Page 79 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘Did it lead you up a hundred flights of stairs and send you all about?’

‘It wouldn’t dare.’

‘Then you haven’t seen the half of it.’ Silas rolled his shoulder, gingerly, as though testing just how badly it would hurt to do so. Evidently not too badly, for he moved the other soon after. ‘But then I suppose it need not have been the Child who was in The Atlas to begin with. It certainly wasn’t them in the Village to know that you had been laid up by the Gu. Did you hear that said by the sorceress? She knew you had been unwell.’

Pitch nodded and could not help but think of Kaneko at the soirée. The tsukumogami had been in Mr Ahari’s employ an untold number of centuries. As little as Pitch liked the surly prick, evenhewas not certain the wretch would turn betrayer. But maybe he was sick of tending the bar. Ahari might well have tasked him with securing the akaname from the black market, told him of their purpose in healing a sick daemon. Kaneko could have described The Atlas to the Child so as to include its halls in this wicked place.

And it was Kaneko who had taken Pitch’s call at The Atlas. Even if he had told the tsukumogami where they were going, chances were the message would never have been relayed.

They’d still be as they were now. A tad bit fucked.

‘There are many eyes upon us, Sickle,’ Pitch said quietly. ‘And less of them can be trusted than we knew, it seems.’

They continued their aimless stroll in a thoughtful silence, on a path that never changed, the same section of panelling repeated over and over. Until Silas gasped.

‘There, do you see it?’

At long, long last a change in scenery. Up ahead lay a clear shift in the passageway. A right-hand turn.

‘About bloody time.’

Silas’s arm jerked against him, the ankou stiffening. ‘Shit,’ he whispered, struggling to look back the way they had come.

‘What is it?’ Pitch helped him turn about. He scanned the corridor, but all he could see was more drab-brown floor runner, more wood panelling, and tarnished sconces with spitting gaslight.

‘Christ, Pitch. There are teratisms down here.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SILAS HADtried hard, for a long while, not to crush Pitch as they walked, but between the god-awful pangs at his ruined back and the sudden clanging in his ears, he barely had the energy to breathe. He stumbled, but the prince had no trouble righting him.

‘A teratism?’ Pitch twisted about, scanning the corridors, which hinted at no end in sight. ‘Fuck, are you absolutely sure?’

Silas nodded, swallowing as the back of his throat burned with threatened bile. The notes had begun a few moments ago. Faint, like they were merely the echo of a song and not the tune itself. The bandalore had so far ignored, or could not heed, his summons, but he knew now, with so many of his death memories loosened by the Morrigan’s dire pond, that the trinket was only one part of the scythe. He was as much a part of death’s weapon as the blade itself. There was no need to hold on to it to know the cry of the Blight’s afflicted.

‘Where are they coming from?’ They had halted beneath one of the gas lamps, its tiny flame jigging about like a will-o’-the-wisp seeking escape. Silas did a double take, just to make sure that wasn’t the case. It seemed the sort of place where such things might happen. But it was a simple flame there, and no such creature.

‘I can’t tell yet.’ He frowned, touching his fingers to his temple as though he could coax the details from his mind.

‘How many? Is there just the one?’

‘I’m not sure…’ Silas’s finger trick was a failure. ‘It is loud but so contorted…I just don’t know.’

‘Whatdoyou bloody know?’

He ignored Pitch’s waspish question. The daemon was bothered, and rightly so, but Silas needed a moment to focus on the melody. It was the scratchy, offbeat song of the teratism for sure. But it was like half an orchestra tuning their instruments before a performance, all kinds of twangs and trills mismatched. It may be one tune, or it could be several played at once.

Whichever it was, the sound of the unsettled orchestra played at his right. It was coming from beyond the turn in the hallway.

‘We need to go that way.’ He stabbed his finger.

Back the way they had come.

But Pitch made no protest, turning them about. The ease with which he was able to manoeuvre a person nearly double his size still managed to astonish Silas. So many of the prince’s strengths did.

‘You are taking usawayfrom it, aren’t you?’ Pitch said.

He moved them down the corridor at a quickened pace, but not so fast as Silas would have liked. The notes were clearer now but no less garbled and repulsive to the ear. They were being followed, there was no doubt, but by how many of the blasted things?