Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (64 page)

“Such is the world we live in,” Ravel said, shaking his head sadly. “Were you of any use to them at all?”

“I don’t see how I could have been.”

“Mm. Well, apart from not
reporting
it to me immediately. I mean, you aided them in
that
sense.”

“I suppose you could look at it like that.”

Mist spoke. “And now, Miss Sorrows, where do your loyalties lie?”

China looked at her. “Where they have always lain, Madame Mist. With me.”

A spider scurried out of Mist’s voluminous sleeve and across her pale, slender hand, before disappearing from sight.

“I’m going to be frank here,” said Ravel. “It’s not looking good for you, China. You come to the Sanctuary for, well, sanctuary, and we take you in. You have work you need to do? We give you the tools. Your little spies aren’t speaking to you any more? We put you in a position so that they do. We’ve done so much and asked so little. And the first chance you get, you fail us by aiding the enemy.”

“If I hadn’t, they might have killed me. It wouldn’t take much to convince Skulduggery that I had betrayed him yet again.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Ravel. “You did get his wife and child murdered, after all. Something I’ve always wondered about, actually. Why did you do it? I mean, I know it was to lure Skulduggery into the trap so that Serpine could kill him, but you could have sent anyone to snatch them up. You could have sent the Diablerie. Instead, you went. Alone. You went up against his wife. Alone. For someone who never exposes herself to any unnecessary danger, that’s quite a risk you took.”

“I was young. Impetuous.”

“In love?”

“What an odd notion.”

“Is it? We had plenty of theories throughout the years, but we always returned to that one. Back when he was alive, before the war started, you were in love with Skulduggery. And he was in love with you.”

“Ridiculous. I barely knew him back then.”

“That’s what Dexter said, but then we remembered that your brother had tried to take you with him when he stopped worshipping the Faceless Ones. You spent months with people who weren’t lunatics – and one of these people was Skulduggery.”

“It doesn’t say much for our supposed love if I returned to my old ways soon after, does it?”

Ravel gave a smile. “You returned to your old ways after Skulduggery met his future wife. Ghastly’s opinion was that you were spurned.”

“Ghastly Bespoke’s opinions were not always right. It was his opinion, for example, that he could stand with his back to you and you wouldn’t stick a knife in it. How wrong he was.”

Ravel’s smile slipped. “I’m not going to try to justify my actions. I killed Ghastly. There’s a special hell for traitors, and that’s where I’m going. But he had to die. As did Anton. I had to send a message to my supporters. They needed to see that I was as committed to this revolution as they were. Just as they had to spill the blood of their Elders and fellow mages, I had to spill the blood of my brothers. Now we’re all damned together.”

“And if you manage to capture Skulduggery and the others?” China asked. “Will they also have to die?”

Ravel shook his head. “It’ll be shackles and a cell for them. You know me well enough to know that killing is, and always will be, a last resort. I may have done this terrible thing, but I haven’t changed who I am. I’m not some moustache-twirling vaudeville villain. I’m still me.”

“And who are you? You say I know you well enough? I don’t know you at all. You used to be such a proud exponent of Corrival Deuce’s teachings. Where did it all go so wrong?”

Ravel shook his head sadly. “My eyes were opened long before I started regurgitating Corrival’s words. During the war with Mevolent, I was captured. Tortured. After a few days, I told them everything I knew, but they didn’t stop torturing me. They finally had one of the Dead Men in their grasp, and they were enjoying every single scream. Then one day I heard screams that weren’t my own, and I thought
they’re here. My friends are here.
But when the door burst open, it wasn’t Skulduggery or Ghastly standing there. It was the Torment. Larrikin took my place in the Dead Men while I recovered, and I spent almost a year with the Children of the Spider. Do you know of the conditions in which they were forced to live? Squalor. And not because of the war, but because of the mortals. A Child of the Spider can’t walk among us for very long without revealing how … different they are. And these days it’s even harder to hide.”

“So that’s what all this is about?” China asked. “Equal rights for Children of the Spider?”

“Equal rights imply that they’re equal to mortals. They’re not. They’re superior. We all are. My eyes were opened, China. Why should we live in squalor? Why should we hide who we are? Because that’s the way it’s always been? That’s not a valid reason.”

“So you orchestrated a war.”

“I orchestrated a revolution under the guise of a war. Corrival Deuce was wrong. We shouldn’t just be the guardians of the mortals. We should be their leaders. The only reason you’re still alive is because I know you share my views.”

“You’re so sure?”

“One hundred per cent positive.”

“That doesn’t mean I agree with your revolution.”

“Of course you don’t agree with it,” said Ravel. “You hate change. You want the world to remain steady and predictable. So does Skulduggery. I’ve just done away with that possibility. The Warlocks are hunting for Department X. They’re going after the mortals. When we are forced to step in, when we defeat them, every sorcerer will be united under my rule. Then we take over. It’s a New World Order, China, and I’m giving you the chance to get in on the ground floor.”

“So you need something from me.”

“I need the Dead Men. I need Skulduggery and the others.”

“I don’t know where they are.”

“But you can get a message to them. You can tell them I’m going to be alone and vulnerable at a particular time.”

China hesitated. “You want me to lead them into a trap.”

“The Warlocks are close to attacking the mortals. To the best of our reckoning, we expect them to attack Dublin in a matter of days. We need to be ready to take them down. You said they had the Wretchlings with them, and that’s something we didn’t anticipate. If anything goes wrong before they attack, if Skulduggery disrupts our plans, the Warlocks might actually win. And then where would we be?”

“Dead,” said China.

“Dead,” Ravel echoed. “So, yes, I want you to lead Skulduggery and the others into a trap. We’ll put them in shackles, put them in cells, and we’ll deal with the Warlocks. Once we’ve established our dominance over the mortals, the cell doors will be opened, and I’ll turn myself in.”

China frowned. “You’re not going to lead?”

“Me?” Ravel said, and laughed. “What would I know about running a world? Every country’s Sanctuary will absorb that country’s government and it’ll all continue as before, just with people like us in charge. I’ll confess to my crimes, be put away or go into exile, and my friends can live in peace.”

“That’s almost noble.”

“Were it not for the manipulations and murders,” Ravel nodded.

“Be under no illusion,” Madame Mist said quietly, “if the Dead Men fail to turn up, or if they are somehow ready for us, you will be killed instantly.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” China said.

avel made a big show of shaking the hand of General Mantis right on the steps of the shiny new Sanctuary. Mantis’s army dissolved, soldiers becoming sorcerers once again – independent and curious – and they explored Roarhaven while the city’s people grinned proudly – both at what they had made, and for the secret they had kept for all this time. The various Elders of the Supreme Council, itself undergoing a slow dissolution, sent their warmest congratulations and made promises to visit soon.

But there was tension in the air. Stephanie could feel it whenever she left Scapegrace’s Knight-cave. The Irish sorcerers who had fought under Erskine Ravel had seen the footage, they had seen Ghastly Bespoke and Anton Shudder being murdered by their own Grand Mage, and they weren’t buying his lies. They met in small groups, talked quietly among themselves, their conversations dying whenever a Roarhaven mage walked too near.

And they weren’t the only ones. Sorcerers from other Sanctuaries, men and women who had never wanted to fight a war in the first place, were asking questions about their own Sanctuaries’ involvement. Upon closer inspection, facts and motivations didn’t add up. The assassins who had caused so many Elders to be replaced had either disappeared or had yet to be even identified.

And then there was the Big Question, the question that everyone was asking.

Where was Skulduggery Pleasant?

They were saying the reason the shield around Roarhaven had been put back up when Mantis came through was because Grand Mage Ravel was afraid of what the Skeleton Detective would do once he got to him. They said that Ravel went everywhere with the Children of the Spider to protect him, and had the Black Cleaver as his own personal bodyguard. They said he couldn’t sleep at night.

How Stephanie hoped that was true.

No one expected her to have feelings. She could see it in their faces. Vex and Saracen and the Monster Hunters were at least civil to her, and friendly enough, but Skulduggery and Fletcher ignored her. She tried not to show how much that hurt. She deserved it, of course she did. She’d murdered Carol. She’d tried to kill Valkyrie. In their eyes, she was probably still a reflection, still a thing, still an
it
.

When Valkyrie had first told her about Ghastly, Stephanie wasn’t sure how she felt. She knew she felt something. There was something inside her, something that felt like Valkyrie’s memories of heartache and loss. But Stephanie had shoved it aside, because she was able to do that. Shove it aside, deal with it later. But when she’d dealt with it later, she realised that what she was feeling was real. It was actual heartache. It was actual loss. And it was hers, it wasn’t Valkyrie’s.

But nobody wanted to know about how much Stephanie grieved.

Seven days after the war ended, she woke to discover that China had sent a message. She walked into the Knight-cave living room to find everyone here, deep in discussion. They hadn’t even bothered to wake her.

“This is our chance,” said Gracious.

Skulduggery kept looking at the message on his phone. “So it would seem.”

Gracious frowned. “You think it’s a trap?”

“I don’t know. It’s perfect. It’s not too easy, but it’s nothing we can’t manage. It’s ideally suited to us.”

“So it
is
a trap.”

“It may not be.”

“So it’s
not
a trap.”

Skulduggery turned to him. “Gracious, I sincerely don’t know. But if it is a trap …”

“Then China’s betrayed us,” Vex said.

“She wouldn’t do that willingly,” said Skulduggery. “But if they’ve put a gun to her head and we don’t walk into the trap, they’ll assume she tipped us off somehow. Ravel might very well throw her in a cell, but Madame Mist is not so forgiving.”

Saracen rubbed his hand over his mouth. He hadn’t shaved in two days. “You think they’ll kill her?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

“So what do we do?”

Skulduggery held up three fingers, and one at a time he ticked them off. “We kill Ravel. We rescue China. We don’t get caught. It’s going to be tricky. Gracious, is there any way you can access the camera feed again?”

Gracious shook his head. “They changed the access codes the moment they realised we’d infiltrated their system. But if Ravel’s going down to the Accelerator Room, I think I can patch into the signals received by the Engineer’s audio-visual processors. I don’t think even Nye thought about installing safeguards for that. We’ll be able to see what the Engineer sees, and hear what it hears.”

“Excellent,” Skulduggery said. “We’ll need every advantage we can get. I’m not going to lie to you, this is going to be dangerous. I can’t make any of you come with me on this one. Questions?”

Everyone put their hands up.

“Sorry,” Skulduggery said, “I meant ‘volunteers’. Thank you. Gracious, get to work. The rest of you, prepare. In two hours, we’re going after Ravel.”