Page 39 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

‘Hotaru?’ Old Bess appeared as confused as Pitch, which was no comfort at all.

Ronin’s ankle turned, in a way no ankle should when it was simply resting upon a bed. The tsukumogami gritted his teeth, hissing through the rest of his reply. ‘The tarts for the daemon…I forbade them. Astaroth didn’t deserve them, I said. Then I heard a housemaid gossiping that I must have changed my mind…and was trying to woo this bastard with a fresh batch.’ He laughed, short and snappish. ‘I know well enough when I’m not wanted. Wouldn’t waste a single strawberry on him.’

He fixed Pitch with a glare that was truly quite admirable, considering the pain the man must be in. Or perhaps it was because of it.

‘Who sent them then, Ronin?’ Bess held the tsukumogami’s wrist, tracing all manner of shapes upon his skin. But Bess was no healer; whatever he sought to do might dull the pain at best.

‘Whobroughtthem.’ Ronin coughed. Most unpleasant. For both him and those having to listen to the snap of more ribs. He groaned but kept on. ‘The plate, Bess.’

Ronin’s body stiffened. His hips shifted one way, his shoulders twisting the other. He was a dishcloth being wrung out.

‘What is happening to him?’

‘He’s dying,’ Bess said tightly. ‘Nothing living may pass through the tunnels. He might have stood a chance if he’d kept to being a sake pot, but he’s thrown himself in full bodied. Where is the damned plate?’

Pitch stood at the foot of the bed. The damned plate was right at his feet. Its intricate artwork was a garden scene, with birds of yellow and turquoise settled among oversized scarlet roses, the painting edged with gold gilding. Hardly a formidable monster, unless birds frightened you.

Pitch snatched it up. ‘This?’ He waggled the plate. ‘Ugly enough, I don’t understand–’

Old Bess belied his namesake, moving from where he sat on the bed to launch himself at Pitch in the blink of an eye and snatching the plate from his grasp. Bess held it towards Ronin.

‘This is Hotaru? Another tsukumogami?’

His nod was laboured. ‘A sister turned deceiver. You’ll find those tarts poisoned, I’m certain.’

Pitch stood still, a sickening certainty gripping him.

With the way Bess held the plate, Pitch could only see its back. A plain surface, save for two holes at opposite sides of its circumference. Perfect placement for screws, so as to tie wire or string between them and mount the plate upon a wall. In a ballroom perhaps.

Fuck.

‘Is that a Satsuma plate?’ Pitch asked tightly.

Bess cast him a curious look, one not half as unpleasant as Ronin’s.

His eyes were shot through with blood; he was weeping crimson at the ears and nose. But he answered. ‘It is. Hotura is young. Barely a hundred years since her spirit formed, and I had not seen her in at least half of that.’ The man was rough as loose gravel. ‘But it is the way of a tsukumogami to be moved about. We are but objects, after all.’ He coughed again, and blood sprayed the air. They waited while he endured the breaking of his little finger, the last on his right hand to succumb. ‘When she sought me out in Mustow Green, I thought it the visit of an old friend. We drank, we spoke of Japan…’

‘Yourold friendis an ally of the Morrigan.’ Pitch was grim. ‘And just tried to infiltrate the Sanctuary to kill me.’

‘It seems so.’ A bloodied tear slipped down the side of Ronin’s face. ‘But if it was just you the Morrigan would harm, I might have turned a blind eye. Let them be done with you, for you are the root of all this madness.’

‘That’s a hell of a grudge to carry because I wouldn’t fuck you again.’

‘Enough.’ Bess tugged at the ties of his apron, pulling it off and wrapping it around the plate. ‘Quiet, the pair of you. Tobias, are you certain she is with the Morrigan.’

‘I’m certain.’

Bess brushed his hand over the concealed plate. ‘Foolish little one,’ he whispered. ‘You cannot hide deep enough to escape this.’

There was no fae magick whispered, no building of any prison to hold the tsukumogami in. Bess let the plate drop to the floor. He lifted his skirts, revealing a low-heeled boot. With grim determination, the Child of Melusine brought down his heel upon the centre of the plate.

The crack of earthenware joined that of Ronin’s slowly shattering body. And above it all, a high-pitched scream, so high and distant it barely sounded as though it was in the room at all. Ronin let out an anguished cry to join it as the gooseflesh rose along Pitch’s arms.

Bess waved his hand over the apron with its pile of ruined tsukumogami. Glittering flecks of silver fell from his fingers, dusting the material in a thick coating of prettiness it did not deserve. That done, Bess turned his attention to the trunk. He went to it, fluttering his fingers to order all the drawers open at once. They shot from their slots. Pitch had emptied all but one. Royal-blue fabric unfurled, sinking to the ground like a grand petticoat.

Silas’s coat had been neatly folded up in the very top drawer, the only one Pitch had not yet searched. Bess kicked at the empty drawers, as though not convinced the Morrigan weren’t in the gnarls in the wood.

‘Can we be certain she was not spellbound?’ Pitch gathered up the coat, clutching at it like a life vest. ‘Could the sorcerers be tracking her location?’