Worldsoul

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows him. He mends lamps.”

He gave Mercy directions and summoned a steamsled for her, happily devoid of severed heads. Well worth the money, she thought as she dropped the coins into the Reader’s gloved hand and thanked him for his assistance.

The sled headed up the road and into a maze of back streets: Mercy could see an enormous building towering over the rooftops. She reached out and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“What’s that?” she shouted, over the roar of the sled’s engine.

“Bleikrgard,” came the driver’s reply. “Where the Lords meet.”

Mercy nodded. The lampmender’s place, tucked away between two taller houses, was more her style, she felt. It was half timbered, in black and red, and bore a small crest above a leaded window. With Perra at her heels, she knocked at the door.

Thirty-Three

Shadow woke, blinking at the stars. The veil was thin across her face, its infinitesimal weight a comfort. She lay on her back, on what felt like a pallet of straw, on the courtyard in front of Elemiel’s dwelling. As she watched, a star shot overhead, bolting down in a trail of green fire. She groped at her sash and found the sun-and-moon blade hanging safely in its leather sheath.

Once she was assured of her veil and the knife, Shadow was more concerned with what was happening within. She shut her eyes and looked inside her mind: there was nothing there, except a sense of unfamiliar peace. The spirit had gone. Shadow breathed out, a sigh of relief and got unsteadily to her feet. Neither Elemiel nor Gremory were anywhere in sight. The crescent moon was riding high above a handful of cloud, but the desert seemed to shine with its own faint light, casting odd moving shadows across the rocks. Shadow remembered the figure she had seen and shivered.

Across the roof, steps led down to the platform of rock by which they had entered. Shadow went down the steps and looked in through the black arch, but there was no sign of the demon or the angel. The chamber was dark and quiet. She took the slope that led down from the platform, out into the desert.

Its peace mirrored the landscape within. She was reminded that it had been years since she had last been truly alone in the desert, without angel or demon or passenger. The journey she had made to find the knife had been like this, with the great starlit bowl of the sky hanging over the shifting sands and the green glow of twilight and dawn.

But now she was not alone; at least, if Gremory and the angel were still even here. Perhaps, their work done, they had departed for other realms, and she was alone. Shadow was not arrogant enough to think this had all been done as a favour to her. There were other agendas, more layers of meaning.

Then she came around an edge of rock and there was the demon. Gremory was in human form, barefoot and wearing a robe of black silk. She was crouching among the stones and as Shadow watched, her hand darted out, re-emerging with something spiny and wriggling. A scorpion. The demon stood, opened her mouth, bit it in half, and then swallowed each half. She turned to Shadow, a bead of venom glittering on her lip. She licked it away with the swipe of a long tongue and smiled.

“You’re awake.”

Shadow nodded.

“I-it’s gone. Where did it go?”

“Ah.” The demon had the grace to look a little abashed. “I need to explain something to you.”

“What?”

“Come up to the chamber.”

“Gremory?”

“Come.” The demon strode past her up the slope, beckoning. Shadow followed with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Gremory did not pause at the angel’s chamber, but went past it, up onto the roof.

“There,” she said. “Do you see?”

Shadow frowned into the darkness. Something was sitting on the lip of rock opposite, something small and tailed. It raised its head and she caught a glimpse of eyes that were the colour of roses, a curl of horn at its brow.

“It’s a demon.”

“Only a little one. A small spirit, a genus loci. You shouldn’t be able to see it, Shadow.”

“Then why can I?”

“Well. Elemiel did his best.”

“And he got rid of the thing in my head.” The demon was looking somewhat shifty. “Gremory? Didn’t he?”

“He was largely successful,” the demon said. “He got it out of your mind, but it went-elsewhere.”

“What? Where?”

“Into your flesh. I don’t know whether it even meant to. I think it was so afraid of him that it split into a thousand pieces, and those fragments went into you-into your fingertips, your eyes, your ears… ”

“So now I’m-what? Infested?”

“Look on the bright side,” the demon said. “Try to see it as an upgrade.”

Thirty-Four

“I can’t do anything before next Fourth Day,” the lampmender said when he opened the door. “If it’s urgent, it’ll have to wait.”

Mercy had been expecting a little old man, like Einstein in an apron, bristling with eccentricity. It just went to show that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Salt was large and lugubrious, with bloodhound jowls and a figure like a pear. He looked at her without expression.

“I didn’t come about a lamp,” Mercy told him.

The stare increased in intensity. “You’d better come in.”

Once inside, he sat her down in a leather armchair. The shop did, at least, ring true to type. It was crowded and, for a lampmender’s, surprisingly dark. Maybe they were like cobbler’s children, going unshod.

“My mother had your address in a box,” Mercy said.

“I’ve got a lot of customers.”

“I don’t think she would have kept it if she’d just been a customer,” Mercy said. She did not add that romance was unlikely to have been a consideration; regardless of Greya’s sexual inclinations, Salt was not an immediate candidate for a burning lifelong passion. But she did not want to hurt his feelings.

“What was your ma’s name?”

“Greya Fane.”

This did produce an effect. Salt’s chilly eyes, which resembled those of a cod, widened. “Oh!” he said.

“You obviously remember her.”

“I’ll say. The last time I saw Greya Fane, she was drenched to the skin, shivering fit to bust, and had just killed a man.”

“I see,” Mercy said, blankly.

“That was-what? Over forty years ago now. I was an apprentice at the time. This was my uncle’s shop. I knew Greya from up north; we’d both come down together from Aachven. Didn’t know one another well-different backgrounds. My family were woodcutters. Uncle broke out, wanted to make something of himself. Greya wanted to get away from the north and her family; I paid for her train ticket. Didn’t hear from her for several months, then one night, she turned up on the doorstep and said someone had attacked her. She’d killed him, apparently, though she never said how.”

“Did you call the authorities?”