Derek Landy - The Maleficent Seven

“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.

nnis had never been a people person, unless ‘people person’ was defined as a person who ate people. She had spent most of her childhood miserable and alone while the other children in her village threw stones at her and called her names. Her teenage years had been typically awkward as a result, and then she ate everyone in her village so the opportunity for decent conversation became decidedly slimmer. When she was sixteen, the sun started to turn her to stone, so her entire adult life was spent in a variety of caves and ditches where her only source of friendship had been Scrannal, an idiot. So being in a room with other people was an unusual and unsettling development, and one which she hadn’t planned on... and then he walked in.

Annis felt her heart surge in her chest. Her belly squirmed like it was filled with a hundred undigested snakes. She felt blood rush to her face and hoped desperately that she wasn’t turning blue. Was this it? Was this what so many of her screaming victims referred to as ‘love’? Was this what they felt for the names they cried out as she devoured them?

He was tall, dark, and handsome. He had a quality about him, a mysterious, brooding quality that she found intoxicating. She could stare into his eyes and be lost forever. He didn’t bother sitting. She saw that he wasn’t wearing shoes. Another thing to love about this beautiful creature, this thing, this Springheeled Jack.

Black Annis was a weird one. Sabine didn’t know what to make of her. She’d heard the stories, of course. Knew what Annis was capable of. But the stories she’d heard were of a wild woman with jagged teeth and jagged nails and impenetrable blue skin. The person seated across from her wasn’t blue. She was squat in both frame and face, and her long, untamed hair was streaked with grey. She was somewhere over two hundred years old and Sabine reckoned she could see every one of those years etched into the lines around her mouth and eyes and on her forehead and... good God, this woman’s lines had lines. She looked her age and then some, unlike sorcerers and certain other creatures who had a pleasing habit of retaining their youth. Like vampires.

Sabine didn’t like vampires. They were too still, like statues. And the way they moved was unnatural. No living thing should be that graceful. But there he sat, the vampire, with his beautiful face marred by a single scar. He wasn’t even breathing. At least, she didn’t think he was. It was hard to tell.

Her eyes drifted from Dusk to Springheeled Jack, a creature who couldn’t seem to stay still. When he was in his chair, the hardened nails of his long fingers beat a rapid rhythm against the tabletop, but only moments would pass before he was on his feet again, pacing up and down like he was waiting for someone to let him out of his cage. And he stank . His clothes, which looked like he’d robbed them off the corpse of a Victorian gentleman, were musty, and he smelled of stale body odour. His face was long and lined and his hair – when he finally took off that battered top hat – was lank and greasy. He’d only said a few words to her so far, but they were accompanied by breath so foul she thought she might gag. And he spoke in a London accent so ridiculous she thought he was having her on.