Chapter 12 The Spindle
The Spindle
The demon lurked unseen at the masquerade ball as Mal snuck inside wearing a tuxedo and a stolen mask. He plucked a flute of champagne from a passing tray and waded into the crush of people decked out in their evening finery, on the hunt for his quarry.
The pre-monsoon humidity was even more oppressive in the packed ballroom where Brits and Brahmins waltzed and winnowed. Women in sweeping ball gowns and bright colored sarees, jewelry gleaming under the chandeliers; tuxedo-clad men accompanied by their manservants in traditional dhotis and turbans.
With the illusion of anonymity granted by their masks, the British viceroys and their pale wives could converse freer, laugh louder, dance closer. Or perhaps the tight stays and starched pompadours of Victorian sensibilities also melted in the tropical heat.
The casual opulence, the offhand decadence, filled Mal with disgust and envy. No amount of criminal prosperity could launch him onto this vaulted pedestal of generational wealth.
Sweat beaded his brow while more trickled beneath his tuxedo.
Sending an Irishman into an Indian summer to track down a Profane relic was a crafty punishment, even for the Tribunal.
Mal itched to return to his burgeoning empire of ill-gotten gains, yet, due to a mishap on a filthy job, here he was, shackled to the Masters’ whims and sweating through his formal wear in Calcutta.
It had taken him sweltering weeks to arrive here to do the Masters’ bidding.
His world travels had yet to take him to the capital of the British Raj, and Mal had craved the immediacy of traversing all along the interminable journey to India’s eastern coast; in stagecoaches rattling over cobblestone streets, on trains snaking through the endless sunbaked savannahs, in dodgy steamboats chugging across the Bay of Bengal and up the mud-colored Hooghly River.
Sure, Koschei’s Egg had given him ample time—he was the perpetual age of thirty-five despite his sixty-four years—but it was the principle of the matter. He was no one’s errand boy. Present circumstance excluded.
Mal spotted his quarry: a Profane relic locked under enchanted glass at the far end of the ballroom.
He navigated a sea of stiff taffeta skirts and acres of lace towards the relic.
He sidestepped the wide skirts of a dancing debutante in a frothy pink confection of a gown, and bumped into a matron, spilling his champagne down the corset she had been stuffed into.
Her many chins, strung up with pearls, wobbled in indignation as he dodged what appeared to be a perambulating wedding cake.
A wall of perspiring bodies blocked him from the priceless relics on display.
The salivating crowd was held at bay by only a velvet rope and a melting sense of honor.
Well-dressed vultures, the lot of them, sipping champagne while they circled the carcass of Lord Falkirk’s private collection before the feast began at midnight.
On display for the midnight auction was a lifetime’s worth of relics from the late Lord Falkirk, an infamous occultist to humans and a notorious Profane Arts enthusiast to mages.
Mal’s only interest—the Tribunal’s only interest, rather—was the spindle.
The Masters had ordered him to obtain it by any means necessary, or else. Very helpful.
Cursing every Master on the Tribunal, Mal elbowed and apologized his way through the crowd for a closer look. The spindle’s pale wood was worn smooth by centuries of patient hands. Other than its age, it was ordinary.
Cold fury crept up his throat the longer he stared at it.
The Tribunal had ordered him to the far reaches of the British Empire, at considerable inconvenience to himself and his thriving import-export business, for this?
He dabbed more sweat from his brow, wondering which Master he had pissed off this time.
He was not the only one eyeing the spindle.
He could tell the mages from the humans by their covetous looks at it.
Were the rumors true, then? Mal had not put much stock in them until now.
Whether the relic was the mythical Fate’s spindle or not, he had competition.
He would need a very good distraction to traverse his hand inside the glass, past the many enchantments, and disappear with the spindle, unnoticed.
“Mal?”
He spun. An older, vaguely familiar gentleman was squinting up at him. Recognition hit like a punch in the gut. Mr. Winston was an Aeromancer Mal had sold stolen Profane relics to. Thirty years ago.
Ageless from Koschei’s Egg, Mal had never stayed in one place long enough for people to notice his unchanging appearance.
An easy feat, as he often grew tired of a place before the self-imposed deadline.
Over the decades, he usually stuck to larger cities; it was easier to be alone among so many people.
Avoiding running into former colleagues in the relatively small world of smuggling, however, was another matter.
Luckily, Mal was armed with a lie.
“You must have met my father, sir. Malachy Bane Senior. I’m his spitting image, I know, name and all. Except for my eyes. People tell me I have my mum’s dark eyes.”
There was a long hesitation before Winston nodded, more in bafflement than agreement. “That must be it. I’ll be damned, you could pass as your old man.”
Winston did not know how true his words were.
Mal hated how much he resembled the father whom he now, in a sick twist of fate, pretended to be.
Beneath his tuxedo and cleverness, Mal was no more than a brute, as his father had been, as his father’s father had been.
Cruelty had been handed down through the Bane family like a slow poison.
It was kill or be killed, and Mal had left his scruples behind along with his heart, locked within the egg made of needles.
You’re no better than your Da, Colleen’s parting words whispered in his mind.
“Running your old man’s, ah, antique business, as well?” Winston asked with a tilt of curiosity.
The usual small talk ensued to ease any lingering suspicions—about Mal Senior’s unfortunate death from a vague accident years before, how his son was traveling the world and running the business in his father’s stead.
His smuggling business, cheekily named Bane he’d just as likely land on top of them as beside them. He pushed through the press of bodies, running towards the wall, then through it.
The neighboring room, a gentleman’s billiard room choked with cigar smoke, blurred past as Mal sprinted. Few of the revelers glanced up to notice Mal come through one wall, let alone run through the next.
The manservant’s heavy footfalls followed Mal as he traversed across a massive library and through stately parlors. By the time he appeared in a long, dark corridor leading out to the gardens, he had lost his pursuer.
Mal kept running, running until he collided with something solid. Panting, he blinked sweat out of his eyes, trying to make sense of it. His memory faded out and back in.
The rotting manservant grabbed Mal’s shoulders and forced him onto his knees. A guttural rumble came from the back of his throat. “Kneeel.”
From the darkness emerged a woman. She came to stand before Mal.
Kneeling at her feet, he slowly looked up and met the hazel eyes flashing beneath her mask. “Who are you?” he demanded.
A wry smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She pointed a slippered foot outside of her voluminous skirts, as if condescending to let him kiss it. “You may call me Your Majesty.”
His memory flashed again. A pair of yellow cat’s eyes peered intently at him from the shadows behind the woman. Something in that slit-pupil gaze mercilessly plucked at his heartstrings. On the creature’s breast glowed a strange emblem.
An eight-pointed star.
Held by the creature’s thrall, Mal barely registered when the masked woman took the spindle from his hands. Compelled by a force outside of himself, he was overcome by a desperate desire to please her. Mal let her take it.
“Enough, Ishtar.” The woman’s musical voice was commanding. “You have fed enough this evening. Disband your sigil. Clotho’s Spindle is ours.”
Another flash of memory, and Mal was kneeling in an empty corridor with empty hands. The spindle had disappeared like a sigh on the night breeze along with the woman, her manservant, and the yellow-eyed creature.
The silence in the corridor was mocking. His Masters would not be pleased when their errand boy failed to deliver the relic they had told him to acquire by any means necessary.
Mal pulled out the Doomsday Watch he had pried from Master Ghose’s dead hand in a Siberian wasteland.
Checking the late Chronomancer’s watch had become a morbid habit he indulged out of sick curiosity, or dread.
Whenever Mal thought it couldn’t get any worse, he would glance at the cursed watch and permit it the pleasure of proving him wrong.
The countdown had reset. Now its complicated face read six years, six months, and six days until Doomsday.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Mal said to the empty corridor.