The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy

by Trent Jamieson

  And I squeeze.

  He grabs my wrists. He struggles. He kicks out at me, and thrashes. But I do not relax my grip. If anything I tighten it. HD laughs, and I laugh too, until I feel Rillman’s spirit pomp through me. It bursts free, not toward the One Tree, but straight into the Deepest Dark. I watch it there, and then, something bright and eight-armed snatches out and grinds out the light within it.

  I’m left staring up into the dark.

  I drop Rillman’s body.

  Mog drifts toward me. I close a fist around its curving snath and back away from the corpse. Let the dust engulf the body.

  I’m empty, weak. I can barely stand. My hands grip Mog so tightly that my knuckles ache. It’s the only thing that is keeping me upright.

  Wal pulls himself from my arm. “What have you done?”

  The body is there, between the two of us. It’s answer enough.

  34

  I shift to my office. It’s late. Ten. I can hear someone using the photocopier. Such an everyday sound.

  I’m sick, but it’s not from the shifting. Mr. D was right, all I needed was practice. I smile, and spew into the bin, but it’s not cathartic. There’s no release in it. Just pain.

  I slump into my throne. It’s bigger now, far bigger, all encompassing. It dominates the room like the dark seat of some dark empire, and yet I hardly notice it. I settle in, and my pain ebbs, a little. But I have worse hurts. I put my head in my hands.

  All the world’s heartbeats rain down on me, all those clocks winding down, all that strength pulsing toward its undoing.

  And that’s the least of it. Every time I close my eyes they’re there—those innocent deaths of which I was the cause, that final pomping of Rillman’s soul.

  I sit in my throne, sobbing, drowning in the world’s pulse. Tim’s is there. So is Lissa’s. I can pick them out like threads. Mr. D once said that the sound becomes soothing—the cacophony a lullaby. Here I am, struck by those billions of heartbeats, and then I feel Lissa nearby. I drag myself from the comfort of the throne and Mog blurs, becomes the knives again. They rest, bound by sheaths knitted from evening, on my belt. I shift through the wall, and there she is.

  “Steven, are you all right?” She’s been crying, too. I should have sought her out straightaway, but I couldn’t face her. I can barely face her now.

  “Yes,” I say. “Are you?”

  “I think so.”

  Then I’m holding her and I can almost forget the pain and guilt I’m feeling. Finally she pulls from me.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she says. A vein pulses in my head. Does she know? “You shouldn’t have come after me like that.”

  “You know I had no choice. I’ve nothing left but you.”

  “I know you were trying to do the right thing. But Christ, you—”

  “I should have told you about Suzanne. No more secrets, right? I promise.”

  She touches the knives at my belt, curiously.

  “They’re mine,” I say, “and, to be honest, I don’t want them out of my sight. I’m the only RM left standing. Mortmax International is my responsibility now.”

  “And HD?”

  “It’s under control, I think… I don’t know. Rillman—Solstice is gone. He won’t be a problem anymore.”

  In my office I can hear the unmistakable ring of the black phone. I ignore it. Lissa looks at me questioningly. “It can wait,” I say. “We need to get out of here.”

  Lissa holds me tight, and it’s all I can do not to crush her in my grip, so desperately do I need that contact. “Where do you want to go?” she asks.

  “Home,” I say.

  I shift with her in my arms. And we are back in my parents’ place, in the hallway, Mom’s perfume as strong as ever.

  “We’re going to move out of here. It was always a mistake to live here,” I say.

  I can’t bear my parents looking down at me from those photos. I know how they would judge me for what I’ve done, what I am.

  “Are you sure?” Lissa asks, though I can tell she’s pleased. This was never our home. I nod. “Then we need to find a place that Stirrers can’t just stroll into,” she says.

  I can tell Lissa wants to talk this through, all of it. And I want to as well. But there’s a weight of exhaustion pulling on her. She’s worn out with worry, with the hell that has been this last week. And we have time. There’s no Death Moot or Rillman to concern us now, and the Stirrer god isn’t here yet.

  “Try and rest,” I say. “We have so much to do, but not now.”

  I walk with her to the bed. Lissa’s fast beneath the sheets and even quicker to fall asleep. I stand there looking at the person I have risked all for, and for a moment I feel better.

  I call Tim.

  “Jesus, what happened to you?” he asks. “I came to the office, and you’d both just left.”

  I don’t want to talk about it. Tim’s going to have to trust me. “How are the Ankous?”

  He’s a while in answering. I can’t tell if I’ve offended him, which probably means I have. “They’re all right. In shock, but that’s understandable. Mortmax has suffered its biggest, loss…gain…Shit, I don’t know, what’s happened? What the hell do we even call you?”

  “Steve,” I say. “I’m your cousin, remember?”

  “Steve. Solstice’s offices, they were worse than anything Morrigan ever did. The rotting dead. Their rage and, God, their laughter. That’s what’s going to stick with me the most. They laughed as we stalled them, every single one, as though it didn’t matter. I’m fucking terrified.”

  I’m more than familiar with that laughter. “Sometimes it’s a reasonable response. Listen, Tim, we’re going to have to start mobilizing,” I say. “The Stirrer god is coming. But we will be ready.”

  “Are you OK? You sound—”

  “I’m exhausted,” I say. “Bloody knackered. I’ll call you tomorrow. We both need to think, and to rest—that most of all. You can’t do anything if you’re tired.”

  “I thought you couldn’t sleep.”

  “I can now,” I say. “You should, too.”

  “One more thing,” he says. “The black phone in your office keeps ringing.”

  “Don’t answer it,” I say. “I can deal with that tomorrow, too.”

  I hang up, and take a shower. But I can’t wash HD or the thing I’ve done from me. Wal is on my biceps, and he looks frightened. When I’m done, I walk to the back balcony, the towel wrapped around my waist.

  Another storm rolls in from the south, but this one’s soft and earthy, and while it may hide a stir or two, it’s just a storm. I watch it build for a while. Rain falls, light spatters at first, and then it’s a real downpour.

  Lightning bursts in the distance. I wait for the thunder to come rumbling through the suburbs, and when it does I turn to go inside.

  Something catches my eye.

  They must have been there for a while, silently waiting for my scrutiny: a shivering darkness spread across the lawn. Sharp beaks. Slick black feathers, glossy with the rain. A thousand crows, at least. And they have bowed down low, their wings extended.

  “Awcus, awcus,” they caw.

  I dip my head.

  HD seems pleased, all this laid out for it and me. I raise a hand, gesture toward the sky. As one they beat their wings into the angry air, and batter hard against the rain. The vast murder of crows breaks from the ground, finds the night sky and is gone. I could have dreamed the whole thing, but for the dark feathers fluttering down.

  Awcus.

  I walk into the living room and pour myself a drink, a big one.

  Lissa’s asleep when I stumble back into the bedroom. The rain hammers on the iron roof but it’s ebbing. HD roils within me, grinning its ceaseless grin. But I force it down. I’m tired and on my way to being drunk. I can’t stifle a yawn. I settle next to Lissa, slide my arm around her. So tired. She moans something in her sleep, then calms.

  The dying rain and Lissa’s breathing are t
he most perfect sounds in the world. I’m not sure when sleep claims me.

  Death. Mayhem. Madness and blood. The metronomic sweeping of the scythe.

  But I sleep soundly.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So Book Two. Who’d have thought?

  Once again, for the last stages (after the big grub of a first draft), a huge thank you to my publisher Bernadette Foley, my structural editor Nicola O’Shea and my copy editor Roberta Ivers. This was foreign ground to me, and you’ve made the whole process a lot less scary than it could have been. If the book’s a butterfly it’s because of the chrysalis you lot wove … maybe I’m taking that metaphor too far.

  Thanks again to everyone at Avid Reader Bookstore (and the cafe) for being amazing, and for still putting up with the least available casual staff member in the universe, and to Paul Landymore, my SF Sunday compadre who never lets me get away with much. Thanks also to the city of Brisbane, with whom I have taken even more liberties—particularly concerning her bridges—and to my Aunty Liz, who isn’t going to like the swearing but switched me onto fantasy when I was a very young lad. All those Greek myths and tragedies: you can’t get a better gift than that.

  Thanks to Diana, who has to put up with everything, and still loves me.

  And thanks to you, who have followed me onto Book Two. I hope you liked it.

  BOOK THREE

  THE BUSINESS OF DEATH

  PART ONE

  THE OTHER EMPIRE

  All earth was but one thought—and that was death.

  “DARKNESS”—LORD BYRON

  1

  I know he’s pissed off even before I see him on the shoreline. The text he’d sent me was something of a giveaway.

  Steve. Here. NOW!

  As if I’m some sort of dog to be called to heel. The Hungry Death rails inside me and suggests we cut him off at the legs about an inch beneath the knees. Me, I know my cousin—it really wouldn’t stop him.

  Of course, it wasn’t his first text of the day. Or his last, which read: NOW MEANS NOW!

  Anyone but Tim (OK, and Lissa too) and I’d ignore a message like that. It really is the most passive aggressive form of communcation. He only does it when he’s having a tantrum.

  A few minutes before I’d stalled a Stirrer in Chermside, outside David Jones of all places, took it down so swift and so casually, that no one noticed. Just me and the body left leaning, eyes closed, on a bench. A perfect stall—I’d considered buying a couple of new shirts to celebrate, but those texts just kept coming. They were worse than Stirrers really—blood and touch can’t banish them.

  I’m Steven de Selby.

  I’m the Orcus. The Thirteen who became one. CEO of Mortmax Industries. A guy with enough titles that even my eyes glaze over reciting them all. What it boils down to is this: I’m Death.

  And I’m still learning on the job. I have to. There’s no one to replace me or share the load. Maybe down the line, but not yet. Doesn’t help that I’m not on talking terms with my mentor Mr. D, and, sure, we might both be to blame for that. But it’s left me alone and I feel it.

  Things I know about Death:

  I’ve no great power, but there’s a fairytale madness lodged in me like a splinter around which the flesh has grown swollen and obdurate. I call it HD, short for Hungry Death, in the hope such familiarity gives me a little control. I’ve a scythe called Mog, which could cut out the heart of the world—a heart built of billions of beats, each of which I can hear whether I want to or not. The World Pulse.

  I watch the world through my eyes, and the eyes of my Avian Pomps. Birds, but only certain ones—crows, lots of them; sparrows, not so many, their loyalties are a bit prickly; and the odd ibis, and what ibis isn’t odd? It’s something about the ridiculous beak, I think, or the honking.

  I can shift through space. Shift between here and the Underworld, and the Deepest Dark—that basement of Hell where life’s cruellest troubles are bred predatory and long-toothed. But I can’t shift through time. I am as intimately bound in its threads as anyone. I’m the sand in an hourglass that can never be tipped over. I can only go one way.

  I can be hurt, but not killed. At least I don’t think so. But to say this has been thoroughly tested is…well, it hasn’t been. As for the hurt—it hurts!

  And I preside over a multi-national business and a world on the edge.

  How completely on the edge it really is I’ve only understood these last few months. To think that once I considered Stirrers to be little more than a nuisance. But that was before I became familiar with their god. The one racing towards our world, through the Deepest Dark, its sole purpose to grind us off the face of the planet, scrub it clean of every hint of life, and return its unliving worshippers as the sole form of earthly existence.

  Every day I feel it getting closer. It’s a weight in my bones, a certainty of death coming on a grand and almost unthinkable scale.

  Every death is a story and every death is mine.

  Yeah, I’m a busy man.

  And that’s not even counting the constant battle I have containing the madness of the Hungry Death. No one wants that thing taking control of my body, least of all me. I like autonomy. I like not slicing the world into little pieces…most of the time.

  You can’t say the same thing about old HD: it twitches just beneath my skin like five cups of double-shot espresso mixed with bloodlust. Sometimes I wake in the dark, not even knowing I’ve slept, right hand clutching the scythe, looking to do (or having done) what, I don’t know. Or at least I tell myself I don’t know.

  Crows sing on the powerlines behind us, vocal and squabbling, their caws of discontent sound like ducks on helium. If I let them they’d be swooping on a cloud of midges blown in from across the water. Their hunger’s an ache in the back of my throat. They’re watching me watch Tim.

  My cousin waits for me on the edge of a stony wall that drops away to slimy rocks, tiny waves slapping and sucking against it. He grinds out a cigarette with the toe of his polished boot and lights up another, all this as he stares out across the bay to Stradbroke Island. He’s dressed in a suit, standard gear for a Pomp, though he could be any senior partner of any company.

  The set of his shoulders says everything I need to know, backs up those texts. I walk up beside him, and he doesn’t turn or even acknowledge my presence, but I know he knows I’m here. There’s an electricity when you get Pomps in a space together, a dull toothachey buzzing. He’s my Ankou, my second-in-command, and I’m his boss. Not that there’s even a hint of deference.

  Ah, the liberties family take.

  “What’s up?” I say after a while, but not nearly long enough, I don’t have time to keep playing games and draw this out. As much as I’d like to.

  Tim regards me bleakly; his lips thin. I know what’s up. But he damn well got me out here.

  “You should have never snatched those souls from it,” he says.

  One hundred and fifty souls. A crowded plane, and me responsible for its crashing into the sea. Those souls were mine, even if it was the Death of the Water’s territory.

  I scowl at Tim. Arrogant pup! How dare he tell me what to do?

  But the bastard’s scowl-proof. He returns my glare with a look of cold disregard. “They’re out there.” He points, seawards, and offers me a pair of binoculars, but there’s not really any need.

  There are eight waterspouts, easily visible between here and North Straddie. They dance and shift around each other with unnatural grace. It would be beautiful if it weren’t so eerie. The air is silent over the water, not a bird in the sky, not a boat nearby. There’s a dark mass to the west of the spouts.

  “What’s that?” I ask gesturing towards it.

  “Fish,” Tim says. “They’re terrified.”

  “I don’t blame them.”

  “You should be too.”

  I snort, waving my hands at the immensity of the water as though it’s nothing but a pond and those spouts are little more than irritating and part
icularly well-coordinated geese. “We’re equals. This is merely a Death having a huge hissy fit.” I look at him significantly. “A bit like a man who insists on only voicing his displeasure via texts.”

  “Equals!” Tim laughs. “You, and an entity, which has been the Death of the Water for eons? Sure, I’ve had some ministers who thought they were the shit, but this is a new level of ridiculous. This is a being intimate with the depth and breadth of its powers, a creature as vast as the sky; its territory covers seven tenths of the earth’s surface…seven fucking tenths. Do I need to go on?”

  I shrug. “You were getting a bit of a rhythm going there.”

  Tim taps the ash off the end of his cigarette, a gesture far more aggressive than it should be. “This isn’t a joke.”

  A news chopper angles in low towards the twisters. Another follows on its tail. The damn things run in packs. The silence out to sea is broken by their approach. Idiots. I hope the pilots don’t get too close. These spouts strike me as pretty vindictive, and I know I’m not up to stealing more souls from the sea. I wouldn’t dare. Tim’s right, we’re hardly equals.

  It’s one reason I’ve put off doing anything. The Death of the Water is unpredictable, I don’t know how it might respond. And my guesses aren’t particularly pretty. HD’s are even worse.

  “Slow news day,” I say.

  “Steve, something like these spouts trashed Tweed Heads the other day. And that’s the least of it. People are drowning. Murdered.” He pauses, thinks about it. “Is it murder when Death takes you? No, let’s stick with drowned.”

  “People drown all the time.”

  “Not this far into autumn. And not in these numbers. We’ve had nearly a hundred percent rise in the number of drowning-related deaths on Australian beaches. We’re not the only ones who have noticed either. Do you ever watch the news, or read the papers?”