8. Defiance #2
He’d murdered dozens of young mages and witches with his disgusting magics.
Forsooth told him they suspected nearly a hundred.
Some had been actual children.
Now, with Roland singing songs of reconciliation, and scarcely daring to inconvenience the evil prick with their presence, Malefic still had the gall to leave them in the snow, begging to be allowed inside.
It was infuriating.
If they hadn’t been there on the King’s orders, it would have been enough that they would have taken matters into their own hands by now.
Valor had scarcely slept nor rested since the fight on Malcroix Bones grounds the previous Thursday, which scarcely helped his mood.
He doubted most of his comrades had, either.
They were all angry about the delay, about the endless debates among the royals about what to do with one of their own who refused to follow the rules.
But the core of their feeling still stemmed from the outrage that Malefic had perpetrated on all of them.
He was a murderer.
Yet no one in power seemed willing to do what should be done.
If it were up to Valor, they’d drag him out of the tower by his hair, and put him in chains.
“Will your master really hide from us inside his cold fortress like a coward?” Josef called out from Valor’s right, his tone holding an open contempt.
“I thought he prided himself on his blood. On his family’s unrivaled power and magic.
Is this really all that precious blood has to offer?
A sniveling whimper from a high window?”
Saladin turned his silver head. He warned Josef silent with a swift stare.
Josef obeyed, but with obvious reluctance.
Valor looked back to the insolent stare of the wizard on the other side of those iron bars.
Rather than appearing chastened by Josef’s words, the tall, gaunt prick made up of hard features and unharmonious angles smirked.
From that lip curl and the dead-eyed stare, he was obviously pleased with himself, and pleased with the Praecuri’s reaction to him.
Valor had a vague memory of seeing his face before, but he couldn’t remember where.
He tried to remember if it could have been at the school, or at the Sanctum Occulus raid, or somewhere else entirely.
When he tried to focus on it, to recall the image that wanted to rise in his head, his memories slid around and blurred in a way impossible to pin down.
It took him a few seconds longer to realize the problem wasn’t him.
His recall was being actively thwarted.
A memory field.
The prick was actively blocking them from remembering him.
It might not even be the mage himself; it could be something in the magic of the castle’s boundaries, something that protected anyone on the other side of that gate.
When approaching them on the drive just now, the weasel-like mage introduced himself as a “servant” of the Bones family, and a mere conveyor of his master’s will.
He hadn’t provided a name.
Valor wasn’t buying the obsequious bowing act, although he had no doubt some element of truth lived there. The mage struck Valor as a true believer, one of those who would skin himself alive if Malefic required it, in the ardent belief he was fulfilling the will of the gods.
All of these dark-magic-addicted fucks believed they’d live forever through Malefic, basking in the glow of their One True King. They thought they would ride that glow far into the afterlife bestowed by gods and goddesses of the Ancients.
But that wasn’t the same thing as being harmless, nor particularly humble or submissive in other respects. Something in his hawk-like, angular face struck Valor as cruel.
Sadistic, even.
He enjoyed telling them to go fuck themselves a little too much.
He’d likely enjoy murdering and torturing them for his king even more.
“I do apologize, noble emissaries of our exalted King,” the prick said loudly, with an exaggeratedly obsequious bow and flourish. “But my master does not refuse you. He certainly does not wish to offend his King, nor the incandescent Magus Imperius. He simply is not here at the moment.”
“It took him that long to tell us that?” Josef muttered to Valor under his breath.
“He is doubtless aware that we are here?” Saladin asked drily, giving Josef another warning stare. “I assume his magics would inform him of that much?”
“Of course.” The servant’s lips again twitched visibly.
“Which is why I am outside, talking to you, despite the cold and it being a holy day, to express his disappointment in his stead. But you must understand, esteemed friend and protector of Magique… no one is allowed through these gates unless the master of the house is present. No one. Not even personages of your stature. The rule is sacrosanct.”
Josef looked at Valor, and they silently shared their mutual disgust.
“How inconvenient for his wife and child,” Saladin remarked, even more drily. “Your master is also aware, is he not, that he is a wanted fugitive? And that he has restricted rights under the law, as a result? Including the right to refuse us entry?”
“I do not know the answer to that, I’m afraid,” the worm replied, holding out his palms in mock innocence. “You will have to direct that question to him, when he returns. I would not presume to speak for a mage of his stature.”
Josef and a few others, including Esalia, let out derisive scoffs.
“Undoubtedly,” Saladin remarked, holding eye-contact with the worm as if he hadn’t heard the irritated noises from his crew.
“Yet you seem to have no trouble refusing an official edict of your actual King,” he enunciated next, clearly mocking the One True King moniker those in Dark Cathedral all used for Malefic.
“…Even though to refuse is a blatant act of treason. In addition to your insubordination, you are impeding a high-priority investigation… yet another illegal act, with its own set of repercussions. Shall I continue, messenger, or is life imprisonment and death inside the Gaol enough to motivate you?”
The hunched-over prick had the audacity to feign shock, a shock so blatantly false, it would have embarrassed a better man.
He made his eyes and mouth wide. His hand fell to his chest as if he’d suffered some deep wound from Saladin’s words.
He then gasped so falsely, it might have been funny under different circumstances.
“Treason?” the man said, his voice feigning a ludicrous surprise.
“That is a horrifying thing to say, sir, about me, a mere humble servant, but even more so to insinuate about my master! For his loyalty is demonstrably without equal! He is more loyal to the bloodline of his family and crown than any wizard or witch of his generation!”
Valor couldn’t hold back that time.
He scoffed loudly and derisively.
Louder than any of his comrades had done.
He got the same warning stare from Saladin, a leader whose orders he’d never failed to follow, but still had to bite his tongue to not say more.
Most infuriating of all, he already knew where this was going. He knew they could not stay much longer, or they risked shaming their entire order.
Sadly, this prick’s arrogance was at least partly justified.
They could not break into the Bones Estate, not without running afoul of the King’s wishes.
Further, they likely couldn’t do it at all, not without aid from its master or a much larger army of sorcerers and magically-enhanced machines.
If Malefic Bones flatly refused them entry, there was little they could do apart from break down the walls via brute force.
To get inside would mean dismantling centuries-old chimaeras and other magical protections, and likely losing people on both sides.
Which meant actual military.
It meant Warlocks, Oracles, at least a handful of Obeah to assess the magical protections, and yes, machines. It meant dragons brought down from Scotland and the Shetlands, and millennia-old chimaeras ripped apart by firewyrms and dark sorcery.
It meant days of fighting, and potentially heavy loss of life.
The King had not authorized them to take those steps yet.
He had actively ordered them not to take those steps, not even in threat.
Saladin had even made the request, in front of Valor and a handful of others, after predicting the exact scenario unfolding now.
Saladin warned the Magus Imperius that if they came out here and made demands without the means to back them up, it would only make them look weak, which would work in Malefic’s and Dark Cathedral’s favor.
Valor had been unable to tell if the Magus Imperius agreed with Saladin’s assessment of the situation, but he’d been nervous enough to pass the same caution on to the King.
The King had been immovable.
He ordered them to “obtain Malefic’s cooperation” and “get him to see reason” without specifying exactly how they were supposed to accomplish that.
They had nothing real to offer him, no credible threats to make, and the famed dark sorcerer refused to even grant them an audience.
Even with an audience, Valor suspected the end result would be the same.
It irritated Valor that Malefic had likely known this, too.
Malefic had known the King wouldn’t want to challenge him outright.
Malefic, who was infamous for his ruthless political maneuverings, had no-doubt known no one from the Central Magical Authority, nor the Palace of the Lions, nor the Ethnarch’s stronghold outside Paris, would have the will to follow through with anything but superficial shows of officialdom and vague finger-wagging.
He would have known he could refuse.
He’d no doubt counted on the King doing exactly what he’d done.
Even after his time in the Pyramid, he seemed to have no fear of them.
Moreover, in setting them up for this exact outcome, he’d made certain that the toothlessness of the Praecuri, the British Magical Government, and the King himself would be apparent to all, merely by not-doing what they wanted him to do, without ever once appearing outright defiant.
Infuriatingly, it was working.