Page 65 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

They knelt there in their chains, gazes fixed upon one another. A heaviness hung in the air between them. Silas’s pulse danced all manner of acrobatics.

‘You want to kiss me, don’t you?’ Pitch said.

He could think of nothing to say but the truth. ‘Among other things. Yes.’

‘Then best we are done with this place sooner rather than later.’

The daemon’s smile made the room tilt, and Silas had to look away.

A pair of mirrored doors halfway down the right side of the ballroom flew open, and the kitsune waltzed in with a grand flourish. ‘Gentlemen, I’m so sorry I was not here to greet you when you woke. Terribly remiss of me, but the preparations for your incarceration have us all run off our feet.’ He strode across the dance floor with all the surety of a consummate host, spreading his arms to take in the room. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it? Marvellous job she’s done, I must say.’

‘Has anyone ever told you your voice is terribly jarring?’ Pitch declared.

‘Goodness me.’ Weatherby’s grin was stitched in place. ‘I should have hit you much harder, shouldn’t I?’

‘Oh, you have no idea.’

‘Perhaps when Madam is done with you, there might be something left for me to play with.’ The kitsune paused to scuff his shoe at a mark on the floor, staring down in some wonderment. ‘Right down to the heel marks, quite remarkable, the details.’ He straightened and clapped his hands. ‘Comfortable?’

Neither Silas nor Pitch answered him.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. ‘Come along, then,’ he called, to someone or something beyond the open doors. ‘Are you there? I did ask you to follow, very nicely I might add, but I suppose you may have trouble hearing me. ’

‘Where have you taken us?’ Silas demanded.

‘Oh, here and there, but not very far.’ Clucking his tongue, Weatherby heavy-footed it to the door. ‘Hello? Are you there? You’re not the one meant to be lost here. Do keep up.’

The dense clatter of what sounded very much like hooves upon a road echoed into the room.

‘Oh shit. A step too far, Weatherby.’ The kitsune spun on his heels, mouth agape, arms paddling at the air, as though that might give him greater speed to escape what was approaching. He raced through the gap between Pitch and Silas, just as the very last creature one might expect to see in a ballroom burst through the doors.

A powerful roan steed, its coat tinged blue, cantered across the floorboards, hooves leaving no trace upon the wood. The animal’s mane hung almost to the ground, and the feathers at its hocks were astonishingly long, like bunched serpents about its hooves. But the horse was not so remarkable as its rider.

For the man in the saddle had lost his head.

The rider guided his mount with hands upon the reins and no eyes upon the way. His cloak whipped out behind him, snapping dully at the air, the high collar ringing nothing but empty space where a neck should be. A whip was coiled at his hip, one made of thick segments white as chalk. They were wide up high near his hand, but their girth shrank the nearer to the arrowhead-like tip they were.

The tune of the headless rider played to Silas: a haunting singular note that shattered into a plethora of fleeing, desperate sounds.

Fae. Unseelie. Erlking’s servant.

‘Dullahan,’ Silas said, reading the clearest of the scrambled notes, the one that squealed the highest. This creature’s melody was terribly confused…not quite so badly as Lady Satine’s had been, but enough that Silas was not certain of all that stood before him. The tune said nothing of death. Nor of a teratism.

‘That thing is fucking fae,’ Pitch growled.

‘In part,’ Silas said. ‘I’m not sure it remains entirely so.’

‘Uh-ah, gentlemen,’ Weatherby tutted. ‘This is really not the place to be bad-mouthing the Unseelie Court, I assure you.’

Silas frowned into his thoughts. He had only the faintest sense of knowing the Unseelie Court. The Erlking. A king of the fae. An elf? It was all dim, far too distant. But what sense of it remained was far from pleasant, like biting into a rotten apple.

The Dullahan sat easily upon his restless steed, and the roan tossed its head, mane cascading like water thrown from a bucket, eyes black as coal. Though the Dullahan had no face, no eyes to see with, Silas had the disconcerting sense that his attention was set on Pitch. As was Weatherby’s. He’d not missed how often the kitsune’s gaze darted to the daemon.

Pitch seemed unperturbed by the scrutiny. ‘Are we meant to feel intimidated by that horse and his headless rider? Or are we being offered free pony rides?’

The chandeliers overhead burst to life, the candles flaring without the touch of any evident match. The crystals cut the light into dazzling pieces, illuminating the entire space like it were the middle of a summer’s day.

‘Right then, gentlemen, she is ready.’ Weatherby adjusted his jacket, his face a serious model of concentration. ‘Shoulders back if you will. Try to look smart.’