The Maleficent Seven (From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant) (4 page)

“You kill all these?” she asked, salivating.

“Not all of them,” said Tanith. “I have a friend with me. You’ll meet him later. I think you’ll like him. His name’s Dusk. He’s been cursed, too, in a way, so you’ll probably have lots in common if you... oh, Annis, please. We really don’t have time.”

Annis looked up from where she was kneeling beside the dead sorcerer, but didn’t answer. Even though she had a habit of living in ditches, she still didn’t like to speak with her mouth full. Some things were just rude.

Sabine put the ring on the table, and watched Badstreet’s eyes widen.

“Is that it?” he asked, his voice hushed. Around them, mortals laughed and joked and drank, and music played, and occasionally someone would nudge past Sabine on their way to the bar. Sabine didn’t mind. The only thing she cared about was convincing the man before her that the metal band on the table was the Ring of Salumar.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Forged in shadow and fire by the seventh son of a seventh son, a blind man who spoke with the dead. He made that ring for the great sorcerer Salumar, but on the eve of delivery, the dead came to him, and told him Salumar was going to kill him. So he hid the ring, refused to hand it over and Salumar therefore killed him. A cautionary tale for those who don’t believe that dead people can have a sense of humour. Pick it up.”

Moving slowly, reverently, Badstreet did as she told him.

“It’s heavy,” he said. “And powerful. I can feel the magic, even holding it...”

He went to put it on, but Sabine’s hand flashed, snatching the ring back. “Sorry,” she grinned. “You break it, you buy it. You know how it is.”

Badstreet’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t expect me to buy it without testing it.”

“You don’t need to test it,” she laughed. “Badstreet, come on. A sorcerer of your ability doesn’t need to slip the ring on to his finger to know the power it holds. You said so yourself, you could feel it.”

He rubbed his hand along the stubble on his jawline. “It’s like it’s calling to me.”

Sabine nodded, and did her best not to laugh. “Do you have the money?”

He hesitated, and she saw the debate going on behind his eyes. To pay, or not to pay, that was the question, and it was a debate Sabine was used to seeing. The outcome, of course, was never in question.

Badstreet passed an envelope to her beneath the table. Keeping it out of sight, Sabine opened it up and quickly counted. It certainly seemed to be all there. She nodded, pocketed the envelope, and put the ring into a small wooden box. Then she stood up, handed the box to Badstreet, and gave him her best smile.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” she said.

She walked to the back of the pub, squeezing through the throngs of people. It would take Badstreet fifteen to twenty seconds to figure out how to open the box, another ten seconds of examining the ring and savouring the power, and then a full two to three minutes before the power started to fade and he was left with a useless trinket she’d picked up from a dingy shop on the way there. Plenty of time.

She had already deactivated the alarm, so she left quietly through the fire escape door, stepping into the alley behind the pub. She turned away from the street, because that would be the direction in which Badstreet would eventually sprint, and instead walked deeper into the darkness. Another job done. Another sucker suckered. All in a night’s work.

“Such a naughty girl.”

Sabine whirled, looked up. Standing straight out from the wall above her was a blonde woman in a long leather coat.

“Good to see some things haven’t changed, though,” the woman said, slowly strolling down to street level. “You were a sneaky little thief thirty years ago and you’re a sneaky little thief now.”

Sabine tried a smile. “Hi, Tanith. Been a while.”

“It has at that,” Tanith said, hopping to the ground. She was taller than Sabine. “To be honest, I never thought you’d live this long. Sneaky little Sabine, always conning the wrong people, always getting the wrong people mad with her. I thought you’d have ended up dead in the gutter a long time before this.”

“Is that why you’re here, then? To kill me?”

“Kill you?” Tanith laughed. “Now why would I do something as mean-spirited as that?”

“I heard you’ve got a Remnant inside you.”

“True enough, but while my insides may be rotten, I still like a good reason to kill someone. It has to be either business, personal or out of sheer boredom. Do I look bored to you, Sabine?”

“So what do you want?”

Tanith’s smile was as bright and radiant as ever. “You.”

own there, in the dark and the cold, all the girl did was train.

In the mornings she trained her mind – languages and numbers and histories both known and hidden. She sat with the others in a semi-circle around the tutor, ignoring the whispers and the smirks and the laughs if ever she got a question wrong.

The afternoons were for training of a different sort. That was when they fought and climbed and ran and swam. That was when their muscles were stretched and torn and built up again, when their bodies were taught how to move independently of their minds. Muscle memory, the tutors called it. Making fighting second nature. Making killing an instinct.

The girl didn’t like the idea of killing, even while she recognised it would have to be a necessary part of her training. The others claimed they didn’t mind it. Avaunt even insisted she was looking forward to her first kill – then she’d always glance at the girl and everyone else would laugh. Avaunt kept up the act until the morning when she was called away by Quoneel.

When she returned, her robe was drenched in blood and her face was pale. Her eyes were wide and wet. The girl found her later, sobbing quietly in a dark corner. Avaunt looked up and called her Highborn again, called her worse names until the girl walked away and left her to her tears.

The girl wasn’t looking forward to her first kill.

Quoneel took her out of lessons one day, and the girl followed dutifully after him, her belly in knots. They came to a small room where a woman was chained to a wall. She was the first person not dressed in robes that the girl had seen in a long, long time.

“Who are you?” the woman asked, frightened. Her hair was brown. She was slightly overweight. She looked the same age as the girl’s own mother. “What do you want? If you let me go, I won’t tell the police, I swear.”

Quoneel handed the girl a dagger. “Kill her,” he said.

The woman’s eyes widened. The girl looked at the dagger.

“I can’t,” she said.

“But this is what you’ve been training for,” said Quoneel. “When you are a hidden blade, you will claim many lives. This will be your first.”

“But I don’t even know this woman,” said the girl.

“Your name,” said Quoneel. “Loudly now, so the girl can hear.”

“Tanith,” said the woman. “Tanith Woodall. I have a son and daughter and they need me. Please. Please let me go back to them.”

“There,” said Quoneel. “Now you know her. Will taking her life be easier now?”

The girl shook her head. “She hasn’t done anything to me. She hasn’t hurt me. I can’t just kill her.”

“You can. It’s quite easy.”

“But why?”

“Because, as a hidden blade, you must kill those you are told to kill. And I am telling you to kill this woman.”

Quoneel clicked his fingers and the chains holding the woman to the wall sprang open. The woman stumbled a little, rubbing her wrists, free but still terrified.

“Master, please...”

“I ask you, child, what use is a killer who cannot kill?”

The girl swallowed. “No use, Master.”

“No use indeed. Since you joined us, you have been tested every day in every way. Every question we ask is a test. Every task you are given is a test. But none of those tests would end in your death were you to fail them. This is the first real test you’ve been given. Think carefully on how you wish to proceed.”

“If... if I could just have a little more time,” said the girl.

“To do what?”

“To prepare. To get myself ready.”

“I see. So if we were to delay this test for six months or so, maybe a year, do you think you would be ready then?”

“Maybe,” said the girl. Then she nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

“Well,” said Quoneel, “it wouldn’t be much of a test then, would it?”

The woman was sobbing now, quiet little sobs that moved her shoulders.

“I can’t kill her,” the girl explained.

“Then I will,” said her master. “And before her heart has stopped beating I will have killed you, also.”

The girl gripped the knife. “I’d fight you.”

“You’d lose. This woman will die today whatever you decide. Make the right choice and kill her quickly. If I have to do it, I’ll chop her into little bits and she’ll die screaming.”

The girl looked at the sobbing woman, and tears came to her own eyes. “Please don’t make me...”

“I am sorry, child,” said Quoneel. “But this is something you must do.”

The woman lunged suddenly for the door, knocking Quoneel to the side, and barrelled straight towards the girl, her face twisted in desperation and rage. She ran into the girl and stopped, and the girl stepped away, her hand empty. The woman looked down at the dagger in her belly. She sobbed again, and her legs collapsed from under her. She sat on the ground and shook her head.

“No,” the woman said quietly. “No, please... not me...”

She sobbed, and took a short, rattling breath, and when she breathed out, she leaned over until her head rested on the ground. She didn’t move, and she didn’t take another breath.

The girl looked at her hands. No blood on them. All the woman’s blood was leaking to the floor. She could hear it drip. But none on her hands. Her hands were clean. She didn’t think that was right. They should be stained red. She thought about kneeling down, putting her hands in the growing pool of blood, but the idea, the very idea, was making something rise up in her mind, something dark and ugly and scared, and it made her body shake and the tears flow.

“You’ve done well,” said Quoneel. “Your lessons for today are at an end. You are dismissed.”

She ran from the room, tears blurring her vision.

The next morning Quoneel sat next to her as she ate. The girl wasn’t used to people sitting next to her.

“Some of the children said they heard you crying last night,” he said, his voice quiet but casual, like he was just asking her to pass the bread.

The girl said nothing.

“Is this true?” Quoneel asked. “Were you crying in your room, child?”

“You made me kill someone.”

“Yes, I did. Is that why you wept?”

“I thought we only killed bad people. That’s what you said. That’s what you told me.”

Quoneel shook his head. “I said we kill people for a reason. If you chose to understand that as only killing the wicked, then how can I be held responsible?”

“But if we kill good people, then we can’t be good.”

Quoneel smiled. “We have a code. We have guidelines. We kill people who deserve death. But sometimes those who deserve death are not wicked people.”

“My brother would never kill an innocent person.”

“You don’t know your brother.”

“I know him better than you,” she said, anger flushing her face. “He’s good and he’s a hero and he helps people.”

“He helps people, this is true. As do we all. That is why we’re here, we knives in the shadows. To help people.”

“Then why did you make me kill an innocent person?”

“To see if you would. To see if you could. You passed that test. The first time is always the hardest. It will be easier from now on.”

“I’m not killing any more innocent people.”

Quoneel smiled again. “You haven’t killed
any
innocent people, child. That woman murdered her husband.” A long pause. “You look surprised. You think all murderers look like murderers? You think they plot and scheme and twirl moustaches? She poisoned her husband to be rid of him and to get his money. She deserved death.”

“What... what will happen to her children?”

“The mortals know how to deal with things like this. The children will be taken care of.”

The girl looked down at her plate. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would it have made it easier to kill a murderer?”

The girl paused. “Yes.”

“Then what kind of test would it have been?” Quoneel asked.