Page 40

Chapter 40

Heroic Murder

Murder gets a bad rep, but if you ask me, homicide is the quintessential act of heroism. It’s all right there in the sagas: how does the hero save the world? By killing the evil king, slaying the mighty dragon, defenestrating the dastardly tyrant.

Choking the unconscious young mother to death.

It’s true, there are no sagas I know of with that particular ending recited to enraptured children at bedtime, but that only meant there was an opening for me to be immortalised in legend.

I know, I know: you’re thinking that good guys don’t murder innocent mothers doing whatever they must to rescue a child from a horrific plane of existence. But the world had plenty of good guys walking around not murdering people and things had still gone to shit. What the world needed now wasn’t a good guy. It needed a hero .

‘She’s going to destroy us all,’ I reminded my friends as I lugged the incapacitated Spellslinger over my shoulder.

They weren’t there, of course. Best I could tell, the portalist working for the Pandoral had transported me a good two hundred miles from that roadside temple where I’d been kidnapped. Still, you spend enough time with crazy people and eventually you can’t help but hear their voices at inopportune moments.

‘ We can’t know that for certain ,’ Galass said disapprovingly, then twisted the knife a little deeper. ‘ You’re the one who’s always defying the inevitable, Cade. Are you saying now of all times you’re becoming a believer in destiny? ’

‘ Kill the bitch ,’ Corrigan said, scratching his balls. In my imaginings, he’s always scratching his balls. Actually, that’s not just in my imagination.

‘ Nay, Brother Cade, nay ,’ declared Aradeus. ‘ Such an atrocity cannot be countenanced, no matter the justification! ’

‘ You can’t stop him, moron ,’ Alice reminded the rat mage. ‘ Cade is only imagining you. He’s mostly hallucinating due to his prolonged torture. And because he’s morally weak. ’

‘ You do appear rather unwell, child ,’ Shame observed in that motherly tone that suggested her notion of motherhood would totally involve smothering the baby to cure the colic. Angelics really don’t understand parenthood.

Aradeus, however, followed an entirely more irritating moral compass. Drawing his imaginary rapier with a flourish he declared, ‘ Whether my sword arm be flesh or mere stuff of dreams, nevertheless shall my blade strike down any who would commit black bloody murder! Have at you, Cade– I say, have at you! ’

I stumbled, twisting my own ankle to avoid dropping Eliva’ren to the dusty ground. The pain was oddly refreshing, if only because it banished the annoying image of Aradeus from my mind.

‘ Yeah, rat mages are moralising pains in the arse sometimes ,’ Corrigan said sympathetically. ‘ Now, just gently set the woman down on the ground, straddle her, in case she wakes up, and choke the life out of her before she comes to her senses and obliterates the fucking universe! ’

It was a hazy late afternoon, the sun slowly setting behind the hills on the horizon. I could see houses up ahead, which was good because I was in dire need of proper food, a bath and a decent bed. Unfortunately, it also meant I was running out of time to either be a proper hero or a pathetic good guy who put his moral squeamishness above the lives of everyone else.

‘ Don’t do it ,’ Galass warned. ‘ I’ll never speak to you again if you do something this awful, Cade. It’s not just me and Aradeus, either. Corrigan will despise you for doing this, no matter how tough he talks. Shame and Alice might seem distant, but they can only be that way because they trust you to keep us on the right path. There won’t be a Malevolent Seven if you murder that woman, Cade, because none of us will be able to look at you ever again. ’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ I asked, stopping to stand there with my ankle aching and my entire body ready to collapse, just like the fortress we’d left behind. Also, because there was the hallucination of a kangaroo standing in my way.

‘Go on,’ I told Temper, ‘say “motherfucker” like it’s supposed to mean something.’

The illusory vampire kangaroo opened its mouth, then coughed, bringing a paw briefly to his muzzle before trying again. ‘ Actually, Cade ,’ the kangaroo began, ‘ what you’re facing is a far more complex philosophical conundrum than you believe. Scholars of ethics refer to your dilemma as “The Horse and Cart Problem”. ’

‘Why are you talking like that?’ I asked.

Temper smiled tolerantly, which is unnerving when the smile in question is formed by a mouth full of fangs belonging to a creature who drinks blood and has poor dental hygiene. ‘ Oh, Cade. Do you expect me to just say “motherfucker” over and over? It’s quaint, but as you’re imagining me for the purpose of achieving a decision on what course of action to take, isn’t it more useful for us to have a proper conversation? ’

‘No, I meant the accent. I’ve never heard it before. You sound halfway between some poncey foreign nobleman and an inebriated fishmonger.’

‘ Ah, I believe the dialect to which you are referring is the one employed by humans from my native land in my own plane of reality. You must have picked up snatches of it when you cast the spell that brought me to your realm. ’ Then, for reasons passing understanding, he added, ‘ Mate. ’

‘Fine,’ I said, resuming my march towards the settlement in the distance. ‘You have until I reach the town gates to help me figure it out.’

‘ There’s really nothing to figure out. The Horse and Cart problem is a simple one: you find yourself on a dirt road descending from a mountain when you see a driverless horse-cart rumbling by. You jump atop the driver’s bench in an attempt to stop the cart’s progress, but the horses have been spooked and are rushing headlong towards five unwitting travellers. You shout to the travellers, but they don’t hear you, and even if they did, there’s nowhere for them to flee because on one side of them is a steep rise and the other a cliff’s edge. No matter how hard you pull on the reins, you can’t get the horses to stop, but there’s a slight fork in the road to the right. If you pull with all your might, you’ll make the horses turn in that direction– but alas, there stands an innocent child who, unlike the oblivious travellers, sees you coming and knows her fate is in your hands. ’

‘I kill the child,’ I said without hesitation.

‘ Because five lives are worth more than one, no matter that it makes you a murderer? ’

‘Because I don’t like kids.’

The spectral kangaroo humoured me with a sympathetic chuckle, then ruined it by saying, ‘ Have you tried any? They’re quite tasty. ’

I stopped again. From this distance, I could already hear some of the sounds of people near the town gates doing whatever people do as they return home from their labours.

‘You’re saying I shouldn’t kill the kid but should let the five travellers die?’ I asked Temper.

‘ Not at all. The Horse and Cart problem has no correct answer. It’s merely a mental experiment forcing one to contend with competing philosophical premises. Either the act of allowing five to die is better because it requires no evil act on your part, or choosing to intentionally murder the child is better because it saves the most lives. ’

I knelt down and set Eliva’ren on the road, wishing a runaway horse-cart were coming this way with somebody else holding the reins. ‘So which choice am I supposed to make?’

I hadn’t expected an answer. Temper was a kangaroo, after all, and incapable of speech other than repeating “motherfucker” relentlessly because Corrigan kept encouraging him. Also, Temper wasn’t really here. That’s why I was so surprised by what he said next.

‘ Neither. ’

‘What?’

‘ You don’t choose either path. ’

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You just told me the whole point of this mental puzzle is that the horses are going to either run down the five travellers or crush the innocent child!’

‘ Who are you? ’

‘What?’

‘ Who are you? ’

‘I’m Cade Ombra, you idiot. The guy who’s imagining you, remember?’

‘ And what is Cade Ombra? ’ My imaginary kangaroo ethics professor held up a paw to forestall my answer. ‘ I phrased that poorly. Tell me instead, what does it mean to be Cade Ombra? ’

‘Unlucky, possibly insane, and sick of imaginary vampire kangaroos.’

‘ What does it mean to be Cade Ombra? ’ he repeated. ‘ Not your name or lineage or profession or even your personality. If it’s simpler for you to understand, what would it mean that you were no longer Cade Ombra? ’

It took me a moment to untangle those two questions in my head, but eventually I realised what Temper– or what I , in fact– had been trying to get myself to understand.

‘Cade Ombra is a fool,’ I said quietly, kneeling to place my ear close to the Spellslinger’s chest. Her breathing was less ragged now, her heartbeat increasing. She would wake any moment. I lifted her back up in my arms and headed for the town gates. ‘Cade Ombra is an idiot who can’t stop himself from believing that no matter how bad the odds, he can figure out a way to save the travellers without killing the child. And the moment he stops believing that? That’s the moment he stops being Cade Ombra.’

‘ Here endeth the lesson ,’ said the imaginary vampire kangaroo, who promptly hopped away, presumably to drink the blood of the five dead travellers, saving the child for dessert.