Hell's Pawns Read online

"But all of the boys look perfectly human."

  Jeggare keeps nodding. "Not all hellspawn have discernibly infernal features."

  "But that's rare, isn't it?"

  "Correct. To cause an entire cohort to appear human would require a great coincidence, or some other commanding force."

  "Like a specialized hellspawn-making devil?"

  He nods again.

  "Boss, I think it's time to get out of here."

  "Yes," he says. "But let us first take a look beyond that hallway. If my estimate is correct, it should lead to a chamber directly below the unused chapel we saw upstairs."

  "Considering what we just saw—"

  "Just a quick look," he says, gesturing once more with the palm lamp as he tucks the handkerchief back into his sleeve.

  Past the hall of infernal triumph is a pillared chamber similar to the upstairs chapel, only twice the size and with a pair of wide doors on the left wall. Rather than pews, rows of pebbled kneeling stones are arrayed before another statue of Asmodeus, this one gilt and fitted with rubies at the eyes. In its muscular arms it holds out what looks at first to be another copy of the Infernal Compact, this one covered with a thick layer of parchment signed many times at the bottom in dark brown ink. Among the signatures we spot several familiar names, the sort you'd expect to see on engraved social invitations: Wintrish, Krupt, Henderthane, Elliendo... even one Gellius Jeggare. The boss senses my curiosity and whispers, "Second cousin."

  "Can we go now?"

  "Shrines to Asmodeus are everywhere in Cheliax—so why does this one make me so nervous?"

  Jeggare nods. "Just let me take this," he says. As he carefully peels the parchment away from its panel, I check out the other exit. The doors lead up to a wide stairway that I follow to a trap door beneath the gymnasium bleachers. Just before I return to the hidden chapel, I notice a fine mist rolling in beneath the gymnasium door. I'm no wizard, but I have a good idea what that means.

  I hurry down the steps and say, "We've got company."

  The boss tucks the parchment beneath his doublet, but before we can escape, a nude and glistening man emerges from the hallway.

  It takes a second to recognize him as Headmaster Orxines. I don't care who you are, when a naked person surprises you, the face isn't the first thing you see. I'm briefly envious of more than his neat yellow beard.

  Orxines catches the look on my face, and for the first time in our acquaintance, he smiles. "Much simpler this way, no?"

  It occurs to me that he's wet, and I realize it was Orxines who was sleeping in that horrible pod.

  "No more intrigue," he says. "Down to business."

  "So you're ready to give yourself up?" I try. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

  Orxines smiles, scratching at a spot just below his left nipple. He presses hard enough to break the skin, and a trickle of blood runs down his side.

  "I think the Headmaster means he appreciates the opportunity to express his plan to an appreciative audience."

  "My dear Count," Orxines laughs, "has that ploy ever worked?" His bloody fingers dig into his skin, and he tears a long arc down his ribs and across his lower belly. Beneath the flesh, where a man should keep his guts, a mass of dark limbs unfolds. "No," Orxines says. "I meant it is a great relief to take off this damned costume."

  Chapter Six: The Scions Academy

  I stare at the devil Orxines in his secret chapel, and I feel the prickling smile of Asmodeus on my back.

  The face of the thing we first met as the headmaster of the Scions Academy is still fair with the kind of sharp little beard made famous by high priests and scoundrels, but now that he's torn the flesh from his naked torso, we see what lies beneath. Ropy tendrils spill out of a ragged maw in his belly. He shrugs off more of the mortal cloak, and what seemed arms and legs twist in inhuman angles. His legs stretch wide to expose a pair of thick appendages like bloated fishers' hooks. His chest peels open, and bloody ribs snap back to transform into chitinous legs. His arms shuffle off their flaccid sleeves and stretch into twin tails of soft anemone tendrils. Only the head remains human, but it rises up on its bloody spinal column like the stinger of some enormous scorpion.

  The boss and I rush toward the stairs leading up to the gymnasium, but there is the ghostly figure of Korva, Matron of the Academy. I remember the mist I saw seeping into the room above, and I know how she got here.

  "Stand aside, hellspawn," says the devil to me, without irony. "Your life may yet be spared."

  I can't come up with a witty retort. "Oh, yeah?" I say. "Why's that?"

  Orxines' ungainly body teeters sideways, but I don't trust the feint. I also haven't forgotten about Korva, who is still chanting in a low voice nearby.

  "Because he expects Egorian will soon be ruled by devils," says the boss. He steps behind me, and I know my cue. I pretend to step away from him, a little farther from Orxines, a little closer to Korva.

  Orxines takes the bait. "My sons can make use of hell-blooded servants openly once they come into their legacies." He skitters again to the side.

  "But then you panicked and murdered Einmarch Henderthane," says the boss.

  "The old fool would have divided his holdings!" says Orxines, once more circling me for a shot at Jeggare. "There was no choice but to restore his will to name Morvus sole heir, and then to ensure he could never change it again."

  "And yet by doing so, you drew attention to a plot that had remained secret for years," says Jeggare. He clucks his disapproval.

  "Do not tempt my ire, half-elf," snarls Orxines. "The only law is the law of Hell, and Lord Asmodeus has taught us all its subtleties. Now mine is the pen that draws the contract." He takes a few steps toward the boss, still testing my loyalty. Jeggare retreats behind me, but this time he steps past and throws himself to the floor. I twist and dive backward, roll on my shoulder, and jump up to punch Korva in the throat just before she can complete her spell. She chokes and collapses to the floor.

  Instead of coming after me, as I'd calculated, Orxines follows Jeggare, who rolls away as the devil's massive forelimbs smash the floor. Flecks of shattered granite rise like sea spray as Orxines demolishes stone kneelers just inches behind the boss.

  I leap at Orxines. He's moving fast, and I barely get my arms around his tail-like neck. I want to smash his head against the floor with my full weight, but his neck is as strong as a carriage spring. The tendrils that were his human arms whip up to grip me. They burn like acid, and I smell the fabric of my favorite jacket melt away.

  "I could... do this all day," I try to sound brave, but my voice is the yelp of a wounded dog. Still, it's the words that matter, and the boss knows the code. He scrambles up and runs toward Korva, who is only just back on her feet. He bowls her over like a dockside bouncer, an image that would amuse me a lot more if Orxines' tails weren't searing into my flesh. When I see Jeggare disappear up the stairs, I concentrate on my predicament.

  Orxines' tails hold me tight, and I can't dig a foot into his back for leverage. Still, I have his neck. It's too strong to bend, but I shift my grip and pull hand-over-hand, climbing up to that smug human face. Just before I can dig my thumbs into his widening eyes, I feel a powerful grip on my legs. His tentacles—I need to think of them as tentacles—entwine my legs and pull hard in either direction. My grip slides, but if I let go, he's going to snap me like a wishbone. I hate it, but I make one desperate pull and do the thing I hate most.

  I bite him.

  After the first time I bit someone in a street fight, I explained by way of apology that it hurt me as much as it hurt him. Of course, that didn't address the matter of his missing fingers. The infection spread throughout his hand a few days later and he had to pay a Cheapside barber to amputate it. I would have offered to pay half, but my jaw was still black and tender from popping out of joint. Besides, he'd s
tarted it.

  My teeth sink into the devil's flesh, and my head snaps back as if I'd bitten a bolt of lightning. Orxines' blood steams in my mouth, the pain so sharp that I barely feel the impact as my body hits and leaves my outline in the plaster. The heat feels like acid surging through all my veins until it reaches my heart, which explodes in a pain so big and white that it flies briefly over the peak of ecstasy before falling back into an abyss of torment.

  Orxines spins, his forelimbs unable to clutch his bleeding neck. He whirls in frustration, yellow ichor flying from his wound to spatter on the surrounding pillars. Beyond him, Korva opens her palms toward me, revealing a swelling orange blossom of flame. The roar of a furnace washes over me.

  Despite the ringing in my head, the fire feels like the sun on my skin after a river swim. Even the pain in my jaw subsides, and I push myself up to my feet again. I almost trip, feeling something unexpected on my knees. Sharp bone spikes jut out of my kneecaps. Sharp bones arc out of knuckles, and I feel more at my heels. My elbow spurs have grown long as knives, forcing me to hold my arms out to keep their points away from my ribs. The devil's blood or the fire—something is changing me.

  "Catch Jeggare!" Orxines screams at Korva. His voice fragments; he sounds like triplet brothers talking over each other. "I'll deal with this one."

  Something more wicked than me uncoils in my belly and sends up a chuckle. "Let's get to it," I say, beckoning him toward me. I'm ready for a fight, and I feel the big grin opening up on my face. Now I'll have his throat in my teeth. Let's see what it does to me a second time.

  Before I see him move, my back hits the floor, and this time it's my brain that feels like it's exploded. Fireworks pop behind my closed eyelids. When I open them, I'm staring up at that writhing mass of tendrils between Orxines' hooked claws. One rises up and smashes me, battering down my raised arms as if there were no strength in them. He hits me again, and this time I can't even make a show of defending myself. I feel a couple of ribs go.

  I kick up at the devil's belly, but those soft-looking tails catch my legs and turn to iron. Orxines lifts me off the floor and holds me there, turning for one last look at my face.

  "You were born to serve, hellspawn," he says, raising his massive forelimbs for a killing blow. "And those who do not serve my new order must die."

  "There will be no new order, hellspawn," commands a voice from behind me. It's excruciating to twist my neck, but I turn just far enough to see the inverted figures of Hellknights at the base of the stairs. I recognize the slim figure of Ivo Elliendo among them, flanked on either side by a red-garbed signifer. Behind them all stands the boss, panting as he leans against the wall.

  "Elliendo!" says Orxines. "Your son will sit at my council. The compact will be rewritten, and you will be among the first servants of—"

  "Kill that thing," says Elliendo. His signifers raise their arms and intone arcane words. I wriggle to slip free, but Orxines holds me fast.

  Wait, I try to shout, but it comes out a spray of bloody spit.

  "Don't!" cries Orxines, lifting me up like a shield.

  "Kill them both," says Elliendo.

  From the hands of the signifers, the light of a hundred thunderstorms falls upon us. For an instant, it feels like every bone in my body has shattered, and then it feels like nothing at all.

  I wake up about a thousand years later, my head filled with a buzzing red haze. Someone has cut away my ruined shirt and jacket, leaving me only the stinking remnants of my boots and leather breeches. When I sit up, I feel the weight of cold iron on my wrists and ankles. The chains scrape across a hard wooden table to which I'm bound. I'm in a small, unlighted room, but my hellborn eyes perceive the outlines of a vertical rack on the far wall. Beside it hang implements like those I've seen on the Judgment Day scaffold.

  "I think I liked him better the other way."

  My hands and arms still prickle, but the skin looks completely healed, and any broken bones have set back into place. That affliction of spiky growths has faded, but I can feel my elbow spurs scrape the table. That the Hellknights went to the trouble of healing me must mean they want to start from scratch, and the thought makes my guts turn to ice. I hold my breath to keep the panic in and try to think. Most of my gear was in my missing sleeves, but if I can just reach the cuff of my left boot—

  Before I can turn the thought into action, I hear hob-nailed boots on stone stairs outside the room. My pulse throbs at my temples. The terror comes out all at once, and I shake the chains as I bend my knees and stretch my hands toward the cuffs of my boots. I can almost reach them when the door opens. The light briefly blinds me.

  Silhouetted in the torchlight of a rough stone hallway are two torturers, their scarlet leather hoods tooled to resemble infernal faces. One looks down at me and scratches his neck, like a butcher considering where to cut first. The other pushes past and reaches for the manacles at my feet. Behind them I see a priest of Asmodeus standing in the hallway, his black-and-red vestments immaculate despite the sooty dungeon walls.

  The torturer unlocks my manacles, but before I can fix the courage to kick him and make a break for it, he pulls me to my feet. He and his buddy grip my arms. Without a word, the priest leads the way up a narrow spiral stairway, and we follow. We pass two more floors of cells before emerging at a guard station, where a turnkey opens a gate to let us pass. We pass a clerk who stares hard at me as the priest signs his ledger and accepts a receipt. The torturers pass me to a pair of Hellknights, both of whom loom a full head above me.

  The knights drag me to a door and pull me out onto steps, where the cold morning air slaps my face as I blink in the silver morning light. One of the Hellknights punches me hard in the gut, dropping me to my knees.

  "That's to remember you were here," says the hollow voice inside the helm. His companion pulls me up by the hair, but the priest steps in.

  "Enough," he says in a cultured tone that is as much a mask as the Hellknights' visors. "Return to your master," he says before gliding away. I hear the knights clank their way back inside their headquarters.

  The red carriage waits near the base of the stairs, the slip driver standing nervously beside the cab door. I crawl most of the way down the stairs before the door slams behind me and the halfling scurries over to support me the rest of the way.

  A month later, I'm standing on the Bunyip Dock as the crew of the Saffron Nymph prepares to cast off. Gruck looks at me from the ship's deck, a question in his eyes. Beside him, the captain—a gray-bearded Vudran whose patience, while heroic, is not unlimited—waits for me to make up my mind. I'm holding two fat purses in my hands, feeling their weight. They feel about the same, so I weigh them against the past few weeks.

  By the time I got to Greensteeples, the boss was waiting for me in the library. I'd been almost two days in jail, and he'd spent most of that time under interrogation by Elliendo's men. As a count of Cheliax, however, he'd enjoyed the relative comfort of his own home.

  "Why didn't they torture you?" I asked. "Or cast a compulsion?"

  He lifted a glass of amber-colored wine, his hand trembling. He looked away as he took a sip. Without looking at me, he said, "They would have done more, but they were awaiting approval from the throne."

  Another privilege of the noble class. "So the emissary is making good on her promise of a favor."

  "So it would seem," he said, returning the glass to a small table beside his chair. He missed, and the crystal shattered on the floor. One of his halfling servants moved in without a sound and knelt to gather the fragments.

  "What else?" I said. "What aren't you telling me?"

  He said nothing for the time it took the servant to finish clearing away the spill. When she left the room and closed the library door behind her, Jeggare put his face in his hands, still turned away from me.

  "What is it, boss?"


  He sighed and lifted his head from his hands. "I am sorry, Radovan. I know you cared for her, but it was necessary that I tell the inquisitors everything."

  "You told them about Pavanna's debt to Zandros?"

  "It was... unavoidable," he said. "If I had obstructed their investigation in any way—"

  "But you didn't tell them about the royal emissary, did you?"

  "No, of course not. One does not disobey a message from the throne."

  I thought about it for a moment. "It's all right, boss. You don't know where she is. She'll hear that the Hellknights are looking for her and find a way out of the city."

  Jeggare still would not turn to face me.

  "What is it, boss?"

  "They already have her, Radovan."

  He might as well have slapped me. "How?" I said. When he didn't answer, I shouted, "You led them to her!"

  "I did not," he said. Even through the thickness of drink, his voice oozed resentment. "How despicable do you think me?"

  "Then how?"

  He hesitated again, still refusing to look me in the eye. "They followed you from the Palace of Jubilations."

  "Impossible," I said. "I shook them off."

  "Radovan," he said with the impatience of a parent lecturing a stupid child. "There was a signifer with them."

  I opened my mouth, but I had nothing to say. What an idiot I had been! The Hellknights' pet wizards could find a stolen coin anywhere in the city, if they cared to expend the precious magical energy. I had always been beneath their notice, or at least I thought I was. Jeggare had warned me more than once not to provoke the Paralictor. I stared at him, daring him to say he had told me so, but he gazed toward the windows, and I saw rain clouds reflected in his eyes.

  "The emissary promised us a favor," I said. "Use it to get her out!"

  At last Jeggare turned to me. "Our favors are spent," he said. "You and I are free of the Hellknights, and there will be no further inquiry as to our involvement."