The Queen of Lies (15 page)

“When I was young, I used to do a sad-orphan act to lure marks into an alley so my gang could jump them and take their shit. But I am an actual orphan,” she admitted.

“Then it’s all good.” Maddox waved his hand and opened all the drawers in the room simultaneously. There were a couple of bottles of wine in one of the nightstands along with a pair of manacles, women’s lingerie, and a cat-o’-nine-tails. Maddox drew the bottle to his hand and popped the cork from its wax.

The label on the bottle read, “House Lysenne Cuvée, 452 3E.” An unreadable stylized autograph was scrawled on the bottle.

“This shit’s almost a hundred years old,” Maddox said, turning the bottle in his hand. “There’s no way it’s even close to drinkable.” He sniffed the bottle and got promising notes of graphite, cassis, and earth.

“It was a banner year for the winemaker,” Esme said casually.

Maddox shrugged and chugged. His sense of taste was nowhere near his sense of smell, but the wine wasn’t half bad, which was remarkable because he detected no alchemical preservatives. A lot of shit happened with the flavor in his mouth. It probably
was
a banner year.

“So seriously you’re, like, what? A nobleman’s daughter who decided to go bad? Why the hell are you with Riley?”

Esme slid off the bed and snatched the bottle from his hand. “You don’t know me, asshole. You don’t know Riley either, but he thinks the fucking world of you. He’s a special person to me, so let’s be absolutely clear—if you fuck with him or talk bad about him again, I’ll kill you so hard that your ghost has its own fucking ghost.” She drank from the bottle and pushed it into Maddox’s chest.

“Fair enough,” Maddox said, taking another swig. The flavor had deepened even in the few moments they’d been talking. “I get that you don’t want me here or whatever. I’m not staying.”

“Right.” Esme took the bottle and drank. “Because a charming guy like you doesn’t need to spend time with a bunch of washed-up druggies.”

Maddox snatched the bottle out of her hands and swished around what was left. “You said it, not me.”

“You’re as much a loser as any of us. Maybe more—at least we have friends,” she said sweetly, leaning over the bed to scratch the wolf behind his ears. “Yes, we do, don’t we, boy?”

Maddox walked out of the bedroom into the common area. The hedge wizards were getting high; a sickly sweet-smelling haze permeated the room.

Maddox sniffed the air. “Is that elder root?”

“My own concoction,” Falco said. “Tincture with mandrake powder, essence of golden nightshade, and witch’s tear. It works to expand the mind and facilitate the flow of theurgy by awakening the dreaming shaman mind.”

Maddox parsed the formula in his head pretty quickly. It was basic euphorium you could buy off any crooked apothecary. The golden nightshade made no sense, unless you wanted to cure yourself of indigestion and sensory awareness at the same time.

He finished the bottle and tossed it into the corner with some other junk on the floor. He plopped down next to Gran, who was staring vacantly into space. “Remember when we used to go dancing, Charlie?” she said.

“Let me hit that,” Maddox said, reaching for the pipe.

Falco’s face beamed. “What’s mine is yours, bro. In the House of the Seven Signs, we’re all equal.”

Maddox took the pipe and wiped it on his tunic. He placed the tip of the hookah to his mouth and tasted the smoke. It wasn’t as pleasant as it smelled; the reagents hadn’t been dried properly, so it was harsh.

Esme stood in the door to Riley’s room and shouted, “Hey, asshole! You can’t do that shit with alcohol. Do you have a death wish or something?”

“Maybe.” He already felt himself going numb, the raw ache of his feelings melting into a monolithic sense of tranquility. “But it may not matter what I want.”

He took another hit and blew out a massive plume of smoke.

He heard more voices, like buzzing, in the distance. Everything seemed hundreds of miles away. Someone was pulling the pipe out of his hand, and the world was tilting as he very slowly sank into the floor. He heard some yelling or commotion.

The crack of his head against the floor came like a softened thud; information disconnected from his body. The floor stretched on forever, and blotches of magnificent color sparkled all around him—motes of energy. The Guides! They were all around him—balls of luminous power floating in the room like a galaxy of spinning stars.

Maddox felt them gathering on his body, like butterflies alighting on a flower, as a golden light slid free from its mortal coil and danced amid the myriad lights.

B
EFORE THE
R
EFORMATION
and Unification of the Orthodoxy, we teach that heathens practiced human sacrifice to the false god of death, Noha. This much is true, although the name of Noha often was different in every civilization. As an example, the modern Archeans still refer to him as Vitae.

It was from those casually accepted monstrosities that the way was paved for all manner of dark sorcery to corrupt the civilizations of the Second Era.

Our absolute mandate is to ensure that theurgy does not corrupt the natural order of life or death. Foremost against all Dark Magic, we must be ever vigilant of our own and certain that they adhere to the letter of Doctrine. And where heresy is found, or even suspected, it must be dispatched by any means at our disposal.

—PREFACE TO
THE RADIANT APOCRYPHA: AN INCUNABULA FOR INITIATES TO THE HOLY ORDER OF THE INQUISITION

T
HE
M
AGE’S
F
LASK
was fuller than usual that afternoon. Amhaven refugees who still had coin to spend nursed pints of cheap grog and nibbled at plates of cheese. Heath never had seen anyone eat anything at the Flask, and he didn’t want to hazard how long that food had been sitting in Cassie’s pantry.

He and Sword sat at a rickety table in the corner so they could see the door. A fresh stack of parchments from Loran was spread out in front of him. There had been at least eight more deaths that the Invocari knew of, most of them in the Backwash. The pattern Sword had mentioned seemed to apply less and less to these new cases. The Amhaven refugees didn’t practice magic, and two of the deaths had occurred among their ranks.

There also was no shortage of gaunt old men wandering the docks, making Harbinger sightings difficult to corroborate. No one actually had spoken to Milk Eyes since he’d visited the Twin Shields.

Sword flipped through the pages of a book, his lips moving as his eyes trudged over the words.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope you’re reading something about the harrowings,” Heath said offhandedly as he shuffled his papers around.

He shook his head. “It’s called
When Kisses Can Lie
. A nuanced portrayal of a young immigrant girl’s journey into womanhood during the siege of Karthanteum. You see, she’s torn between fulfilling the expectations of her religious mother and establishing an identity for herself—”

“If I read what’s on that page, is it going to be sex?” Heath asked.

Sword slammed the book shut. “Fuck off, mate. It’s been two days of sitting in this shithole and no sign of the fucker. It’s boring as hell, so sue me if I find refuge in a bit of titillating literature written for a discerning female audience.”

“He’ll show up,” Heath said, pointing to an empty barstool. “Maddox is a creature of habit. And for whatever twisted reason, this is his bar.”

Sword glanced at a raddled prostitute with a peg leg chatting up one of the refugees. “This place is like the elephants’ graveyard for old drunks. There’s probably a big pile of bones under this place where they go to pop off when it’s their time. The fuck are we doing here, mate?”

“I told you, I want to warn Maddox,” Heath patiently explained. “He used to be a friend, and I want to make sure he gets out of town before Daphne gets hold of him.”

“That’s right big of you mate, but no one’s seen hide nor hair of him…or that dodgy drinking buddy of his. Um…what’s his name?”

“Riley.”

“Anyway,” Sword said, “he’s long gone. Probably offed himself, which seems a very reasonable course of action given our current dispiriting environs. But an equally reasonable conjecture is that he bolted.”

“Read your book if you’re not going to offer anything productive.”

Sword scratched the back of his neck. “Look, I gotta take a leak. I’m going out back to relieve myself. If Maddox turns up, distract him. Show him your dick or something.”

Sword headed for the back, stopped, snatched his book off the table, and continued on. “I may be a while.”

Heath leaned his head back against the wall. Sword had been his loyal companion through several incarnations. Heath knew that Sword wore each personality like a mask, just as he wore their bodies. The last two Patreans had been military and acted like trained soldiers, even calling him “sir.” This new body, however, was a different story altogether.

“It’s a very good likeness,” the Harbinger said, examining the parchment drawing of himself. He was sitting in Sword’s spot, elbows perched nonchalantly on the table, as if he’d been there the entire time. The likeness was in fact quite good.

Heath startled briefly then composed himself. “The fuck?”

“I’m called the Harbinger,” he said. “I know you’ve been searching for me, and I would have come sooner, but that artifact is always close to you. It’s one of the only things in Creation that can harm one of my kind, and it has a fickle temperament.”

Good to know.
Heath smiled. “Sword? He’s amazingly nonviolent for a ancient instrument of decapitation.”

“Its brutality has been the subject of many epic poems, some of them in your own Doctrines.”

Heath shrugged. “I think people tend to put more stock in myths and folktales than is truly warranted.”

“An odd sentiment for a priest.” The Harbinger produced an ivory flask from his sash and set it on the parchment.

“Former priest,” Heath corrected. “And I have firsthand knowledge that most of what people believe is bullshit. What I do believe about
you
is that you’re old, and you’re powerful, and you know something about what’s going on with the harrowings.”

“Old by some measures and powerful in some respects.” The Harbinger bobbed his head in agreement. “And a good deal more learned on these subjects than most. Though knowledge isn’t what you seek. You seek understanding.”

“I read up on you Travelers. Your people like to speak in riddles, so let me ask this plainly. How do we stop these Harrowers?”

The Harbinger sighed. “No one likes to speak in riddles, Priest. But sometimes a riddle is the only way to get at the truth without changing its meaning. The answer isn’t always the words themselves but the experience of realization. In fairness I can see how such statements would be annoying to one as pragmatic as yourself. Have a drink.”

Heath looked at the ivory flask on the table. It was finely crafted but otherwise nondescript. “No way in the hells am I drinking that.”

“Suit yourself.” The old man leaned back. “We can’t stop the Harrowers. They’re an inexorable force that can bend the very fabric of our universe to suit their whims…when they have whims. We exist only because they don’t wish us dead.”

“What do they want then?” Heath asked.

“Nothing.”

Heath forced another smile. “You came to tell me
something
. So talk.”

The Harbinger nodded with a hint of approval. “I’ve foreseen the inevitable because that’s the source of my theurgy. I can’t foresee the exact future. That gift is a burden none should carry, but I see any futures that will never happen.”

“Your theurgy is making predictions that are wrong? That’s not even a power. Half the fortune-tellers in Rivern have your gift.”

“Ah,” he replied with a twinkle in his milky eyes, “but they’re right sometimes…They just don’t know it. My predictions are always ‘wrong,’ as you say. From that certainty I can see the shadow of Fate. In no future do the towers of Rivern still stand in two months’ time. Great death and darkness are coming to all.”

Heath folded his hands together. “I don’t believe in fate any more than I believe in invisible gods. People believe in fate because it absolves them of taking responsibility for fixing their problems.”

“Let me give you a familiar example.” The Harbinger smiled with yellow teeth. “A woman is born with a slight irregularity in the smallest building blocks of the stomach tissue. Over time it becomes more than an irregularity; it starts to grow out of control, and her body turns on itself to repel what it perceives as an invader. Eventually the illness causes her body to waste away. Eating is painful, and she spends every waking moment in agony.”

Heath didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit. “People get sick—it’s not the Will of Ohan or fate. It’s bad luck.”

“The woman’s youngest child is called from a life of crime to join the priesthood to save his mother, to learn the ways of the Light,” the Harbinger continued, “but there’s blood on his hands when he stands before the altar of the Father of All, and the elders lead him down a different path—a path of both darkness and Light, where he learns the god of life is also the god of death.