The Dying of the Light (7 page)

“The people … the bodies.”

Darquesse stood. “Their names, you mean? I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I think that one’s name is Daisy, because it says Daisy on her badge. She works in a supermarket.”

“I see. And why did you kill Daisy?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t kill her? Then who did all this?”

Darquesse looked around, then back at him. “I did.”

“Then you
did
kill her.”

“No. Well, I stopped her heart beating and her brain functioning, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“But I didn’t
kill
her. She’s still here. They’re all still here, Billy-Ray. I wouldn’t just kill them. How cruel would that be?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’d be pretty cruel, all right. So when you say they’re still here, what exactly are you talking about?”

Darquesse fluttered her fingers. “They’re still here. Around us.”

“You mean like ghosts?”

“In a way,” Darquesse said, smiling. “I mean their energy. Can’t you feel it?”

“Have to be honest with you, Darquesse, I cannot feel that. That must be one of your special abilities, because to me, it looks like you just killed a whole bunch of people for no reason.”

“Oh,” said Darquesse. “That’s so sad.”

“It’s a little depressing, yeah. So is that what you’re investigating, this energy?”

“I’m seeing how it works.”

“Found out much?”

“A fair bit. I might need to talk to some experts, though. Maybe scientists. I need to know how things work before I can play with them, you know?”

“That makes sense,” said Sanguine carefully.

“You know what’d be handy? Remnants. Lots of them. They take over the experts, the experts tell me what I want to know. Doesn’t that sound handy?”

“Uh, it sounds more trouble than it’s worth …”

“Nonsense,” said Darquesse. “The Remnants are lovely. Aren’t you engaged to one, after all?”

“Tanith’s a special case, though. And how are you even gonna find them? The Receptacle has been hidden away—”

“No it hasn’t,” Darquesse said happily. “There were plans to relocate it. Great plans. Plans that got sidetracked. Forgotten about. Quietly abandoned. The Receptacle is still in the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks, guarded by a few sorcerers and a squad of Cleavers. No problem.”

“You really think this is a good idea? Last time those Remnants were loose, you killed a whole bunch of them. Remnants have long memories.”

“You don’t think they’ll like me?” Darquesse asked, and frowned. “Maybe we should ask Tanith.”

She walked out and Sanguine hesitated, then followed. They found Tanith in the kitchen, sipping from a mug of coffee.

“I’m going to set the Remnants free,” Darquesse said. “What do you think about that?”

Tanith paused, then took another sip and shrugged. “Don’t really care one way or the other, to be honest. Some of them will be happy to see you. Some won’t.”

“Want to come with me? Say hi?”

“Sure,” said Tanith. “Let me drink this and I’ll meet you on the roof.”

Darquesse grinned, went to the window and flew out.

Tanith watched Sanguine for a moment. “You look like you have something to say.”

He kept his voice low. “You know she killed some people just to look at their energy, whatever the hell that means? She’s killing people, but not
seeing
it like killing people. Tanith, that ain’t safe. She’s tipping over the edge.”

“Of what? Sanity? Billy-Ray, what does sanity mean to someone like her? How does it apply?”

“She could kill us just as easily as anyone else.”

“No,” Tanith said. “She won’t kill us. Not till right before the end.”

“She can do no wrong in your eyes, can she?”

“Actually,” said Tanith, “she’s doing plenty wrong. She’s wasting time, for a start. I mean, what’s the problem? She has enough power to turn the world into a blackened, charred husk.”

“Is that what you want?”

“You know that’s what I want.”

“I know that’s what you
wanted
,” said Sanguine. “But that was before you talked to that guy who’d learned to control the Remnant inside him.”

“His name is Moribund. And he doesn’t control the Remnant, OK? How many times do I have to say it? After a few days, the Remnant stops being a separate entity.”

“OK, sorry, but my point remains. He said you didn’t have to be this way. He said you could rebuild your conscience if you worked at it.”

“Why would I want to?” said Tanith. “I’m happy being me.”

“No you’re not.”

Tanith laughed, put the coffee down. “Oh, really? You’re the expert on how I feel and what I think, are you?”

“I saw you working alongside Valkyrie and the Monster Hunters and the Dead Men. You were having fun, sure, but it was more than that. You were where you belonged.”

“Why don’t you just admit it? You don’t want Darquesse to destroy the world, do you?”

Now it was Sanguine’s turn to laugh. “Of course I don’t.”

“Then why are you helping us?”

“Because I love you and I wanna be there when you realise you’re wrong, because on that day you’ll need someone to have your back.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Love makes a fool of us all.”

“Will you please stop saying that word?”

“Why? It making you uncomfortable? Maybe the more you hear it, the more you’ll remember it. Maybe that’s the problem here.”

“There is no problem,” said Tanith. “I just want Darquesse to hurry up and kill everything.”

“You want the world to end now because the longer it takes, the more time you have to think, and doubt, and question yourself. See, you’re coming off a wonderful certainty, where you knew for sure that you wanted the world to end. But you don’t have that certainty any more, and that scares you.”

Tanith shot him a glare, and walked to the window. Right before she climbed out she looked back and said, “You don’t know me half as well as you think you do.”

“That’s right,” said Sanguine, “I don’t. But hell, Tanith, you don’t know yourself, either.”

ack to Roarhaven, and not a word spoken in the car. Stephanie replayed the vision over and over in her head. Details changed, but the facts remained the same. Stephanie, standing there with a tattoo and that gauntlet. Darquesse, murdering her family. Skulduggery’s skull plucked from his spine. That smile. Those things didn’t change. Those things wouldn’t change.

They drove by the elderly sorcerer whose job it was to turn back any mortal who strayed too close. He nodded to them, and a few moments later the road narrowed and they passed through the illusion of emptiness that protected Roarhaven from mortal eyes. The city loomed, its huge gates open. The Bentley slid through the streets, parked below ground. Stephanie followed Skulduggery into the Sanctuary corridors and they went deeper. They walked without speaking. Stephanie wondered if Skulduggery even remembered she was there.

They got to the cells. Skulduggery spoke with the man in charge, told him what he needed. Moments later, they were in the interview room. Skulduggery sat at the table. Stephanie walked slowly from one wall to the other and back again, her hands in her pockets. She looked round when the door opened, and a small, neat man stepped in. Creyfon Signate was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, and his hands were shackled before him.

“Finally!” he said, once he saw who had summoned him. He walked forward, dropping into the empty chair.

Skulduggery tilted his head. “I’m sorry?”

“I’ve been asking to speak to someone in charge ever since I was arrested,” said Signate. “I’ve been locked up here for
weeks
!”

“Erskine Ravel orchestrated a war in which hundreds of sorcerers were killed,” said Stephanie, “and you played a huge part in that. Of course you were locked up. You’re lucky we kept you here instead of shipping you out to an actual gaol.”

Signate shook his head. “I had nothing whatsoever to do with the war. I was brought in to do a job, to oversee the construction of a city in a hospitable dimension and then to shunt the people and the city itself back to this one. The city we built had to overlay the town of Roarhaven exactly. It took pinpoint planning, an absurd attention to detail, and it required my full attention. Do you really think I had time to plot and conspire with Ravel and the Children of the Spider, even if I’d wanted to?”

“So you’re entirely innocent?” Skulduggery said. “You were just doing your job?”

“I believed in what Ravel tried to do. I believed in his vision. But having an unpopular ideology is not a crime, and yet here I sit. In shackles.”

“You’re not in shackles for the ideology part,” said Stephanie. “You’re in shackles for everything else you did.”

“But I didn’t do anything! I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t even lie to anyone. All I did was obey the Grand Mage.”

“Construction on the city started long before Ravel became Grand Mage,” said Skulduggery. “You can’t use that as an excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse, Detective. I was just doing my job, and breaking no laws while I did it. Bring in your Sensitives, have them read my mind. They’ll tell you I’m innocent.”

“They’ll tell us you
believe
you’re innocent,” Skulduggery said. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Then allow me a trial. We can still have one of those, can’t we? They haven’t been rendered
completely
obsolete? Allow me to be judged by my peers, based on evidence and testimony. Let them weigh up the facts and deliver their verdict.”

“No,” said Skulduggery.

“This is preposterous! You cannot keep me in prison! I deserve a chance to prove my innocence!”

“Mr Signate,” Skulduggery said, his voice calm, “you won’t require a trial because we’re here to offer you a deal.”

Signate’s fury vanished. “You are?”

“Darquesse poses a threat like virtually nothing we’ve ever seen. While we do have a way of fighting her, we don’t have a way of
finding
her. She could be anywhere. That’s why we need you.”

“I don’t understand how I could be of use.”

“You’re one of the best Shunters alive, Mr Signate. We’re going to require someone of your skill to do what needs to be done.”

“I … I still don’t see what—”

“If you’re interested,” Skulduggery said, interrupting him, “and you agree to help us, then you walk free this very afternoon. You’ll be working with the Sanctuary and all your previous misdeeds will be forgotten. Are you interested?”

“I … I am,” Signate said. “What do you need me to do?”

“Before she vanished, Darquesse punished Erskine Ravel for everything he’d done. In particular, the murder of Ghastly Bespoke. She took that personally. You may have heard that Ravel is allowed one hour free of agony every day. The other twenty-three hours are spent screaming. No sedatives or painkillers can help him, no Sensitive can calm him. On his hour off, he has taken to begging. He wants to die. He wants the pain to end. Obviously, I won’t let that happen. I took Ghastly’s murder personally, too.”

“I didn’t know Ravel was planning to … to kill Elder Bespoke,” Signate said, fear in his eyes for the first time. Stephanie believed him.

“The human body adapts,” Skulduggery said, ignoring Signate’s distress. “If constant pain is inflicted, it raises its threshold. Ravel has been denied this luxury. Every time he gets used to the pain, the pain intensifies. The only way this is possible, we think, is if Darquesse has formed a direct link to Ravel. She’s turning the dial on his agony herself.”

Signate looked at Skulduggery for a few moments. “You want me to shunt Ravel into another dimension,” he said.

Skulduggery nodded. “Doing so should sever the link between them, catching Darquesse’s attention. Then, when you bring Ravel back, she should come for him.”

“And you’ll be waiting.”

“Yes. You’ll take a team of Cleavers with you when you shunt to keep Ravel in check.”

“It’s a good plan,” said Signate. “But there’s a problem. I have access to four dimensions. Three of them are inhospitable at this time of year. The fourth is where we built the city.”

“So that’s where you’ll be shunting.”

“I’m afraid not. There are creatures in that reality that we barely managed to hold back with the city’s walls. Some of these creatures are as big as elephants. Some are the size of large dogs. They’re all predators, and now that there are no walls to keep them at bay, we would be shunting straight into a feeding frenzy.”

“So you need a new dimension to shunt into,” Skulduggery said, and went silent for a moment. “Tell me, Mr Signate, do you know Silas Nadir?”

Signate’s lip curled in distaste. “I know him. Haven’t spoken to him in over sixty years. If you’re hoping I know where to find him, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I try not to associate with serial killers.”

“We don’t need you to find him. We’ve come close to it in the past, and one of these days we’ll catch him and make sure he never kills again. But you’re aware of the dimension he found?”

“I am, of course,” said Signate. “A reality where Mevolent rules the world. Not somewhere I’d ever be interested in visiting, mind you, but … oh.”