Chapter 1 #2
“Do not speak of the Cathedral brother. Not even here,” Malefic hissed in the other’s ear. “Unless there is some other ‘holy society’ to which you refer?”
Still, he found himself thinking about Rontu’s words.
Perhaps for the same reason, he slightly loosened his hold after that last, hard squeeze.
“He could be an asset,” he commented next. “To the cause.”
Rontu shook his head. “N-n-no. No!”
“Why not?” Malefic demanded, tightening his fingers more.
“U-u-unstable,” the Obeah gasped. “Inherently so––”
“How unstable?”
“D-d-deadly. Volcanic. None has made it past their twenty-fifth year––”
“Can any of the Obeah see him?” Malefic demanded.
Rontu looked confused, then alarmed. “N-n-no.”
“How many?”
“Some.” The pale, bony fingers tightened without mercy and the Obeah groaned. “Maybe four… no, five, of my caste. Including the Obeah Regis––”
“Who never leaves the Sanctum,” Malefic muttered. Another thought occurred to him. “Could he be seen by the Regis from a distance? From his hole in the ground?”
Rontu again looked confused. When Malefic shook him by the throat, he sputtered out words. “N-no. No. He could not. It would need an audience… him… your son––”
“Which of the others can see as well as you, brother?” Malefic asked, his voice dangerously smooth. Cajoling. Silky. “I need names.”
Rontu nodded quickly. “Yes. Of course. I can give you––”
“Today,” Malefic cut in. “You will give them to me today.”
He gauged the black eyes. Rontu’s face looked rodent-like to him now. Cornered. Afraid, but still crafty, cunning. If Obeah had primals, would Rontu’s be a rat, Malefic wondered?
He decided it would be.
“And?” he prompted. “Members of your caste would see him, and what? Run hysterical to the Ethnarch? Hold a meeting of others to verify? Declare him unfit to live?”
“––To reach adulthood,” Rontu managed in a gasp, holding up a hand in a silent plea for mercy.
“But you misunderstand. His aberrations will show, even to non-Obeah. He will be unstable by the time he leaves adolescence… perhaps before. Even if an exception were made, precautions taken, those precautions would of necessity be extreme, Malefic. Grotesque for one of your illustrious bloodline. He would spend his life drugged and imprisoned. Likely insensate for the majority of his lifespan. How would death not be preferable to such a life?”
But the Lord of the Black Tower was still thinking.
Thinking about what this could mean.
Remembering the old stories. Fragments of them, at least.
He would need to read more.
He would need to know more, not merely guess, nor read between the lines of what arrogant, cunning scholars like Rontu deigned to tell him. He would definitely need better sources, not the children’s tales he’d learned in his youth.
He must consult the family libraries, not only the vast library that took up an entire tower of the eastern outer wall of the Black Tower, but those in other parts of the world.
He would also need access to texts which had been outlawed for centuries, which now mostly resided only in vaults guarded by the Obeah and their many servants inside the Sanctum.
Malefic’s own foolish ancestors had even contributed to those vaults, although they had held back some of the family knowledge, rather than turn it over in the Tyrenus Decree.
Malefic knew, from a very distant memory of reading he had done on the subject in school, that phasing was only a fraction of what a wyverm ignis, also known as caleum ignis in some of the older texts, could reportedly do.
But yes, most of what he remembered fell into the realm of fairy tale, of myth.
He would need to sift fact from theatrical exaggeration. He would need prime sources, including first-person, eye-witness reports, as well as the most trustworthy scholarly assessments he could find to rule on their authenticity.
Even so, Malefic felt a manic excitement begin to overtake him.
Perhaps this development would not be such tragic news.
Perhaps it was not bad news at all.
What other family could shepherd such a powerful entity to his full potential?
What other father could turn a supposed curse into unprecedented greatness? If successful, he, Malefic, would secure his own name in the Bones historical annals as one of their absolute greatest. Perhaps even the greatest, at least since the time of the Pharaohs.
He would secure their family legacy forever.
More to the point, if Malefic could make use of the child in the way he hoped, it might finally mark the true end to the Age of Shadows. He, alone, might finally end the plague that hung over both worlds since the time of the earliest recorded histories of either.
Whatever Rontu believed, that level of power could never be only profane. For those too weak to wield it, of course it appeared a curse. For those who dared, it was something else.
A challenge? Perhaps.
A cross to bear, particularly in times of strife? Quite probably.
But a curse? No. Malefic would not believe it.
It would not be a curse to him. It would not be so for any with Bones blood pumping through their veins, and the will to create a better world from sheer will.
Malefic had sworn his life to a cause greater than even that of the family, which the gods themselves well knew. They would only ever gift him such a child for one purpose, that the Great Rend might finally be healed.
If Malefic gave that to his people, his name would surpass that of Eustacia Morwormer Bones herself. It would surpass the Pharaohs and all their servants. It would make Malefic a Pharaoh himself. He would be the greatest Magical to have ever lived.
He would usher in a New Golden Age.
A smile began to grow on Malefic’s lips as he loosened his fingers from Rontu’s throat, then removed them altogether.
He watched the eyes of the rat-faced Obeah blink as his face sagged in visible relief.
Rontu sucked in breaths as subtly as he could, even as his face remained red and slightly puffy.
Malefic felt some slight regret for what must come next.
Rontu was no warrior. He was not even a Magical, not truly, although he had been birthed by Magical parents.
Obeah were, ironically enough, a different kind of genetic aberration, but Rontu and those like him were still widely perceived as assets to the race.
It’s why all the great Magical nations contributed to the upkeep of the Sanctum, and why they compensated the Obeah well for their contributions.
Obeah remained servants, like Warlocks and Oracles, and like the other two lower castes, they generally knew and understood their place.
Therefore, it was unfortunate to lose one with talent.
It was unfortunate to lose one so experienced and highly trained.
It never felt good to destroy anything useful, whether Magical or beast or something between. Rontu’s loss would be felt.
Perhaps for the same reason, Malefic didn’t use his considerable abilities at mind-reading to know what the other male was thinking right then.
It no longer mattered.
Whether the Representative planned to tell another about Malefic’s newborn son already, or if he schemed to hold the information over the Bones family for favors, or if he habitually talked in his sleep, or talked unwisely when he drank too much, or when he bedded whoever consented to bed an Obeah, even a well-respected one like Rontu… none of that mattered now.
The Representative may not be thinking those things at this very moment, with Malefic standing in front of him, but it would occur to him at some point to think them, and Malefic had not gotten where he was by taking risks.
He drew a knife from his belt, one encrusted in emeralds and sapphires that had belonged to his grandfather, Andreas Neverloch Noxious Bones. He didn’t pause even a breath, but angled it precisely as soon as it had cleared the golden sheath.
He struck without any change in his heart rate.
He drew the sharpest part of the blade once, precisely, across the Senior Inquisitor’s throat. Malefic moved so quickly, the other did not seem to see the blade before it made its cut.
As it should be. Unnecessary suffering in the course of dispensing of one’s useful beast was the mark of a brute and a barbarian. Suffering, pain, even torture, all had their place, but that place was not here.
Rontu seemed to understand at once what had occurred, despite his lack of reaction as the act took place. His eyes fell to the bloody knife gripped tightly in Malefic’s hand, now hung close to his right thigh.
A flash of disbelief, fear, and horror shone on that narrow face.
The thin lips opened in a gasping oh.
Then, Rontu Barnaby Excelsus Obeah, Representative to the United Kingdom by order of the Obeah Regis, highest adept of his caste known to be living in England, and third in line to the Sanctum Occulus itself, crumpled in a boneless mass.
His ermine-lined cloak, expensive Italian suit, calf-skin boots, ghost-white skin, and iron gray hair soon meant little more to Malefic than a burdensome mess that temporarily marred the delicate pattern of a very expensive Persian carpet.
“Malefic?” She awoke slowly, blinking into the parted curtains and swath of dusty sunlight.
She stretched her arms carefully, her small-lipped mouth pursed as she stared up at the silhouette of her husband.
“Where is Gretarch?” she asked, looking around for her mephysician and her team. “Did the Apothecary call them back?”
Her husband stood in the sun-washed window, a wrapped bundle in his arms.
The Bones crest stood out on the dark red blanket, a bone-white skull with a dragon wrapped around it, done in gold and black silk that shimmered iridescent green where it caught the light.
Malefic’s hooded eyes stared greedily down at the child within the bundle.
His mouth curled in a covetous smile that somehow didn’t look like a smile.
Or maybe it just didn’t feel like one.
Vaevarya Anastasia Bones, née Parshukova, glanced around the unfamiliar room.
Perhaps four hundred years ago, some distant Bones mage had chosen this space for the Bones women to use when they underwent birthing labors.
Vaevarya, or Varya, as her husband called her, had never even entered the room until a week ago.
Malefic had never seen fit to show it to her.
Yet somehow, the servants managed to prepare it all without her noticing, fitting every corner with all new everything, from the curtains down to every pillowcase, sheet, towel, and washcloth.
They’d even filled the closet with fresh clothing for her.
The only old things left were the walls, the fireplace, the bed frame, and antique details like the water pitcher and bed-warming pans.
They were definitely alone.
Varya saw the crib nearby, but everything else she remembered from the room was gone.
The rows of empty bottles filled with medicines, spelled and not, to help her through the birth. The basins of blood-tinged water. The instruments they’d brought and used on different parts of her. She shuddered at the memory, then looked back to her husband.
“Did you send them away?” she asked cautiously.
He turned to look at her for the first time, his stare a near-warning.
“Yes, Vayra,” he said. “I sent them away. And you aren’t to ask anyone about them again, dearest, particularly by name.
If anyone were to come to you, and to inquire about a single one of them, you have never heard the names before in your life.
We handled the birth here, with our trained staff. Alone. For the privacy of the family.”
Her fingers clenched in the furred skin that lay over her body.
She knew her husband, even if he remained an enigma to her in many ways.
She could read at least pieces of his meaning through the heaviness of the silence from what he had not said.
“Did Rontu come?” she asked, even more cautiously. “Did he do the reading on our son?”
“He did not,” Malefic clipped.
“Why not?” Her eyes and voice remained wary, careful.
“I do not know.” Malefic lifted an eyebrow in her direction, his voice light, easy, almost indifferent, but a cold light lived in those silver eyes. “He never answered my summons, my love. I have sent two more letters this morning, and nothing.”
“But our son must be read,” Varya said, her eyes wider. “It is tradition. It must be written into his birth book, when we make his name official––”
“I will take care of it all, my darling.” Malefic’s warning rose to the surface. He gave her a slightly harder stare. “Do I not always take care of this family?”
She hesitated, then nodded slowly, carefully.
Her eyes fell to the bundle in his arms.
The way he held him…
Vayra had worried about Malefic’s probable indifference towards any children they might have. She’d worried about his possible harshness to their firstborn in particular, given how he himself had been raised, and given the responsibilities placed on the titled heir, in particular.
She had never anticipated this.
Malefic curled his muscular body around the small bundle in his arms like a dragon bent over and around its most beloved piece of treasure.
From his posture and that fire of covetousness in his eyes, Vayra wondered if Malefic would even harm her, the child’s mother, if she were to get too near without his permission.
The look there disturbed her.
The hard set of that preternaturally handsome face disturbed her.
It sent a shiver of fear over her bones and skin that felt like premonition.
Whatever this was, whatever had so changed Malefic’s mind about fatherhood, about his role in it, about the singular role of the mother regarding the early years of their firstborn, Vayra doubted it boded well for the bundle in his arms.
The thought made her want to take her son and flee.
To where, she did not know, but the urge felt nearly physical for those few seconds. It nearly overwhelmed her––but only briefly, and, obviously, irrationally.
Of course, she would do no such thing.
That moment would come back to her, though.
It would come back to her for many years.