Page 41

Chapter 41

Romantic Inclinations

The two of us sat either side of the small table with enough food to feed a platoon of soldiers heaped high on our plates. Neither of us had reached for cutlery, and for once it wasn’t out of a concern that doing so might lead to accidental bloodshed.

‘There need to be a few ground rules,’ the Spellslinger said.

She looked rather delightful tonight, the intimate candlelight in this little restaurant in a quiet corner of town gleaming on her dark curls. She’d chosen an unpretentious ankle-length grey dress for the evening that looked utterly stunning on her. She’d purchased the dress from the same shop where I’d swapped my tattered rags for a surprisingly well-tailored brocaded coat in what’s apparently called the ‘baronet’ style, which was similar in cut to my usual wonderist’s coat. Instead of my customary azure, I’d had to settle for crimson with gold trim. Along with the inordinately puffy white shirt and narrow black trousers the shopkeeper had insisted I buy as well, I looked poncey enough to pass for a rat mage.

‘You look nice tonight, by the way,’ Eliva’ren said.

‘You too,’ I said, aiming for casual and somehow landing on fretful-seventeen-year-old-desperate-to-impress-a-pretty-girl.

She smiled, which told me she wasn’t unaware of the innate awkwardness of this particular conversation. ‘So. . . ground rules.’

‘Right. Rules. Must have rules. I take it the first rule is no sex?’

She looked surprised by that. ‘What? Of course not. I thought sex was the whole point when you propositioned me.’

‘I wasn’t propositioning you,’ I half-stammered. ‘I was merely proposing th — ’

‘So it was a proposal. You were proposing to me.’

‘No, damn it, I was just. . .’

‘ Brother Cade ,’ I imagined Aradeus shooting me one of those swashbuckler grins of his, ‘ I believe you are falling in love. ’

No, I’m not. This is all part of a brilliant and cunning plan.

‘ You are falling in love ,’ Alice insisted. ‘ It is pathetic. ’

Then Temper started in on some philosophical dissertation about the inseparable connection between love in the mind and love of the body and whether the existence of the latter voided the possibility of the former and I stopped listening to my own imaginings.

Truth be told, I hadn’t had much of a plan once I’d brought Eliva’ren to the town and she’d had a chance to recover from the exhaustion of wielding her strange form of wonderism to rescue us from the Unlucky Eight– although only because I’d forced her to, and only after she’d tried to torture me herself with her so-called silk magic. Then she’d passed out from the effort, leaving me the choice of whether to kill her or save her. Abandoning her outside the fortress would’ve likely produced the same effect, as I was sure someone working for the Pandoral had survived the collapse.

So where had that left us? Two people who’d saved each other’s lives yet were on opposite sides of a conflict far bigger and more consequential than either of us. We were surely going to try to kill one another once this whole Great Crusade insanity came to its inevitable calamitous end– so what were we supposed to do? Wave goodbye and, vying for who got the last word, walk off in opposite directions? I could almost hear how that would go.

‘ Farewell, beloved enemy. When next we meet, you will surely die. ’

‘ Ah, but we shall not meet again, for when I kill you, I shall give you a gift, for you will never see death coming. ’

‘ I need not see death, you poor fool, save in a mirror, for I am your death. ’

‘ Yes, you are my death, the last one I must commit ere this bloody business be done. ’

‘ Alas, it is already done, and soon your blood will. . . Wait, what was that last part? I didn’t hear it all. ’

‘ What’s that? You’re too far away now. I can’t hear a thing you’re — ’

You get the idea. It was pointless to walk away at that moment, but the alternative was to start fighting again, which was also kind of silly given we’d just saved each other’s lives.

‘Say, does that destiny hoodoo magic of yours happen to tell you how far away my crew are?’ I’d asked instead, looking up at the town gates, unsure which of us would be expected to skip the comforts of town to avoid us having to deal with the obvious logic of resuming our conflict now rather than later.

Eliva’ren had closed her eyes briefly. Some shred of the connection we’d had through her silk magic before must’ve remained, because when I closed my own eyes, I saw images in flashes: Aradeus having a conversation with a group of rats; Alice, her eyes glowing an odd onyx, peering into the distance and apparently looking straight at me. Temper, hopping around madly shouting, ‘Motherfucker! Motherfucker!’

‘They’ve either abandoned you and gone their separate ways or they’ll be here in the morning,’ Eliva had said at last. ‘Both destinies ultimately end the same, but the intervening steps are equally likely.’

Personally, I thought she was being cynical and that the others would, of course, be on their way. ‘Tomorrow morning, you said?’

She nodded. ‘Assuming they haven’t given up on you.’

Ouch.

‘Okay, then I have a proposal.’

She looked at me, those dark eyes narrowed in suspicion, even as a glimmer of her smirk appeared. Her kiss still lingered on my lips, even after a week of torture. ‘All right, Cade, what are you proposing?’

‘A date.’

‘A date ?’

I pointed to the bustling street, where lanterns were being lit against the falling dusk. ‘That’s likely the only civilised settlement for miles around. We’re both hungry and exhausted. Instead of fighting over who gets to eat at which restaurant, why don’t we share a meal and pretend to be civilised, just for one evening?’

‘You’re also filthy and you smell terrible,’ she pointed out.

‘Right. A bath is definitely in order.’

She placed her hands on her hips, though I noted one was now cocked fetchingly. ‘And do you propose we also share the bath?’

‘Only if you don’t hog the tub. Also, I might need you to scrub my back.’

That last part earned me an actual laugh. If only because the whole idea was utterly preposterous, she eventually conceded that a single evening of civilised socialising wasn’t likely to alter anyone’s destiny. However. . .

‘The first rule,’ she said now, speaking more quickly because neither of us wanted our food to get cold, ‘is that there can be no obligations on either side.’

I considered that a moment. The term ‘obligation’ can carry a lot of different meanings. ‘So, you’re saying you won’t marry me after even if you get me pregnant?’

Oh, Celestines and Devilish take me. Wrong joke. Wrong joke!

I guess a pretty rough ten years since a confused young initiate mage had accidentally found herself on this plane of reality, lost and not yet aware she was pregnant and about to be hunted, tortured and then accidentally attuned to devastating magical forces had inured her to tasteless humour.

‘Even if I get you pregnant with twins,’ she said with just enough of a flicker of amusement to let me know I was off the hook. ‘Whatever happens tonight, it won’t affect our fates. The decisions you’ve made to this point have collapsed your destinies down to a single doom.’ She reached out and took my hand briefly. ‘It’s not a good one, Cade.’

I had a number of short, pithy speeches for moments like this, about how wonderists face death every time they use their abilities, or that I’d been hunted by Glorian Justiciars and demoniacs galore and they’d all failed, or about that time I had sex with the Celestine of Rationality. I didn’t bother with any of them, however.

‘What’s rule number two?’

‘No questions.’

‘I thought we were discussing the rules?’

‘No, I mean, from now until we part in the morning, no matter what else happens between us, you can’t ask me questions about your doom. What’s going to be is going to be and nothing you try to do will change it. Tonight will be the last time we see each other before the end. I. . . It never occurred to me that two people in our position could ever have. . . could ever pretend things were different. I’m glad you suggested this “date” of yours, but it’s nothing but a momentary aberration of our destinies. It really is just pretend, so you have to promise not to ask me any questions about what comes next.’

‘No problem.’

‘Really?’

‘No obligations, no questions. Anything else?’

She didn’t answer at first; I guessed she was wrestling with the situation. I figured for sure she was going to back out. No matter what anyone tells you about fate or inevitability, human entanglements have a way of screwing with destiny. So I was surprised when she stood up, grabbed me by the collar and pulled me upright, then kissed me like the entire world was on fire. ‘Rule three,’ she said, her voice barely more than a breath. ‘We get the food to go.’

And that, friends, is the story of how I faced off against the Lords Celestine, the Lords Devilish, got kidnapped by a cult of weirdo mages, was beaten and tortured only to finally get over my secret obsession with the Celestine of Rationality by spending the night with the most amazing woman I’d ever met just in time for the world to end.