The Maleficent Seven

“Yeah?” Jack said. “And who might that be?”

Black Annis had had an ignominious end. There weren’t many who could survive an encounter with her, not once she was mad and her skin was turning blue and her teeth were growing long and jagged. Her fingernails had silenced many a last scream and her jaws had clamped round many a throat. She was a people-eater, and had never seen anything wrong with that, and for most of her life she’d lived in one ditch or other, or a cave if she was lucky, its ground littered with the bones of her victims. Apart from one particular idiot who used to scurry around after her, no one who entered her lair had ever emerged.

Until the blonde. Until the blonde in the brown leather. And before Annis had known what the hell was happening, she was hog-tied and helpless and the blonde in the brown leather was smiling down at her.

Just like she was now.

Annis sat up in her narrow bed, in her cell that was far too cramped and far too bright. There was a toilet against one wall and a sink against another. She’d never needed a toilet or a sink when she was living in her ditch. That, she supposed, was the sole advantage of living in a ditch.

“Hi,” said the blonde. She stood there in the open doorway, smiling, with that sword strapped to her back and all that brown leather barely keeping her in.

“You’re looking well,” said the blonde. Tanith Low, her name was. “Better than the last time I saw you, anyway. At least you’re not wearing a sack.”

Annis looked at her, but didn’t move to get off the bed. “They starve me here.”

“No, they don’t. They feed you.”

“I eat people. They don’t give me people to eat. They give me animals. That’s barbaric. At least people have a fighting chance to get away. The animals they give me are already dead. It’s sickening, is what it is.”

“Annis, you’re a unique individual, which is why I’m here.”

“I should rip your throat out.”

“And if you could grow those sharp nails of yours, I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem for you. But you can’t. You’re stuck here in this little cell, your powers bound and your life drifting away from you. And let’s face it, Annis, you’re not getting any younger.”

“Is that why you’re here? To gloat?”

“Not at all. You see, the last time we met, I was the old me. But now I’m the new me, and the new me sees things differently from the old me. The new me would never have arrested you and dragged you from that ditch. And what a splendid ditch it was. Tell me something – did you like living in ditches?”

Annis glowered.

“I’m not trying to poke fun, honest I’m not. I don’t think you did like living in ditches. I think it’s just something you had to do because of your... condition.” Tanith smiled gently. “What if I told you that I knew of a cure?”

Annis frowned. “Cure for what?”

“For what ails you. For your curse.”

“A cure for my curse? There is no cure for my curse. I don’t have a curse. I was born this way. This is natural.”

“Annis, you don’t know what you are, do you? You don’t know why your skin turns blue or why your nails grow long and you don’t know why you’d turn to stone if sunlight hit you.”

“Yeah?” Annis said with a sniff. “And I suppose you do?”

“Actually, yes,” Tanith said, “I do.”

“You’re lying.”

“I have access to certain files and documents, and one of these files is about you. You were cursed, Annis. It’s why you’re the way you are. And there is a cure. But if you want it, you have to do something for me first.”

“Like what?”

“I’m putting together a group of special individuals with unique talents, and I want you to be part of it.”

“You want me to be in your gang? I eat people.”

“The new me doesn’t care,” Tanith said. “Eat whomever you want. Apart from the other members of the team, obviously. That would be inconvenient. Just do what I say, and when our job is done, you’ll be set free and you’ll get the cure. The rest of your life is yours to live, however you want to live it. May I suggest not living it in a ditch?”

Annis stood. She wasn’t a tall woman, so still had to look up. “You say you’ve changed. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Do you know what a Remnant is, Annis? I’ve got one of them inside me, permanently bonded to my soul. I’m a changed woman.”

“So you’d be breaking me out of here, is that it?”

“That’s it exactly. Providing you agree to my conditions.”

Annis looked at her for a long while. “If you bust me out of here, you have a deal.”

“Oh, good,” Tanith said, grinning. “Come on.”

She turned and walked out, and Annis hesitated. If this was some sort of trap, she couldn’t see the point of it. So she followed.

“We’re lucky,” Tanith was saying as she walked. “They didn’t put you in a top-security gaol. Don’t get me wrong, Annis, you’re a dangerous lady, you truly are. But prisons like these are designed to keep in prisoners who aren’t really smart enough to try to escape.”

Annis was barely listening. Her body tingled as her magic returned. It was such a wonderful feeling it almost took the breath from her. She could grow her fingernails and swipe that pretty blonde head from those pretty broad shoulders if she so wanted. But then what? She didn’t know where the hell she was. She didn’t know how the hell she’d get out.

They passed a man on the ground with his throat torn open. Another up ahead, and beside him, a woman. Annis’s stomach rumbled.

“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.

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.

“Luv a duck,” he said, “is this meetin’ gonna come to bleedin’ order before or after we all die of old age?”

At the head of the table, Tanith sat and smiled. Billy-Ray Sanguine stood behind her with his square jaw and his sunglasses.

“Before we begin,” Tanith said, “I’d just like to tell you all how much I appreciate your help in this matter. I know you’re all going to receive a reward when it’s over, but I like to think that you’re helping me because you see a person who needs help, and out of the goodness of your hearts you decided to pitch in.”

The others looked at her, saying nothing. Undeterred, Tanith continued.

“What we have here is a mission. Missions are exciting. You should look on this whole thing as an adventure, and just have fun.”

Again, everyone looked at her. Like she was nuts.

Big, bright smile. “I have a friend who’ll be arriving sometime over the next year or so,” said Tanith. “She’s awesome, and she’ll do some pretty awesome things. But there’ll be a lot of people who will want to hurt my friend, and they’ll use four God-Killer weapons to do that.”