Page 145 of The Simurgh

‘Where is it?’ Lucifer roared.

‘What do you fucking care?’ Pitch roared back.

The silence that followed was bleak, belying the reasonably pleasant morning. It was daybreak, a hint of peach upon the sky, a tepid warmth pleasing to bare skin and damp clothes.

Tyvain peered from behind one of the larger headstones, giving Silas a look of wide-eyed worry.

‘Just stay there,’ he said quietly. ‘They tend not to see eye to eye.’

‘You don’t feckin’ say.’

Silas stepped between prince and king, raising his hand, searching for the right words. ‘Now listen here, it’s been a long day and –’

‘Mr Mercer, sir, if the angry man is talking about the pretty bird he should have just said so.’ Phillipa now stood at the carriage door, guts showing, smile wide. ‘The wisp tucked them away inside here. Firm friends, if I do say so.’ The spirit extended her touch into the corporeal world with her usual aptitude, and opened the door.

Scarlet appeared, one turquoise hand on their hip, the other raised to their mouth. Their forefinger was bloated, oversized so there’d be no mistaking how it was placed across their blueberry coloured lips in the time-honoured gesture of shushing. Behind them, curled upon the cushioned seating was the simurgh, its head resting so that its golden beak was tucked beneath the ribbon-like feathers of its wing, a wing with one strip of dull grey, like a painter had not yet finished with his canvas.

‘Are you shushing his majesty, Scarlet?’ Pitch could barely contain himself. ‘My gods, Silas, I think you no longer have my heart, it belongs to the wisp now.’

Silas could barely inhale for hearing the impossible almost said. He certainly had no coherent words to say in return.

‘Right there, Mercer?’ Tyvain snorted behind her gravestone.

Silas grunted, his pulse marvellously wild.

Lucifer muttered something unkind about wishing he’d shushed Pitch permanently when he’d been given the chance, and turned his attention to the carriage.

Scarlet rushed at the king, waving tiny hands madly, darting about like a crazed firefly, leaving streaks of their rainbow hues behind.

‘Out of my way.’ Lucifer batting at the tiny attacker. ‘I do not intend to harm it.’

‘If you intend to take it, I’ll stop you.’ Pitch was calm now, breathing steadily, his gaze fixed on Lucifer.

The king’s shoulder’s lifted with a deep breath. ‘I know you shall try. And that fool of yours too.’

‘Silas has a name.’ Pitch still remained remarkably calm. Silas felt a swell of pride to see it. ‘I’ll thank you to use it.’

Lucifer regarded him with disdain. ‘I was referring to Crimson. I may think the ankou many things, but a fool is not one of them.’ He sniffed. ‘Except perhaps where you are concerned, but we shall blame his humanity for that mistake. They tend to be soppy creatures, obsessed with the notion that love is something worth all risk for.’

He turned back to the carriage, back to contemplating the creature within.

Pitch glanced at Silas. And tapped his temple with a questioning lift of his brow. Clearly suggesting Lucifer had gone mad. Silas shrugged in reply, but did not think it madness at all. He knew the depth of King of Daemonkind’s grief over Seraphiel’s death. Lucifer was more human than he knew.

A tug came at Silas’s senses. He raised his head. At the corner of the church, beneath the twist of brambles Jane had worked to avoid, stood a teratism. There was no doubt of the creature. He was the very same one who’d been at Sherwood, who had led Silas to where the Dullahan lay in self-imposed imprisonment. The hunchback with the broken ankle was hard to forget.

The teratism managed to lift its down-turned gaze so its yellow eyes could find him.Come, My Lord.

The creature laboured away, dragging its mutilated ankle behind.

‘Will you be alright here, Pitch? I have to go to Sybilla.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll take care of the imbecile.’

Silas turned to go, but that did not seem right at all. He doubled back, pressed his hands to the daemon’s cheeks, and landed a kiss on Pitch’s lips.

‘What was that for?’

‘Because you are here, and I can, and there is much lost time to make up for.’