Page 113 of The Simurgh

Silas hurled the weight of inevitable loss at the Herlequin like he was casting the bandalore down its string. The Herlequin tilted his head back and howled, his knees going from under him. He clutched at his head, the flail still in hand, the spiked head swinging against his own chest.

Now was when Silas should move in. Raise the blade and put an end to the creature. The Herlequin’s assault on his own mind had ceased; there was no barrier left to push through.

But Silas had released a pressure within that he’d not realised was so draining. The weight of death and loss. The torrent spilled from him, unstoppable. And he sent its deluge at the Herlequin.

This creature needed to know what it was to lose. To feel devastated.

He had killed Forneus. He had caused Silas to lose Pitch in Sherwood Forest. The Nephilim was the reason, one at least, that Silas had been lost in a waking hell for three days as he wondered if Pitch still lived, if he was hurting, if he thought himself abandoned.

Silas found himself on the ground, on hands and knees, screaming at the sand as it lay still and silent beneath him, drinking in the agonised moans of the felled Nephilim.

‘Enough,’ the creature rasped.

But the floodgates were opened now, and Silas did not wish to shoulder the burden offeelingany longer.

Let his brother know what it was to carry the blood of humanity in his veins.

Christ, he felt like a freshly-tapped artesian well. The swell of woe that rose from him was enormous. Even the Herlequin was made small beneath it.

The creature lay curled on his side, hand pressed to his face, rolling with his agonies. The flail was discarded, and he did not seem to notice when he shifted himself against its sharp points. Blood, dark as claret, spread over the stark white sand.

And Silas kept on, shedding his grief. He’d been filled to the brim with it by all the souls he encountered. The teratisms the Blight had made, he held their death notes all. The echo of those he’d been shown in the cave, being eaten by the ravens, ran through him. That echo fuelled him, their cries for salvation unending.

Silas ran his mind through his losses.

Hastings. Forneus. Ronin. The creatures of Sherwood Forest. Even Sybilla, for in truth he had not saved her from death, merely asked it to stand back awhile longer.

He thought on all the lost souls he should have protected, had he been in his right mind from the moment Mr Ahari had pulled him from his grave. Black Annis, and all those innocent children, had suffered needlessly while Silas stumbled about like an oaf.

He sank back onto his heels, dragging the broadsword along the sand. His vision was blurred with tears, his face caked with fine particles of sand where the wetness trapped them.

But it was not what he’d already lost that weighed him down worst of all. It was who he might still lose.

Silas dragged himself to his feet, using death’s scythe as little more than a prop to find his way. Good god, it were as though all the tombstones of the world were upon his shoulders. Grief was utterly exhausting, and he’d shouldered it for so very long.

He moved to stand over the Herlequin, and his tears dripped down onto the creature’s prone figure.

The Nephilim was babbling. Sobbing. Grabbing the sand in fistfuls, like a babe clinging to its blanket. He was utterly undone.

Silas ran his tongue over sand-dusted lips, fighting his own strength. There was one thought he’d not allow to gain hold here, for it if did, then he’d fare no better than the Nephilim. He’d be overcome and all would be lost.

The Herlequin moaned, rolling onto his back. His eye was no longer bloodshot, perhaps his weeping had run it clear.

‘You have won,’ he gasped.

Won? How was this winning? Silas fought here to take Pitch from one terrible place to another. With the faintest hope that to see this through to the end might win the daemon his freedom, when in all likelihood it would end what life he had.

‘There are no winners here.’ Silas raised the broadsword, bringing on a shift. The blade shortened, arching into a curve like a crescent moon. ‘Now rest in peace…my brother.’

Silas swept his arm back, the scythe humming in his hold. A heat spread through the hand that clasped it, an added pressure strengthening his swing.

He brought the blade down upon the Herlequin’s neck, the creature’s eye upon him.

The severance was clean, true and absolute, as only death could be.

The Nephilim’s death note stuttered, then swelled. Roaring.

Not one but a thousand cries of anguish.