, spinning her dagger on its point into the fine mahogany table. She wore a sleeveless dress and a diamond tiara, looking every bit the highborn daughter, save for her dark eye makeup.
Even Gran was dressed in something other than her filthy robes; someone had thrown a pearl necklace on her. Otix, who looked so emaciated he could have been a revenant, wore a black-and-gold dinner jacket and scratched at his skin. Themis, in wolf form, lapped at a dish of wine, while his brother Theril, in human form, completely naked from the waist up, sipped a glass of bubbly. Crateus was diligently practicing pouring wine from one glass to another.
“Happy birthday,” Riley said. “Crateus told me you was missin’ your old pal, and I’m sorry I were out of pocket last time you came round, but old Riley never forgets a friend or a birthday.”
“What day is it?” Maddox asked.
“Fourth of Ember, 565 in case you forgot the year.”
“It’s not my birthday,” Maddox said hesitantly.
Riley shook his head. “You told me it were! You was at the Flask last year, and I asked you for some ducats, and you says, ‘Fuck off. It’s me fuckin’ birthday, and I need to be alone.’ Exact words.”
It hadn’t been his birthday, but he probably would have said anything to make Riley go away. The fucker remembered.
“Huh. Maybe I’m just confused. It’s been a rough morning. Where the fuck are we?”
“The Turley,” Esme said, her sweet voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s the oldest restaurant in Rivern. Goes back over four hundred years, if you count the original location, which burned down.”
Maddox knew the Turley, but he’d never been inside. It was a private facility that offered tables by invitation only, a place for the old aristocracy to feel exclusive. The walls were covered in stuffy oil portraits of the old monarchy. He felt suddenly embarrassed about his dirty tunic and rough breeches.
Maddox grinned back at Esme. “Hey, kid, I think places like this provide you with silverware.”
She feigned a pout and put her knife away. “I would never cut food with Lucky.”
“When I use to come here,” Gran said, “I sat over there, and they had a fireplace place next to a long table where you could make any kind of salad.”
“Wow, Gran,” Riley said. “You really got around in your old days.”
“I was so sad when this place burned down,” she said wistfully.
Maddox turned to Riley. “So what the fuck is up? With all this shit? Why are we sitting by ourselves in the most prestigious restaurant in Rivern? What the hells is going on with the revenants and the drugs and the disciples and the mansions and your clothes and the fucking diamond tiaras and fucking all of it?” He took a deep breath.
“Had to be done, though. They were catching on,” Gran whispered to no one in particular.
Maddox held up a finger to the old woman. “I’ll get with you in a minute.”
Riley slid his arm around Maddox’s shoulder. “We got us a legitimate operation, licensed and everything. The city needs all hands on deck making dragonfire since they legalized it, and Mr. Cordovis has taken us under his protection. He owns this place, and I told him I wanted your birthday to be special, so he were like ‘Here, have it,’ so we can celebrate as a family. You’re one of us now.”
“Wait…Cordovis? That man puts more people in the river than the Thrycean flu.”
“We got us an agreement, and he knows better than to come for any one of us. Besides what you got to be scared of, eh?” Riley punched his arm. “The old man don’t do nobody who don’t need to be done in the first place. He’s the one who offed that twat Torin Silverbrook on the riverboat.”
“Torin’s…dead?” Maddox felt nothing when he said it, but it was a tangible nothingness. A placeholder for emotions happening far beneath the surface.
“I’d have done him meself, the fucking asshole.” Riley spat on the antique Turisian rug beneath them. “But yeah, he died same day your old magus kicked the bucket. Cordovis wanted to keep him from marrying that Storm princess, but it were all a misunderstanding about a peace treaty or some such.”
Esme snapped her fingers at one of the waitstaff. “Excuse me. Can you give our friend some wine, perhaps a fortified cippriatto from Barstea? Nothing from 543—that was a terrible vintage. Not that he would know, but it is his birthday.”
Theril looked at Esme. “How’s a street rat like you know to order wine like a lady and such?”
She set her elbow on the table. “I was a high-class prostitute till I hit puberty.”
“That shit’s not funny,” Maddox said coolly.
Esme laughed innocently. “We all deal with tragedy in our own little fucked-up ways. I like to make jokes and…be alive all the time. It’s not for everybody.”
One of the waitstaff appeared with a bottle of dark liquid and a glass balanced on a silver tray. She was dark skinned enough to pass for Bamoran, but she probably was Turisian if she was serving Rivern nobility. A single trickle of sweat ran down the side of her face as she gently lowered the tray to the table. Her eyes looked straight ahead, terrified.
At the last moment, her hand slipped, and the glass tumbled off the tray along with the bottle.
Maddox caught both midair before they hit the table, but the wine splashed out on his rank old tunic. Liquid was next to impossible to handle by seal, but he saved a sip in the glass. “I’ll pour,” he said, willing the bottle to refill the glass.
“I should have poured,” Crateus whispered to the wolf next to him.
The waitress had gone pale. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry…”
Riley touched her arm gently. “Hey, it’s all good. You didn’t get any on me coat and people make mistakes, and you can’t get mad for things people can’t help. Now run along and see where we’re coming on that thing.” He winked at her. The second his hand came off her arm, she marched to the kitchen. The other servers stood perfectly still, barely disguising their terror. .
“What are these people scared of, Riley?” Maddox demanded. The glass slid into his hand, and he took a swallow. It was like drinking liquid walnuts and cinnamon, like someone had distilled his grandmother’s house into a cloyingly sweet beverage.
“What’s anyone scared of, Maddy? Fear is the enemy of us all.”
“Fucking shit.” Maddox rubbed his temples.
“Houses,” Esme said. “We wait for people to die in their sleep. Then, after the body is cleared out and the remaining family members flee, we go in and loot whatever valuables we can move on the street. We use that money to buy reagents for dragonfire and other drugs. We take bodies from the river and turn them into revenants so they can cook the shit. We’ve made a fucking killing, and now we’re the toughest crew on the streets. People who piss us off have a habit of turning up dead.”
Riley shrugged. “City’s falling apart anyway. The whole fucking place. It’s free money.”