Page 122 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

You are right behind me, speaking into my ear, Lord Death.

‘Well, you need not listen.’ Silas’s frustrations had to go somewhere, so they landed upon Byleist. ‘And don’t bloody call me that. My name is Silas Mercer.’

That is not your true name.

They negotiated the crumbling hulk of a fallen birch, Chollima grunting as they landed before breaking once again into a headlong gallop.

‘It is the only one that matters now.’ Which was a lie. There was another that mattered far more.

Sickle.

The name had infuriated him in the beginning, for Pitch had meant it as a mockery. But at some point, when Silas was too busy adoring him to notice, the daemon stopped casting the name like an arrow and reserved it for moments when he was most at ease. When he could run his tongue over it and cause it to heat Silas’s cheeks.

Silas bowed his head beneath Sybilla’s dying. He clung to gentler things.

To a clarity that emerged from the desperate thump of hooves, the terror of the moment. That name was everything the prince could give. Pitch would never spout pretty, foolish words of adoration, as Silas did. But that look upon his face when he called his ankou Sickle…therewas Pitch’s declaration.

He swallowed, a catch at the back of his throat.

Lord Death…there is a horse.

Silas raised a weary head. ‘What?’

There.

They had cantered up a rise, a hill like many others dotted around the countryside, and the onward view spread out before them. The sky was darkened to the west, a deeper bruise than the thin white above them here. Byleist drew in his horse. The stallion pranced restlessly. At the bottom of the gentle slope there was a small cottage, very much abandoned, judging by the wind-funnelling gaps in the simple array of wood panels. But it was what stood beyond that ramshackle building that had Silas sitting bolt upright, his fingers digging into the sharp bones at Byleist’s hips.

‘Lalassu,’ he breathed, all the muscles in his body taut. ‘Go, go, what are you waiting for?’

The Dullahan set his horse into a gallop and began racing down the slope with neither care nor concern for the pace on the uneven ground. They headed to where Lalassu reared in a stony act of defiance, hooves caught in a petrified reach for the sky.

The Pale Horse was turned to stone. Just as Robin and the Major Oak had been.

Her marvellous mane reached skyward. Long tendrils of hair were caught in their last movement, reaching at least three times her height above her. There was not a doubt in Silas’s mind what she had been reaching for. Lalassu sought to steal a daemon from the angels.

Her tail splayed over the ground behind her and formed a brace to hold her as she strained upwards, lips peeled back to expose most of her large teeth. Her fury was evident in the wideness of her eyes and the severe flare of her nostrils. How sickening it was to see the mare so still. Her pale coat looked nothing like it should. Gone was the mysterious shift of hues, the moss and lichen shades that swirled like oil on water, and instead there was only a dull grey. Unremarkable. Utterly unsuited for her.

Sybilla’s wavering song was so dominant in his mind that it took a few heartbeats before Silas noticed the solid, resonating tones of the Pale Horse’s naming tune.

Djinn. Servant of lord and leviathan.

Leviathan he knew, for it was what the melody had named Lady Satine, but of lord he could only fathom a guess. The Lord of Arcadia?

But all that mattered very little.

‘She’s alive,’ Silas cried. ‘Under the stone, she’s alive.’

Are you certain?

‘You are the one who insists on calling me Lord Death. Do you not think I know it when life is gone?’ As it would soon be with Sybilla, the angel’s notes gravely weak. He needed to keep moving, the Valkyrie was not far, but bloody hell how could he leave Lalassu buried in stone? ‘She’s alive. How do we free her?’ He could use the scythe perhaps? Or would he just end up shattering the Pale Horse into irreparable pieces?

I do not know.Nor, to Silas’s irritation, did Byleist sound keen to learn.

Silas slid from Chollima’s back and ran towards the mare, but no sooner had he begun when his breathless race to Lalassu came to a violent, gut-wrenching stop.

He saw what lay beyond the rearing horse.

‘Oh shit…Sybilla.’