Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds…
Join us every Monday in April for an extended preview of The Devils, a brand-new epic fantasy from author Joe Abercrombie featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey. The Devils publishes May 13th with Tor Books—find previous excerpts here.
Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it’s a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.
Chapter 4
This Much Luck
Alex stood by the window, a cool breeze on her cheek and a warm fire at her back, rubbing her bandaged knuckles and looking down on the Holy City.
Way above it, rather’n crushed in its guts, it seemed a different place. A beautiful place, even. Gardens and pale palaces on the hilltops, with statues of angels on their gables. Grand streets and tall houses on the slopes, dozens of church spires and shrines capped with the Circle of the Faith. All dissolving into a haphazard maze of slum roofs in the valleys, shining wet from a chilly sleet that just stopped falling. You could see the ruins the city was built on, built around, built out of—towering blocks, shapeless blobs, tumbledown walls heavy with creeper, remnants of a fallen empire poking from the mass like the bones of a giant carcass. The Pale Sisters stuck up like fingers, two crumbling columns left over from a vast temple, on top of which some canny set of priests had built two rival bell towers, soaring high over the city and clanging away at each other at every prayer time like twin babies screaming for Mummy’s attention.
From up here, you’d never have guessed the strife and struggle going on in their long shadows, where you’d as much chance of feeling a fresh breeze as an elf of feeling heaven. The human rubbish crawling all over each other like ants in an anthill. The lying and hustle and hurt to get one step ahead. Snatches of hymns and hawkers’ cries drifted up, feeble on the cold wind, clamour of faith and fury dulled by distance, like none of it was much of her concern any more.
A set of nuns had bathed her, scrubbed her, wrapped her in a robe with the faces of saints stitched in silver, fur on the collar so warm against her cheek it made her want to cry. She hardly knew her own face in the mirror. Hardly knew her own hands with the dirt scraped from under the bitten-down nails. She doubted she’d ever been this clean before and wasn’t sure she liked it, kept being ambushed by the feel of her own hair, now they’d cut out the thousand tangles and combed it till it shone.
They’d left the comb behind. Silver, with amber in the handle. She kept wondering what Gal the Purse might’ve priced it at, and how much more it was really worth. Her hand kept creeping towards it, one finger tap, tap, tapping at the windowsill. Wouldn’t have been theft in her book, just picking up what was thrown away.
If you don’t want your comb stolen, you shouldn’t leave it alone with a thief—
Knock, knock at the door and she jerked her hand back, heart suddenly pounding, desperate to slither out the window and down a drainpipe, frantic voice in her head shrieking that she was the mark in some con and would soon enough be suffering for it.
But there was a colder, softer voice, too, whispering that she might squeeze more out of this than a nice comb. A lot more. All she had to do was sell a lie, and wasn’t she a liar? She’d played so many parts she hardly knew which one was her. She was an onion made of only skins with nothing at the centre.
So she dragged in a slow breath, and unclenched her fists, and tried to wriggle free of her usual cringe and look like she deserved to be there. She tried to coo, “Come in,” the way a princess might, but she ended up hooting the come then going too far the other way for the in so she sounded like a pigeon turning into a hog and was wincing at her own blunder as the door opened.
It was her unlikely saviour, the self-styled Duke Michael. He had an awkward smile, like he didn’t quite trust her, which showed good judgement as she was a treacherous rat, ask anyone.
“Well,” he said, “isn’t that better?”
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear in a way that aimed at winsome, but she hardly knew what winsome meant, let alone what it looked like. “Got the fish out of my hair,” she said.
“They’re treating you well?”
“Better’n those three bastards in the market. You should’ve killed ’em and kept the money.” Or better yet, given it to her.
“The Almighty tends against killing,” said Duke Michael, “if I remember my scripture.”
“Far as I can tell he makes all manner of exceptions.”
“God has that luxury, he’s unlikely to get knifed in a fish market.”
“You had a sword.”
“If I’ve learned one thing in all my years of using one, it’s that men with swords die every bit as easily as other men, and usually much sooner. Besides, I couldn’t risk Eusebius. New dukes can be made with a word, but good servants are rare treasures. May I come in?”
Alex wasn’t sure she’d ever been asked that before. Never had a place of her own. That and the folk she dealt with didn’t tend to be the permission-asking sort. So she enjoyed the little pause before giving a haughty toss of the head and saying, “You may.”
“I expect you have… some questions.” Duke Michael eased himself into the room.
“One or two.” She fixed his eye, businesslike. “First off, is all this a sex thing?”
He burst out laughing. “No. God, no. By no means.”
“All right. Good.” She tried not to show her relief. No need to discuss the terms she’d been considering if it had been a sex thing.
“I’m your uncle, Alex. I’ve been searching for you for a long time.” He took a step closer. “You’re safe now.”
“Safe,” she muttered, having to stop herself taking a step away. She was even less sure what to do with safe than she was with may I come in. Her rich uncle, popped out of nowhere to tell her how special she was. Too good to be true hardly seemed to cover it. “Are you really a duke?”
“I am, though… without a dukedom, for the time being.”
“Bit careless. Losing a dukedom.”
“It was stolen.” He took another step towards her. “Do you know anything about the politics of the Empire of the East?”
She could’ve given him a solid rundown of the politics of the slums, but the Empire of the East had always seemed a long way off. “There may be a few gaps in my schooling…”
“You’ve heard of the Empress Theodosia the Blessed?”
“Obviously,” lied Alex.
“She had three children. Irene, Eudoxia, and… me.”
“Your mother was an Empress?”
“Your grandmother was an Empress. A great one. When she died, my elder sister Irene should have been crowned, but my younger sister Eudoxia…” he turned his face away, his voice cracking, “…Eudoxia murdered her and usurped the throne. There was a civil war.” He stared into the fire, shaking his head like it was heavy with regrets. “There was war, and famine, and schism between the Churches of East and West, and the great fortress city of Troy rotted from the inside. Irene’s servants spirited her infant daughter away to the Holy City, to the Pope’s protection. But she was lost on the way. Killed, I believed, for a long time.” He looked up at Alex. “Her name was Alexia.”
“And you think… that’s me?”
“I know it. There is the birthmark on your neck, and the chain you wear…” And he pointed to a few links showing inside that fine fur collar.
She pulled her gown tight over it. “It’s not worth anything.”
“You’re wrong. Is there, by any chance, half a coin on it?”
Ever so slowly, she pulled it out. The bright half-disc of copper dangled on the end, polished smooth by years against her skin, its zigzag clipped edge glinting. “How did you know?”
He reached into his collar and pulled out a chain of his own, and she stared as she saw, dangling on the end, another half-coin. He came closer to hold his up to hers, and Alex felt all the hairs on her neck stand up as she saw the ragged edges were a perfect match. One coin.
“You were given this the day you left Troy. So there could be no doubt who you were. But I knew the moment I saw you.” He smiled, and the awkwardness had faded, and it was so warm and open he almost had her believing. “Even with fish in your hair and a fist around your throat. You look just like your mother.”
“I…” Alex swallowed. “I don’t remember her—”
“She was the best of us. Always so brave. So certain.” And he took her good hand and her bandaged one and held them in his. Big, strong hands he had, and warm, and once she’d smothered the instinct to wrench herself free, there was something weirdly reassuring about their touch.
“Look,” she grunted, “I don’t know anything… about being a princess—”
“All I want,” he said, “is for you… to be you.”
Alex very much doubted he’d have said that if he’d known her better. But Gal the Purse always said, Don’t interrupt the mark when they’re making a mistake, and he was frowning down at the floor now, so she let him keep talking.
“I learned a few weeks ago that my sister Eudoxia is dead. To no one’s great sorrow. Some say poison. Some say an experiment gone awry… a last act of sorcerous hubris…”
“Sorcerous?” muttered Alex, doubtfully.
“Whatever the cause, her throne is empty!” Michael’s eyes flicked back up and met hers. “It’s time for you to return.”
Her brows had gone even higher. “To a throne?”
“The Serpent Throne of Troy.”
At their first meeting he’d declared her a princess. At their second he was putting Empress on the table. At this rate she’d be an angel by teatime and a goddess by nightfall.
“I can’t wait for you to see it, Alex!” he said, eyes shining. “The Pillar—raised by the Witch Engineers of ancient Carthage—towers over the city, casting the whole harbour into its shadow! At its top, the famous Hanging Gardens, more beautiful than you can dream of, watered by mountain springs carried down the Grand Aqueduct.”
He took her by one shoulder, holding out the other hand as though the view was spread before them.
“The Basilica of the Angelic Visitation rises over the greenery, crowded with pilgrims come to view the relics of the grand crusades! And the palace, too, the Pharos above all, the greatest lighthouse in Europe, at its top Saint Natalia’s Flame, shining like a star, guiding the sons and daughters of Troy home!” He turned to her, catching her by the other shoulder, holding her at arms’ length. “Our home, Alex!”
She blinked up at him. Her every instinct—learned several different hard ways down the years—was to treat everything as a lie, and had there ever been a more laughable set of clangers than this?
And yet here she was. In the Celestial Palace. Warm for the first time in weeks. With a comb worth more than her hands. In a robe worth more than her head. And there was something so damn plausible about this bastard. She was starting to think he might be who he said he was. She was almost starting to think she might be who he said she was.
Duke Michael seemed to remember himself and pulled his hands away. “I know this must be… a lot to take in. I know it must be frightening. But I will be with you, every step along the path.”
“I never had… any family…” She hardly knew whether she was telling the truth or playing a part any more. Probably just as well. That’s where you find the best lies.
“I’m so sorry, Alex. That it took me so long to find you. For many years… I gave up hope. Let me put it right. Let me help you now.” He had some damp in his eyes, so she reckoned it’d suit her to do the same. She never had to search far for some sad memories.
“I can try.” She sniffed, and blinked back tears, and put on a shy little smile, and was quite pleased with her performance.
“That’s all I can ask.” He wiped his eyes on his wrist. “There’s so much to do. You must meet Cardinal Zizka! She can help us. Soon, Alex, we’ll be back where we belong!”
And he smiled, without a hint of awkwardness now, and stepped away, shutting the door behind him.
Alex had been told where she belonged a few times. In prison. In a sewer. In a shallow grave. In hell, depending who you asked. This much luck had to have a razor hidden in it somewhere, but what were her choices?
She owed Papa Collini twice what she was worth, if you were very generous about what she was worth, and that wasn’t even her only debt. She’d borrowed money from the Queen of Clubs at ruinous interest so she could cheat at cards against Little Suze, but Suze had turned out to be a better cheat than Alex, so she’d come out owing Suze, too, who’d cut her nose off for it, and the Queen of Clubs, who’d take her kneecaps off for it, and still owing Papa Collini, who’d take some teeth and fingers, and then—when he found out about the other two debts—likely her eyes into the bargain.
Many thanks, but fuck that.
Whatever her doubts about this whole princess business, it had come along at the perfect time. She’d play the part, and get what could be got, and when it started to look like trouble, she could ditch her so-called uncle somewhere on the crooked road to Troy and find some new name to wear and some new place to settle.
You have to treat people like oranges, Gal the Purse always said. Squeeze what you can from the bastards, then waste no regrets when you toss away their wrung-out skins. You have to treat people like stepping stones. Like rungs on your ladder. Or you’ll wake up one day with nothing but a set of bootprints on your own back.
Alex couldn’t stop the smile spreading across her face. Been a while since she’d tried one on and she liked how it felt. She was starting to think Duke Michael might be a stepping stone to somewhere very sweet. She wasn’t sure where, exactly. Been a while since she looked too far past the next meal. But she’d work it out as she went. She was a quick thinker, ask anyone.
She propped her elbows on the sill, cool breeze on her cheek and warm fire at her back, and grinned towards the slums. You could just see people down there, if you really squinted. But they were so far below. She couldn’t help rubbing that lovely fur against her face again, and giving a little giggle.
Then she slipped that comb up her sleeve.
Best to be on the safe side.
Chapter 5
A Flock of Black Sheep
Brother Diaz turned slowly around, head tipped back and mouth hanging open, dizzy with awe.
“It’s so beautiful…”
The Chapel of the Holy Expediency might have been four times as high as it was wide, an echoing well of varicoloured marble lit by angelic shafts from a cupola high above. Carved niches held sculptures of the Twelfth Virtues in human form, the walls crowded with paintings of the seventy-seven senior saints and a dizzying assortment of junior ones. There was a porphyry pulpit that wouldn’t have been a disappointing centrepiece for a cathedral, a gem-studded copy of the scriptures open on the lectern.
His lectern, he realised, awe beginning to melt under a warming glow of satisfaction. His pulpit in his chapel. He’d never been much of a preacher, admittedly. But in a place like this? He would make do.
“It is beautiful.” Baptiste draped an overfamiliar arm around his shoulders and pointed out a painting. “That Saint Stefan is by Havarazza.”
“Really?”
“I knew him, in fact.”
“Saint Stefan?”
“Havarazza.” Baptiste modestly flicked a stray curl from her face and it immediately flopped back. “He painted me once.”
“He did?”
“I was between jobs at the time, serving as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Sicily.”
“You… what?”
“He was painting her during the days. I modelled for him in the evenings.” She leaned close to whisper, “He wanted to do it nude.”
“Er…”
“But I insisted he keep his clothes on!” Baptiste burst out laughing, then her laughter became a chuckle, and the chuckle petered out into awkward silence. She dabbed her eyes. “He died of syphilis.”
“Havarazza did?”
“And the Queen of Sicily soon after. Make of that what you will. I think the Duke of Milan has that painting.”
“Of the Queen of Sicily?”
“No, the one of me. He was a lovely man.”
“The Duke of Milan?”
“Ugh, no. He’s an absolute turd. I meant Havarazza.” She considered that painting of Saint Stefan, smiling beatifically as toothy elves squashed his balls with red-hot tongs. “One of those truly pure souls you find now and again.”
“I am… so sorry to hear that. About his death, that is, not his pure soul…” Brother Diaz took the opportunity to slither from under Baptiste’s arm. He hadn’t been in such close contact with a woman for many years, and the outcome then had been far from a happy one. He placed a fond hand on one of several dozen giant votive candles, twice his height at least and thick as a tree trunk, wondering what it must have cost. He’d scored an unsung triumph negotiating a new contract with the chandler on his monastery’s behalf, so had a reasonable idea. “It really is a beautiful chapel…”
Pride was not numbered among the Twelve Virtues, but after being left to pickle in shame for so long he couldn’t help picturing the faces of his so-called brothers in the refectory when they heard the news. Vicar? Of an opulent and exclusive chapel? Inside the Celestial Palace? He imagined the monstrous scale of his mother’s boasting, the petty achievements of his actual brothers cast aside, the dishes passed first to him before they squabbled over the scraps—
The grating voice of Jakob of Thorn cut his daydreams off at the knee. “We won’t be spending much time here.”
“We won’t?”
The knight had one hand under the lectern, wincing as he searched for something. There was a clunk, a grinding of gears, and the pulpit slid aside to reveal a hidden stairway, disappearing downwards.
“Your flock are below.”
Brother Diaz swallowed as he peered into the inky darkness under the chapel, Cardinal Zizka’s mention of the howling night beyond creation making the hairs on his neck prickle. “Why below?”
“Partly for their protection.”
“Mostly for everyone else’s,” said Baptiste, taking up a candelabrum with three flickering candles.
It was while following her downwards that Brother Diaz noticed all the daggers about her person. One could hardly miss the huge one strapped to her right thigh, and the only slightly smaller one buckled to her left, but now he noticed a curved one in the back of her belt, and the telltale glint of a pommel in the top of one tall boot, and, Sweet Saint Beatrix, two in her other boot.
“You have a very great number of knives,” he murmured.
“I’ve found it’s a bad idea to run out.” The candles gave her eyes a playful gleam quite at odds with the subject matter. “How could I stab anyone then?”
“Do you stab people… often?”
“I try to keep it to a minimum. Never stick your neck out, that’s my motto.” She sighed. “But a life well lived will, perforce, feature some regrets.”
“Perforce,” murmured Brother Diaz, pointlessly. Behind him, Jakob of Thorn made the slightest pained grunt with each scraping footfall.
The walls changed as they descended. Dressed masonry gave way to the carelessly mortared brick of the foundations, which gave way to that strangely seamless grey stone, like the back wall of Zizka’s office, the candlelight throwing odd shadows from its humps and waves. Brother Diaz reached out, brushed it lightly with his fingertips. Very smooth, and very hard, and very cold.
“The remains of the ancient city,” said Jakob of Thorn.
“Not much left above ground,” tossed Baptiste over her shoulder, “but there are miles of tunnels below. No one knows how deep they go. All built by the Witch Engineers of Carthage.”
Brother Diaz snatched his fingertips away, touched them nervously to the lump in his habit made by the vial of Saint Beatrix. He couldn’t escape the irrational sensation that he was descending into the guts of a monster.
“Ironic, really.” Baptiste chuckled. “Long before it was the Holy City, it was… well…” The light from her candelabrum fell on a weighty door, studded with iron, apparently scorched by flame and deeply carved with several interlocking circles of runes. “An unholy city?” And Baptiste grinned over her shoulder as she rapped on it with her knuckles.
Brother Diaz steeled himself for unknown horrors as locks rattled and the door swung open—but beyond there was only a storeroom containing a fireplace and cookpot, several crates and barrels, shelves holding crockery and cutlery, and a huge bald man with a whale-oil lamp.
Baptiste frowned towards another door, still heavier and more rune-scored than the last. “All quiet?”
“The wizard complained about his food,” said the big man, in a thick accent, as he sat back down at a table and picked up a very small book. “But otherwise yes. This our new priest?”
“Brother Diaz,” grunted Jakob.
“Ah, a Castillian?”
“Leonese…” Though insisting on the distinction seemed absurd under the circumstances.
“Good to meet you. I’m Hobb. I look after the devils.”
Brother Diaz swallowed. “The what?”
“Didn’t Cardinal Zizka give you the talk?”
“She gave him the talk,” said Jakob of Thorn.
“They’re not really devils.” Baptiste had gone to a long rack from which dangled at least a dozen bunches of heavy keys. “Not technically.”
“You have a very great number of keys,” murmured Brother Diaz.
“Well, Brother,” replied Baptiste as she plucked down one ring and began to sort through it, “we need a very great number of locks.”
Hobb laughed. “You’ll be fine. Just… stay back from the bars.”
“From the what?” muttered Brother Diaz, watching Baptiste tackle one lock after another.
“Stay back from the bars, keep on your toes, trust nothing they say, and I’m sure you’ll fare better than your predecessor.”
“What?”
“That’s the spirit,” said Hobb, planting one boot on the table and turning his attention to his book. “And don’t stick your neck out, eh, Baptiste?”
“Never.” Baptiste finally slid back two hefty bolts and shouldered the second door open, a faint breath of cool air issuing from beyond.
“He looks after the devils,” said Brother Diaz, in a kind of whimper.
“But he’s from England.” Jakob of Thorn ushered him over the threshold. “They’re all devils there.”
A hallway stretched off into the gloom, walls and ceiling a single semi-circular vault of that melted-looking rock. The only light came from three ominously flickering candles in rusted sconces, falling on a set of archways in the left-hand wall. It might almost have felt like a wine cellar, had it not been for the grilles blocking the openings, bars of black iron thick as Brother Diaz’s wrist, well secured with yet more heavy locks.
He swallowed. “Are these… cells?” Ancient ones, by the look of it. “What kind of prisoners did the Witch Engineers of Carthage keep?”
“The righteous?” Baptiste shrugged. “Or the really unrighteous?”
“Those they hated,” said Jakob. “Those they feared.”
“And those they failed to understand.” There was a scraping of chains from the nearest cell. “And little has changed in that regard.” A man shuffled from the shadows. “New jailers, perhaps…” He was an imposing figure, perhaps a patrician of northern Afrique, his black hair and beard shot with grey. “But petty injustice, hypocrisy, and oppression are eternal.” His air of outraged dignity was undermined by two facts impossible to ignore: his ankles were fettered by a heavy chain of black iron, and he was entirely naked.
Baptiste leaned casually against the archway. “Might I introduce the most recent addition to our little family. His name is Balthazar…” She squinted at the ceiling, jingling her keyring on a fingertip. “I forget the rest of it.”
“Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi.” The man flared his nostrils magnificently. “And it is a name that shall resound through history!”
“Bit lengthy for an echo, isn’t it?” said Baptiste, giving Brother Diaz a wink. “These sorcerers and their names—”
“I am a magician, fool.”
“Oh, I’m a dunce and you’re a genius.” Baptiste smiled wider, gold teeth glinting. “That’s why you’re naked in a cage and I’m holding the key.”
“Laugh while you can!” The magician pressed his face to the bars and obliged Brother Diaz to take a cautious step back. “But no chain can restrain me! No spell can bind me! I shall free myself, and when I do my vengeance shall be the stuff of legend!”
He shook his fist as he worked himself to ever greater heights of outrage, and whenever he did his prick would swing about, and though Brother Diaz had no desire to see it, he somehow couldn’t stop looking at it, and had to hold up a hand to shield his eyes. “Must he be naked?”
“He was scraping dirt from the corners of his cell and using it to write on his shirt,” said Baptiste.
“Would writing have been bad?”
“It could’ve been very bad,” said Jakob.
“He is an infamous practitioner of Black Art,” said Baptiste, “pursued by the Witch Hunters for nine years and found guilty as hell by the Celestial Court.”
“Don’t they tend to… a little bit…” Brother Diaz cleared his throat, “burn people for that?”
“On rare occasions they are given a chance at redemption through a lifetime of service to Her Holiness.”
“Redemption?” snarled Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi. “Ha! The distinction between Black Art and White is a patent artifice, born of wilful ignorance. They are drawn from one well. They even emerge in the same bucket! Then you blockheads dip in two cups and declare what suits your petty prejudices White and what defies your pitiful understanding Black when in fact they are one and the same—”
“There was the matter of the dancing corpses,” grated Jakob of Thorn.
“And the bargaining with demons,” added Baptiste.
Balthazar threw up his hands. “You bargain with one demon and that’s all anyone talks about!”
“I need to sit down,” muttered Brother Diaz, but there was no chair on offer.
The next cell was neatly furnished with a narrow bed well made, two faded rugs, and a shelf stacked with books, including a fine copy of the scriptures. But there appeared to be no one in it.
“Sunny?” Baptiste tapped at the bars with a man’s signet ring she wore. “You can come out.”
She didn’t jump from the shadows or wink suddenly into substance. She must’ve been standing there, in full view. But, for no reason Brother Diaz could explain, it was only when she turned towards him, breathing out with a long sigh, that he noticed her.
One could not possibly have overlooked that face otherwise. It was recognisably female, dusted with very ordinary freckles, but resembled a face reflected in a carnival mirror: impossibly narrow across the jaw and impossibly wide across the sharp cheeks, the nose far too small and the unblinking eyes far, far too big.
“Saviour protect us,” he breathed, making the sign of the circle over his chest. As if the magician hadn’t been bad enough. “It’s an elf.”
She stepped forwards, long fingers curling spider-like about the bars. “New priest?” One might have expected an enemy of God to speak with a devilish hiss. The elf’s flat, high, normal little voice was quite the anticlimax.
“This is Brother Diaz,” said Jakob of Thorn.
The elf studied him, unblinking as a lizard. “Charmed,” she said, and was no longer there.
“Why…” whispered Brother Diaz, his throat so tight he could hardly make the words, “is there an elf under the Celestial Palace?”
Baptiste waved towards the next set of bars. “For the same reason there’s a vampire under the Celestial Palace.”
This cell contained the most ancient-looking man Brother Diaz had ever seen. His body was hunched, face a withered mask, neck a flopping wattle, a few floating wisps clinging to his wrinkled pate. But his voice was rich with culture and refinement.
“To undertake the labours,” he said, “that those upstairs will not contemplate. I am Baron Rikard, and I can only apologise for my wretched decrepitude.” He glanced towards the walking stick on which he leaned with one crooked, trembling hand. “I would bow but, with the stiffness in my back, I fear I might never rise…”
“Pray don’t trouble yourself!” Brother Diaz had never met a baron, had no notion where he might rank in Europe’s labyrinthine aristocracy, but felt the need to be on his very best behaviour. “It is my honour to—”
As he stepped towards the bars, Jakob of Thorn held out an arm to stop him. “Best keep your distance.”
“You have no doubt already realised that Jakob can be exceedingly tiresome.” The baron hobbled closer, flashing a smile. He had superb teeth for a man of his age, so pearly white and delicately pointed, Brother Diaz yearned to inspect them more closely. “I cannot tell you how desperately I am in need of good conversation, not to mention spiritual instruction. Your predecessor was no use whatever in such matters—”
Jakob of Thorn’s grating voice cut in. “Don’t get too close to the bars.” Brother Diaz was surprised to see that, almost without noticing, he had taken another step towards the cage.
“Honestly, Jakob, few people are more keenly aware than you how much blood a healthy young man contains. We all know he can spare a pint or two, eh, Brother Diaz?” His eye had a playful sparkle and Diaz could not but chuckle. What a spirited and amusing old gent he was! How proud his mother would be, to learn he had a friend of such status! Whyever should he be kept in a cage? He had half a mind to wrestle the keys from Baptiste and unlock the gate—
Jakob’s voice was a warning bark. “Step back from the cage!”
Brother Diaz found, to his amazement, that he had stepped right up to the grille and was on the point of slipping his arm between the bars, right beside the baron’s withered face. He snatched it back as if from a blazing fire.
Baron Rikard curled his tongue around one pointed tooth and dragged it away with a disappointed sucking. “Well, you can’t blame a boy for trying.”
“Did you ensorcel me just now?” demanded Brother Diaz, gripping one hand to his chest with the other. “Was that ensorcelment?”
“Manners might seem like magic in this company,” grunted the vampire. “The two are not so far apart as some would prefer to believe. Rather like good and evil, in that regard.”
Brother Diaz gave an outraged gasp. “We can probably agree that feasting on the blood of innocents is on the evil side of the line!”
“I will bow to your expertise. Or would if my back permitted.” The baron gave a papery sigh as he turned away. “If vampires made sound moral judgements, after all… why would the world need priests?”
The next cell contained only dirty straw, a bucket, several sets of rather worrying scratches, and an animal odour that reminded Brother Diaz of a visit he once made, and instantly regretted, to a slaughterhouse in Aviles.
“We had to place the last of our flock in more secure lodgings due to…” Baptiste scratched her throat as if searching for the right words, which in someone who produced as many as her did not strike him as a good sign.
“Unacceptable behaviour,” said Jakob.
“To put it very mildly. Sometimes we have more charges, sometimes fewer. The tasks assigned to the Chapel of the Holy Expediency lead to a certain…”
“Churn,” said Jakob.
Brother Diaz had no words. Honestly, he was finding it difficult to breathe down here. He was feeling dizzy. As if the ground might suddenly fall away. He struggled to loosen his collar once again. All he’d wanted was a comfortable living, somewhere sunny. To be taken seriously by the frivolous, regarded as wise by the unwise, and considered important by the unimportant. Instead, for reasons he couldn’t comprehend, he found himself called on to consort with scarred knights and part-time painter’s models, to face unspecified perils dire enough to threaten creation, all while not getting too close to the cages in which his congregation were kept.
“I spent many years in a monastery,” he almost whined, at no one in particular. “Away from everything, in the library, mostly, and a bit of work on the accounts, some weeding in the herb garden…” God help him, he was starting to wish he was still there. “I really have… no experience with…” Brother Diaz’s gesture encompassed the Witch Engineers’ dungeon housing the naked magician, the vanishing elf, the geriatric vampire, and whatever had been too badly behaved to be kept in such company. “All this.”
“Your predecessor had experience,” said Jakob of Thorn.
“No one more,” said Baptiste, sadly swinging her keys around one fingertip.
“What became of them?” asked Brother Diaz, desperate for a glint of light at the end of what was starting to seem a very dark tunnel. “Some new assignment?”
Baptiste winced. “Mother Ferrara was a very… rigid woman. Full of faith. Full of zeal.”
“Huh,” grunted Jakob.
“But rigid things are prone… under extremes of pressure… to shatter.”
“Extremes,” echoed Brother Diaz, “of pressure?”
“You see it.” Baptiste placed a hand on his shoulder. If it was meant to reassure him, it failed spectacularly. “The Chapel of the Holy Expediency is no place to get… all dogmatic.”
“Hmm,” grunted Jakob.
“In my experience—and my experience, did I mention…” Baptiste slid her arm across Brother Diaz’s shoulders in an unsolicited embrace, the grip of one of her many knives poking him in the side, “…is considerable—if you treat everything like a fight you will, sooner or later, and probably sooner…”
“Lose one,” growled Jakob, glaring off grimly into the shadows.
Brother Diaz cleared his throat. He never used to need to clear his throat, but lately he was having to do it before every sentence. “I wouldn’t presume to challenge the breadth of your experience—”
“Then we’ll get along famously!” said Baptiste.
“—but you don’t seem to have explained what, specifically, became of my predecessor.”
Jakob turned his grey eyes back to Brother Diaz, as if only now remembering he was there. “She’s dead.” And he started to limp back the way they’d come.
“Dead?” whispered Brother Diaz.
“As fuck.” Baptiste gave his shoulders a parting squeeze. “She’s dead as fuck.”
Chapter 6
Born in the Flame
No one has doubts,” said Cardinal Bock, who was tall and kindly but seemed always to have her mind on other things. “What was her name?”
“Alex,” said Duke Michael.
“No one has doubts, Alex.”
It wasn’t quite true to say no one had doubts. Alex had massive ones. She was nothing but doubts. Any moment now they’d realise that instead of a long-lost princess they’d found themselves a piece of shit. But Gal the Purse always said, Never give up the lie. Admit the truth, you’re fucked. Cling to the lie, you never know. Lie all the way to the scaffold, lie with the rope around your neck, let them bury your lying corpse still sticking to its story. The truth is a luxury the likes of you can never afford.
“There is your half-coin,” said Cardinal Bock, leading the way through the chilly maze of the Celestial Palace at a hell of a pace, “and your birthmark, and your uncle is entirely convinced—”
“Entirely,” said Duke Michael, giving Alex a grin she was quite grateful for.
“—so no one here has doubts, but when you get to Troy… if you get to Troy… they’ll want to be absolutely sure. I mean, one can understand it. You’re not inheriting granny’s cheese shop, are you?”
“No,” said Alex, with a slightly wistful chuckle. Cheese shop would’ve been nice. She reckoned she could handle a cheese shop. That was about the right level of responsibility.
“So it’s just that extra little certainty. Just the icing on the bun.” Bock thoughtfully patted her stomach, then glanced towards one of the silent priests hurrying after them. “Sister Stefanu, could you make a note to go out and fetch me a bun? I’ve given myself a hankering. Anyone else? Bun?” Alex had a policy of never turning down food, but before she could say yes Cardinal Bock stopped dead before a hefty door flanked by armoured guards. “And here we are.”
She began to wave her hand around. “Azul saz karga with this rod this oil this will this word I sanctify the portal. Droz nox karga I shall permit no unclean thought to pass amen. Locks, please.”
Each of the guards turned a wheel and there was a grinding as toothed bars slid back. Funny, to have the mechanism on the outside. Like it was made to keep something in. The door opened with a hiss of escaping air and Bock stepped through. Alex didn’t care for magic one bit, whether it was White Art, Black Art, or some grinning liar with a pack of cards. There’d been that mess when she was hired to steal that book off that sorcerer and it had not turned out well. This felt like a much bigger and more serious business altogether and her short hairs were all prickling. But when she looked back Duke Michael was giving her that smile again, so encouraging, like he actually believed in her, the damn fool, and she reckoned he’d be disappointed if she made a run for it. What could she do but go in?
Right away she wished she hadn’t. The room on the other side was huge, round, domed, all painted white, so bright it was almost painful after the gloom of the corridors. The polished floor was set with a crazy confusion of rings, and lines, and symbols of polished metal. Nine monks stood evenly spaced against the walls, each holding something in their clasped hands: a candle, a sickle, a bunch of some herb, each face beaded with sweat, each set of lips constantly moving, the heavy air full of the echoing whisper of their ceaseless prayers. Alex jumped as the door crashed shut behind her, bars on the far side grinding back into place.
For someone constantly thinking about running for it, it was amazing how she always missed her chance.
Cardinal Bock was already striding across that expanse of sorcerous floor, past a very nervous-looking clerk sitting at a portable desk, towards a priest with a shaved head near its centre who was kneeling with a book open in the crook of her arm, obsessively polishing the floor with a rag, then breathing on it and polishing again.
“Lovely,” murmured Bock. “Lovely, lovely, good good good… seals all triple-checked?”
The priest clambered up, tucking her rag away. “And triple-checked again, Your Eminence.” And she handed Bock some sort of crystal on a handle.
“Braziers full, in case of another incident?”
“They won’t get past us this time, Your Eminence.”
Bock shut one eye to peer around the room through the crystal. “Those bastards are always picking at the seams, remember. Always.”
The shaven priest swallowed. She shaved her eyebrows, too, Alex noticed. “How could one possibly forget, Your Eminence?”
“Good, lovely, excellent.” Cardinal Bock waved Alex over. “Now don’t worry, there are no wrong answers here.”
Alex tried to smile. In her experience, there were always wrong answers, and she’d very likely soon be giving them.
“One thing, before we begin…” Bock took her by the shoulders and guided her forwards a few steps, then back an inch or two, until she was satisfied. “Stay inside the circle.” Alex followed her eyes down, and saw her rather lovely borrowed shoes had been positioned within a circle of brass in the very centre of the floor. “Stay inside the circle, at all times.” Bock stepped backwards, towards the priest with the book, beckoning to Duke Michael. “And if you could join me here, Your Grace, we need to be south of the principal of course. Don’t worry a bit… what was her name again?”
“Alex,” said Duke Michael.
“Don’t worry a bit, Alex, this is all entirely standard. Even if standard still represents colossal risks, of course, we are all well aware of the risks…”
Alex swallowed. “Er…”
“Just stay inside the circle. Whatever happens. You can bring them in now!”
Two doors at opposite sides of the hall were opened and two teams of four guards shuffled in, each carrying a chair on poles. Alex had a feeling the nine monks were sweating more, praying more, looking more pained than ever.
In the chairs, in white shifts, blindfolded and with wrists and ankles chained, were two people. One was a man, she thought, one a woman, though it was hard to tell, they looked so starved, skin and bone, and unhealthy skin at that, scabs about their withered lips. They were limp as rags, heads lolling, bouncing slightly with the movement of their chairs. They looked like paupers’ corpses. Things she’d been close to more often than she’d have liked. Things she’d been close to being more often than she’d have liked.
The guards set the chairs down, one on each side of Alex, and hurried back. As if they’d carried in two barrels of oil and Alex was the spark. Eight hard-bitten veterans, and they all looked terrified.
“Er…” muttered Alex, glancing around for some way out. But, you know. Locks on the outside.
“Begin,” said Bock.
Chains rattled as the blindfolded man and woman lurched forwards in their chairs together, clutching Alex’s hands. She flinched, almost stepped back, then realised she might step from the circle, and stayed where she was.
In a ringing voice, the woman spoke. “I see the elves!”
“The elves come!” wailed the man. “Their blind mad hungry gods come!”
“God save us, the elves come!” screeched the woman, gripping Alex’s hand painfully tight. “Hungry, hungry, hungry, laughing.”
Alex stared wildly at Bock, but the old woman waved it away. “Don’t worry. They always say that.”
“And that’s a good thing?” squeaked Alex.
Bock hooked a finger to scratch under her crimson skullcap. “Long term it is definitely a concern, but for the time being—”
“I see a great building!” The woman twitched, head flitting this way and that. “An ancient building with buildings upon it with buildings about it feet in the sea head in the clouds I see rivers in the heavens gardens in the sky.”
“The Pillar of Troy,” said Cardinal Bock, with a significant glance towards Duke Michael. Her priest had pulled a stub of pencil from behind her ear and was scribbling furiously in her book.
“I see an ordeal,” whispered the man, in a papery wheeze, “I see tests and trials.”
Alex didn’t much like the sound of that. But if these withered ghosts had talked about cake, it likely would’ve come over sinister.
“A tower a high tower the highest tower and there burns a light a light to guide the faithful a false light a true light a light reflected.”
Cardinal Bock stood, eyes narrowed intently, like a miner sifting gravel for gold.
“A hunt within a hunt without a crooked path by land by sea.”
“I see teeth,” said the man.
“I see teeth,” said the woman. Was it getting hotter? Alex was sweating. “I see a monk and a knight and a painted wolf I see death and no death I see blood I see a circle.”
“I see a wheel.”
“I see flame!” barked the woman, making Alex jump. “I see fire I see fire I see cleansing fire I see fire at her end.”
“I see fire at her beginning,” said the man, softly, hard to hear over the prayers, whispered louder and louder.
“Fire at her beginning.” Bock and Duke Michael exchanged another glance. “Born in the flame…”
“Pyrogennetos…” And Duke Michael began to smile.
“The elves!” wailed the man, gripping Alex even tighter. God, his hands were burning. She had to bite her lip. His blindfold was smoking, two charred brown spots spreading over his eyes. “The elves come!”
“Enough!” snapped Bock, and the Oracles’ fingers went limp at once and dropped away, and their faces went slack, and their heads rolled back, and they were two starved corpses again. The initiates hurried forwards with buckets to throw water across the floor, and where it hit metal it went up in hissing steam. The shaven priest checked something that looked like a compass and made another note in her book, then puffed out her cheeks with relief and gave Bock a nod.
“Good, good!” Her Eminence peered thoughtfully up at the distant ceiling. “Great… so… on this day, the twenty-first of Loyalty…” The clerk’s pen began to scrape on paper. “I, Cardinal Bock, being certified of sound mind uncorrupted by Black Art or demonic powers et cetera, et cetera, assert that the candidate has been examined in a purified pale chamber under nine seals by paired Oracles of the Celestial Choir. Blast it!” she called over. “What’s her name again?”
“Alex,” said Duke Michael.
“You can leave the circle now, Alex, we’re all done!”
Alex backed away from the limp Oracles, nervously rubbing her hands, fingers still pink and tingling from the heat of their touch.
“You did well.” Duke Michael was smiling as he squeezed her shoulder.
“All I did was stand there.”
“That’s nine-tenths of what an Empress does.” And he led her across the echoing floor towards the desk.
“What’s Pyrogennetos?” she whispered.
“The title granted to royal children born in the Imperial Bedchamber, high in the Pharos of Troy, directly beneath Saint Natalia’s Flame. Only Empresses and the firstborn of Empresses are permitted to give birth there. It is the ultimate mark of legitimacy.”
Bock was leaning down over the clerk, one hand on his desk as she continued to dictate. “…Her Holiness Benedicta the First, therefore, invested with the full authority of the college of cardinals and speaking by papal bull and holy writ with the sanctified voice of God on earth and so on and so on, proclaims her to be none other than the Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos, born in the flame, eldest offspring of Irene, eldest offspring of Theodosia, and the one and only rightful and legitimate heir to the Serpent Throne of Troy.”
Alex blinked as she watched Bock pluck the pen from the clerk’s hand and scribble out a flamboyant signature.
“And there… we…” She slung pen back into inkwell, spraying black spots over the clerk, and gave Alex a beaming smile. “Go.”
“Right.” Alex swallowed. “Fuck.”
“They will eat us all…” whispered one of the Oracles as she was carried past, tears leaking through her singed blindfold and trickling down her hollow cheeks.
* * *
Alex kept her face near her plate and her fork moving between the two fast as she could. She’d have loved to use her fingers as stuff kept falling off the cutlery, but as long as she was getting something down her gullet she called it a win. Duke Michael watched, slightly pained, from the opposite side of the table. Likely this was no one’s idea of eating like a princess. But once you know what proper starving feels like, when someone offers food, you eat all you can quick as you can in case they change their minds.
“The elves will rise again,” Cardinal Zizka was saying, from the big chair at the head. “That is the terrible inevitability we must all face. Against that implacable, insatiable, unholy enemy, Europe must stand together… or forever fall into darkness.”
“Uh,” grunted Alex, around her latest mouthful. She’d no doubt the elves were real bastards. Who wasn’t? But they seemed a long way off. Hadn’t been their pliers in her face the other day, had it?
“All I want—all Her Holiness wants—is to close the great schism, heal the great wound, and bring the Empire of the East back into the loving embrace of her Mother Church.”
Schism and Church and blah, blah, blah. Alex couldn’t have given a smaller shit about all that if she’d gone at a turd with tweezers, but she knew better than to say so. She could tell this Zizka was high up, from the big, dark furniture in her dining room, polished by centuries of holy arses. From the great paintings of martyrs piously suffering on the high, high walls. From the plate, and the cutlery, and the candlesticks, and the candles in ’em. Gal the Purse would likely have pissed her pants at the sight of it all. Then there was the gold chain with the jewelled circle she’d so carelessly slung over the back of her chair.
You have to be rich to have a thing like that. But to be careless with it? That meant power.
Alex wouldn’t have minded sleeving a couple of pieces. Wouldn’t have been thieving at all in her book, just a noble effort at redistribution. But sadly, the dress they’d belted her into was cut more for sitting still and smiling than redistribution, and had tight sleeves.
Might be she’d spot a chance to palm a spoon or two when dessert arrived.
“The Saved must be united against the enemies of God,” the cardinal was burbling on. “Beneath the banner of the Saviour. Beneath the banner of the Pope. Ready to march all one way when the heavenly trumpets herald a new crusade, so we may drive the elves back into the abyss from whence they came!” She glared over, making Alex pause with her fork halfway to her mouth. One long drip of gravy spattered on her plate.
The cardinal had this way of looking at Alex that was making her worry this might be a sex thing after all. Priests might not be allowed to fuck, but that only seemed to encourage some of them. A servant kept drifting in from behind and pouring more wine and Alex had the same policy on drink as food so she’d sunk a few glasses. Now the room was a bit spinny and her ears were all hot and her nose had a dewy sweat on it she kept having to wipe on the back of her sleeve.
“Happy to help,” she muttered around her latest half-chewed mouthful. Much better to agree with powerful folk then weasel out later than to risk vexing ’em up front. “With the crusades… and all…”
The cardinal raised one brow. “Your commitment to the cause of the Church will be rewarded, in this world and the next.”
Alex coughed as she tried to swallow too much in one go and had to thump her breastbone then slurp some wine to wash it down. “You can hold off on the heavenly rewards,” she said, grinning, “if I can cash in on the earthly ones now, eh? Eh?” No one laughed.
Oh God, she was drunk. She thought the answer might be to drink more, and drained her glass.
“We should set out for Troy as soon as possible,” Duke Michael was saying. “My dear friend Lady Severa stayed in the city after the civil war, she served as Warden of Eudoxia’s Chamber.” He held up a folded little sheet of paper. “She’s risked everything to keep me informed ever since.” And he did what Alex had been afraid of, which was to hand the paper to her.
“Lady Severa,” she muttered, “very good. Very good.” She shook the paper open and frowned at the writing, the way she’d seen priests frown at the writing in holy books. It all looked very neat and careful but meant about as much to her as the patterns the pigeon shit made on her windowsill. “Mmm. Hmm.”
Duke Michael looked slightly pained as he leaned close, took the letter from her hand, and turned it the other way up so he could read it. “She tells me Eudoxia’s sons are moving to cement their positions. If it wasn’t for their own bitter rivalries, one of them might already—”
“What?” Alex stopped waiting for the last drops of wine to trickle into her mouth and lowered her glass. “I’ve got cousins?”
“Eudoxia’s sons. My nephews. Four dukes, and each a bigger bastard than the last. Marcian, Constans, Sabbas, and Arcadius.” He bit the names off with narrowed eyes, the way a preacher might’ve listed the deadly sins.
“Don’t they want the throne?”
“They will stop at nothing to get it,” said Cardinal Zizka.
Alex sucked half-chewed food from her teeth. Wasn’t tasting so fine as it had. “They’re dangerous?”
“Powerful men in the Empire of the East,” said Duke Michael. “Men who delighted in inflicting Eudoxia’s reign of terror on the people.”
“Men with land, and money, and influence.” The cardinal forked a piece of meat with deadly precision. “Men with soldiers, spies, and assassins at their command. Men with no care for their immortal souls. Men who will not balk—if the rumours are to be believed—at employing forbidden magic, trafficking with devils, and worse.”
“Worse?” muttered Alex.
Duke Michael was looking uncomfortable. As well he might. He’d said nothing about cousins till now, let alone forbidden magic. “My sister Eudoxia not only murdered your mother and usurped her throne, she was also a sorceress of terrible power. After she won the civil war, she founded a coven in Troy.”
“She and her apprentices performed Black Art.” Cardinal Zizka scowled down the table. “Openly, mark you! Offences against God, committed within sight of the hallowed ground wherein the heroes of the grand crusades are buried!”
Duke Michael shook his head. “Eudoxia was always obsessed with the soul.”
“That sounds…” Alex squinted. “Sort of pious?”
Zizka gave a snort of disgust. “The soul is that part of himself that God puts into each one of us. To tamper with it is the worst heresy.”
“How do you tamper with a soul?” muttered Alex, definitely not wanting the answer.
“She conducted… experiments,” said Michael.
“Obscene experiments,” said Zizka.
“She began… to combine man and beast.”
“Like a dog’s head on a man’s body?” Alex was about to laugh, then saw Zizka and Duke Michael exchange a glance to kill all humour dead. “Wait… like a dog’s head on a man’s body?”
“People are given souls,” said Duke Michael, “beasts are not. Eudoxia believed… that by fusing the flesh of the two, she could locate the soul. Release it. Capture it. Harness it.”
“She sought to enslave a splinter of God.” Cardinal Zizka glared down the table. “In fifteen years as Head of the Earthly Curia, it is the most depraved sacrilege I have heard.”
“Oh,” croaked Alex.
“Now you see, Your Highness, why we cannot suffer one of Eudoxia’s sons to sit on the Serpent Throne. Why her cursed legacy must be ripped up by the roots, and the holy ground of Troy purified once again.” She watched Alex while she chewed, looking like a woman who never bit off more than she could swallow. “It is such a brave thing you are doing, Your Highness. A noble, a righteous, and a brave thing.”
A breeze seemed to whip through the room, or at any rate Alex got goose-flesh up her arms, tight sleeves or no. “No one said I’d need to be brave,” she muttered.
“In an Empress,” said Duke Michael, “I think it goes without saying.”
“But bear in mind you are a step ahead of your cousins,” observed Cardinal Zizka. “No one outside the Celestial Palace even suspects Princess Alexia is alive, let alone found. You will approach Troy in secret, under the protection of a handpicked group. Copies of the papal bull confirming your identity will be sent ahead of you to Lady Severa, to be circulated shortly before your arrival. Until then Eudoxia’s cursed brood will be engrossed by their struggles against each other. You will fall on them like a bolt from the heavens!”
Alex didn’t feel much like lightning. “What if one of ’em wins before I get there?”
“No one denies there are risks,” said Duke Michael. “It is near a thousand miles to Troy, and we cannot be certain what support you will have when you reach the city. The stakes are huge, and our enemies powerful, and they will move heaven and earth to stop us—”
“Look, I grew up out there.” Alex jabbed at the window with her fork and a pea flew off and stuck to the wall. “In the slums. I’ve done…” None of what she’d done seemed quite right for the surroundings. “All sorts… of stuff, but I don’t know a fucking thing about being a princess—”
“I sense you are a quick study,” said the cardinal, unmoved. She struck Alex as a woman not likely to be moved by anything short of an earthquake. And probably not far even then.
“But these four cousins, with all the soldiers and the money and the land, won’t I have to fight them, sooner or—?”
“I’ll fight for you.” Duke Michael gave her an encouraging smile that made her want to pee. Or maybe that was all the wine.
“A famed hero taking your part!” said Zizka. “And you will enjoy the support of Her Holiness the Pope, and with her,” and she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, painted like a cloudy sky at twilight, hopeful rays breaking through the gloom, “the aid of the Saviour, blessed daughter of the Almighty. They may have spies and assassins, Your Highness, but you have saints and angels in your corner!”
In Alex’s experience, the Almighty sides with the favourites, and once you’re hoping for angels to even the odds you’re proper fucked. But she had a sinking feeling she’d been proper fucked for a while and had only just realised.
Duke Michael leaned towards her. “And never forget that you have something those four usurping dukes never will.”
“What’s that?” asked Alex, sounding very small.
“The right!” He thumped the table with his fist. “You are the Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos, born in the flame, and through the Oracles of the Celestial Choir endorsed by God himself!” And he hit the table even harder, making the cutlery jump. Would’ve been a good moment to palm one of those little forks but Alex hadn’t the heart.
“I’ve got the right…” She was pretty sure the right would fetch nothing on Gal the Purse’s table. She’d known there must be broken glass hidden in the cake, but she’d chomped into it even so. She’d been dazzled by the big score, so fixed on reaching for it she’d tripped over her own feet. Tripped over and straight down a mineshaft. A mineshaft filled with deadly cousins, heretical sorcery, and stolen souls.
She made one more whingeing effort. “But they’ve got sorcerers, you said, and folk who are somewhere between man and beast, and, you know, devils—”
“They do.” Cardinal Zizka smiled. It was the first time she’d done it and Alex reckoned, on balance, she’d preferred her frown. “But we have devils of our own.”
Buy the Book
The Devils
Excerpted from The Devils, copyright © 2025 by Joe Abercrombie.
So excited to find out that this is being previewed! Just found out about it now so I had six chapters to enjoy, can’t wait for the book to come out!
same here.