Page 31

Chapter 31

Payment

Corrigan and I rejoined Galass, Shame, Aradeus, Alice and Temper at an old crossroads temple some seven miles south of the Auroral citadel. My plan to abscond with the Glorian Banner without any of us actually laying our hands on it had for once gone off without a hitch. When I first walked inside the ruins of that temple, I thought I must have had something on my face– other than the transmogrified golden features, of course– because the looks of my friends were entirely unfamiliar to me. I believe the technical term for their expressions was ‘confused admiration’.

‘Don’t get a big head,’ Corrigan said, slapping me on the back of my skull yet again. ‘We still have to figure out how to stop your girlfriend from dooming the entire Mortal realm and all the ecclesiasm keeping it together from being sucked through some portal to prop up the Pandoral realm.’

We’d come to this abandoned church, consecrated to some god no one could remember, to collect our payment from the chosen representative of the Lords Devilish. We were prepared for the fact that we’d probably have to torture him a bit first.

Despite their relative hardiness and affinity for intense sensations– and not just pain– there are any number of ways to torture a demon. I’ve performed many of them, mostly on Tenebris. In all our irritating interactions, however, it had never previously occurred to me that there is one method for tormenting a diabolic that is so devious, so cruel, so immoral as to make all other abuses little more than the gentle caresses of a butterfly’s wings.

‘You gotta change me back, Cade. You gotta !’ whined Tenebris.

My former agent in Infernal spells was leaning over a large shard of glass from one of the arched windows, staring despondently at his own reflection whilst plucking at curls of golden hair and prodding his gilded cheekbones. Shame really had gone a bit overboard with the diabolic’s transfiguration.

‘What exactly did you say to her?’ I asked.

‘Me? Nothing! I showed up here for the hand-off and all of a sudden your dopey crew put the boot to me, bound me up and then. . .’ He was leaning so close to the glass the tip of his perfect nose was touching it, his breath beginning to fog it over. ‘To do this to a guy? To a pal? Practically a brother ?’

‘How long has he been like this?’ I asked Shame.

She gestured to the Glorian Banner lying in a heap among the dust and debris. ‘The diabolic did pause briefly in his whingeing when the Glorian Ardentor came to bestow the banner upon him, then immediately fell back into some sort of repetitious quasi-poetic lament about the loneliness of being the only sane being in the universe.

‘Then I recalled that it was he who set the child Fidick in my path.’

‘I was just following orders!’ Tenebris insisted. ‘You know how it is, Cade. Business is bus — ’

Shame interrupted him. ‘I contemplated re-transfiguring his face to no longer require a mouth.’ Her eyes flickered briefly to Aradeus. ‘Then I was. . . reminded that whatever pleasure such an act brought me would be at the cost of slowing down your subsequent questioning.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, but Shame only looked away. I turned my attention back to Tenebris, having noticed a flicker of something wistful in the diabolic’s expression when she’d mentioned the Ardentor. ‘Did something happen with Propriety?’ I asked him. ‘Did he suspect we were pulling a con?’

Tenebris tore himself away from his reflection to sneer, ‘Nah, the moron bought it hook, line and sinker.’ The sneer faded, leaving behind a kind of melancholic confusion. ‘It’s just. . . I mean, here he was, handing over one of his side’s most sacred relics, and instead of having qualms about it, he was — ’

‘Are you coming to a point any time soon? I’m not really equipped for hand-holding Diabolic Contractualists through what’s starting to sound like a severe emotional crisis.’

‘You’re an arsehole, you know that, Cade?’ Tenebris held up a hand to forestall any further interruptions. ‘Listen, I’ve met plenty of Aurorals in my time and they’re always smug, self-righteous arseholes– kind of like you, actually. But this guy, it was like. . . like that whole secret conspiracy you’d invented made him feel. . . I don’t know. Special? I swear, this guy was the happiest Auroral I’ve ever seen. Happy , Cade. Imagine that: a happy Auroral.’

I’d never heard Tenebris sound so philosophical about anyone, let alone an Auroral– it was as if his whole universe had been flipped upside down and sideways.

I turned to Shame. ‘Any chance your transfiguration magic might’ve rattled his brains somehow?’

‘I say leave him that way,’ Corrigan commented from the narrow archway into the temple. ‘Me, on the other hand, you need to change back right away .’ He scratched at his smoothly shaven jaw. ‘How you managed to make my skin itch without my beard is beyond me.’

‘Best start on Corrigan first,’ I suggested to Shame, ‘otherwise he’ll be competing with Tenebris to see who can whine longest and loudest.’

‘Me, obviously,’ they said in unison.

Temper, peering down from the gaping hole in the ceiling where the temple’s stone-tiled roof had lost the battle with time and gravity, helpfully added, ‘Motherfuckers.’

‘Hah,’ Corrigan chortled. ‘Good one, buddy!’

‘What did he say?’ Tenebris asked, eyeing the kangaroo’s grinning muzzle. ‘Did that giant rabbit just insult me or something?’

‘Oh, he burned you but good!’ Corrigan informed him.

‘Ignore them both,’ I told the diabolic who, despite looking every bit a Glorian, managed both petulance and affront. ‘Corrigan likes to pretend that he can understand Temper even though Temper doesn’t speak our language– or any other language, as far as we can tell.’

‘Really?’ Tenebris asked, one golden eyebrow arching magnificently as he stared at Corrigan. ‘Isn’t that kind of immature for a guy his age? I mean, even for a thunderer?’

‘Corrigan seeks to convince the rest of us that he has formed a deep bond with the otherworldly beast as a way to mask his insecurities over the diminishment of his relationship with Cade,’ Shame explained. Her manifest disinterest in the subject only made her assessment more embarrassing for Corrigan and me.

‘That’s not — ’

‘It’s true,’ Galass said, coming to place a hand on my arm, a gesture which I’d noticed always preceded a troubling pronouncement. ‘We can all see it, Cade. Ever since the seven of us began this mission to stop the war between the Infernals and the Aurorals, you’ve been distant, more a general trying to keep his troops in line than a proper friend.’

A headache was forming behind my eyes. I was about ready to compose my very own poetic lament to being the sole sane being in the universe. Most people assume semi-deranged, morally bankrupt mercenary mages don’t suffer from stress– in truth, usually they see us grinning like psychopaths as we’re hurling lethal incantations at them– but beneath our jovial exteriors, we are walking masses of anxieties and tension headaches. Oh, and apparently, we’re really fucking sensitive when our feelings are hurt.

‘Corrigan?’ I asked quietly.

‘Yeah?’

‘Would you be so kind as to open up a rift to the Tempestoral realm and blast me out of existence? I’d hate to go on living thinking I’d in any way diminished the genuine affection between us.’

He grinned. ‘I was saving that for later.’

Our brotherly bond restored, I turned back to Tenebris. ‘Time to pay up. We “rendered unto you” the Glorian Banner, and in exchange, your bosses promised us information on how to stop the Spellslinger and the Pandoral from ruining the Mortal realm even faster than your arsehole bosses and the Celestines are intent on doing. So cough it up.’

‘Hey!’ the diabolic snapped at me, feigning outrage, ‘you don’t get to talk to me that way. I’m an important guy in the Infernal Hierarchy these days and I don’t take shit from penny-ante wonderists who get an attack of conscience and decide to save the world all by themselves. The way this works is’– he jabbed a finger at Shame– ‘you tell the bitch angelic to restore my beautiful countenance and then maybe I’ll toss you a few scraps of intel regarding the skinny psycho girl you’re all so hot for.’

With my left hand, I grabbed my former agent by the neck. Despite the impressive physique Shame had given him, he was still a snivelling, preening con artist at heart. ‘Listen, you little — ’ With my free hand I snapped my fingers at Temper, who was watching from the hole in the roof.

‘Motherfucker,’ the kangaroo said gleefully.

And another relationship restored to its normal emotional balance.

‘You’re going to start coughing up the details on the Spellslinger’s employer,’ I continued, giving Tenebris’ neck a squeeze, ‘and for each piece of genuine intelligence that I actually believe, Shame will restore one part of your physiognomy.’ I gave the diabolic a shake. ‘Try to bullshit us even once and I’ll have her transform you into a fucking Mortal.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Tenebris cried out. He really is a bigot when it comes to Mortals.

I yanked him closer so he could see my smile. ‘The Lords Devilish and every other Infernal infesting this realm will think you’re my slightly dumber-looking cousin.’

‘Fine, fine,’ he said, prising my fingers from his neck, then dusting himself off. ‘I suppose we should start with the Spellslinger. . .’

‘Who he kissed!’ Corrigan announced, excitedly poking me with his still-golden finger. ‘Seriously! First, he bedded the Celestine of Rationality and now he’s putting moves on a gods-damned lunatic Pandoral mage who’s planning to destroy the entire Mortal realm! That’s whose judgement you prefer over mine for who should run this coven!’

‘How long have you been holding this in?’ I asked Corrigan quietly.

He shrugged. ‘It’s been building up a while, I guess. Maybe if you’d let me give the speech back in that town where your little friend’s fellow demons were killing those Angelic Valiants — ?’

‘Would the two of you please focus on the matter at hand?’ Galass asked. Her scarlet tresses were beginning to writhe and twist in the air again. We were all stressed, I suppose, but a blood mage having a panic attack invariably leads to the construction of a whole new graveyard.

‘She’s right,’ I said, and turned back to Tenebris. ‘I presume the Pandoral has promised Eliva’ren that once he’s opened a gate between this realm and his own, he’ll free her son and somehow get the two of them back to their own plane of existence before this one collapses completely?’

‘Aw, see?’ the diabolic asked, dripping with sarcasm. ‘I don’t know why people say you’re so slow, Cade. You figured out that a crazy woman obsessed with losing her child is willing to sacrifice an entire world just to get her mewling little brat back into her loving arms. I mean, the batty chick’s motives were positively inscrutable until you worked it all out. You’re a real fucking geni — ’

I’d like to believe that it was his crass indifference to a mother’s suffering and the calamity it was going to cause all of humanity and every other species that lived on this plane of reality that led me to punch Tenebris in the face for the second time in a week. But the great scholars of philosophy and spirituality argue that ignorance of ourselves is the lock that bars the door to enlightenment and truth the key that turns only when we are willing to accept what it reveals.

So, yeah. I punched him because I was scared of what might soon befall my world, and because I was terrified it might well be my fault.

Also, I think I might have mommy issues.

Turns out, I wasn’t alone in that.