The Realmwalker (Unwoven Fates #2)
Chapter 1
Sham of a Trial
“I can explain everything,” Malachy Bane said, spreading his hands wide.
The Masters of the Mage Tribunal, curved like a sickle around his lone chair below their dais, did not appear convinced. Thirteen implacable faces glowered down at him as silence echoed in the temple of justice sculpted out of travertine.
Malachy’s judge, jury, and likely executioners surrounded him.
The Tribunal compound was a drowned fortress, clutched like a pearl in the murky depths of a flooded Roman quarry.
Beyond the mullioned windows, leagues of water hung like a ponderous sky.
Ripples of shimmering sunshine bathed the creamy stone in a perpetual twilight.
Only the Master Aeromancer’s enchantment, domed like a thick pane of glass overhead, kept the air in and the water out of the compound.
To the humans above, it was a dark lake haunted by centuries of ghosts. To Malachy down below, it was a prison carved out of stone and buried under waters deep enough to drown in.
Master Otto Bittenbinder, the arbiter of this disaster, leaned forward in his throne-like seat upon the dais, his gunmetal hair cropped close and his ceremonial robe spotless.
The Master Memnomancer, called the Lethe after the underworld river that drained memories, dissected Malachy like a scalpel.
“We had hoped, Mr. Bane, that the London Nightmare—a fiasco for mages and humans alike—would be the end of your crimes.” Bittenbinder’s mustache, clipped with surgical precision, twitched over his pursed lips.
“It appears not. We released you in the spring on the condition that you would complete your mission with discretion. Instead, you have mired mages in a disaster the likes of which we have not faced since the medieval witch trials.”
Malachy’s hands curled into fists in his lap.
He felt, as he often did around Bittenbinder, the irrepressible urge to throttle the Memnomancer.
With great effort, Malachy refrained. By now he knew that arguing with Bittenbinder was as useful as banging his head against the limestone edifice of the Covenant’s rules.
Bittenbinder remained cold, unmoving, and reason showed no sign of eroding him down.
It was a wonder that a memory mage with the personality of conscious drywall could be so infuriating.
Malachy settled back, his impassive expression an imitation of patience.
“As I have told you before, Master Bittenbinder, numerous times. After I discovered Ikelas, the former Master Oneiromancer corrupted by the Profane Arts, I took appropriate action. I immediately dispatched Ikelas and her co-conspirators.” Those that he could find, at least. The Coal-Eye demon that was once Alastair Ghose not included.
“I would have notified the Tribunal of the dream demon sooner, had I not been trapped in the Dream Realm by Ikelas’s magic. ”
Bittenbinder flinched at the word demon. “The fact remains, Mr. Bane, that you acted without consulting the Tribunal.”
“Even though I acted in every mage’s best interest?”
“Regardless. The law is the law.”
Malachy bit back a retort to this all too familiar argument. He was on thin enough ice with the Tribunal already, and getting locked in another cell a continent away from Cora was the last thing he needed.
“Now,” Bittenbinder continued, “your careless crimes have outpaced the Tribunal’s ability to conceal them. I have siphoned the memories of every human and mage who encountered the… targets you failed to recover. However, the trail of dead bodies left in your wake is now beyond our control.”
Malachy’s fists clenched. While the demons that had escaped from Ikelas’s tear in the veil had not been his fault, the Tribunal had certainly made them his problem.
“You sent me out to hunt demons you insist don’t exist in this Realm.
You demanded I clean and cover up your mess, again.
If the Tribunal was as concerned about mage safety as they are about optics—” Malachy caught himself.
Now was neither the time nor place, if he wanted to survive this sham of a trial.
“I did what was necessary, given the limitations you placed upon me.”
Bittenbinder’s lips curled. “That will be for the Tribunal to decide, Mr. Bane. Be advised that execution is the most charitable outcome given your long list of crimes. Where shall we begin? With the two bodies found outside your London club? The victims include one man, a former employee of yours, and one… Well, we are still awaiting identification. There has been some discourse about the second body’s exact classification.
What is well established, however, is the victims’ connection to you. ”
“Or,” said the Master Necromancer, Baron Samuel Lakwa, his Southern drawl as slow and rich as molasses. “Shall we begin with the third victim the world wants to see you hung for?”
Malachy’s gaze slid to Lakwa and hardened.
In the fifteen years Lakwa had served as the Master Necromancer, he had been nothing but charm and easy smiles to Malachy.
But Malachy increasingly suspected that beneath Lakwa’s mask of Southern gentility something else was watching him back through those black eyes.
Malachy drew a deep breath and forced a neutral expression. “Let us begin not at the beginning, but where we ended. When you released me from my cell in the spring…”