Page 5 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle
‘Tobias.’
‘Since when do you ever call me Tobias? I don’t like it at all.’
‘Tell me what is wrong.’ Silas was stern.
‘A small thing really,’ Pitch said. ‘Why did you stop rubbing my back? I didn’t tell you to stop.’
‘I wasn’t waiting on your orders, Your Highness.’ Silas felt the daemon tense. ‘Sorry. I didn’t intend to…damn it, Pitch tell me about the watch, now.’
The prince waited a few moments in imperious silence, and then, ‘Having it too near…hurts. The watch seems to stir the markings of the halo. It is…not pleasant. And as you are capable of carrying death’s blade with no trouble, I figure you can carry Seraphiel’s token too.’
‘How badly does it hurt you?’ Silas was not sure he’d believe the answer but he’d ask.
‘Badly enough. But there’s every chance it won’t be quite so annoying when the Gu is out of my body entirely. Perhaps I’m just more sensitive to such things at the moment.’ Pitch turned his head, huffing. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Now I have to see that face of yours all bent out of shape.’
Silas shifted his jaw, as though that might rid his features of concern. ‘I’m grateful you told me, and yes I’m worried, of course I am, but I agree. Let’s wait and see how you feel once the akaname are done with. I will happily carry the watch for you until then.’
The watch that bade them to search for Edward Charters.
Pitch’s illness had been a distraction from Silas’s other great worry: the whereabouts of Charlie. Yesterday, he’d nearly cried with relief when Tyvain told him the lad had been spotted at a pub near the Charters’ residence in Mayfair just last week. Silas’s heart had lifted at the news and then sunk just as readily when the trail ran cold. The soothsayer was out now searching. Jane too, when she wasn’t tending Pitch.
Lady Satine had denied Silas’s repeated request to join them. ‘We must be discreet,’ she had said. ‘The maleficent sorcerers have you firmly in their sights, Silas. And it would do Charlie no favours for them to know that you are so desperate to find him. If you would step into a magick circle to help a stranger, what wouldn’t you do for a dear friend? Your kindness is rather your weakness too.’
He knew she spoke some sense, but it made it no less easy to wait behind.
‘We will find them, Silas.’ Pitch slid his hand over the covers to find Silas’s knee. ‘Charlie and the lieutenant both.’
Silas nodded, trying to shake off his deep concern. ‘I’m sure we will. What do you suppose you need to find Edward for? Have you had any time to think on it?’
‘Oh, it will be something trivial, I’m sure. He’s only human, after all. Likely I need something he can give me, or show me. Perhaps Seraphiel hid instructions on how I’m supposed to destroy this fucking halo somewhere in the Charters’ family library, and I’ll have papercuts from here to Arcadia when I finally head off on this moronic quest.’
‘Well, I can’t help you with the reading, but I can turn a decent page –’
Pitch’s smile began to slide along his lips, only to turn sharply down. ‘Fuck, chamber pot, where is it?’ He came alive, wriggling his way over to the other side of the bed, hissing bitter curses in between wretches. The akaname on his back all curled in like snails balling themselves up against a predator. Silas hurtled to his feet, snatching up the pot which was actually beneath the bedside table, and raced around the bed, boots crunching on another stray piece of vase. He only just managed to position the porcelain beneath Pitch’s head as the first wave came. The prince’s slender body jerked with spasms as the Gu made its sudden appearance, with it a sour stench.
Pitch coughed something about the ankou leaving the fucking room. But Silas ignored every barely distinguishable word. He’d not be chased away again.
He stayed on, holding back the daemon’s hair until all was said and, very messily, done.
CHAPTER TWO
THE AKANAME, or filth-lickers, as Mr Ahari named them, had been purchased from a black market stall down Croydon way. A market, according to Tyvain, that was run by naturals of some ill-repute and with a reputation for selling poor-quality stock with a propensity for causing accidents and ills. Their conversation had Silas in a fluster by its end, but Jane was adamant that Mr Ahari knew exactly what he was doing.
The air elemental, thankfully, was right.
It took near on a hundred of the unfortunate creatures to make it so, but Pitch was much improved by midday. And by the time Jane was finished taking her lunch, she had declared the treatment done with. She stopped in to remove the last of the akaname from their tethered places upon Pitch’s back, and despite the grunted demands by the daemon to do so, Silas refused to leave the room. He’d stood by as Pitch gritted his teeth as tiny fangs were coaxed from his skin. The akaname had rounded mouths, leaving small pinwheels of punctured skin behind. The bruises looked awful with their mottled colouring but would disappear before long.
Pitch slept for hours after Jane was done, only stirring when the afternoon considered giving way to evening. On waking, he seemed bright and restless enough that Silas suggested a short walk around the grounds. The afternoon was mild, the fresh air would do the prince good, and Silas himself was quite desperate to be outside. Nearer to the graveyard for a spell, if he could encourage the daemon that far.
When Silas suggested the walk, Pitch rolled his eyes and declared that in Arcadia this sort of carrying on would see his valet Forneus, the skriker’s namesake, lose two of his seven eyes for insubordination.
In the end, it was the promise of strawberry tarts that drew the daemon from his sickbed, but it took another half hour of infuriating coaxing and goading to have Pitch dressed well enough for a stroll. The blasted fellow could not decide on which coat to wear, so in the end Silas thrust a purple velvet number at him, told him he looked beautiful in it as he did most things, and ushered the preening prince downstairs.
For himself the choice was simple. Silas threw on his newly laundered and repaired-once-more royal-blue Inverness coat and headed for the front door. Pitch took his time, making much of his limp because it suited him to do so today.
‘I think actually my hip is too worrisome to bother,’ he announced, just shy of the door.
Silas had to take a breath before he spoke. ‘I could find you a cane, I’m sure.’