Suzanne shakes her head. 'It wasn't good. I don't want to talk about it. He is no longer in any pain.'
Above us the great inky mass of the Stirrer god swallows an ever-increasing portion of the sky like some gargantuan and evil lava lamp.
'I was tortured today.'
'I am aware of that,' Suzanne says. 'Don't forget I have ten Pomps on your payroll. They're switched on enough to pick up a phone. I knew you would be in touch soon enough. Your Lissa, she's sleeping?'
'Yeah, what's that got to do with anything?'
'Everything. This is your Lissa. This is all of them.' Suzanne crouches down, picks up a handful of dust and does whatever it is that she does. It dances around her hand, shining ever brighter. I can see Lissa's face there, her eyes closed, whispering in her sleep. Then, with a single chopping gesture, the dust drops to the ground. 'They all need sleep. Not that it is enough in the end. Gravity changes them all. They shift down, they grow heavy in their bones. They lose swift thought and swift action. They decay. That is all they have, a trudging forward into decrepitude and dust. And yet it is so beautiful. So tragic. And far better than it was before. She sleeps, your girl, but it is not enough to hold back the final sleep.'
I don't want a lesson in the obvious. I want answers. 'I know this. I've grown up around death,' I say. 'I was a Pomp, just as the rest of you were Pomps.'
Suzanne gives me a patronising pat on the shoulder. 'You only think you do. You don't know death the way we know death. That knowledge is coming, but you don't have it yet. You're never going to feel gravity again, Steven. It doesn't apply to you, the death you will find will be fast and violent and centuries hence, if you're on your game. You will have time to see the beauty and ugliness of life for what it is: fleeting and yet, somehow, eternal.
'And how you come to that knowledge won't have anything to do with what I say, or Neill. I can guarantee that.' So she's on to me, then. I try to not register any surprise. 'It will come to you in its own way, as everything else has come to you, because that's how it works.'
'I'm a bloody slow learner.'
'There's nothing to learn. This is a bone-deep truth, whether you understand it or not. A hundred years from now you will be the same as you are now, and different in ways you can't even begin to comprehend. You've no choice in the matter.'
'But there are choices to be made.'
'As much as any of us can make them. We're all fighting the same fight. The enemy hasn't changed. That's a constant, too.'
But I feel it has. Morrigan, in his dealings with the Stirrers, has set something in motion. Something I can't quite articulate. Suzanne watches me trying to get it out, and sees that it obviously isn't going to come.
'Rillman, what about him? He wants me dead,' I say, finally.
'And yet you are most obviously not.'
'Tell me how I can find him.'
Suzanne looks away from me, towards the city of Devour. 'If I knew a way, believe me, I would have pursued him a long time ago.'
An idea strikes me then, an unpleasant one. 'Are you using me as bait?'
Suzanne shakes her head. 'You've drawn Rillman out. Before, he was all secrecy – back-door plans and sneaking in and out of Hell. You would make excellent bait, but I fear that the moment we used you as such Rillman would go underground again. I want you on my side,' Suzanne says. 'Neill's bloc is growing too powerful.'
I peer over at her, surprised. 'I thought he was your bloc.'
'We may help each other from time to time but we are not in agreement on much. We know how to put up a unified front when we need to. But he worries me now.'
'What difference does it make?'
'When you have centuries, it makes all the difference in the worlds. Believe me, you will learn that.'
'What are your plans for me? The All-Death -'
Suzanne grimaces. 'What did that meddlesome thing say?'
'That I will be alone. That I will fall.'
Suzanne looks almost relieved, as though I've merely reaffirmed something. 'We're all alone,' she says. 'Rillman. You. Lissa. You will learn this, Steven, if you're half as smart as I think you are. The longer you live, the more alone you are.'
I turn from her, and consider the darkness of the Stirrer god above. I remember with utter clarity the immensity of its eye in that vision granted to me by Stirrer rage or my newborn power. I'd stared it down. Of course, I'd been too stupid to do anything different. Me there in that darkness, hurling its worshippers back away from the land of the living. I'd felt the strength of Orcus unity, a strength that had extended all the way down to my hundreds of Avian Pomps.
Absolutely meaningless. I knew that if it came down to it, I'd be fighting that dark alone and it scared the shit out of me.
'I don't think we have centuries anymore. Maybe my presence is what the Orcus needs, someone to add a little urgency to the proceedings to draw your attention back to that approaching hunger filling the sky.'
The look that Suzanne gives me is not nearly as patronising, though I still feel as though she considers me as little more than a dog that has just learnt to fetch.
'We know it's there. Its presence is undeniable and we are doing something about it,' Suzanne says. 'You have to believe me.'
'I really wish I could.'
Suzanne nods. 'This morning, I will send Faber to you. He will show you our latest work.'
'Seven am,' I say. 'And make sure he isn't late this time.'
Suzanne flashes me a vicious smile, and shifts out of there. I stand looking up at the dark. Wal drags free of my arm.
'I really hate how she does that,' he sighs. 'Keeping me stuck to your arm; it's very rude.'
'I don't think she likes you,' I say.
'What's not to like, eh? Eh?'
I don't even know where to begin. The next morning I shift to the office, leaving Lissa to sleep under the protection of my Avian Pomps. Oscar is already there waiting outside my office. He nods at me, lets me pass through the door.
Downstairs someone is dismantling the broom cupboard's door. I can feel it coming undone even from here, and I'm pleased.
It's one place Rillman, or anyone else who might want to lock me away, can't use.
I feel Cerbo's arrival a few minutes later. Oscar knocks on the door.
'Come in,' I say.
Oscar swings open the door. 'He says you are expecting him.'
'Yes, I am.'
Cerbo nods at me. Today he's wearing a green bowler that most people could only ever get away with on St Patrick's Day, and only a certain few of those. He carries it off with a quiet dignity.
He turns to Oscar. 'It's quite all right,' he says. 'I have no intention of killing your boss. Couldn't if I tried.'
Oscar lingers at the door a moment longer.
'This isn't Rillman,' I say. 'He's not going to be able to pull that one on me again.'
The door shuts. Cerbo raises an eyebrow at me. 'Quite the hired goon.'
I let it slide. 'Suzanne said you would show me what you know about the Stirrer god?'
Cerbo smiles. 'And that is why I am here, Mr de Selby.' He gestures at me. 'Now, if you would stand up, and come towards me.'
'I was kind of expecting a PowerPoint presentation.'
'What I have is much better than any computer-based simulation. Now, up, up! Get your rear out of that chair!' He seems to enjoy shouting at an RM.
I get out of my throne and walk around the desk.
