INTERLUDE 2B: THE FABRIC

“What are you fighting for? What will buy you your moment of peace? Must it come at the cost of tears? Must it come at the cost of blood? There is always a better way. You know it yourself, when you lie abed and try to hold the grin upon your face, confronted by all those apparitions. When you have sunk your soul, it only becomes easier and easier to continue to sink. Harder and harder to climb out. And yet it is so simple any might achieve it in but a moment. Let the grin slip again. Yes, like that. You know. You know what you did wrong. And you know – you know – you will not permit yourself to do it again. Your last ill deed is now behind you. Open the fist. Extend the helping hand. Do not be afraid. I believe in you. Even if you never believed in me – I always knew you had it in you to change. Set aside the sword. Let the wound be staunched. Let it heal.”

– taken verbatim from ‘The Maiden’s Way’ recordings, Ismethara 945 NE

“Holy… drop,” Tanra’s boyfriend breathed after he finally finished chewing and swallowed the stuff.

They sat upon her bed, the window still slightly open from when she’d raised it to let him in. It was past eleven on Twoday night. Her studies and her knitting had kept her up, but it was the Blackrush ale at the Gold Griffin that’d claimed Xaba’s attention for most of the night. She had to be up at six for her seamstress job, and her father would break her boyfriend’s neck if he was caught here at this hour – throw him back out the window, probably, and let the fifty-foot drop do the job.

That was the kind of man her dad was. Twelve Hells, he’d probably break her neck into the bargain – or at least nail shut her windows and keep her in under curfew until she hit fifteen.

When she would finally get a chance to clear out of this nightmarish place.

Just… ten months and a day to go, she reminded herself. She kept it like a clock ticking away in her head, the countdown to her emancipation. Then I’ll be free – or on my way to freedom, at least.

Xaba raised his face, his head bobbing about on his neck as if only barely connected. She saw how his eyes were darting here and there, his lips parted in a slight smile; she could hear his heavy breathing, and smell the sickly-sweet rancour on his every exhalation.

“I really hope this works for you,” he said, his voice appropriately-hushed.

“I’m not sure, Xaba,” she said, tapping her chin.

She was suddenly realising that this was really going to happen. She’d been attracted to him at first because he ran with a gang. He was older than her, and worldlier – but Xaba always talked it up, always acted like much more of a bad-boy than he was at heart, and secretly she was okay with that. His friends were bad influences on him, but their hold on him had weakened over the months she’d known him, and he was going to make husband-material one day. He’d help her get out of here, when the time came, and keep her safe. And so she indulged him; she didn’t mind him eating wane from time to time, and had even tried it once – the euphoria hadn’t lasted long, and she’d never felt the desire to try it again.

But this was something called ‘inkatra’, he’d said, and she knew nothing about it.

His smile widened. “Trust me, all the Knuckle-Heads are doing it. Anyway, what I’ve come up with – it’s like cheating, we get two for one, but I – oh, sweet Mother of Bliss!– I can make you feel the way I feel without you even needing to eat it.”

She didn’t feel keen now she could see it close-up, the way his brow had turned all sweaty, his ceaselessly roving eyes. But she wasn’t going to draw away as he reached out to touch the pad a fingertip to the centre of her forehead; she offered up a swift prayer to Yune, and closed her eyes.

He was just going to tap her forehead, right? What harm could that cause?

No harm. No harm at all.

It swept over her in what must’ve been an instant, but it was an instant divided into layers – there was a softness she’d never experienced before, a softness she didn’t have words for. It was as though she’d been oiled with pungent creams and gently wrapped in silken sheets, placed with care to float upon an ocean of down-filled pillows…

She was on her back now, she knew, lying on the bed – but that reality, that truth was simply too straightforward, too mundane for the experience to which she was being treated.

She wasn’t lying on her bed; she was a snake, a wisp of tendrils that permeated solid matter, slipping through her covers, rolling around like a leaf caught in a whirlpool, a swirl of oiled creamy silken fabrics –

“Tanra –“

She opened her eyes, and saw Xaba’s face, his heavy-browed, tough-looking visage; she put her palms against the sides of his face and kissed him fiercely.

His lips tasted good.

“Tanra!“

He was shouting to her but she didn’t listen, wouldn’t stop trying to kiss him.

“You’ve got to shut up!” he cried.

It was only then that she realised the constant “ahhhhhhhhhh!” sound, a noise like the distressed bleat of some animal, was coming from her own throat – it was only then that she realised she was even hearing a sound at all, actually –

It was very interesting, all of a sudden, the way it had worried him –

She fixated on a button near the neck of Xaba’s vest. It was a little circular piece of wood, painted the same blue as the cloth, and it was supposed to be round – but it was marred on one side, a little chip, a jagged indentation, like a tooth had bit into it –

She was vaguely aware as the door opened, her father entered, the scuffle, the window smashing, blah blah blah. She kept her eyes on the button, the way the little chip caught the warm, orange light of the candle in the hallway outside the room – how it was altered when Xaba turned towards the shards of the window hanging there in the frame, charging and pushing – the sickle-moon beaming a cold, clinical, silvery light that caused the shadows along the jagged edge of the button to dance and deepen –

Something was impeding the process of making memories; it was like her consciousness was working her body ahead of her, in real time, and she was doing her best to keep up, but even when she tried her hardest she was still minutes behind. There were a few scattered moments left in Tanra’s mind, when she came upon them, experiencing the series of events as if for the first time: her mum’s face frozen in shock, shock and hope, isn’t that the real telling thing; stopping by a bloody corpse outside before they ran – her dad’s corpse – well, never mind, at least that’s one good thing to come of tonight; running, running into the smog, laughing at the night. Searching.

Searching?

Searching out Old Tibbey, who had provided Xaba with the inkatra, who would surely provide them with more, more and more; and they would run, run into the wind, laugh at the night forever.

* * *

She waited on the bench by the office in the repurposed warehouse, the back of her smock soaked in sweat, trying to keep from screaming. The constant anticipation had Tanra with her backside right on the edge of the hard wood.

‘Waited’ was perhaps too-strong an expression; her knees were shaking, and she had no command over her demeanour, which surely displayed a never-ending cycle of impatience to frustration to ferocity.

Thankfully the few lanterns scattered throughout the space, which was scarcely better-appointed than a barn on a farm (but was at least as large), probably did little to illuminate her expression. The others in the room – a dozen-and-a-half druggies and gangers who would’ve normally been more than happy asserting their dominance over this fourteen-year-old girl – were regarding her the same way one would regard an unshackled rabid animal. The way she would regard a spider on the other side of the wash-room that she’d only spotted once she’d sat down on the toilet, feeling it staring back at her with its eight eyes. Do not come any closer.

She was enjoying it, she supposed, even if ‘enjoying’ had become a relative term over the last four hours. How did Xaba put it? ‘It took the edge off.’ Yes, that was it. Them staring at her with untrammelled apprehension in their eyes; it took the edge off the craving.

Perhaps they had experience dealing with people who were undergoing inkatra withdrawal. They knew better than to interfere with her, even if her presence was putting a downer on their own night.

They reclined in the padded chairs and on the cushioned divans that were scattered between the boxes and crates, seemingly all filled with illegal substances. Some of the thugs were inhaling pungent smoke, others eating strange packages, or even dripping concoctions right into their eyes.

She looked away when she saw that, tapping her chin nervously. She hated eyes.

“Waneday,” said a big guy with his trunk-like left arm in a sling, speaking to no one in particular, in what probably passed for a thoughtful tone for someone of his immense stature and booming voice. “Did they name the day after the drug, or the drug after the day?”

“Get real, Garet,” someone else answered, chewing noisily on some bread.

“Get-Real Garet. That should be his name,” another commented with a giggle.

“Get-Real Garet!”

“Oh, oh ha-ha yes, Get-Real! Get-Real Garet!”

The big guy with the sling muttered something like “drop off” darkly, sank back into his pillows and shut his eyes, cradling his hurt arm with his free hand.

“Neither, ‘course,” came an acerbic voice after the hubbub had died down. The older man who spoke had a hard expression on his wrinkle-twisted face, and a jar of beer in his hand. “Wane’s a word, yer know.”

“It is?”

“Never heard o’ the wanin’ moon? Means it’s on its way out, innit?”

“Then why’s Waneday come ‘afore Fullday?”

Tanra sighed, and pressed her hands into the wood of the bench on either side of her, gripping it so tightly that her nails began to hurt.

Three minutes. She’d been here about three minutes, ‘waiting’ for Xaba to finish talking to this Old Tibbey, ‘waiting’ for her next fix of inkatra.

She was new to this, and had no doubt in her mind that her boyfriend was about to emerge with handfuls of the drug.

Then she heard raised voices in the partitioned-off ‘office’ behind her; she sprang up, feeling tension all the way from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, making her hair and teeth ache, making her blood itch as it scratched its way through her veins.

Everyone else gave her a look, but she was ignoring them for the moment, doing her best to listen to the heated words being exchanged beyond the thin wooden walls – she went to the door and leaned next to it, head turned to expose her ear to the gap between the door and the frame. She shut her eyes, trying to quell her involuntary movements, trying to focus…

“… any Knuckle-’Ead finks he can just saunter in ‘ere and demand me produce, he’s got another fing comin’, my son.”

“Come on, old man, you said yourself, Ginnel Gram’s shifting the lot. I can pay, you know me.”

“Money – up – front, you little dropstain. Doessen your generation never show respect, boy? I could send you right back ter Papa Roon with a scar on your cheek and d’you know what he’d do about it? Nuffink. ‘Cos I got you dead ter rights, Xaba Bhellomy. You get out my joint right the Hells now, or they’ll be findin’ yer bits fer weeks ter come.”

“If I come back with money –“

“Money talks.”

There was a pause, in which Tanra could only hear her own heart beating, could only think about the way this had turned out, feeling her anger seething – itchy blood became acid, the aching of her hair and teeth suddenly transformed into a full-blown headache like someone had just taken a hammer to the back of her skull –

When a hand grabbed her around the back of her neck, she tried to squeal, tried to whirl, using all her fury mingled with the swiftly-onset terror –

But the man’s grasp on her was firm, and she only succeeded in croaking and half-spinning before falling into a heap at his feet. She hadn’t really eaten the inkatra – they’d cheated. And even if the magic of which she’d been given a taste by Xaba had increased her strength as well as her ferocity, that effect was long-since passed now.

For a second or two she struggled, increasingly realising the futility of her actions, then finally went limp, staring up at him in shock.

He slowly hefted her by her throat, and she fought to get her feet underneath her in time, hoping to relieve the pressure on her windpipe. He wasn’t trying to choke her, but it was clear he was willing to if she didn’t obey.

It was someone she hadn’t noticed before. Not tall or particularly muscly-looking, he was still heavyset – she might’ve even been a bit taller than him, but he weighed at least twice as much as her, and he was at least twice her age.

It wasn’t that far from dawn, and he had the look of someone who’d been up all night without a nap – pinkish eyes, messed-up brown hair, crumbs in his scraggly beard.

“Dance fer us, girl,” he said without any pretence, and without any doubt that she’d comply. His breath stank of whatever the blue stuff caught in his teeth was. “I’m gettin’ bored, and yer wooden like me when I’m bored.”

He strode off, half-carrying her as her feet scurried to copy his motions, move with him – then he flung her into the centre of the room, into the midst of the sprawled druggies.

His actions bought him some measure of approval from his companions – the half who said nothing in response weren’t abdicating out of some sense of criticism, she was sure, but more because they were too vacant between the ears to care about anything, even the latest entertainment.

“Dance!” he barked, taking up position as if to close-off the ring in which she’d been encircled.

Even some of the more lethargic-looking members of her audience were now stirring with interest.

She stood there, a sweat-soaked rabbit surrounded by baying wolves, and her chest began to constrict. She wrapped her arms around herself as though she could protect herself from the situation with them, and she spun in place, looking into their faces and cringing.

Only the one they’d called Get-Real Garet was looking away, rubbing his sling-bound hand without any consciousness behind the action, his mind off somewhere else.

It wasn’t long before the chant was taken up, “Dance! Dance! Dance!” and within seconds people were throwing things at her – chunks of plaster, crusts of bread, a cup –

“Tanra!”

It was Xaba’s voice – she could see him over the short, heavy guy’s shoulder. He was leaving the office through the open door, the grey-haired old man in a nightgown visible behind him – Old Tibbey.

“You leave her alone!” Xaba roared, hastening forwards to catch the heavy guy’s arm even as the blue-teethed ruffian hoisted a cushion from a nearby chair to lob at her.

She saw Old Tibbey’s grin, behind Xaba –

“Xaba! Look out!” she screamed –

Old Tibbey, with a dexterity that belied his age, slipped forwards with a dagger in his hand, catching up to her boyfriend in an instant.

Xaba’s face froze in an expression of anguish, his hands clawing at the air – the blow to his back had arrested all his movements. He didn’t even cry out.

She watched as he slowly, slowly fell down to his knees, then toppled onto his face.

Now he moaned, a single long monotone, before falling silent.

A silence that stretched.

Xaba. Dead. Her mind struggled to connect the two concepts. Dead. Xaba.

Her father was dead. The evil man. Now Xaba was dead. The good man.

I loved him.

It hadn’t been a pure love, hadn’t been something from a fable. It’d been real. It’d been hers. And now it was dead, stabbed in the back by a demon-hearted old man.

But she watched as Old Tibbey’s dagger quivered slightly, its tip wedged firmly in her beloved’s spine, and she couldn’t cry.

Not here. Not now.

“What o’ the girl?” the heavy guy asked, as if nothing had just occurred.

“Take ‘im out and slit ‘is throat where it won’t make a mess, an’ yer can do the same wiff ‘er after, eh?” the old man called, already turning around to head back to his separate room, nonchalantly smearing the blood on his hand onto the side of his nightgown as he went.

They’re going to kill me.

As if in answer to Old Tibbey’s words, a heavy blow struck the door of the warehouse.

Boom!

The chains, wrapped in a figure-of-eight between the two handles on the insides of the pair of wooden doors, shook and jangled loudly in the silence afterwards.

For a second Tanra thought she’d imagined it, dreamt it – but then Old Tibbey halted, and slowly turned around to stare at the chains, as if daring them to shake again.

“What in Infernum was that?” the old man growled.

There was a pause; everyone turned their heads, looking at each other. Tanra quickly focussed her eyes on the floor as if showing herself to be capable of perception would suddenly make them perceive her again, as if keeping her eyes on the floor made her invisible.

When the answers came they flowed from several tongues, but it was as though the same consciousness directed the responses:

“That wuz the wind, boss, I swears it –“

“– yeah the wind’s been bad, las’ few nights –“

“– heard it do that many a time, when it’s stormed, yer know?”

“– couldn’ter been anyfink else anyway, we got Willow Jonsen and The Stain on watch –“

Boom!

This time there was the unmistakeable sound of splintering wood. The shadows were too thick in the doorway to tell whether a hole had been punched-through. The walls and door were a muddy brown that might as well have been black in the dimness of these few lanterns, and the sky outside would probably be dark for a good while yet –

Tanra stood there, more firmly paralysed by her fear than by any spell a mage might’ve conjured.

She stood there and ‘waited’.

It was almost too good to be true. Something to distract them. A time was coming when she would have to run. Her skin was crawling like she had a million insects worming their way around inside her clothes, over her face, in her shoes. She longed to move. She longed to go home. She longed to hug Xaba.

The realist-portion of her mind was still ticking over, somewhere below the blinding drug-addled rage and the humiliation of her current predicament, and that part of her had it all worked out. Xaba would be blamed for her dad’s death – she was sure of it. She could go home, and she would miss Xaba, she really would, but he would be dead and she would be alive and she would just have to make the most of it –

But she couldn’t move, couldn’t break the paralysis. She couldn’t trust that, when the moment arrived, she’d be able to do what she had to, to be free of this warehouse of nightmares.

When she dared flick her gaze towards her tormentors, she saw the same fear, the same paralysis infecting the faces of the others.

Old Tibbey’s voice was tense but his tone was commanding:

“Kezelro, Garet. Go check it.”

With a grunt, the heavyset guy who’d grabbed her by the throat moved as though to walk past her –

Then, as he got next to her, he shouldered her suddenly, right in the chest, driving the air out of her lungs and smacking her down to the ground, leaving her curled up on the floor.

“Don’t fink yer gettin’ out o’ dancin’,” he – Kezelro – snarled at her.

But Garet held up his injured hand. “I’m on leave, boss. Peltos’s orders. I’m not to, you know, get in any scraps or whatever. Till I’m healed.”

Old Tibbey didn’t argue, didn’t even seem flummoxed for one instant – he just barked, “Norrest!” and a different guy got to his feet, glowering at the muscled brute.

“On leave,” Norrest muttered mockingly.

He and Kezelro made their way to the door, disappearing into the shadows.

Tanra felt her chest with almost-unresponsive fingers. There was no sharpness, like she imagined she’d feel if he’d broken one of her ribs. But the flesh was incredibly tender to even her lightest touch. At least her breath was returning to her.

“No damage,” the evil one, Kezelro, called back from the dimness, a blackness moving amidst the blackness.

“Musta been the wind, boss,” said Norrest, his voice whiny. She recognised him now by his pitch; he’d been the giggler, the one who’d said ‘Get-Real’ should be Garet’s epithet.

There was a moment of consternated silence, then Old Tibbey yelled angrily, “Go check on Jonsen and The Stain! Call yerselves Bertie Boys…”

The tension seemed to melt out of everyone, second by second. The chains were rattling as the ruffians opened the door. Old Tibbey was retreating to his office once again. The pool of blood around Xaba’s corpse was slowly becoming apparent, having finally soaked through his clothes to spread on the ground…

The warehouse door was opening – the worst amongst her tormentors was leaving… If there was ever a chance to mount an escape, this was it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

But how? Even if her body miraculously did what she told it, how could she get over there, from here on the floor, evade the (possibly four) people in or around the doorway…? Even if she’d had her wits about her she would’ve found it an impossible task, and right now in this instant, her flesh was nothing more than a pool of suffering in which to drown her mind, stifle her instincts, choke her resistance.

Joran give me strength, she prayed, tensing up, getting ready to try to get to her feet –

“Why thank you.”

A new voice, scarily loud.

There was no gratitude in that deep, male voice – only something ominous, brimming with barely-submerged emotion, making it not just sarcastic but caustic, biting like a razor. There was no trace of a highborn accent, but the words were precise, crisp.

She jerked her head up, trying to look, but couldn’t get a glimpse of the newcomer through the shadows. She could, however, see Norrest hastily retreating back into the light, Kezelro only slightly slower, swaying as he backed-up as if in indecision.

“Mage!” Norrest cried, “mage!”

“Not again,” she heard Garet mutter to himself.

Old Tibbey had reached the office door, but had seemingly stopped the moment the voice out of the darkness reached his ears; instead of entering, the old man swung it shut while still on this side, and leaned against it with his back, weariness crossing his leathery face.

“Whadder yer want, magister?” he called out into the darkness. “We ain’t got owt fer the likes o’ you – get gone, or ye’ll regret it!”

“Oh, I’m no magister. I’m just… looking for someone.”

Yes, the voice was kept low, but there was something about the way it throbbed, in one moment sneering-hot and in the next brittle-cold – something that told her he probably wasn’t much more than a few years older than her.

The newcomer approached into the gap left by Kezelro and Norrest, the lantern-light falling on a grinning, shining face that floated in the darkness.

Tanra felt the shudder of terror that seemed to pass through everyone assembled in the warehouse.

She didn’t follow the antics of the darkmages as much these days; her work and her schooling had kept her busy – Xaba, poor Xaba, he would’ve probably known who this was – but even if it were some infamous killer, it was unlikely he was here to exact vengeance on her. She could slip out, unnoticed…

The tension seemed to grow, build higher and higher, like the time she’d seen the wizards dam the Blackrush while they fixed the locks – a vast black weight of incredible depth rising, rising, waiting to spill, to crash down…

Old Tibbey was saying nothing – she couldn’t even hear anyone breathing –

Kezelro, the closest to the grinning face, snapped first.

A short bark of exasperation or resentment escaping him, the bearded Bertie Boy reached inside his vest, producing a short-handled knife.

The moment his hand re-emerged the grinning face said merely, “Good.”

Something happened then, something that made little-to-no sense: a white hand came out of the shadows, moving in a little flicking gesture before clenching into a loose fist; and Kezelro’s body changed – it went from the buoyant stance of a man who was ready even in the throes of his drug-haze to commit acts of abhorrent violence, to a crumpled up, contorted mess.

It was like the thug was trying to cross his arms at the elbow and bend his knees inwards. He only barely stayed on his feet and the splayed fingers of his hands were no longer anywhere near the knife-hilt.

Like he’d been shoved into an invisible box of strange dimensions, a box imperceptible other than by the behaviour of its captive.

There was a flurry of movement in the dark, and within an instant Kezelro was being marched towards them in the centre of the warehouse; behind him, the black-robed, black-hooded mage in the macabre mask towered over him, a long-sleeved arm reaching around the captive and pressing something thin and dark into the soft flesh beneath his chin.

The eyes were glaring through the holes in the mask at Norrest – the whiner was quick, almost grateful to stand down, backing closer to the relative safety of the rest of the gang.

The mage stopped twenty feet away, turning his head to regard them all in turn, as though he were getting a read on each of them, listening to something, listening to their thoughts?

An enchanter?

“You know what this is, I take it?”

The mage twisted the piece of wood in his hand, its tip buried in Kezelro’s throat. Surely most of them knew what he meant – even Tanra recognised the explosive dagger for what it was.

“Do you know what’d happen if I pushed a bit too hard?”

The hooded figure laughed, cold and brittle as before, then suddenly shouted: “Pop! I transform his head into a fine red mist. What do you know, I must be a magician or something.”

The trapped Bertie Boy’s eyes flicked around the room, looking imploringly at its other occupants. But there was no one able or willing to help him.

“And do you know what I’d say?”

The figure laughed again, then, but it was a different sound. Hollow. Bitter.

Perhaps she’d been wrong, she thought, when she heard that awful sound – perhaps he was older after all.

When he spoke again it was the voice of one who just seconds ago stood on the edge of a momentous decision, but who had now made that decision.

“I would say oops.”

Boom!

The room recoiled.

The instant he’d said ‘oops’ there was a tremendous thunderclap, right there at his hands around Kezelro’s throat – an unnatural clamour with none of the wave of air that should’ve accompanied it, given the volume.

The newcomer shoved Kezelro forwards, who fell screaming, frantically patting his cheeks and ears and hair and beard, face contorted and eyes screwed shut. Once he seemed to realise he was still alive he began to crawl away, moaning all the while; he primarily used his knees, as his arms were clasped around his head so that his ears were covered.

A foul odour filled the air. Tanra gave it fifty-fifty odds as to whether the Bertie Boy actually let his bowels go, or just came close at the moment he thought his head had been blown apart.

She smiled, a tight little smile. She felt a touch of the fierceness that’d infected her returning.

Most of the patrons of Old Tibbey’s warehouse had either pushed themselves over the arms of their seats at the thunderclap, or pushed over the seats themselves – whichever way, Tanra was no longer the only one on the ground.

The old man himself had slumped to the floor, she saw when she glanced across. “Well ooh in Twelve ‘Ells are yer after?” he croaked, his tone plaintive, hurt.

The newcomer’s explosive dagger had vanished; he was just standing there, chuckling – then he suddenly stopped.

“One of you is dying?” he muttered, incongruous concern in the threat. He straightened up. “Give me Telrose Gaum. Now.”

The last word came out like the thunderclap, deafening, skin-shrivelling.

Tanra looked about. There was going to be none of the back-and-forth here, no disguising the identity of the mage’s quarry – she immediately identified Telrose Gaum by the way everyone was looking at him. Short and skinny, forty or forty-five years old, his shaven face and head were his only contributions to maintaining his appearance; his rags looked like they were soiled with gutter-waste and worse. He was crouching on the balls of his feet, tucked up next to the arm of the couch he’d until-recently been sitting in; his eyes were roving in their sockets, his forehead dripped with sweat, and he was chewing frantically.

Swallowing.

There was a part of her, a strong part, that just wanted to spring on him and kill him and steal his remaining inkatra and she was going to do it, she would find a way –

Then Telrose Gaum was smiling thinly, rising to his feet and holding out his hands.

“Too late,” the newcomer declared, full of confidence – then, suddenly desperate, “Wait! Don’t try it!”

A rippling sheet of blue-green fire leapt from the thug’s fingertips.

And rebounded right back at him, as though the air around the mage simply rejected it.

The thug had no training, had no way to repel the effects as what looked like glistening, liquid flame covered him, consuming his rags –

Telrose shrilled like a trumpet in its highest key, panicking, flapping his arms about wildly –

“In ma lar!” the figure snapped, like he was swearing in another language.

She looked at him, wondering who he was speaking to, what he was saying –

Then she blinked two or three times at the tiny handsome chap who stepped on clattering hooves out of a green-coloured nowhere.

A faun?

The little fellow raised a big old goblet and a set of pipes and then there was a long, low note of music somehow producing a flood of water – no, it was wine, she could smell it and it was splashing all around her, further soaking her clothes – cascading onto the burning man, pummelling him down into the ground.

The flood continued for a few seconds, everyone doing their best to maintain their composure as they watched the idiot Telrose Gaum come within an inch of losing his life to his own foolishness.

“Thank you, Flood Boy,” the mage said. She saw it more clearly this time as a jagged, greenish rip appeared there, hanging right in the air – seemingly swallowing the faun.

An arch-sorcerer? she thought wonderingly.

Slowly, Telrose shook his head and got to a half-sitting, half-sprawling position, gasping heavily. His rags had mostly dematerialised, but his skin was only red and blotchy in patches, not showing the welts of a severe burn anywhere she could see.

“I warn you not to try it again,” the sorcerer said; “the same spell is active, and next time you’d likely perish. All I want from you…” he took a breath, “all I want is information.”

“Ah – ah,” Telrose gasped for at least ten seconds; then finally between the agonised winces he managed to cough out: “Wha’… ‘information’… would that be?”

“Morsus Tarent. He is dead. You were there.”

Morsus Tarent? She’d never heard of him.

“Wha’… wha’ d’yer care?”

“What do I care!” the sorcerer roared, setting Telrose flat on his back just with the power of his voice. “What do I care? I care that my… I care that he was stabbed in the chest and left in the gutter for children to find, for the rats to chew!”

The anger was back, seething, rolling across the room, the voice magnified in volume also deepened in timbre, wrath itself echoing back off the walls.

She looked back at Old Tibbey, to see if he was following the conversation, how he was reacting – but it was Garet, Get-Real Garet, not far from her and huddled up next to a piece of furniture like everyone else, who caught her attention. The big man with his arm in a sling was staring at the mage with a strange, almost wistful look in his eyes, just for an instant – then he looked down at the ground beneath him once more.

She could almost imagine the sound of the cogs slowly, laboriously turning in his head, but she had no idea what that portended.

“Look, misser, I… I got’s no ‘information’…”

“Who killed him?”

“I… I don’t got…”

“Tell me who killed him.”

Telrose gazed back up at the mage, silent, even holding in his winces in his resolve to keep his lips sealed.

And so when the masked figure next spoke, it was in a quiet, resigned voice.

“Very well. I won’t kill you. Not myself – I couldn’t do that. And I think you know that much already.”

She heard Telrose cluck in response.

“But I can send you to hell.”

The sorcerer’s arms moved, fingers clawing at the air; and then a blood-coloured curtain of flame sprang up, almost touching the ground between them, the thing flickering madly in comparison with the soft, gentle crackling-sound it emitted.

Uncanny red light fell on everything nearby, illuminating the warehouse and its occupants with its eerie glow.

“Through there is Infernum,” Tanra felt herself pale at this, “and what would you know, I happen to have a one-way ticket with your name on it. You’re going to end up there anyway, right? Why not speed up the process? Unless you want to tell me, and get yourself some healing for that pain – those burns gotta hurt, right? – I’ll just move the gate on top of you, and we’ll see what a world full of demons can do – I’ll even come with, this has got to be good –”

“He killed hisself!” Telrose cried at last.

The sorcerer took a step backwards, as if he’d been pushed back bodily. “Yeah,” he said coldly, “he just took out his dagger and repeatedly thrust it into his own heart. That’s possible, right? Try again, Telrose.”

“You fancy droppin’ highborn wi’ yer fancy-pants words. Look, misser, I’ll tell it yer straight – yer man Morsus, he came in after dinner wi’ eight gold, wha’s tha’, like, eigh’y sillies – showin’ it off, he was, talkin’ it up, like the big man, yer know? Then when he goes n’ loses it all, well – he starts screamin’, dussen he? Knocks over the table like he’s the big man, yer get the picture? Wan’s his money back, he does, wants it back or he’s got friends in high places, friends like you, eh? – n’ they wassen gonna take this, was they?”

As Telrose’s story progressed, Tanra could perceive that the sorcerer’s confidence was taking a beating. He’d lowered his masked head, and she could see the way the tips of his pale fingers appeared, emerging from the opening at the end of his sleeve before disappearing, reappearing… At least one of the sorcerer-boy’s hands was clenching and unclenching, over and over.

“So yeah, he gess told ter leave, n’ kicks the wrong guy when they movin’ him out the door, a real goat he was. Tha’ was it, though. He got the knife in the front, mind, n’ there never was no fightin’. Clean and straight, eh? Kultemeren’s me witness, I ain’t never seen a death wha’ deserved it more.”

There was silence, and more silence, unbroken except by breathing – and somewhere behind her a little slurping as someone on the periphery of this madness took advantage of the wine-puddle.

“The name.”

This time when the sorcerer spoke it was with sorrow.

This time when he spoke she could tell those two words were the last two words Telrose Gaum would ever hear in mortal language.

It would be the tongues of devils for him from now on.

And it seemed Telrose finally got the same impression.

“Orven… It was him wha’ stuck him, but there was –“

“His sirename.”

“I dunno…”

“Where would he be found?”

“I dunno!” Telrose shrieked.

The sorcerer’s arm was flung up suddenly –

And the glow of the red-flame portal vanished even more swiftly than it had first been conjured.

“Thank you,” he said in little more than a whisper.

“Yer believe me?” Telrose sounded surprised as much as he sounded relieved.

The masked figure just nodded once, and continued quietly, “Let’s see about that healing.”

For a moment it was as though he’d cast an opaque black screen up into the air in front of him, and then a second later it vanished again, to reveal the sorcerer and… and…

And something most fourteen-year-old girls would’ve wanted the power to summon.

The bronze demigod-looking thing moved forward at a short command from its master, but it didn’t stop beside Telrose, who looked up at the sorcerer, offended.

“Critical casualties first, fool,” the masked figure muttered. “One of you is near death.”

‘One of you is dying?’ She understood him now.

Xaba!

Tanra cried, “He isn’t one of them! Please, is he alive?”

The act of speaking seemed to unlock her arms and legs, and she scrambled up to her feet.

Now she and the sorcerer were the only ones in the room standing; the beautiful bronze man was already crouching at Xaba’s side, blowing in his face, slowly but forcefully – she could see her boyfriend’s hair rippling back from the pressure.

She glanced back at the masked mage in his grey robe – his head moved slightly, eyes looking her up and down, then he said, “Are you alright?”

She felt herself shaking all over again, whether from the inkatra-withdrawal or the built-up dread of being trapped here she was unsure.

But he noticed her shuddering.

“We’ll get you out of here,” he reassured her. “First,” he turned his attention to the bronze guy, “how are you getting on, noble sylph? In Mundic.”

“Grave his injury, less-grave his fate,” the muscly ‘sylph’ replied in a monotone, almost overly-polite voice. “I hadst no other recourse than to replace his lost blood, and his condition, meagre as I find it, shall worsen no further; in time yon maiden must procure the ministrations of druidry. For the present will he sleep – yet shall he make his way in the world afoot? This matter only a master-healer might settle.”

Tanra appreciated the musical quality of his speech patterns, but she noticed that almost everyone else was looking at the sylph with nonplussed expressions on their faces.

“’E said to speak Mundic, right?” one dolt murmured.

“Very well,” the mage said to his minion, and sighed. “Carry him, then.”

The sylph immediately bent and hefted Xaba up effortlessly into the air, big bronze hands and elbows carefully placed so as to cause as little adjustment to his spine as possible.

“What about me?” Telrose moaned. Tanra suspected the pain was keeping the throes of inkatra-ecstasy from taking hold of him – or perhaps he already had a tolerance.

The sorcerer didn’t even look down. “I don’t think so,” he said disdainfully. “Call this a taster, and a warning. I wasn’t lying about Infernum, you know, and it is real. Do you want to end up there? Any of you? Ruminate on those burns, and on the fiery eternity you’re looking forward to.”

“Yer never gonna get away with this, boy,” Old Tibbey called out. It sounded like he was trying his best to be intimidating but the involuntary thrum of nervousness twisted his threat into a querulous, trite statement.

Telrose jumped up, all blackened rags and reddened skin – Kezelro too came bounding forwards, recovered from his ear-splitting, head-popping experience –

Both of them went hurtling at the sorcerer with all their might –

And they both bounced off invisible walls, something unseen and impenetrable, surrounding just him, or the thugs, or all of them at once – she had no way to tell.

“Seriously?” the sorcerer cried. “Are you seriously going to do that? Do you have any idea of how badly I’m holding back? I’m having to think through everything I’m doing just to make sure I don’t kill everyone in the room by accident!”

Telrose slowly hunkered down again, wincing as he painstakingly lowered himself back onto his rear-end. Kezelro, shame-faced, stayed in a crouch.

“Anyway, I’m not even finished yet. Leave off the whole ‘never gonna get away with this’ spiel until I’ve destroyed almost every bit of product you’ve got in here. Gosh, this crate here,” the sorcerer pointed to a nearby wooden box two feet on a side, the lid off and leaning against it, “wouldn’t be full of bags of fresh wane, would it?”

Old Tibbey got to his feet, staggering forward. “I –“

There was another green nimbus in the air, a flurry of motion.

“Make a mummy of the old man, will you?” the sorcerer said.

There were two greyish ugly critters on either side of Old Tibbey, who was staring at them open-mouthed.

Then the flurry of motion became a tempest, the critters whooping and baying as they whipped around and around the Bertie-Boy-boss in opposite directions, pulling something like a roll of paper out between them to an incredible length and using it to entangle the old man.

Through a flash of red flame, a huge glob of bright-green snot appeared – not far off the size of a wagon – with two dark round eyes and a dark flick of a smile right there in its side.

The sorcerer spoke again in a strange, different tongue, but this time something guttural, almost cruel-sounding: “Thanatar ru mahlas ri talas’r, kha thanem khi-rum.”

The dark flick of a smile on its ‘face’ became a huge grin, at least two feet wide from tip to tip – then the blob replied, a gurgle of sound every bit as menacing as the sorcerer’s voice: “Zi kason.”

All at once the demon – that was what it had to be, right? – revolved in place, and spat a ball of steaming green goo at the nearby crate.

It went right through it, reducing the crate and its contents to smoking ash.

Tanra looked around, trying to ignore the noxious odours. The slimy demon destroying the drugs, spinning and spitting again and again. The sylph standing there, Xaba in his arms, staring at his master as if he looked strange all of a sudden. Old Tibbey, lying on the floor wrapped up in parchment – the grey critters standing by, watching curiously – and Kezelro, Telrose, Norrest, Garet, everyone cringing as far as possible from the demon’s potential targets, waiting and praying for it to all be over – Kezelro glancing back at her –

It happened just as she imagined it was going to happen, and as he did it she watched it, watched it back, watched it happen this way and that way… How he could slip and stumble if his foot twisted in just such a way – how he could fall on his knife – but that wasn’t going to happen, the future containing such a momentous blunder was already slipping free of the possibilities, like a single bird peeling away from a flock of thousands and disappearing into insignificance.

Like a thread – a loose thread, cut free by a swift sharp cut of her scalpel.

No, he wasn’t going to fall on his knife as he got up, intending to make his way to her and take her hostage, slit her throat – that future was still possible, if she froze, didn’t act fast enough – but even though he was going to use a burst of energy to cross the distance as quickly as possible, it wasn’t going to work. She was going to emerge from the first opening of her new awareness, evade his attack, and make him fall on his knife. She knew this for a fact – she had seen it.

Reality was fabric.

It moved. It flowed. It was cut and sewn. The images changed and time passed but it was a fabric and it was hers.

She could enter the emptiness between threads, gaze into the reflections gathered like dewdrops in the secret recesses of time and space. If the possible futures were like a million mirror-like dewdrops gathered before her – some greater and some lesser, some shining and some transparent – in all but a few of them, the reflections showed her his corpse lying on the floor.

She knew that later she would look back on this as a mistake. When she plunged her consciousness into each of the million dewdrops she saw only ten million more, and a hundred million through each of those – and the big picture was that this was her first step on the path to becoming a hunted criminal.

She might’ve had doubts about her new abilities, had she not possessed the sight enabling her to confirm their source and, at the other end, their permanency. Were they an effect of the inkatra? No. The withdrawal effects from the drug were only going to last a few more hours – the crawling feeling, the perspiration that drenched her clothing, would soon be gone –

But she was still going to be an arch-diviner next week, and the week after, and the week after… That was easy to perceive. Besides, Xaba had used the inkatra like an enchanter, to give her the impression of having taken the drug – it wouldn’t just now all of a sudden give her something from the diviner’s suite of powers.

She had genuinely just become an archmage.

Tanra forced herself to relax, to exhale. And as she breathed out, she breathed life back into the world, breathed motion into the present, allowing it to slip once more into the past, pulling the future inexorably along behind it.

I’m ready.

The thug was fast, for his size, and the sorcerer wasn’t looking.

Kezelro’s dagger glinted as it flashed towards her face –

Live by the blade, die by the blade. This she would say in four months’ time, on the twenty-second of Taura, to some Cutter-Boys – she would say it, and then she would kill the men with her own dagger – a simple, sharp kitchen knife.

She would start carrying her own knife, not long after killing Kezelro – after letting him die. And not just one, either. A whole bunch of the things.

What’re you doing here? My oh my. I’m sorry, guys, but you all have to die now. You shouldn’t have looked at my face. This she would say in ten months’ time, on the seventh of Kailost, to four young Knuckle-Heads, Xaba’s former friends and partners-in-crime. She and Xaba wouldn’t be together anymore, of course – there was no wedding in their future that she could see – she was more likely to marry the sorcerer than him – and there was a fair chance Xaba would be dead too by then anyway. But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part would be that she’d go into those situations unmasked, deliberately, knowing the three men, the four boys, knowing they would see her face – just so she had a way to make them blame themselves for their deaths before she used the dagger in her gloved hand…

That latter time her weapon would be a rune-encrusted thing, twinkling with faint rays of pink-purple light…

Kezelro’s dagger glinted, glinted as it flashed towards her –

No.

Her reaction to that path, the path where she removed this miserable excuse for a human being from the city, from Materium – her reaction was mistake; her reaction was no.

Better that I die, than he.

If she let his evil existence continue on after this juncture, he would do harm to so many. Kezelro was a nexus-point of events. He was a link in a chain of distress the fed the web of woes, but he was a link with dozens of other links feeding off his actions. If he could only be made to –

Kezelro’s dagger glinted, flashed, somewhere she used to be –

She used a single hand to push the crook of his arm, turning his blade away, and then, seeing how lethargically he seemed to be reacting, she bunched up her fingers and struck him right in the throat with her palm.

When time flowed normally he fell quickly towards the ground – she hadn’t seemed to hit him hard, but she supposed she’d hit him fast – though she didn’t let time do that for long – she was too busy examining her surroundings in this new light. She could look, and she could see –

Ah, Feychilde. Of course it’s him.

The sorcerer was looking at her in alarm, mouth open as if to shout a too-late warning to her or a command to one of his minions, but, just like the others, he was almost frozen in time to her while her perceptions were moving at this speed.

She’d read the name of the new champion connected to a couple of recent, high-profile events – something about cannibals, and an attack in Oldtown, if she was remembering correctly. She usually skipped those sections in the news.

Yes, she was remembering correctly. She could revisit her own past, see the ink on the page. ‘Cannibal Six Incarcerated: Shocking Revelations,’ and ‘Heretics Assault Firenight Square!’

There was something off about him – no, not about him, in him – that she couldn’t quite put a finger on. Much of his past and future looked different to the others’ – hazy, incomplete, a million mirror-shards with most of them dark, showing only her own eyes staring back at her –

Still, he was a champion, and he was true. That much she could tell.

How to do it…? She couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t declare it here in front of the Bertie Boys. But she had an irresistible compulsion to let Feychilde know how she’d changed – she knew things would turn out better in the end that way.

The demon would finish soon, the grey things – the goblins – would bind the others, and she and the champion would leave together.

She let Kezelro hit the ground, then crouched beside him. The sorcerer was still looking, she could tell without glancing back.

While the green blob finished Feychilde’s work and the scattered thugs lay prone, staring at the sorcerer and recoiling every time the demon spat its acidic goo-balls, she spoke softly to the blue-teethed Bertie Boy who’d come so close to breaking her will.

“There is nothing I can tell you to change you, Kezelro Merne.” To him it’d been only a second since she struck him in the windpipe, and he was still preoccupied trying to breathe – he was in no fit state to try another assault, yet. “I’m incredibly tempted to kill you, or at least castrate you. I know what you’re like, and you’ll never be any different. Unless…”

She took his knife and thrust it into the floor between his legs.

She glanced back at the champion, just to be certain he was still watching.

It was only then that she got a sense of Feychilde’s recent past, his grief – so she could read him, but it was different to reading the others… certain things were blocked off, blank. It was like he had two souls. Like he was possessed.

Still, the vision came.

A body on a pallet, arranged with dignity, eyes closed, face not anguished but tranquil, peaceful – an old man holding his lifeless hand, murmuring meaningless sounds into his cold ear in a husky voice.

And it was only then that she realised. She had her own father’s funeral to attend, and she could see it, reflected in her future a million times over.

It was hard to scry out those futures where she attended.

He’d been a man of violence, and he’d died by that violence. It wasn’t right – she wouldn’t do it again if she had the time over – but it was done now, and that was that. She wanted to feel the hurt she knew she should be feeling, but even with all her powers she felt nothing, knew nothing of the grief Feychilde was undergoing – and that was for someone he’d lived with for just three years.

What was wrong with her? Was she broken?

Did the power do something to me?

She returned her attention to Kezelro.

He was a nexus-point not only of evil, but of love. His life wasn’t a hundred percent devoted to the causing of misery; some people still enjoyed his company. His sister. His mother. Their lives – oh, she saw it now – they would die, if he went away to prison, or if he were killed. What little money they had came from Kezelro’s dodgy dealings. His sister would manage three years of degenerate life before she starved on the streets, but his mum would last only six months.

There were no easy answers.

“Drop on it,” she muttered, then got to her feet, drew back one booted foot, and swung it straight at his right eye socket.

It connected, and it was satisfying, so she repeated the action a second time, then a third.

Always – hated – eyes – anyway.

Cretins like Kezelro deserved death. But she couldn’t be the one to give it to them.

She could still give him a bit of a kicking, though.

Feeling better, cold beads of sweat running from her forehead down to her chin, she finally stopped, letting the Bertie Boy moan and roll, holding his head like he was clutching a cracked egg, futilely trying to keep the contents from spilling out.

The demon had been dismissed. The diviner, the sorcerer and the sylph stood amidst the sizzling wreckage of Old Tibbey’s hangout, nearly twenty people curled up like dogs during a storm, watching them in trepidation.

“Got it out of your system?” Feychilde asked her, as if there were only the two of them in the room.

She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded instead.

“Given what I just saw, I think these fine gentlemen are dangerous. We’ll have to send a message to the night’s watch – I’m informed there’s plenty in the crates just in that room over there to incriminate them – but let’s get them wrapped up first. Mummifiers, you’re up. You, there! Get to your feet.”

She watched the goblins work with interest. They could move a bit like her. Even when she held onto the reins of time, held on so tight that the others in the room wouldn’t have a pulse, the goblins were still in motion, going around and around their captives at maybe a half-pace.

It wasn’t long before the occupants of the warehouse weren’t going to be going anywhere.

Another wave and the goblins were gone.

“Come along, noble sylph,” Feychilde murmured once he’d dismissed them. “It’s a ways to the nearest temple.”

Saying nothing, Tanra walked out of there, trying to keep her stride steady, letting Feychilde and his minion follow along. She knew where she was going, what the rest of this morning held in store for her. As she moved towards the door, her sight opened up more and more possibilities to her with every step; she felt increasingly out of touch with the reality she could grip in her hand, increasingly in tune with the divergent branches, the harmonic realities she could see resonating with her dream-delving mind.

Distracted, she didn’t even look back at the warehouse. The location would hold a special place in her heart, because it was where she was brought into being, given her essence, shaped and moulded into the archmage she’d now become. But it was a relic, a structure of old bones filled with dust, fit only for her to peruse while walking down the aisles of her memories during later days, when this encounter would be like nothing more than an amusement on the shelf of a museum.

She didn’t look back. She would look forward, now. Look forward to extracting every bit of information she could from Feychilde, from his words and from his destiny; look forward to schooling him, shaping him. Look forward to the next few days, the oncoming weeks, as her new name preceded her.

Tanra was going to be a champion.