The Malevolent Seven

THE MALEVOLENT SEVEN Also by Sebastien de Castell The Greatcoats Series Traitor’s Blade Knight’s Shadow Saint’s Blood Tyrant’s Throne The Spellslinger Series Spellslinger Shadowblack Charmcaster Soulbinder Queenslayer Crownbreaker Way of the Argosi Fall of the Argosi This ebook published in 2023 by Jo Fletcher Books an imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK company Copyright © 2023 Sebastien de Castell The moral right of Sebastien de Castell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library HB ISBN 978 1 52942 277 1 TPB ISBN 978 1 52942 278 8 EBOOK ISBN 978 1 52942 280 1 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Ebook by CC Book Production www.quercusbooks.co.uk For Dirk Henke, a musical wonderist who put together some truly killer bands. Contents The Malevolent Seven Also By Title Copyright Dedication Real Mages Don’t Wear Funny Hats And the Walls Came Down Necessary Cruelties Everything Comes With a Price The Bat The Hanged Man A Nasty Way to Die Better a Big Betrayal than a Small One Military Indiscipline Blood Magic Bad Bargains The Canal Choosing Sides The Thing About Cosmists The Handsome Rat Beneath Red Sails Love Poems The Price and the Prize I Hate Reunions The Purpose of Angels The Breakout A Whole New Deal Walks in the Dark Voices from the Shadows Friends in Low Places The Recruit Comrades A Deal’s a Deal Travelling Companions The Blood Soot The World’s Most Aptly Named Town The Client The Red Parlay Familial Relations The First Offering The Second Offering The Revenant The Thunder The Girl and the Boy The Angel and the Rat The Demon and the Diabolic The Tunnel Complications The Walls The Thunderer’s Choice The Lightning Doorways The Pandoral The Gates Within Blood and Guts That Which is Holy Farewell The Apparatus The Virtue of Malevolence Real Heroes Don’t Name Their Swords Acknowledgements Chapter 1 Real Mages Don’t Wear Funny Hats Picture a wizard. Go ahead, close your eyes if you need to. There he is, see? Old, skinny guy with a long scraggly beard he probably trips over on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. No doubt he’s wearing some sort of iridescent silk robes that couldn’t protect his frail body from a light breeze. The hat’s a must, too, right? Big, floppy thing, covered in esoteric symbols that would reveal to every other mage which sources of magic this moron relies on for his powers? Wouldn’t want a simple steel helmet or something that might, you know, protect the part of him most needed for conjuring magical forces from being bashed in with a mace or pretty much any household object heavier than a soup ladle. Yep. Behold the mighty wizard: a stoop-backed feeb who couldn’t run up a long flight of stairs without giving himself a heart attack. Now, open your eyes and let me show you what a real war mage looks like. ‘Fall, you pasty-faced little fuckers!’ Corrigan roared as our contingent of wonderists assaulted the high citadel walls our employer had sent us to bring down ahead of his main forces. ‘Fall so that I can rip your hearts out with my bare hands and feed you to my favourite devil as an appetiser before he feasts on your miserable souls!’ Yeah, Corrigan was a real charmer all right. Big man, shoulders as broad as any soldier’s. I stood maybe half an inch taller, but in every other dimension he was my superior. The muscles on Corrigan’s forearms strained against the bejewelled gold and silver bands he always negotiated into his contracts. Tempestoral mages of his calibre have no particular use for precious metals or gemstones, but when it comes to selling his services, Corrigan likes to – in his words – ‘Remind those rich arseholes who needs who.’ ‘Watch this one, Cade!’ he shouted to me over the tumult of battle all around us. Our employer’s foot soldiers and mounted cavalry were fighting and dying to keep the enemy troops busy while we wonderists did the real damage. Corrigan’s eyes glowed the same unnerving indigo as the sparks that danced along the tightly braided curls of his hair and beard. Tendrils of black Tempestoral lightning erupted from his callused and charred palms to sizzle the air on their way to tear at stone and mortar like jagged snakes feeding on a colony of mice. He grinned at me, his white teeth in stark contrast to the ebony of his skin, then laughed as each of his fists closed around one of his lightning bolts. He began wielding them like whips, grabbing hold of the stalwart defenders atop the walls and sweeping them up into the sky before shaking them until their spines snapped. Several other poor bastards leaped to their deaths rather than waiting for Corrigan to take an interest in them. ‘We don’t get paid extra for making them shit their pants, you know,’ I reminded him, my fingers tracing misfortune sigils in the air so that the volleys of arrows the enemy fired at us missed their targets. ‘Our job is to convince them to surrender, not commit suicide.’ ‘Our job?’ The indigo braids of Corrigan’s beard rustled with the same enthusiasm his lightning snakes showed as they destroyed in minutes the gleaming, high-towered citadel that had taken hardworking masons decades to build. ‘Our