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Given the rat mage’s devils-may-care ways, his suggestion gave me pause.

Problem was, the Lords Celestine had already gone to significant lengths– including, it appeared, engineering the horrific sacrifice of an eleven-year-old sublime so that a seventeen-year-old sublime could be condemned to the short and unpleasant life of a blood mage, not to mention manipulating me into coming here with her. What would they do to us if we tried to leave before the job was done?

‘The client wants to have a little chat,’ I said, following Vidra along the red dirt path towards the northern edge of town. ‘Wouldn’t be polite to keep him waiting.’

I wasn’t as nervous as you might expect. Whatever this Baron Tristmorta was planning, trying to murder six wonderists– even in an ambush– was a bad gamble. Both Corrigan and Aradeus had readied spells of one sort or another, and I’d unbuttoned my coat and shirt and was already tracing a couple of the nastier sigils on my chest to wake them up, in case our client needed remonstration.

Shame, Alice and Galass weren’t technically wonderists, but I could see they were preparing their own surprises for whoever was waiting for us. Alice had that whip-sword of hers out. Shame had looked the same for a while, like someone you’d never pick out of a crowd, only her skin had started to change, becoming sleek, hard and shimmering as newly polished steel armour. Galass– well, I’ve no idea what she was doing except looking like she was sick and tired of holding back the blood magic screaming inside her.

Five minutes later, Vidra arrived at our rendezvous, and we discovered that none of our preparations would make the least bit of difference.

Baron Tristmorta looked younger than I’d expected, late twenties, maybe? Hard to tell when a man’s skin and hair has been stripped from his body and he’s hanging six feet high from a rope that’s attached to nothing but air. He should have been dead– he certainlylookeddead. Hells, maybe hewasdead. All I know is that the moment we came within a few yards of him, those lidless eyes started moving to follow our progress and his jaw dropped open.

That’s when he started screaming.

Chapter 32

The Client

Baron Tristmorta was a man of few words. Even when his tongue reformed inside his mouth, the only ones to come out were, ‘Kill me, kill me, please, for pity’s sake, kill me!’

‘Tell us about the Seven Brothers,’ I shouted up at him. It turns out, it’s hard to have a conversation with a man screaming in agony while he’s hanging several feet off the ground from a rope that doesn’t go anywhere.

Okay, yes, I’m aware that the moral thing to do here would have been to put the baron out of his misery, and that, technically speaking, refusing to do so until he shared whatever intelligence he’d gleaned on the Seven Brothers might fit some people’s definition of torture. The problem was, I had five other people with me who could end up in the same regrettable position as the baron unless we understood precisely what we were dealing with.

I warned you that we weren’t the good guys, right?

‘What are their attunements?’ I asked.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Alice informed me. ‘His mind is gone, his soul is severed from his body.’

‘But he’s crying out,’ Galass said, trying to use her untested blood magic to put an end to the baron’s agony. Her efforts served only to give her a nasty headache and the rest of us bloody noses.

‘His brain still functions, but his spirit has been destroyed.’ Alice turned to me. ‘You should be able to determine as much for yourself, fallen one.’

I softened my gaze and let my awareness shift a fraction. She was right. There was no ecclesiasm suffusing the body. Baron Tristmorta had been reduced to a corpse that couldn’t die. He was capable only of eternal suffering.

‘Corrigan?’

He shoved us all aside. ‘Yeah, all right.’

He squeezed his fist and the familiar red and black sparks appeared around his knuckles. I ostentatiously covered my ears, then pointedly looked at everyone else until they’d done the same. They’d be grateful in about three seconds.

Corrigan drew back his arm and hurled a bolt of lightning dead centre into the baron’s chest, blinding us all and shattering the air with deafening thunder.

When the dust had settled, the baron’s corpse was nothing but charred bone, creaking as it dangled from the unattached noose.

‘What about the other wonderists– the spellers– who came through here before us?’ I asked Vidra.

She shrugged. ‘Before them brothers left the baron here as a warning, a posse of folks like you turned up in town every couple of days. Always seven at a time. We’d tell them what little we knew and they’d get drunk on our liquor before making a big speech and heading up to the fortress. We never saw them after that.’

‘How many different covens–posses, I mean?’

‘Hard to recall. Maybe six, I guess.’

Seven Brothers. Seven mercenaries in each coven, and thanks entirely to Tenebris’ machinations, we were the seventh coven to arrive here.

‘Something about this job really stinks,’ Corrigan whispered to me.