Page 57 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

Pitch bent forward, flexing his fingers as he took hold of the jaws of the trap, having a brief panicked moment where he wondered if the angel had stolen his strength as well as his flame. He ground his teeth, settled his fingers in between the cruel prongs, and took hold. ‘Steady now,’ he whispered.

And heaved. His muscles tensed, the metal bit into his skin. The will-o’-the-wisps trembled and their colours danced across his pale skin. The colourful critter who’d urged him on came to settle near his shoulder. He strained. But it was not enough.

Pitch bore down harder, anger stirring.

Hisanger.Hisindignation. Not that of the wildness, sleeping so deeply he could pretend himself free of it.

There was that fucking word again.

Pitch stifled his shout behind clenched teeth, conscious that startling the deer now would only bring greater harm to the creature. And he was so fucking sick of bringing harm.

The metal made no sound as it bent to his will. Slowly, infuriatingly so, the folds of the trap peeled open. It was like trying to part the fucking heavens.

But he’d not be made a fool of by a godsdamned man-made pile of shit. Pitch gathered himself and threw his full weight against the trap. The jaws gave way, slamming back into their horizontal positions, a tiny clack heralding the catch of the locking mechanism.

The deer slid her injured leg free, pushing up a clump of dirt as she fought to distance herself from her temporary prison. The will-o’-the-wisps whispered like a hundred pixies tittering in delight. They swirled about the doe, who made a calamity of getting to her feet, legs akimbo, body shaking, her tiny tail bobbing like a maddened hare stuck to her arse.

He expected she would dart off at once, and she was certainly readying for it, but at the last moment she twisted in close to where Pitch rested on his heels. A pink tongue licked his cheek, and before he could expel a cry of distaste, she was gone. A hobbling, unsteady, butfreecreature disappearing in the trees.

The will-o’-the-wisps danced around him, the rainbow-hued creature being so bold as to brush at his nose.

‘Bugger off, you little prick.’ His swipe was not nearly so firm as it could be.

The deer made the undergrowth crackle as she fled, the sound growing fainter and fainter as Pitch contemplated getting to his feet once more. He was tired. To the marrow. He’d not stopped being tired since the Fulbourn. Christ, since that day on the cliff over the Lethe River.

Pitch reached for the trunk to brace himself. The deliberate snap of a branch pierced the settling quiet. He stared hard into the surrounding woods, certain he was being watched. ‘Who is there?’ he called.

The pause was pregnant with indecision, he could practically hear the cogs of his watcher’s mind clacking over as they tried to decide whether to reveal themselves or not. The will-o’-the-wisps scattered, hiding away.

‘Someone who is not much pleased about what you’ve just done.’

A man stepped out from behind the swell of a juniper bush, a bow slung over his shoulder, a pair of hares strung up and dangling from his hand: a huntsman, who appeared not to have ever caught sight of himself in a mirror, for he could surely not intend to look so unsightly. His eyebrows were black as soot and so overgrown they teased at his eyelids. His hair was a calamity too, resembling more of a bird’s nest even than Marcus’s, the snow-owl djinn.

The hunter’s beard had clearly not seen a blade since Enoch was a lad, its tip resting against the middle of his chest, flecks of the forest caught in its wiry, dark curls.

‘Is that so?’ Pitch got to his feet, fighting not to stagger as he did so, his hip stiff from all the running about. ‘And what is it I just did that has you displeased?’

‘That was my dinner you just let run off.’

The man was solidly built, or at least it seemed so. He was clad so thickly in various layers that it was difficult to be sure. He wore at least two shirts Pitch could make out, and perhaps three vests, as though he kept on all the clothes he owned. His coat was patched to within an inch of its life, with no care taken to try to match the fabrics. A shadow stretched from his heels. A purebred.

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have left your dinner sitting about, then,’ Pitch replied, dusting off his hands.

‘I don’t like a smart mouth.’ The stranger scratched his neck, fingernails coarse against his skin. ‘And I don’t like a fucking dandy playing about in my forest.’

‘Oh, dear chap, you’d quite like my mouth, I assure you. It’s the ones who protest the loudest who often do. But as for your forest, well it is rather dull, far too much dirt about.’ Pitch brushed off his knees, eyeing his coat, which lay closer to the hunter than it did him. ‘I’ll just take my coat and be on my way. Leave you to finding your dinner.’

He was not keen on stepping closer to the fellow. And the moment he did so, the smack of beer struck him. The hunter enjoyed his ale.

‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ For a solid chap, the hunter could move quickly. He snatched up the coat, raising it like a trophy. The hunter grinned, which was unfortunate, for it showed how many teeth he was missing. ‘This be the coat you wanting? A nice fancy coat, for a fancy pretty man.’

‘Oh my dear.’ Pitch sighed. ‘I do suppose a man such as yourself might consider that coat with its silk and velvet trims fancy. Goodness, you probably think this waistcoat with its mop buttons the very height of fashionability, but I assure you, you’re an idiot.’

But the idiot proved again how very deft he could be. The hunter tossed the coat in the air, a clever distraction admittedly, for when it fell back over his arm, he now stood with a small revolver in his free hand, taken from one of the endless hiding places in his layers.

‘Well, that all seems a tad dramatic.’ Pitch sniffed.

‘You do like to use that mouth a lot, don’t you?’ The hunter cocked the gun with practised ease and aimed it at Pitch’s chest. ‘But I don’t much like the sound of your voice. Now how’s about you take the rest of those fancy clothes off.’