Page 21 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘We have known each other from the beginning?’

‘To be honest, I don’t reallyknowyou, Silas. You’ve never been open to revealing much about yourself. Conversations didn’t exactly go on all night by the fire when we met. I’d be lucky to get two words out of you. It seemed that being a servant of the goddess of death meant being deathly dull. When I’ve tolled the bell for you in the past—’

‘Bell?’

The Lady’s glance was laden with many things, frustration among them. ‘Yes. You must have heard the blasted thing when you woke in your coffin? Damned near sent me deaf when the goddess rang through your arrival.’ She leaned back against the stacked bales.‘When I have need of my Horseman, of you, I ring the bell and place it on an unmarked headstone over an empty grave. Mr Ahari does the digging, thankfully. I think this time there was only a simple cross at the head of your plot. The stonemason was busy, but we could hardly wait. Still, it worked just as well, for the bell tolled again when the goddess had you in place. We dug up the grave and there you were.’

That day of waking in his coffin seemed one of many lifetimes ago. But Silasdidrecall the tinkling of a bell, the only sound at first until the steady thump of digging had begun.

‘Bloody hell…’ He cringed. ‘I sound like a turkey being baked for a Sunday lunch. I’m surprised Mr Ahari didn’t stick a fork in me to make sure I was done.’

Lady Satine snorted and let the circlet she’d woven drop into her lap. ‘Goodness, you are much improved on your past reiterations. I mean you look very similar each time…like you are the brother of the man that came before you, but in personality, this time you are night and day to the rest.’ She waved her hand at him, like he were a piece of art for perusing. ‘Oh, yes, this is far more likeable. Gods you were boring, what with all yourI must dispatch the teratism and return to my grave, Satine.’

‘I said that?’ Silas tried to wrap his mind around this bizarre conversation. One that felt as though it involved an utter stranger.

‘Not in so many words, because you didn’t really use many. Very serious chap for the most part. Dedicated to the task at hand. You were rather like a very handsome automaton, once such a thing existed for me to compare you to. You kept to yourself, did your work, and were gone. I have to say, as concerning as your extreme lack of memory is and how painful it’s been to watch you bumble about, I think I may actually miss you this time when you leave. You are so very…well, you are the most human I’ve ever known you.’ The Lady crossed her legs beneath her, resettling her skirts on her makeshift throne of hay. She drew another piece of straw and picked up her circlet of golden dry stems. A light drizzle was falling beyond the wide-open doors of the carriage house, though Silas could not hear any hint of it through the shroud’s sparkling barrier.

His head ached. ‘Forgive me, but this is all very—’

‘Ah-huh.’ Satine pointed at him with the unwoven straw. ‘See that…that right there…delightful. Humble and polite to a fault, modest…gentle and prone to worrying too much. I wonder if you were more like this to begin with? In the very beginning I mean.’

‘When I first lived?’

Silas only knew a terror-struck young man drowning in a loch. He’d not stopped to wonder what else he’d been.

‘Yes.’ Satine embellished her circlet with little loops, casual as you like, as though they were not discussing the endless years they had both lived. ‘Mr Ahari and I have many theories about why you are such a blank slate this time.’

‘Do you intend to share them with me?’

Somewhere beyond the Lady’s veil of quicksilver, an owl hooted, drawing him to thoughts of Marcus in the garden…and the tawny owl’s son at the witch-bottle house. Silas peered beyond the shimmering layer, wondering how Pitch fared, disliking the distance between them.

‘Most of the ideas are nonsense.’ Lady Satine was clearly in the mood for conversation. ‘I assured Mr Ahari you are definitelynotan automaton and nor do I believe you have a touch of decay dementia.’ The lady held up her braiding to survey the work. She pursed her lips, angling the untidy weave of straw back and forth. ‘My theory is that the sand in your hourglass runs thin. You have served the goddess far longer than any other ankou, thanks, I’m sure, to the Nephilim blood that once ran in your veins. But you’ve always retained your humanity, even when it was hidden beneath dullness and duty. And your humanness has never been more evident than with this reanimation. All purebreds grow old and die. It is the way of things. And I believe the time soon approaches when the goddess will take back her scythe. My theory is, Mr Mercer, that you are dying.’

Silas blinked. ‘Well, to be fair, I die on a very regular basis. And remember far too much of it. Even down to the very first sacrifice.’

He found himself not so shocked at the Lady’s words as he might have expected. As though this truth already lay somewhere in the quagmire of his many memories. He knew he was not immortal.

‘Sacrificed,’ the Lady said, ‘because your mother had fallen prey to Samyaza’s wiles and they feared the angel’s blood in your veins would turn you monstrous, like so many other bastards of the Watcher King had done. I know the tale, it was one of the few you ever deemed to tell me. I think you were rather pissed off at the stupidity of humankind. Believing the death of a frightened young man would appease a furious god. You were never a monster, nor have you become one.’

‘Wait, just a moment.’ Silas bristled. ‘If you’ve known so much about me all along, why have you said nothing all this time? You could have told me who—’

‘Being told is not the same as remembering.’ Lady Satine moved from seated to on her feet in the actual blink of an eye. ‘And you were foggy to begin with the last time you rode, but it all fixed itself eventually. I thought, given time, it would do the same now.’

Silas stared at her. ‘A word here or there would have been appreciated. I’ve had a horrendous time, what with being so lost and empty-headed.’

‘I may have let you stumble about too long, I’ll grant you that. But you were still a master of your scythe, still capable of carrying out your task. Now, don’t speak to me of being left in the dark, for I’m well familiar with it. Lucifer and I have known each other a long while. He came here often in the early days to see to things, but I had not seen him for a long time when he turned up with a sickly Dominion prince, demanding to be directed to Seraphiel’s Sanctuary so he could conceal Vassago there. I told him he was asking entirely the wrong person. It was not as if I’d ever been invited around to the angel’s place for tea. I think I saw Seraphiel thrice, in all the time I’ve been beholden to Blood Lake. How the hell would I know where his lair was? And if he’d not deemed to tell Lucifer of it before he died, that was hardly my fault. So the Village had to suffice.’

‘Then, you don’t know what the angel might have done with Pitch at the Sanctuary?’ Silas asked.

‘I understand there was fucking involved, Lucifer was not happy about that. Jealousy doesn’t look good on a king, I have to say.’

With a wince, Silas shook his head. ‘No, I mean you spoke as though you understood Seraphiel’s designs on Pitch, when Lucifer delivered the watch.’

‘I understood designs existed, but that was all. I doubt even Lucifer knows the ins-and-outs, that’s why he’s so cantankerous about it all.’

‘Did you know that Seraphiel possessed Edward’s body, when he had Pitch at the Sanctuary?’

The Lady’s gaze snapped to him, her fingers tightening over the straw circlet. ‘The angel used the lieutenant?’