Managing death sds-2

by Trent Jamieson

  I get out of the chair, with a little help from Lissa.

  'Sorry,' I say to my crew. 'You all party on. Really, it's OK. Someone turn up the music.'

  As inspirational speeches go it really doesn't cut it.

  Lissa wipes some more blood from my face. 'Steven, most bosses just get drunk and flirt with their staff at Christmas parties.'

  Tim belts back up the stairs, panting. Oscar's behind him looking very pissed off. Tim passes me my phone. It's whole again. I blink at it. I can see where the glass front is finishing healing itself: the tiniest tracework of cracks. Must be a cracker of a twenty-four month plan.

  'Rillman's gone,' Tim says. 'There's just the chair, and blood.' He looks from me to Lissa and back. His eyes are frantic. I can tell he wants to hit something. 'You poor bastard.'

  I don't have time or the energy to comfort him. 'The guy was out cold when I left him.'

  'Well, he's not there now.'

  I look up at Oscar he's only just getting off his mobile. 'What happened? How did he -'

  'Rillman, it has to be him, he killed Jacob. Stabbed, in his own house.'

  'So who was it that I was talking to in my office?'

  'I don't know.'

  'That's reassuring.'

  'Look, someone died today,' Oscar says. 'I'm going to find the bastard who did this and there will be payback. No one does this to one of my crew.'

  I nod, a bit woozy with lack of blood. I know how he feels. I'm mad enough about this as it is, but if Rillman had tortured anyone else I would not be able to express my rage. At least physical damage is only going to be a memory to me.

  Poor Jacob is dead and gone and, for all I know, he wasn't even properly pomped. That's too high a price.

  'He was working for me, too,' I say. 'We'll both make the bastard pay.'

  A thought strikes me. A dark one. 'Do you have a photo of Jacob?'

  Oscar nods, fiddles with his mobile and passes it to me. The face I'm staring at is the face of the man who hit me. This is not good.

  'That's him, the man who attacked me.'

  Oscar shakes his head. 'Couldn't be. He's been dead for twelve hours.'

  Great, Rillman can change his appearance. The question is, can he change his appearance only to those who are dead? Or are all the living open to him as well?

  Just where might Rillman be now?

  My gaze shifts from Oscar to Tim and Lissa, then to the crowd of Pomps around me.

  Paranoia plus.

  16

  'Didn't I tell you to keep out of trouble?' Dr Brooker grunts, looking at my hand. The finger has melded nicely. Not bad for a couple of hours. The wound in my leg is scabbed up too. He looks from me to Lissa and Tim. 'I did tell him to keep out of trouble.'

  I'm on a drip, blood filling my veins. I'm on my second bag, and I'm starting to feel great. Brooker had nearly fainted at the sight of me. Anyone else and I would have been dead, or at the very least in a coma, he reckons.

  'This is getting irritating,' I say.

  'It'd be rather more fatal than irritating if you weren't who you are. So it's definitely Rillman?' Tim says.

  'Yeah, but I still can't understand why he did it. I mean, I can't have pissed him off. The bastard doesn't know me.' Rillman may not be the first person who has wanted to torture me, but he's certainly been the first to try.

  'I think Rillman's testing the limits of your abilities. Trying to find out what can kill you.'

  'Neill said that Rillman's been a thorn in Mortmax's side for a while.'

  'Not here,' Tim says. 'There's no record of a Rillman for years in our system.' He sighs. 'Do you think that perhaps the Orcus are using you to draw Rillman out? I mean, there are links, plenty of them. If Rillman's seeking an end to the status quo you would be attractive to him.'

  I chew on that for a while. 'Yeah, I'm new to my powers. I don't have any allies as such.'

  'And you managed what he failed to do,' Lissa says. 'You brought someone back from Hell.'

  'You pomped him. You said he seemed calm.'

  Lissa nods. 'Maybe resigned is the better term. Most dead people are that. Perhaps he had decided on his plan of action. Maybe he was seeking me out. Death would be an easy way of doing that. He knows how we work, and it seems no real obstacle to him.'

  'Think about that,' I say. 'Think about how reckless you might be if death holds no fear, no real consequence, and you want revenge.'

  'It might make you willing to experiment more. Particularly in unconventional ways of killing an RM,' Tim says.

  'You're telling me that no one has ever tried to kill an RM before?'

  Tim rolled his eyes. 'Well, obviously they have, but without success, unless it's part of a Schism, killing off an RM's Pomps, weakening them until they're able to be killed. It's messy, convoluted and can really only happen inhouse. Remember, as you've probably read in my briefing notes,' Tim says, giving me a stern look, 'RMs give Pomps the ability to pomp. You turn them into the doorway that gives access to the Underworld and closes out Stirrers, but they also give you something in return. Through them you are able to shift, to heal. One of the reasons the party was so subdued had to do with the amount of energy all of us were expending to keep you alive.'

  'That, and the music, I mean those Christmas carols were tragic!' I say. Lissa glares at me, reminds me to stay on track. Tim shakes his head, but continues.

  'Rillman is obviously aiming at non-traditional methods.'

  I remember Mr D's words about a paradigm shift back when Morrigan was around. 'He's trying to effect a change. A real change to the system.'

  Tim nods. 'You'd have to admit that killing an RM without destroying their Pomps is a much less bloody transition.' He grins. 'I hate to say it, Steve, but if it's going to come down to me getting it and you getting it, or just you getting it, I know what I'd rather -'

  'Hey!'

  He raises his hands in the air. 'With the proviso that I can get my revenge. I'm in no hurry to lose any more of my family.'

  'So why would Rillman want to get rid of me? I can't believe it's just because I succeeded in my Orpheus Manoeuvre and he didn't.' But I can believe that, part of me at least. If I had failed, and for a while I thought I had, bitterness would poison me.

  'Did Morrigan have any allies? Maybe Rillman was one of them,' Tim says

  'No, I don't think so. Morrigan ended all his allegiances brutally. By the Negotiation I think his allies and enemies were indistinguishable.'

  Tim nods. 'Even the Stirrers were working against him.'

  'What we need to do is find Rillman before he actually succeeds in killing me. As well as organise a Death Moot, run Mortmax efficiently and -'

  'Don't forget about the Christmas party.' Tim smiles, nodding to the door outside. 'Well, you've already ruined that.'

  Dr Brooker grunts, looks at us both quizzically. 'Christmas party?'

  Oh, shit.

  'Didn't you get your invitation?' Tim and I say at the same time. 'Maybe we need to cancel the Death Moot,' I continue, changing the subject.

  Lissa and Tim shake their heads. 'No. That's one thing you cannot do. A Death Moot must never be cancelled. It's a sign of weakness, and you don't want to present any weakness to the Orcus.'

  'But people are trying to kill us.'

  'Death may well be preferable,' Tim says.

  Speak for yourself. 'How do I look?' I say, getting up, straightening my hair as best I can. My fingers catch on what I suspect are large clumps of dried blood.

  Lissa smiles at me. 'Like Death warmed up.'

  At least someone's kept their sense of humour. I don't feel safe at home.

  The rest of the Christmas party was, well, in a word, awkward. Death is something of a party killer at the best of times. Particularly when I spent a good deal of it staring intently at every staff member, or asking difficult questions that in theory only my people should be able to answer. Yes, there's going to be a staff meeting about that. Some of the basic pomping facts tha
t these people didn't know shocked me. I was almost relieved when a truck collision called a good half-dozen of them away. Call me mean-spirited, but I am Australia's RM and death is my business.

  Lissa had stayed by my side the whole evening, even submitted to my paranoid questions – with curt, often embarrassing, answers. Of course I knew it was her, I'm intimately familiar with her heartbeat. I have to believe that Rillman's mimicry doesn't extend that far.

  Lissa's asleep almost the moment her head hits the pillow. I text Suzanne: Need to talk.

  A few seconds later I have a response: Yes, you do. Usual place. Let's make it another lesson.

  Yeah, but this time I'll be directing the questions.

  I shift there. The Deepest Dark whispers around me. I wince, expecting more pain than I actually get.

  Suzanne smiles at me, and she's in my coat. I'd ask for it back but she seems wounded in some way, a little less confident. It was less than twenty-four hours since we were here last, and I had left her to witness to the fate of one of her agents.

  For the first time I see something – I hesitate to call it human – inside her. A vulnerability that I had never expected to encounter in an RM. It actually stops me for a moment. Reminds me that I'm not the only one capable of feeling pain.

  'Your agent?'

  Suzanne shakes her head. 'It wasn't good. I don't want to talk about it. He is no longer in any pain.'

  Above us the great inky mass of the Stirrer god swallows an ever-increasing portion of the sky like some gargantuan and evil lava lamp.

  'I was tortured today.'

  'I am aware of that,' Suzanne says. 'Don't forget I have ten Pomps on your payroll. They're switched on enough to pick up a phone. I knew you would be in touch soon enough. Your Lissa, she's sleeping?'

  'Yeah, what's that got to do with anything?'

  'Everything. This is your Lissa. This is all of them.' Suzanne crouches down, picks up a handful of dust and does whatever it is that she does. It dances around her hand, shining ever brighter. I can see Lissa's face there, her eyes closed, whispering in her sleep. Then, with a single chopping gesture, the dust drops to the ground. 'They all need sleep. Not that it is enough in the end. Gravity changes them all. They shift down, they grow heavy in their bones. They lose swift thought and swift action. They decay. That is all they have, a trudging forward into decrepitude and dust. And yet it is so beautiful. So tragic. And far better than it was before. She sleeps, your girl, but it is not enough to hold back the final sleep.'

  I don't want a lesson in the obvious. I want answers. 'I know this. I've grown up around death,' I say. 'I was a Pomp, just as the rest of you were Pomps.'

  Suzanne gives me a patronising pat on the shoulder. 'You only think you do. You don't know death the way we know death. That knowledge is coming, but you don't have it yet. You're never going to feel gravity again, Steven. It doesn't apply to you, the death you will find will be fast and violent and centuries hence, if you're on your game. You will have time to see the beauty and ugliness of life for what it is: fleeting and yet, somehow, eternal.

  'And how you come to that knowledge won't have anything to do with what I say, or Neill. I can guarantee that.' So she's on to me, then. I try to not register any surprise. 'It will come to you in its own way, as everything else has come to you, because that's how it works.'

  'I'm a bloody slow learner.'

  'There's nothing to learn. This is a bone-deep truth, whether you understand it or not. A hundred years from now you will be the same as you are now, and different in ways you can't even begin to comprehend. You've no choice in the matter.'

  'But there are choices to be made.'

  'As much as any of us can make them. We're all fighting the same fight. The enemy hasn't changed. That's a constant, too.'

  But I feel it has. Morrigan, in his dealings with the Stirrers, has set something in motion. Something I can't quite articulate. Suzanne watches me trying to get it out, and sees that it obviously isn't going to come.

  'Rillman, what about him? He wants me dead,' I say, finally.

  'And yet you are most obviously not.'

  'Tell me how I can find him.'

  Suzanne looks away from me, towards the city of Devour. 'If I knew a way, believe me, I would have pursued him a long time ago.'

  An idea strikes me then, an unpleasant one. 'Are you using me as bait?'

  Suzanne shakes her head. 'You've drawn Rillman out. Before, he was all secrecy – back-door plans and sneaking in and out of Hell. You would make excellent bait, but I fear that the moment we used you as such Rillman would go underground again. I want you on my side,' Suzanne says. 'Neill's bloc is growing too powerful.'

  I peer over at her, surprised. 'I thought he was your bloc.'

  'We may help each other from time to time but we are not in agreement on much. We know how to put up a unified front when we need to. But he worries me now.'

  'What difference does it make?'

  'When you have centuries, it makes all the difference in the worlds. Believe me, you will learn that.'

  'What are your plans for me? The All-Death -'

  Suzanne grimaces. 'What did that meddlesome thing say?'

  'That I will be alone. That I will fall.'

  Suzanne looks almost relieved, as though I've merely reaffirmed something. 'We're all alone,' she says. 'Rillman. You. Lissa. You will learn this, Steven, if you're half as smart as I think you are. The longer you live, the more alone you are.'

  I turn from her, and consider the darkness of the Stirrer god above. I remember with utter clarity the immensity of its eye in that vision granted to me by Stirrer rage or my newborn power. I'd stared it down. Of course, I'd been too stupid to do anything different. Me there in that darkness, hurling its worshippers back away from the land of the living. I'd felt the strength of Orcus unity, a strength that had extended all the way down to my hundreds of Avian Pomps.

  Absolutely meaningless. I knew that if it came down to it, I'd be fighting that dark alone and it scared the shit out of me.

  'I don't think we have centuries anymore. Maybe my presence is what the Orcus needs, someone to add a little urgency to the proceedings to draw your attention back to that approaching hunger filling the sky.'

  The look that Suzanne gives me is not nearly as patronising, though I still feel as though she considers me as little more than a dog that has just learnt to fetch.

  'We know it's there. Its presence is undeniable and we are doing something about it,' Suzanne says. 'You have to believe me.'

  'I really wish I could.'

  Suzanne nods. 'This morning, I will send Faber to you. He will show you our latest work.'

  'Seven am,' I say. 'And make sure he isn't late this time.'

  Suzanne flashes me a vicious smile, and shifts out of there. I stand looking up at the dark. Wal drags free of my arm.

  'I really hate how she does that,' he sighs. 'Keeping me stuck to your arm; it's very rude.'

  'I don't think she likes you,' I say.

  'What's not to like, eh? Eh?'

  I don't even know where to begin. The next morning I shift to the office, leaving Lissa to sleep under the protection of my Avian Pomps. Oscar is already there waiting outside my office. He nods at me, lets me pass through the door.

  Downstairs someone is dismantling the broom cupboard's door. I can feel it coming undone even from here, and I'm pleased.

  It's one place Rillman, or anyone else who might want to lock me away, can't use.

  I feel Cerbo's arrival a few minutes later. Oscar knocks on the door.

  'Come in,' I say.

  Oscar swings open the door. 'He says you are expecting him.'

  'Yes, I am.'

  Cerbo nods at me. Today he's wearing a green bowler that most people could only ever get away with on St Patrick's Day, and only a certain few of those. He carries it off with a quiet dignity.

  He turns to Oscar. 'It's quite all right,' he says. 'I have no intention of killing yo
ur boss. Couldn't if I tried.'

  Oscar lingers at the door a moment longer.

  'This isn't Rillman,' I say. 'He's not going to be able to pull that one on me again.'

  The door shuts. Cerbo raises an eyebrow at me. 'Quite the hired goon.'

  I let it slide. 'Suzanne said you would show me what you know about the Stirrer god?'

  Cerbo smiles. 'And that is why I am here, Mr de Selby.' He gestures at me. 'Now, if you would stand up, and come towards me.'

  'I was kind of expecting a PowerPoint presentation.'

  'What I have is much better than any computer-based simulation. Now, up, up! Get your rear out of that chair!' He seems to enjoy shouting at an RM.

  I get out of my throne and walk around the desk.

  'Hold my hand,' Cerbo says reaching out towards me.

  I hesitate, and he grimaces. 'Oh, for goodness sake. You're not even my type!'

  That's not why I'm hesitating, but his words push me hard enough into action.

  Cerbo's hand is warm, and he grips mine hard. 'This is something new. A technique Suzanne has been developing. It's based on the subset of skills required to shift.'

  I groan.

  Cerbo squeezes my hand. 'No, it is not shifting per se. For one, it is more… well… cinematic, Mr de Selby. And two, it demands a little more. You'll see what I mean.' He closes his eyes. 'Whatever you do, don't let go. This is no pixie-dust journey we're going on, and I'm not Superman.'

  I'm trying to imagine Superman in a green bowler as Cerbo reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulls out his knife.

  I have to fight the reflex to pull away. 'What the fuck are you doing with that?'

  Cerbo's eyes flick open. He regards me disdainfully. 'Don't worry, it's not for you. I've been Ankou for nearly two decades to an RM who is centuries old. You pick up a few things, but I have yet to uncover a really easy way to kill an RM without first killing their Pomps. Even Morrigan couldn't do that. This knife is for me.' He takes a deep breath, grits his teeth, and then runs the blade over the back of the hand holding mine. Blood flows quickly. 'Remember, don't let go.'

  Between heartbeats, this happens: we are in the office, and then it is just a space distant beyond my imagining below us. We're vast and tiny at once, and shooting along a tunnel brighter than any glaring sun. I have to cover my eyes. Cerbo squeezes my hand even tighter. For a moment I am reminded of the All-Death's implacable grip.