Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

An aura of utter disbelief still hung about the refugees. Only five days ago they had watched Ironport burn, seen their livelihoods destroyed and their family and friends slaughtered. In the space of an hour they had lost everything but their lives. Some whispered horrific stories of witnessing the Skallgrim shaman summoning daemons and allowing them to gorge on living human flesh.

Strictly speaking Ironport was a member of the Free Towns alliance and no longer part of the crumbling Setharii empire, but blood sorcery was an abomination, and I wondered if even the eternally bickering magi of the Arcanum political elite would be forced into taking action. After all, it was the lust for that vile power that caused the fall of the ancient empire of Escharr – the mightiest empire the world had ever known – and plunged humanity into a dark age of slaughter. Sorcerers had sacrificed untold thousands to sate their addiction to magic. The Arcanum had to recognize the danger the Skallgrim now posed.

Still, in my experience the councillors of the Arcanum would probably debate such hefty and urgent matters for years while the bureaucrats of the Administratum, the heads of the High Houses, and the high priests of the gods quietly ran the lesser affairs of the city: the likes of road and well maintenance, trade fees, crime and fire and plague prevention. A mageocracy like the Setharii Empire was probably not the most efficient of governments, but nobody else could ever dream of controlling the hundreds of Gifted throughout the empire. Without the Arcanum we would still be living in muddy huts and small villages like the Skallgrim, a mass of squabbling tribes loosely controlled by Gifted shaman wearing bits of dead animals on their heads and shouting at spirits. The Arcanum was a necessary evil. Now if only a god would show up and kick their arses into action, as they did on rare occasions when they deemed it important enough – even the mighty Arcanum dared not disobey the gods.

A yellow-robed priest of Derrish, the Gilded God claimed as the figurehead of Setharii commerce for obscure historical reasons I couldn’t care less about, shuffled into line behind the pimple-faced pompous prick of a nobleman I’d taken to thinking of as Lord Arse due to the amount of absolute shite he talked. I watched the priest look back over the sea towards Ironport, his haggard face tightening as this jumped-up lordling of some minor house began spouting more crap about his family’s extensive holdings in Setharis, of how Ironport’s fall wasn’t a total loss for him.

As the gangplank thudded down onto the rain-slick jetty Lord Arse strode to the front of the queue, his two retainers pushing the riffraff out of his way. He began whining at a leather-faced sailor, demanding to be let off immediately. Nobility and all that. Then the Arcanum magus walked straight past him to the front of the queue. Lord Arse ground his teeth but gave way. He wasn’t brave or stupid enough to risk igniting the volatile temperament of a pyromancer. After five days of my baiting and mental conditioning this brat was taut as a bow-string and ready to snap. Perfect timing. I shuffled up behind him and smiled at his belt. The idiot had left his purse tied there in full view of any would-be thief; he would need to learn quickly in Setharis. I slipped a nasty little present into it.

There was no way of totally avoiding detection by the sniffer on guard duty, but I could direct their sight elsewhere. My poncy tailored clothes were all well and good, but even after ten years some of the sniffers on gate duty might still recognize the unique scent of my magic if we came face to face. Better to keep my head down and hide amongst the herd while they focused on some other well-deserving git.

Lord Arse glanced back, frowning, but his eyes slid right over me. To him I was a nobody, just another hollow-eyed and newly-paupered merchant from Ironport bewildered by recent events. Under that perfectly boring mask though, I smiled on the inside.

At a nod from the captain, the sailor began ushering us down the gangplank. The rain died off as we hustled along the jetty in a disorganized mass and slogged along the muddy track leading to Pauper’s Gate. It was a huge relief to have solid ground underfoot but my stomach still felt like it was pitching up and down. Weathered old men and women busy gutting fish paused to eye us dully as we passed their small shacks clustered around the warehouses. Drunken sailors crowded into makeshift drinking dens waved cups of grog and called us over for games of dice and the exchange of news. Some of the refugees drifted towards them; I suspected they’d wake up in the gutter the next morning, naked, penniless and feeling rough as a badger’s arse.

It was hard to imagine how this once-great city had looked when it had been the heart of an actual empire. All we had left was the southern half of Kaladon and a few far-flung colonies that drained coffers and barracks alike. The Free Towns had seceded before I’d been born, but some old folk still remembered, and lamented, that last gasp of imperial rule. Ancient gods of Setharis aside, the Arcanum’s elder magi were the only ones who remembered the city at the height of its power, before it became this lice-infested midden-heap.

Gulls wheeled above the docks, trailing in the wake of fishing boats offloading their hauls, screeching and cackling, diving down to fight over stinking piles of guts heaped outside the shacks. Unlike other ports, the gulls didn’t infest Setharis itself – the corvun saw to that. Akin to a cross between a sea eagle and giant crow, the corvun were the colour of deepest night, as vicious as debt collectors, and as cunning as any street urchin. They were found nowhere else in the world. One of the evil-eyed birds perched atop the fortified gatehouse we were making for, busy tearing chunks from a gull’s splayed belly. I glowered at a message daubed across the wall below it in bold red paint, barely legible: “Skinner’s gonna get you.”

Through the open gatehouse doorway, I glimpsed the wardens on guard duty yawning and rising from their benches, grabbing halberds to block the path. An Arcanum sniffer joined them, looking very grand in robes emblazoned with arcane symbols. That was half the battle with the subtle arts of suggestion: if somebody believed your power would work on them then self-suggestion dictated that it usually did. It was the difference between being confronted by a child waving a carrot and somebody dressed like an Arcanum magus pointing a sparking wand of glowing crystal at your face. One was far more likely to fuck you over than the other.

It took some blocking and shoving through the crowd to get ahead of Lord Arse. I ended up third in the queue for the gate, seeing no point attracting attention by being the first to be questioned and processed, and in any case that honour always belonged to magi. The pyromancer waved a parchment stamped with the wax seal of the Arcanum and walked straight past the guards to converse with the sniffer. They exchanged pleasantries while his papers were verified. The sniffer scrutinized him for traces of unfamiliar or dangerous magic and then waved him past. Ostensibly, nobody escaped their checks, not even the Archmagus himself, the head of the empire. It was far too dangerous to allow blood sorcerers or the magically-corrupted into the city, and any unregistered Gifted would be arrested and tried by the Arcanum unless they carried diplomatic papers from other lands. I could well imagine what they would do if they discovered a rogue magus like me standing before them.

The ragged young man next in line became irate as he argued about paying the gate tax. The guards were having none of it, told him to bugger off back to the docks and beg for work if he didn’t have the coin.

Just then the ground began to tremble, buildings creaking, the gatehouse doors and portcullis rattling their fixings. The guards glanced up at the wall as dust and stone chips rained down. It was over in a moment, but the ragged young man ahead of me took advantage of their distraction to make a run for Pauper’s Gate.