Page 13 of The Simurgh

‘Yes, your grace.’

The sorcerer bowed low while the Archangel took his leave.

Badh.

Fuck, this was not déjà vu. The familiarity of this pose was from Gidleigh Park House. The Alp daemon riding him into sickening oblivion, and the bluecap at the ready with her Gu-drenched knife. Badh standing in the doorway, telling them both to hurry up and be done with the daemon they tormented.

Pitch was taken over by revulsion, unable to stop himself from imagining Onoskolis here, somewhere in the darkness.

Gabriel departed without a backward glance, and Badh leaned over Pitch’s glass coffin. He still wore the ridiculous feathered mask of the Morrigan, even here where there was barely enough light to see the end of one’s nose. He shifted his hood from his head. Revealing an utterly bald and decidedly lumpy scalp. There were scars to match the one upon his lip that drew up the edge, making it appear he were always about to speak.

Badh did speak now, but only in whispers, as he drew a rune upon the glass, right over Pitch’s face. The man had horrid, thick fingers, ones that made Pitch think of sausages, and he despised sausages.

‘Make that rune stick fast, cretin, you do not wish me free, I assure you.’ Pitch’s voice snaked low, the threat causing Badh’s pointed finger to lose its certainty, the lines he worked to waver.

He swallowed, the bob at his throat violent. ‘For what it is worth…I did not approve of what the Alp did to you.’

‘It is worth nothing.’

Badh hid behind his mask. ‘That entire affair went on far too long.’

‘Do you truly think so? I’m not so certain.’ It hurt to sound so dry and disdainful. So careless, when Pitch really cared very much about the day he’d been stripped of all agency, taken to his basest level, and found that for all his posturing and preening, his wanton hunger for debauchery, he was a pathetically fragile creature beneath.

Scarlet nestled in behind his ear, a warmth when all else was so cold.

‘But some blame lies with that ankou, you know.’ Badh’s eyes were shadowed beneath the gauze of the mask. ‘He had the chance to save you from suffering, and he did not take it.’

So the sorcerer’s show of weak empathy was exactly that. Showy and weak. Oh, how very brave this arsehole was when the daemon he taunted could not hope to retaliate.

‘What a quaint little story,’ Pitch hissed. ‘But I suggest you continue to earn your keep through skullduggery and not authorial pursuits, for your tale lacks substance.’

That scarred lip rose. ‘Mr Mercer was at the door, was he not? He was right there. He heard you. But he walked away and let you suffer. You may delude and enchant him now, but he was in his right mind then. He knew the truth of you. You disgusted him, as you do so many. Little wonder the ankou did not think such a lewd, foul creature worth saving.’

Despite himself, despite knowing this entire, ridiculous tirade was meant to goad him and little more, Pitch felt the sting. The doubt caught him beneath the ribs, down deep where the emptiness was. That hole dug by centuries of believing himself everything the sorcerer said.

Scarlet’s tiny fingers took up an urgent patting behind his ear, a caress seeking to calm. To assure.

‘It’s all right,’ Pitch whispered.

Badh thought the words aimed at him. ‘All right that he didn’t give a toss what became of you? You certainly enjoy torment.’

Pitch’s eyes widened. Not at the idiot who sought to rattle him looser than he already was, but at the small sliver of certainty that emerged from the abyss of his self-doubts. Silas was not enchanted, or deluded. The ankou’s feelings, however impossible as they were, were his own.

Silas did give a toss all right. His tossing skills were admirable, actually. Remarkable what those enormous hands could do.

Pitch smiled, and though it hurt, it was worth it. Badh’s jaw tightened.

‘I suppose you are so well used to rough treatment that you’d find being discarded amusing. After all, what are you but a tool, truly? A prince of nothing but others’ intentions.’ Badh was finished with the invisible runework and now delved beneath his cloak.

‘Says one tool to another, and does not see the irony of it,’ Pitch sighed, a long, drawn-out breath that fogged up the glass above him.

‘I am no tool, daemon. I am the new order of things. And whether we glean anything of use from you, before you are dead from his grace’s attentions, hardly matters. We are rising, too high and fast, for any to stop us now.’ Badh’s movements tugged at his cloak, enough that Pitch glimpsed again the hint of the grimoire he’d seen at Gidleigh Park.

‘Ah, I see. But tell me, if you are so high and mighty, why do you still need to consult your handbook to do anything of worth? Seems to me that you, dearest Badh, are the weakest of the triad. With your little doodles.’

The unpleasant smile, the twist of an injured lip, returned. ‘You may think differently of my little doodlings once we are done.’ He pulled a small bottle from his pockets, the contents glittering like captured stardust.

Pitch groaned inwardly. ‘Oh, truly? Pixie dust again?’