Page 140 of The Simurgh

‘He could do that this whole fucking time?’ Pitch muttered.

‘He is not deaf.’ Lucifer called back. ‘And of course I could. My destruction is not the aim here. But I have no idea what following in my wake will mean for you. Do so at your peril.’

Silas rubbed at the scythe, returned to his finger. ‘I’m not sure we have a choice, Pitch.’ Even if he tried to fly them again with the kite, in appalling visibility, which direction should they take? How could the boots show him the way?

Behind Lucifer the pressed back waters began to trickle down the invisible barrier that held them.

‘Give me your hand.’ Pitch barely gave Silas a chance to offer it up and he was grabbed. ‘Ready?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Me either, let’s go.’

Side by side, they entered the cleared path behind the daemon king. The waters lifting and parting and leaving the way ahead open. At their feet was the mud of the marshlands grown thick and gorged with debris. Silas thought he saw a turret from one of the towers piercing the silt. There were bodies too. Their naming songs long extinguished. Creatures of all ilks. Two legged, four legged, elf and other fae, most too mangled to distinguish anything about them but death.

Pitch had extinguished his flame, for no rain fell here, in the passageway through the preternatural sea. The dull roar of the wrath-borne ocean that surrounded them was disconcerting. A power held up by seeming nothingness gnashing and thrashing and snapping at them like pent up rage.

Lucifer strode ahead.

The indecisive king could change his mind at any moment, and be done with a prince he seemed to loathe.

He tugged Pitch in closer.

The king turned, and Silas’s heart lost a beat.

‘Still here, then?’

‘Disappointed?’ Pitch returned.

‘Surprised, actually. I did not think this would work. Vassago, you’ll tell me if you sense the location of the simurgh. If I have the slightest inkling you are hiding something from me, I’ll have the sea bury you.’

Silas and Pitch exchanged a glance, and as there really were no words to say, Silas simply kissed Pitch’s knuckles, and hurried them along.

The first raindrops found them. Landing on Silas’s cheek. Pitch glanced up at him, and a droplet hit his nose.

‘Fuck,’ the prince said. ‘Lucifer, you prick, I don’t know where the simurgh has gone. Call back the sea.’

‘This is not my doing. I told you the idea tenuous.’ The king broke into a run. ‘Move! Ankou, use those boots of yours. We are close.’

‘Pitch, get on my –’

The prince was already there, wrapping himself around Silas’s back, the well-practised move now smooth for both of them.

Silas ran. The boots shifting him forward so intensely he had to slow his step so Lucifer was not left entirely behind.

‘Keep going, keep going.’ The king threw up a thin veil of fire.

Chasing back the strengthening downpour.

The walls of water towered over them, their tops bending inwards, a grey field of wheat bowed by a harsh wind. Silas’s throat tightened as he worked to hold back thoughts of being buried beneath that onslaught.

‘Breathe, Sickle. We shall make this.’ The daemon’s heat chased away the prickling, icy chill.

A horrendous groaning came from the liquid walls, something between beastly and sufferance.

‘Gods damn it.’ Lucifer sent more flame above them. ‘It is intent on you. There is nothing more I can do. But we are close, do you see the gateway, ankou?’

Silas blinked through the glow of the daemon’s fire. Pitch’s knees tightened about his waist.