Page 139 of The Simurgh

‘I am not lying.’ Pitch grew equally as incensed. ‘And the simurgh can fly off to the same hades that Seraphiel languishes in for all I care. Good riddance.’

‘Hold your tongue,’ Lucifer roared, and his fire with it.

Between the two daemons the heat was insufferable, Silas’s trousers were not only dry they were warming against his skin, and the water at his feet all but evaporated, leaving heated rock behind.

‘Stop, for Christ’s sake, stop.’ Silas stood between the feuding firelords, arms raised, like a referee halting a boxing match. ‘Put your grievances aside, we need to find a way out of here.’

‘You two need to find a way out of here.’ Lucifer was the first to calm, the intensity of his flames subsiding. ‘I am the Herald of the Wrath, it shall not seek to destroy me as it will all else.’

‘What a pity.’ Pitch was rigid, his eyes all fire.

‘Pitch, enough. Let it go for now.’ He turned so he’d be all the prince saw. It seemed to be the only thing that snapped him out of his fury when it came to Lucifer. Slowly the hint of emerald returned.

‘Was that confounded wisp telling us to wait?’ Lucifer stared at the sky where the wisp and simurgh had disappeared into the downpour

‘The water is at our fucking shins.’ Pitch was calmer but not happier. ‘How long are we meant to wait?’

Lucifer flashed the prince a deprecating look. ‘Your shins perhaps. It is only at my ankles.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Both of you stop.’ Silas stepped down the slope, where it took just two steps to be thigh deep in the icy cold waters. The currents buffeted his legs, tugging and shoving, the surface was tipped with froth and waves for as far as he could see in the rain.

‘Silas?’

‘We have to do something.’ He shook hard, and not all of it came from the temperature. He was less terrified with being in the water, but that was not to say he wasn’t still afraid. Silas slipped the ring from his finger, and built an image in his mind.

The row boat he’d considered.

He had the luxury of a moment’s delight as the scythe did his bidding, shaping itself into a silver boat, small but suitable enough for the pair of them. Lucifer too, if Pitch did not drown him in the meantime.

‘What are you doing, ankou?’ Lucifer called. ‘Can you not see the currents will make that impossible?’

Silas turned his head to answer, and that momentary lapse of concentration saw the scythe’s hastily formed boat swamped. The waves came at it like writhing sea monsters, lifting it and flipping it and crushing it down into their bellies.

‘Shit.’ Silas back-peddled away from the manic churn that sought to pull him in. Christ, the current was unbelievable. His feet were whipped from beneath him, and a pitiful cry shot from him. But he did not go under. Hands grabbed at him. Dragging him back up onto the ever-vanishing mound.

Lucifer held him by one arm, Pitch by the other. The king let go at once, clucking his tongue and wiping at the smear of blood on his hands.

‘Are you all right?’ Pitch’s fingers were stained red. ‘Damn it, you said you would heal.’

‘And I am much improved.’ Silas offered a smile as reassurance. ‘But not yet ready for rugby or a country dance.’

‘Idiot,’ Lucifer said. ‘If you’d stayed in York as I intended then you’d not be in this predicament.’

That had Pitch ready to spit fire again. Silas grabbed him, grimacing as the sharp move pulled again at slowly healing wounds. ‘Leave it, just leave it.’

Lucifer stood beneath his fire, glaring at the waves. He folded his arms, as seemed his move when irritated. ‘This is likely all for nought, and you’ll both be drowned by the weight of a vengeful ocean, but follow after me, and don’t say I did not try.’

‘How the blazes did you convince any legion to follow you?’ Pitch said. ‘You are wretched at a rousing speech. Bedsides, have you not told us how we are doomed to die here, and only you may leave?’

Lucifer turned his back on them, uncharacteristically silent.

With a flick of his fingers, the daemon parted the waters.

Or rather, the waters parted for Lucifer. He stepped down the slope, setting foot in the seething turmoil. The chaos abated, the waters drew back where he moved, opening a path that stretched down the side of a considerable hill, rocky as the one Silas and Pitch had climbed in the torrential rain. Or the very same one.

The waters rose up high either side of the king, splashing against unseen walls.