The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (66 page)

My face burns. He doesn’t stop eating the nibblies, nor swigging down on a glass of white, though, all of which cost me more money than I want to think about right now.

He pats my shoulder gently. “Of course, you won’t need to worry about that, soon.” He sighs. “Got any of those little sandwiches? I do like those little sandwiches.”

What the hell is he talking about? I open my mouth to thank him for the vote of support when the air is split with a tremendous thunderclap.

Two black flags, marked with the brace symbol, snap in the wind above the Ankous’ marquee. The RMs call it the whinge tent. As far as I can see it’s justified, the title and the whingeing. We make them work hard and then some. Tim knows he doesn’t have to put up with my shit, but the rest of them don’t have the advantage of a family connection. This must be their only chance to vent.

Tim stands by their marquee with the other Ankous, apparently holding court. He looks far more comfortable than me, though I’ve noticed that he’s drawing on a cigarette faster than I thought was humanly possible.

He nods at me. Yeah, something’s going on there, and he’s not happy. He gestures at his phone; I yank mine out of my pocket a moment before it signals that I’ve received a text.

Be careful
, Tim’s written.
They’re up to something.

A few more specifics would be helpful.

A hand, a big hand, slaps down on my shoulder and I somehow manage not to yelp.

“Good spot, this,” Kiri Baker says. He’s about as broad across as I am tall. He smiles a wide, bright smile. “Nice.”

I nod my head. “Yeah.”

“So, you still seeing Mr. D for advice?”

“Yeah.”

“He still doing that face thing?”

I nod, and Kiri shivers. “Fuck, that used to scare the bejesus out of me. Dramatic bloke, isn’t he? Gotta have a hobby, I suppose.” He slaps me on the shoulder again and squeezes. “We southerners have to stick together, eh?”

Hm, that didn’t count for much when we had a Schism a couple of months ago.

Kiri sighs. “It’s a shame we’ll never have a chance to know what might have come of that.” I turn sharply and look at him. He’s grinning. “Desperate times. Now, I’ve got to get some of those little sandwiches.” He walks back into the marquee.

What do these people know that I don’t?

It’s my turn at the podium again. I pull out my PowerPoint; relate all that I know about the Stirrer god. The things that Cerbo has told me, my own experiences. I even mention the visit from the Stirrer that inhabited Lissa, suggesting that Stirrers may not be as unified as we once thought.

I cannot feel any heartbeats, which is a blessed relief. Must be the storm. I look at the eleven RMs before me. They may be my people now, but I can’t show any weakness. My only strength, Mr. D reckons, is that none of them is likely to remember what it was like to be new to the job. They expect a higher level of knowledge than I have.

Huff and bluff,
I think to myself. If there’s anything I’m good at it’s bullshit.

“We have to do something,” I say.

“But what?” Charlie Top asks. “My resources are stretched as they are, particularly now that I’m shackled to South Africa, too. Do you not know how many wars my poor Pomps are working? Will you give me more crew to work them?” He looks over at Suzanne. “Not that it matters,” he says under his breath, and makes a show of looking at his watch.

“I don’t have any to give,” I say. Everyone laughs at that, and I fail to see the joke.

“Exactly,” Charlie says. “You developed world RMs never have anything to give. We’re all part of Mortmax and yet what do you all do? Cut back our supplies or provide them with so many conditions that—”

“It’s not the time to discuss this,” Kiri breaks in. “We have deeper issues at stake. Rillman has killed an RM. Mortmax’s thorn has grown thornier. We all felt it, we’ve all borne that new burden.”

“Which is why de Selby must know these things,” Charlie says. “Why he must understand the issues of our regions before it’s too late.”

“It’s what I’m after,” I say. “A unified approach to dealing with this problem.”

“Yes, but what you don’t understand, Mr. de Selby, is that the threat Rillman offers is more immediate,” Anna Kranski says.

“How can it be more immediate than
this
?” I slam my hand on the projector and the inky black illustration of the Stirrer god that covers the far wall shakes. “It’s coming. And it’s getting faster and hungrier and more powerful.”

“We have months, if not years, to resolve that issue. Well, you will,” Charlie says. “Perhaps you might want to work out how to use PowerPoint, too. All those transitions!”

My jaw drops. “I thought the transitions worked very well.”

Charlie Top snorts. “In my experience things aren’t ever as neat.”

“And what exactly is your experience?” I demand.

“I was old before you were born.”

“Ha! What’s a few centuries?” I say.

“Actually, Mr. de Selby, a few millennia.”

“Well, I’ve yet to see the wisdom of them.” I close the PowerPoint presentation. “We know so little, because we share so little. We have to be united. We have to be because there is no one else but us.”

Charlie looks over at Suzanne, and smiles somberly. “He may just be ready.”

What the fuck is he talking about? And what the fuck have all those veiled comments been about? I get the feeling I’m about to find out.

Kiri whistles and jabs a thumb toward the doorway. “There’s one motherfucker of a storm coming.”

Wind shakes the marquee like some curious, angry giant. Then the tent is gone, hurled into the air, and I’m having some sort of Dorothy Gale moment. Lightning dances across the river, spanning the water at some points so that it looks like a bridge of flame. And at its heart is a figure, grinding two knives together. Around him stand half a dozen Stirrers, their arms tattooed with a familiar pattern, their hair writhing with esoteric energies.

Sensing the threat, my sparrows and crows swarm, but they can’t draw close. The moment they do, lightning blasts them out of existence.

Suzanne grabs my hand. “This is it, Steven. I’m sorry it’s all going to rest on your shoulders.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You never were the brightest one, were you? Just look after Faber for me. He has always been such a loyal Ankou.” She grabs my face, kisses me once on the cheek, and then the lips, the latter a lingering thing that possesses a surprising tenderness. “Pity, I think I would have enjoyed getting to know you better.”

They can’t be serious. They can’t leave all this to me! I didn’t even want to be RM, and I certainly don’t want to run all of Mortmax Industries. I can’t.

The other RMs surround us. I remember them circling me while I fought Morrigan in the Negotiation, with all that hunger in their eyes. There’s none of that rapacity now, just a grim fear. These Deaths are going to face their own mortality. They’ve forgotten what that is like, and now it’s time to die. But for me, it’s all too familiar.

It’s one thing to serve it out, to be the creeping replication of cancer cells, the rupturing or blockages that halt a heart, or the shriek of metal against metal and the burn of petrol waiting to ignite on a highway. But it’s an altogether different thing to be on the receiving end.

“We’ve been working hard to bring Rillman out into the open. The man has been actively lobbying against us in various parliaments for a long time. And he can be extremely persuasive, as you would expect from a man who came back from the dead. We never thought he’d get his hands on the knives so swiftly. Steven, you have proven a remarkable accelerant.”

“Yeah, people say that about me.”

Suzanne ignores me. “You were the perfect bait though; imagine, an RM who had also completed a successful Orpheus Maneuver. How could Rillman ever resist that? I’m sorry about what he did to you.”

“And Lissa? Walking in on you—me…?”

“We needed Lissa out of the way. She was in too much danger, and if anything happened to her, we know how that might affect someone at the stage you are in of your career. The last thing we wanted was a rogue RM. I must apologize for that. It was my idea. I sent one of my own Pomps to the Princess Alexandra so that she’d come home. You were set up again.”

“Again?”

“Well, Morrigan did it so successfully. We thought we could as well.”

“Successfully? Look how that ended up.”

“Hm, well, there’s a theory that bait is best when it doesn’t realize just what it is. Even Mr. D agreed on this. Why do you think we allowed you to have him as a mentor? You are the first RM in the history of the Orcus to have such a guide!”

Mr. D was in on this, too? I thought we’d reached a nice balance of trust and untrust, and now …

“Who else knew about it? Tim?”

“Tim’s canny, but no. He does now. All the Ankous do. He loves you too much to keep something like that quiet. Steven, people love you, despite you making it so hard for them. They really do.”

“So you baited the hook with me? Thank you very much.”

“You were being watched. We wouldn’t have let Rillman hurt you very much. And as for your relationship with Lissa, you did a good enough job of messing that up yourself, despite my help.”

“But did your spies have to punch me in the face?”

“Let me tell you, he was disciplined for that.”

“For punching me?”

“No, for being caught and needing to.”

The lightning cages and crackles around us, a net of fire that sets the hair on my flesh on end. The other RMs look at each other, and then at Suzanne.

The Ankous’ marquee follows its twin into the air. Twelve Caterers rush toward the kitchen, place their hands on it and are gone. Can’t guess how much this is going to cost.

I can hardly hear Suzanne’s voice. “You have to get away from here,” she’s saying. “The Ankous are already gone, including Tim. They’re safe for the moment. And find your Lissa. Things may not end as badly as we fear, and if that’s the case we’ll find you. If they do end badly, well…you’ll know.”

But I know it will end badly. I know they’re all preparing to die. This is the path they have chosen, the plan they laid out when I became RM.

Suzanne is shaking her head. “Steven, you may be a bit slow on the uptake, but really, your heart is in the right place. You’re the only one of us who might stand a chance with the Hungry Death inside of them. You’re the only one who might hold out against the coming darkness.”

I want to hit something, anything. “So all that shit about you having a plan, about doing something. The plan was to leave it all up to me.”

“Not just you. You will have our Pomps, our Ankous, and your precious Mr. D. Let me tell you, he won’t give in to the One Tree for anything now with the kind of influence he’ll have.”

Like I’m ever going to talk to Mr. D again. Fuck him. Fuck all of them.

“You have to realize that the Hungry Death has been manipulating us all these years, driving our Negotiations to greater and greater violence. We started playing its game, and that’s not how you control something like the Hungry Death. You made me realize that. So, Steven, you’re not as stupid as you think.

“You’ll succeed at this in a way that none of us can. Surely you can perceive what an important moment this is? Just what we’re giving up? This is
you
. This is all
your
doing. You’ve made us all a little bit human again with your presence, your… flaws. Don’t forget that.”

She leans toward me, fast, and kisses my lips hard, one more time. My face burns. “There has to be another way. It’s not too late. Please—”

“No. You’re going to need all of the Hungry Death inside you to defeat what’s coming. We’re giving up our disunity in favor of your sense of purpose. Madness, isn’t it?”

“Neill didn’t want this, did he?”

Suzanne winks at me. “Why do you think he’s dead?”

“You organized that somehow. Made it easy for Rillman to get to him!”

“I’m a ruthless RM when I have to be. Don’t hold it against me, de Selby. It’s all I know, it’s the reason I can’t do what you have to.”

Lightning sparks against the bridge, a flashing beat of fire that webs its steel masts. Everything seems caught in the flame. I feel like I’m in an out-take of
Highlander
.

“There can be only one,” I mumble. My legs are weak. This is too much. Here I am, sick with fear in the eye of the storm.

Suzanne smiles. “Now you’re getting it. But there will actually be two. You, and the Hungry Death inside you. It will test you, oh, how it will test you. But then what doesn’t? You’ll be Death, Mr. de Selby. Death of a whole world. What a glorious thing.”

The bridge shudders, jolts. And then Rillman shifts onto Kurilpa, followed by his Stirrers. Lightning flashes everywhere, arcing around us. Suzanne and I look at each other, almost embarrassed by the melodrama of the moment.

“He’s nearly tiresome enough to make death pleasurable,” Suzanne says.

Rillman shifts to the rail of the bridge. He smacks the knives together. Lightning shivers from the blades, dancing between him and his Stirrers. They’re generating it between themselves somehow, just as they’ve been generating the storms in Brisbane, I realize. The lightning curls around Rillman in a way that no lightning should.