The Maleficent Seven (From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant) (7 page)

Her good mood evaporating, Tanith fought through the pain in her head and pushed herself up, swayed a little, and went straight for the Ripper. She yanked him away from Jack who went to his knees, gasping for air. The Ripper’s elbow collided with the side of Tanith’s face. He followed with a punch that she dodged, but her bare feet slipped on the wet surface and she went down. She crossed her arms, blocking his kick, catching the glint of the sickle blade a moment before it slashed at her.

She threw herself back, head over heels, coming up to a crouch in time to see the sickle arcing in to take her head. She was up, both hands blocking the sickle hand, her fingers wrapping round his wrist, and she was jumping, her strong legs folding beneath her as she used his wrist as a fulcrum on which her whole body spun. Her shins smashed into his jaw. He bent over backwards, all strength leaving him even as she was landing. Her feet touched down, but she slipped again and fell into Sanguine’s arms.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m here to save you.”

“I’m so lucky I have you,” she replied, disentangling herself from his hands. “Jack, you OK?”

Jack spat over the side of the boat. “Nearly choked the life out of me, the git. And me with so much to live for.” He stood up, and looked around. “Where’s Sabine?”

Sabine pulled herself out of the water behind him, and glared up as she hung there. “You spat on me.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “Sorry.” He held out a hand. Sabine hesitated, regarding the gnarled fingers and long nails warily, and then allowed him to help her up.

“What are we going to do with him?” she asked, looking at the unconscious Ripper. “If we let him go, he’ll tell Starke we stole the dagger, but if we keep him prisoner, we’ll have to take him everywhere with us.”

Tanith pretended to mull it over. “That’s a good question, Sabine. Whatever shall we do with this most unexpected of guests? Billy-Ray, do you have any ideas?”

“I may have one,” Sanguine said, taking out his straight razor and cutting the Ripper’s throat.

Sabine stumbled back. “What are you doing?” she cried. “You can’t just murder people! What the hell are you doing?”

“Murdering people,” Sanguine answered.

Sabine took two steps and shoved Sanguine. “He was unconscious! He was unconscious and defenceless and you murdered him!”

Sanguine grinned as Sabine shoved him again.

“Sabine,” Tanith said, “Sanguine did what had to be done. We can’t leave witnesses. You said it yourself − we couldn’t release him or take him with us.”

“I’m out,” Sabine said. “I didn’t agree to this. I steal things and I cheat people, but I don’t kill anyone.”

“No one’s asking you to,” said Tanith gently. “And it’s because we have you on the team that we can do this with as few deaths as possible. If we didn’t have you, we’d be going in guns blazing, killing whoever got in our way. Sabine, you’re what some people call a godsend. You’re a good influence on the rest of us. We can’t afford to lose you.”

“Then you promise me, right here, that there won’t be any more killing from now on.”

Tanith’s face took on a pained expression. “I can’t do that, Sabine.”

“Then I’m out.”

“Sabine,” Tanith said, “please.”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “Don’t go. We’re a good team, you and me.”

Sabine frowned. “Us two? We’re not a team.”

“Ain’t we?” asked Jack, actually sounding surprised. He looked at Tanith. “Ain’t we?”

She ignored him. “Sabine, I can make you a promise, but it’s not the one you want. I can promise you that we will only kill to defend ourselves. That’s fair, isn’t it? That’s reasonable?”

Sabine pushed her wet hair back off her face. She chewed her lip. “No more killing unconscious people,” she said.

Tanith nodded. “Agreed. Billy-Ray?”

Sanguine held up three fingers. “Scout’s honour.”

“And no killing innocent people,” said Sabine.

“I agree to that in principle,” said Tanith, “providing you understand that some people just have it coming.”

Jack nodded. “Innocent is a murky area where killin’ is concerned.”

Tanith stepped forward, took Sabine’s hands in hers and looked into her eyes. “Sabine, are you with us? We need you with us. I can’t do this without you.”

Sabine didn’t answer for a while, but it didn’t matter. Tanith knew she had her.

“I’m with you,” Sabine said eventually, and Tanith hugged her.

“Thank you,” Tanith whispered. She broke off, found a towel and handed it to Sabine. “OK, now we’ve got to concentrate on finding a place to dump the body. Until it’s recovered, Johann will hopefully think that I eloped with his bodyguard. It should give us plenty of time to get the other three weapons.”

“Which one are we going after next?” asked Sabine, sitting on the edge of the boat as it started up.

“The bow,” Tanith told her. “It’s in the possession of some rather unscrupulous people.”

“There might be some violence,” Sanguine said over his shoulder as he steered. “There might be some blood needs spilling.”

“Criminal blood,” Tanith said quickly. “Bad guy blood. Not innocent blood.”

“And you have my solemn oath,” Jack said, patting Sabine’s shoulder, “that I will only kill those what are awake, and if they ain’t awake, I swear to you that I’ll wake ’em up and
then
kill ’em, or kill ’em as they’re wakin’, dependin’ on the situation and what course is called for. But they will be awake, on that you have my word.”

Sabine sighed.

ravity is a fickle mistress,” Quoneel said. “With the right wink and the right smile, small pockets of it can be persuaded to shift to altogether new positions. Wall-Walking is not about sticking to walls or ceilings. It is simply about not falling from them.”

The girl raised her foot, placed it flat on the wall in front of her. She focused on the weight of her supporting leg.

“But this is not an easy discipline to master,” Quoneel continued, walking behind her. “Are you sure it’s the one for you?”

“I’m sure.”

“There is no need to be hasty. Did I ever tell you about Vindick Leather?”

“Who?”

“He’s a sorcerer I know of,” said Quoneel. “He worships the Faceless Ones, but was born too late to fight in the war. All he ever talks about, though, is the next war, when Nefarian Serpine leads the faithful to victory. Before his surge, he reasoned that the most common discipline of magic being practised was Elemental, and he decided the most damaging aspect of Elemental magic was fire. So he ensured that fire would never harm him.

“Apparently you can set him on fire from head to toe and it would do absolutely no damage. But there is a flaw. There is no discipline that does not have a weak point. The danger of focusing on one aspect to the exclusion of all others is that the weak point tends to grow. He had no idea when he set himself on this course, because from what I’ve heard he has never been the brightest of sorcerers.”

“What is his weak point?”

“Water.”

“That’s it? Just water?”

“He can’t be submerged in it. Apparently he has to stand whenever he takes a bath. If he is completely submerged in water even for an instant, something bad will happen.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” said Quoneel. “But something bad. The point of the story is that he made a decision early on and he is now stuck with that decision. There is nothing he can do to change it now. When you were a child, what did you dream of?”

“I wanted to be an Elemental,” the girl said truthfully.

“And then?” Quoneel asked. “As your horizons broadened, and you encountered more and more branches of Adept magic?”

“An Energy-Thrower,” she said. “Or a Teleporter.”

“Ah,” said Quoneel. “A Teleporter. What could be more useful for a knife in the shadows than the ability to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye? A dying art, some might say. But you dismissed this notion also?”

The girl nodded. “I want to walk on walls,” she said.

“Why?”

She hesitated. “So I can strike from above. So I can attack without warning.”

“No, these are not your reasons.”

“You’re distracting me from my lesson.”

“Why do you want to walk on walls?”

The girl returned her foot to the floor and sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You must have a reason.”

“Because it’s useful,” she said. “And it’s unexpected. And in a fight, you’d have the advantage. Everyone else fights with their feet on the ground. If you can make them fight you sideways, or fight you as you hang upside down, they’re never going to get comfortable.”

The master nodded thoughtfully. “And your real reason for wanting to walk on walls?”

“Because no one else is doing it!” she blurted. “All the others are choosing disciplines to help them kill. So what? We’re being
trained
to kill. We’re going to kill,
anyway
− we don’t need to do it by shooting energy from our fingertips. For an assassin to choose a discipline like that is... is...”

“Redundant,” said Quoneel.

“Yes,” she said.

“I agree with you completely.”

“You do?”

“Of course. What’s the point of being a hidden blade if you attack with a clumsy old club? Where’s the subtlety? Where’s the finesse? Your friends have sadly missed the point.”

“They’re not my friends.”

“Ah, yes. They still call you Highborn, don’t they?”

“I don’t talk like I used to. I don’t walk around all proud and bright like I used to. But they won’t stop calling me that name.”

“What age are you now, girl? Thirteen? It’s past time you took on a name of your own.”

“I’ll take my name when I’m ready,” the girl said. “I won’t do it just to stop them teasing me.”

Quoneel smiled.

“But why don’t you tell them?” she asked. “If they’re choosing the wrong disciplines, why don’t you just make a list of the right ones and let them pick?”

“It is not our place,” the master said. “We can only hope that through our teachings and our guidance, the appropriate disciplines will become obvious. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Avaunt said she’s going to be an Energy-Thrower,” said the girl.

Quoneel smiled again. “Another one who has missed the point. She will make an excellent assassin, however. They all will. But none of them will rise beyond merely excellent.”

“Will I?”

“That, I cannot say. You might, provided you live long enough. We never stop learning, in truth. You study here until your Surge, then you rejoin the world outside as one of us, and you grow older and more powerful and more accomplished... And if you’re lucky, you see out your life back here, speaking these same words to some other young girl or boy, hundreds of years from now.” He laughed when he saw her expression. “I assure you, it is a lot more rewarding than it sounds.”

“If you say so.”

“Let us return to your lesson, then. Enough idle talk from an idle fool. Put your foot up on the wall. First you learn to stand sideways. Then you learn to stand upside down.”

Quoneel was not the only master to teach her. Sometimes the girl was introduced to sorcerers whose task it was to teach her one single thing in a day. Sometimes a week. Sometimes a month. Sometimes an hour. It wasn’t just magic or combat, either. There was a man who taught her forgery. A woman who taught her carpentry. She was taught about engines and astronomy and how to pick pockets. There was a woman who taught her everything about women and a woman who taught her everything about men. And then there was a man who taught her about locks.

His name was Audoen, and he was a Wall-Walker. He asked her to open a door and she tried, but it was locked. She told him so and he nodded, then pressed his hand to the lock and it clicked open.

“How did you do that?” the girl asked.

Audoen smiled. “You have undoubtedly heard the phrase ‘branches of magic’, yes? Picture a tree. Elemental magic is one branch. Necromancy is another. So-called Energy-Throwing is yet another. There are many, many branches on this tree. With me so far?”

“Yes,” the girl said. “I’m not stupid.”

He laughed. “On each of these branches there are, shall we say, twigs. Because these ‘twigs’ are so low-key and in most cases passive, learning one or two of them does not interfere with your chosen discipline. For Wall-Walkers, the ability to open locks and seal doorways is a twig you can either ignore, or take advantage of. Because of the work we do, having such a talent can benefit us greatly.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Are you sure? It may only be a simple twig on the tree of magic, but even so it will take time to master, and you have a lot of work to do.”

“Teach me,” the girl said. “I can handle it.”