Page 90 of The Simurgh
‘I hope so too, your majesty. I have thought of little else but removing the ankou’s head from his neck since he bested me.’
Lokke burst out laughing, playing his fingers across the Dullahan’s chest. ‘Well, if he does not come to us, we shall go to him to settle this vendetta. Hmm? I know you were quite attached to that old tangle of bones.’ He laughed again, as though the most amusing joke had been told. ‘Do you see what I did with that? Attached?’ He breezed past the headless horseman, touching him once more. This time on his left hand, swirling a circular shape on the back of the Dullahan’s glove. ‘Show me again, when I am done here, that fabulous bone hand of yours, won’t you? Oh, has the boundary rider returned from the marshlands yet? Should we be concerned?’
‘No, your majesty, to both those questions. I’ll see to the rider myself now you are delivered to his grace but I’m certain we’ll find the fox tunnel undisturbed.’
Lokke lifted his hand to his lips, blew a kiss and disappeared around the effigy of himself upon the throne.
Lucifer stared at the space where a head should rest on the Dullahan, trying to fathom what he’d just heard.
The headless horseman had Duty-Bound himself to the ankou, Lucifer had found the bond during his interrogation. Byleist was besotted with Mercer’s well-being, not itching to murder him in a vendetta. And what of denying any disturbance in the marshlands? Even if Old Bess’s cloak and Lucifer’s own abilities kept him hidden, there were two dead guards in a church that would be missed, and the likelihood that simply using the entranceway would resonate somewhere in the cockaigne, raising the alarm. Lucifer had cared little for each possibility because he’d intended to destroy this place the moment he stepped foot in it. Now he’d gotten so caught up, he’d failed to ponder why no talk of intruders could be heard.
If the Dullahan were keeping his king in the dark, it was for one reason.
Silas Mercer.
The ankou was here. Or if not yet, very soon to be.
Confound the man and his devotion to that daemon.
‘Is there word yet of the prince’s death?’ Gabriel spoke loudly enough to be heard, with the King likely still making his way through the grandness of the conservatory.
Lucifer tried edging to one side so as to peer around the preposterously large throne. There was more topiary to block view of the depths of the conservatory, two figures caught in the twirl of the dance, the skirt of what seemed to be a human woman so wide and large that it was like a low hedge, but he did glimpse the yellow robe of the Erkling as it vanished behind a magnificent topiary stag.
‘Not yet, your grace,’ Lokke replied. ‘But I expect it only a matter of time. Iblis is a hard taskmaster, and I’m sure he is relishing the chance for his sorcerers to use their spellwork upon a daemon.’
His words irritated Lucifer. He’d imagined a quick demise for the prince. Not for Vassago to be used as some scarecrow in the field for the crows to pick at.
Gabriel replied to the Erlking, but Lucifer did not catch it, nor was he paying attention. For it was beyond clear now that he’d made a grave mistake in not using the Trumpeter before now. He’d intended to wait until the Erlking was close, well, he was here now. With the angel. With the simurgh.
The time for appalling hesitation had passed.
Lucifer slipped his fingers in under the chain, and tugged at it to draw the herald of the Lord’s Wrath free.
A soaring cry stilled his hand –the clear, penetrative note that lay somewhere between the rasp of a griffin and the call of a nightingale.
It sank into him, found its way beneath his skin. And deep in the conservatory the sun rose, spilling shades of apricot tinged with lavender.
The simurgh’s cry rang out again, and the creature might as well have been a siren and Lucifer a simple human man of the sea. The chain slipped from his finger, the trumpeter never seeing the light.
‘Lord, forgive me.’
Lucifer stepped into the conservatory, drawn forward with such yearning that he did not recall how to breathe. Gods, he’d thought himself a master of this grief by now, but here it led him by the nose.
The Dullahan stepped in his way, and Lucifer was ready to kill him. Cut the rest of this ridiculous creature into yet more pieces for daring to keep him from the very last remnant of Seraphiel.
Be sure of what you do.Lucifer flinched, caught unawares by the airy voice that rattled in his skull.You are not the captain, for I know him dead near the tower. Poorly concealed, from one such as I, who has long existed as a living corpse. And as I know my Lord Death would not choose a pretty bird over his pretty daemon, you are not Silas Mercer either. That leaves only the man called Reginald who tortured a fox, handed me a bag of pixie dust, and left us in York.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
PITCH WRAPPEDhimself around Silas’s back, and clung tighter than mould on cheese.
‘Perhaps loosen your arms a little?’ Silas coughed.
He was very reasonable in not wishing to be choked, but Pitch was staring out over the edge of the shattered hole in the tower wall. Fucking gods they were high.
His thighs were clamped about Silas’s hips, so fiercely he could feel the bones. ‘Could we just be done with this?’
It was like looking down off the cliff again, the River Lethe a hundred leagues beneath. But there was no molten current here. There was all the glitter and shine of the Faelands, a spewing of colourful plant life so far as the eye could see. More towers, too, high multitudes of them, and in fact their tower’s height paled alongside most of them.