Malice: The Faithful and the Fallen Series Book 1
PROLOGUE
For the past two weeks the simple building had been his safe house, but now Thren Felhorn distrusted its protection as he limped through the door. He clutched his right arm to his body, fighting to halt its trembling. Blood ran from his shoulder to his elbow, the arm cut by a poisoned blade.
“Damn you, Leon,” he said as he staggered across the wood floor, through a sparsely decorated room, and up to a wall made of plaster and oak. Even with his blurred vision he located the slight groove with his fingers. He pressed down, detaching an iron lock on the other side of the wall. A small door swung inward.
The master of the Spider Guild collapsed in a chair and removed his gray hood and cloak. He sat in a much larger room painted silver and decorated with pictures of mountains and fields. Removing his shirt, he gritted his teeth while pulling it over his wounded arm. The toxin had been meant to paralyze him, not kill him, but the fact was little comfort. Most likely Leon Connington had wanted him alive so he could sit in his padded chair and watch his “gentle touchers” bleed Thren drop by drop. The fat man’s treacherous words from their meeting ignited a fire in his gut that refused to die.
“We will not cower to rats that live off our shit,” Leon had said while brushing his thin mustache. “Do you really think you stand a chance against the wealth of the Trifect? We could buy your soul from the gods.”
Such arrogance. Such pride. Thren had fought down his initial impulse to bury a short sword in the fat man’s throat upon hearing such mockery. For centuries the three families of the Trifect, the Conningtons, the Keenans, and the Gemcrofts, had ruled in the shadows. Over that time they’d certainly bought enough priests and kings to believe that the gods wouldn’t be beyond the reach of their gilded fingers either.
It had been a mistake to deny his original impulse, Thren knew. Leon should have bled out then and there, his guards be damned. They’d met inside Leon’s extravagant mansion, another mistake. Thren vowed to correct his carelessness in the coming months. For three years he’d done his best to stop the war from erupting, but it appeared everyone in the city of Veldaren desired chaos.
If the city wants blood, it can have it, Thren thought. But it won’t be mine.
“Is that you, Father?” he heard his elder son ask from an adjacent room.
“It is,” Thren said, holding his anger in check. “But if it were not, what would you do, having given away your presence?”
His son Randith entered from the other room. He looked much like his father, having the same sharp features, thin nose, and grim smile. His hair was brown like his mother’s, and that alone endeared him to Thren. They both wore the gray trousers of their guild, and from Randith’s shoulders hung a gray cloak similar to Thren’s. A long rapier hung from one side of Randith’s belt, a dagger from the other. His blue eyes met his father’s.
“I’d kill you,” Randith said, a cocky grin pulling up the left side of his face. “As if I need surprise to do it.”
“Shut the damn door,” Thren said, ignoring the bravado. “Where’s our mage? Connington’s men cut me with a toxin, and its effect is… troublesome.”
Troublesome hardly described it, but Thren wouldn’t let his son know that. His flight from the mansion was a blur in his memory. The toxin had numbed his arm and made his entire side sting with pain. His neck muscles had fired off at random, and one of his knees kept locking up during his run. Like a cripple he’d fled through the alleyways of Veldaren, but the moon was waning and the streets empty, so none had seen his pathetic stumbling.
“Not here,” Randith said as he leaned toward his father’s exposed shoulder and examined the cut.
“Then go find him,” Thren said. “How did events go at the Gemcroft mansion?”
“Maynard Gemcroft’s men fired arrows from their windows as we approached,” Randith said. He turned his back to his father and opened a few cupboards until he found a small black bottle. He popped the cork, but when he moved to pour the liquid on his father’s cut, Thren yanked the bottle out of his hand. Dripping the brown liquid across the cut, he let out a hiss through clenched teeth. It burned like fire, but already he felt the tingle of the toxin beginning to fade. When finished, he accepted some strips of cloth from his son and tied them tight around the wound.
“Where is Aaron?” Thren asked when the pain subsided. “If you won’t fetch the mage, at least he will.”
“Lurking as always,” Randith said. “Reading too. I tell him mercenaries may soon storm in with orders to eradicate all thief guilds, and he looks at me like I’m a lowly fishmonger mumbling about the weather.”
Thren held in a grimace.
“You’re too impatient with him,” he said. “Aaron understands more than you think.”
“He’s soft, and a coward. This life will never suit him.”
Thren reached out with his good hand, grabbed Randith by the front of his shirt, and yanked him close so they might stare face-to-face.
“Listen well,” he said. “Aaron is my son, as are you. Whatever contempt you have, you swallow it down. Even the wealthiest king is still dirt in my eyes compared to my own flesh and blood, and I expect the same respect from you.”
He shoved Randith away, then called out farther into the hideout.
“Aaron! Your family needs you, now come in here.”
A short child of eight stepped into the room, clutching a worn book to his chest. His features were soft and curved, and he would no doubt grow up to be a comely man. He had his father’s hair, though, a soft blond that curled around his ears and hung low to his deep blue eyes. He fell to one knee and bowed his head without saying a word, all while still holding the book.
“Do you know where Cregon is?” Thren asked, referring to the mage in their employ. Aaron nodded. “Good. Where?”
Aaron said nothing. Thren, tired and wounded, had no time for his younger son’s nonsense. While other children grew up babbling nonstop, a good day for Aaron involved nine words, and rarely would they be used in one sentence.
“Tell me where he is, or you’ll taste blood on your tongue,” Randith said, sensing his father’s exasperation.
“He went away,” Aaron said, his voice barely above a whisper. “He’s a fool.”
“A fool or not, he’s my fool, and damn good at keeping us alive,” Thren said. “Go bring him here. If he argues, slash your finger across your neck. He’ll understand.”
Aaron bowed and did as he was told.
“I wonder if he’s practicing for a vow of silence,” Randith said as he watched his brother leave without any hurry.
“Did he lock the outer door?” Thren asked.
“Shut and latched,” Randith said after checking.
“Then he’s smarter than you.”
Randith smirked.
“If you say so. But right now, I think we have bigger concerns. The Gemcrofts firing at my men, Leon setting up a trap… this means war, doesn’t it?”
Thren swallowed hard, then nodded.
“The Trifect have turned their backs on peace. They want blood, our blood, and unless we act fast they are going to get it.”
“Perhaps if we offer even more in bribes?” Randith suggested.
Thren shook his head.
“They’ve tired of the game. We rob them until they are red with rage, then pay bribes with their own wealth. You’ve seen how much they’ve invested in mercenaries over the past few months. Their minds are set. They want us exterminated.”
“That’s ludicrous,” Randith insisted. “You’ve united nearly every guild in the city. Between our assassins, our spies, our thugs… what makes them think they can withstand all-out war?”
Thren frowned as Randith’s fingers drummed the hilt of his rapier.
“Give me a few of our best men,” his son said. “When Leon Connington bleeds out in his giant bed, the rest will learn that accepting our bribes is far better than accepting our mercy.”
“You are still a young man,” Thren said. “Yo
u are not ready for what Leon has prepared.”
“I am seventeen,” Randith said. “A man grown, and I have more kills to my name than years.”
“And I’ve more than you’ve drawn breaths,” Thren said, a hard edge entering his voice. “But even I will not return to that mansion. They are eager for this, can’t you see that? Entire guilds will be wiped out in days. Those who survive will inherit this city, and I will not have my heir run off and die in the opening hours.”
Thren placed one of his short swords on the table with his uninjured hand. Holding it there, he met Randith’s gaze, challenging him, looking to see just what sort of man his son truly was.
“I’ll leave the mansion be, as you suggest,” Randith said. “But I will not cower and hide. You are right, Father. These are the opening hours. Our actions here will decide the course of months of fighting. Let the merchants and nobles hide. We rule the night.”
He pulled his gray cloak over his head and turned to the hidden door. Thren watched him go, his hands shaking, but not from the toxin.
“Be wary,” Thren said, careful to keep his face a mask. “Everything you do has consequences.”
If Randith sensed the threat, he didn’t let it show.
“I’ll go get Senke,” said Randith. “He’ll watch over you until Aaron returns with the mage.”
Then he was gone.
introducing
If you enjoyed MALICE, look out for
VENGEANCE
by Ian Irvine
Ten years ago, two children witnessed a murder that still haunts them as adults.
Tali watched as two masked figures killed her mother, and now she has sworn revenge. Even though she is a slave. Even though she is powerless. Even though she is nothing in the eyes of those who live aboveground, she will find her mother’s killers and bring them to justice.
Rix, heir to Hightspall’s greatest fortune, is tormented by the fear that he’s linked to the murder, and by a sickening nightmare that he’s doomed to repeat it.
When a chance meeting brings Tali and Rix together, the secrets of an entire kingdom are uncovered and a villain out of legend returns to throw the land into chaos. Tali and Rix must learn to trust each other and find a way to save the realm—and themselves.
CHAPTER ONE
“Matriarch Ady, can I check the Solaces for you?” said Wil, staring at the locked basalt door behind her. “Can I, please?”
Ady frowned at the quivering, cross-eyed youth, then laid her scribing tool beside the partly engraved sheet of spelter and flexed her aching fingers. “The Solaces are for the matriarchs’ eyes only. Go and polish the clangours.”
Wil, who was neither handsome nor clever, knew that Ady only kept him around because he worked hard. And because, years ago, he had revealed a gift for shillilar, morrow-sight. Having been robbed of their past, the matriarchs used even their weakest tools to protect Cython’s future.
Though Wil was so lowly that he might never earn a tattoo, he desperately wanted to be special, to matter. But he had another reason for wanting to look at the Solaces, one he dared not mention to anyone. A later shillilar had told him that there was something wrong, something the matriarchs weren’t telling them. Perhaps—heretical thought—something they didn’t know.
“You can see your face in the clangours,” he said, inflating his hollow chest. “I’ve also fed the fireflies and cleaned out the effluxor sump. Please can I check the Solaces?”
Ady studied her swollen knuckles, but did not reply.
“Why are the secret books called Solaces, anyway?” said Wil.
“Because they comfort us in our bitter exile.”
“I heard they order the matriarchs about like naughty children.”
Ady slapped him, though not as hard as he deserved. “How dare you question the Solaces, idiot youth?”
Being used to blows, Wil merely rubbed his pockmarked cheek. “If you’d just let me peek…”
“We only check for new pages once a month.”
“But it’s been a month, look, look.” A shiny globule of quicksilver, freshly fallen from the coiled condenser of the wall clock, was rolling down its inclined planes towards today’s brazen bucket. “Today’s the ninth. You always check the Solaces on the ninth.”
“I dare say I’ll get around to it.”
“How can you bear to wait?” he said, jumping up and down.
“At my age, the only thing that excites me is soaking my aching feet. Besides, it’s three years since the last new page appeared.”
“The next page could come today. It might be there already.”
Though Wil’s eyes made reading a struggle, he loved books with a passion that shook his bones. The mere shapes of the letters sent him into ecstasies, but, ah! What stories the letters made. He had no words to express how he felt about the stories.
Wil did not own any book,, not even the meanest little volume, and he longed to, desperately. Books were truth. Their stories were the world. And the Solaces were perfect books—the very soul of Cython, the matriarchs said. He ached to read one so badly that his whole body trembled and the breath clotted in his throat.
“I don’t think any more pages are coming, lad.” Ady pressed her fingertips against the blue triangle tattooed on her brow. “I doubt the thirteenth book will ever be finished.”
“Then it can’t hurt if I look, can it?” he cried, sensing victory.
“I—I suppose not.”
Ady rose painfully, selected three chymical phials from a rack and shook them. In the first, watery fluid took on a subtle jade glow. The contents of the second thickened and bubbled like black porridge and the third crystallised to a network of needles that radiated pinpricks of sulphur-yellow light.
A spiral on the basalt door was dotted with phial-sized holes. Ady inserted the light keys into the day’s pattern and waited for it to recognise the colours. The lock sighed; the door opened into the Chamber of the Solaces.
“Touch nothing,” she said to the gaping youth, and returned to her engraving.
Unlike every other part of Cython, this chamber was uncarved, unpainted stone. It was a small, cubic room, unfurnished save for a white quartzite table with a closed book on its far end and, on the wall to Wil’s right, a four-shelf bookcase etched out of solid rock. The third and fourth shelves were empty.
Tears formed as he gazed upon the mysterious books he had only ever glimpsed through the doorway. After much practice he could now read a page or two of a storybook before the pain in his eyes became blinding, but only the secret books could take him where he wanted to go—to a world and a life not walled-in in every direction.
“Who is the Scribe, Ady?”
Wil worshipped the unknown Scribe for the elegance of his calligraphy and his mastery of book making, but most of all for the stories he had given Cython. They were the purest truth of all.
He often asked that question but Ady never answered. Maybe she didn’t know, and it worried him, becauseWil feared the Scribe was in danger. If I could save him, he thought, I’d be the greatest hero of all.
He smiled at that. Wil knew he was utterly insignificant.
The top shelf contained five ancient Solaces, all with worn brown covers, and each bore the main title, The Songs of Survival. These books, vital though they had once been, were of least interest to Wil, since the last had been completed one thousand, three hundred and seventy-seven years ago. Their stories had ended long before. It was the future that called to him, the unfinished stories.
On the second shelf stood the thick volumes entitled The Lore of Prosperity. There were nine of these and the last five formed a set called Industry. On Delven had covers of pale mica with topazes embedded down the spine, On Metallix was written in white-hot letters on sheets of beaten silver. Wil could not tell what On Smything, On Spagyric or On Catalyz were made from, for his eyes were aching now, his sight blurring.
He covered his eyes for a moment. Nine books. Why were there nine books on th
e second shelf ? The ninth, unfinished book, On Catalyz, should lie on the table, open at the last new page.
His heart bruised itself on his breastbone as he counted them again. Five books, plus nine. Could On Catalyz be finished? If it was, this was amazing news, and he would be the one to tell it. He would be really special then. Yes, the last book on the shelf definitely said, On Catalyz.
Then what was the book on the table?
A new book?
The first new book in three hundred and twelve years?
Magery was anathema to his people and Wil had never asked how the pages came to write themselves, nor how each new book could appear in a locked room in Cython, deep underground. Since magery had been forbidden to all save their long-lost kings, the self-writing pages were proof of instruction from a higher power. The Solaces were Cython’s comfort in their agonising exile, the only evidence that they still mattered.
We are not alone.
The cover of the new book was the dark, scaly grey of freshly cast iron. It was a thin volume, no more than thirty sheet-iron pages. He could not read the crimson, deeply etched title from this angle, though it was too long to be The Lore of Prosperity.
Wil choked and had to bend double, panting. Not just a new book, but the first of the third shelf, and no one else in Cython had seen it. His eyes were flooding, his heart pounding, his mouth full of saliva.
He swallowed painfully. Even from here, the book had a peculiar smell, oily-sweet then bitter underneath, yet strangely appealing. He took a deep sniff. The inside of his nose burnt, his head spun and he felt an instant’s bliss, then tendrils webbed across his inner eye. He shook his head, they disappeared and he sniffed again, wanting that bliss to take him away from his life of drudgery. But he wanted the iron book more. What story did it tell? Could it be the Scribe’s own?
He turned to call Ady, then hesitated. She would shoo him off and the three matriarchs would closet themselves with the new book for weeks. Afterwards they would meet with the leaders of the four levels of Cython, the master chymister, the heads of the other guilds and the overseer of the Pale slaves. Then the new book would be locked away and Wil would go back to scraping muck out of the effluxors for the rest of his life.