Page 50 of The Death Wish

Do not let them distract him? How the bloody hell could he prevent it?

The whispers had begun the moment they had left Ambleside. Grown to quiet conversation an hour later, and grown again to the louder hubbub of a drunken tavern an hour after that.

Whatever protections Izanami had set around the graveyard of Ambleside was not evident here, and Silas suffered for it.

The cacophony was ridiculous. As if he stood in the busiest train station in London, and every passenger held a blasted mega-phone, their melodies pounding the airwaves, each fighting for dominance.

Despite the maelstrom of sound, if he focused just so, he could name each melody.

All manner of dead were here.

There were the simple lost souls, those trapped by their grief, a murderous end, perhaps, a regret so powerful it kept them from finding peace, from wanting to move on. Their quiet notes were near drowned by the sharper trills of the hungry ghosts; the ravenous souls of the worst of mankind, the murderers,the violators, the ones who hunted down the weaker souls and devoured them. Then, over the top of it all, was the bombastic notes of the Blight-stricken teratisms.

It was not a concert Silas enjoyed; all the less for how it made Pitch’s voice so small. Barely discernible as he begged to know what ailed the ankou.

Silas would answer–he was desperate to do so–he just needed a moment to gather himself. To understand this newfound intensity.

The goddess had done too well in resurrecting his strength. She had made him too much in her image.

You shall hear more keenly, Herbert had said.

‘One moment, just one moment.’ His words were a whisper among shouts.

Silas kept his eyes shut. Needing the stillness behind his lids.

That was not what the goddess had said.

Her words, from Herbert’s lips had been:it is not they who sing louder, but you who hear keenly, once more.

He inhaled, drawing in the centuries, filling in a fine crack of lost memory.

He listened to the death that surrounded him. That hadalwayssurrounded him as the Pale Horseman. A calamity of the collision of life and death. ‘I forgot how to listen.’

His words were instantly consumed by the chorus of the dead; picked apart by the messiness of their nature.

A touch landed on his shoulder, and the furore dimmed. The manic discord lowered its volume.

‘Silas? Is someone hurting you?’

Charlie stood by his side, the lad whose blood anchored him more securely to the land of the living. Blood that provided a quiet place, where a lost soul might remember himself.

Silas exhaled, breathing into the space where he existed in the world. A place that housed neither the dead nor living. Andhe understood; the subtle slink of returning memory warming his mind.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It is not me they harm. I had just forgotten what it was to hear them. I have forgotten how to listen.’

He placed his hand over Charlie’s. The lad frowned with confusion, and Pitch cursed at Lalassu when the mare held him fast on her back.

‘Start making sense, Mr Mercer, or I swear I’ll burn myself clear of your nag.’

Both of his companions were easily heard now, the din of the dead was pressed to the background by Charlie’s touch. While there was sense to be made of his own thoughts, Silas listened.

And remembered.

And understood how much violence had been done to the dead, since last he’d ridden with his scythe.

Stronger now, clear-headed, Silas looked to Pitch. ‘I can hear all the damage done. The ruin the Blight has made of the melody that should run peaceably between life and death. The goddess warned me how great it had become, but I hear it myself now.’ He could not suppress a shudder. ‘The Blight knows our threat, and it does not like us. Izanami seeks to make a haven for those most vulnerable, Sybilla shall take her place among the ankou…’ He paused, listening anew.

‘Sybilla?’ Pitch’s fingers were aglow, but he’d not made good on his threat to burn Lalassu’s mane, thankfully. ‘You told me she had come over unwell again, and that was why she did not ride with us. When the fuck were you going to tell –’