I notice the brace symbol tattooed on its thumb. This Stirrer shouldn't exist. And it shouldn't have passed through all the safeguards that I have set up throughout the house.
But here it is staring at me, in a body I do not recognise, for all its Pomp tattoos. Who did he work for? The relief I feel that it's not one of my Pomps is followed quickly by guilt.
'I found him outside your home.' It lifts its head and I see the red line slashed across its throat. 'I just took what was convenient. You really should clean up more frequently. My host has been dead for some time.'
'What do you have to say?' I ask, still holding Lissa back. She's shaking with rage.
'Not all of us are happy to see our god approaching. Some of us are scared. Some of us may be willing to change sides.'
'What for?'
'To see the sun again. To live among you, godless. After all, this place was ours long before it was yours. You who live owe us that much -'
'That's it!' Lissa snarls, and shakes free of my hand. 'We don't trust Stirrers around here.'
She slides her knife over her palm and slams it against the Stirrer's face. There's a soft detonation, the air gathers something about itself, and takes the motion from the corpse. The body drops, all smug smiles and jerky movement taken from its limbs. I look down at it. There's no hint that a Stirrer ever inhabited the body.
Then it smashes into me. The Stirrer's soul. It's as though I've curled myself around a ball of razor wire. I drop, and howl.
I close my hands around the scythe.
It feels so good, doesn't it?
And it does.
Now let us kill. Something shakes my shoulder, jolts me awake. My head rests on a cushion and Lissa is holding my hand, whispering soothing nonsense.
'You had me worried there.'
'It'll take more than a stall to kill me, no matter how rough. Why'd you wake me from the first decent rest I've had in ages?' I murmur.
'You were screaming. And then you started to chuckle.' Lissa doesn't laugh. I blink at her. 'When did that start happening?'
'Just then. A stall has never hurt like that before.'
Lissa smiles grimly. 'I'm glad you spared me from it.'
'You're welcome. The Stirrers are definitely getting stronger. And I don't like what that suggests. But next time, maybe we should let the Stirrer speak.'
'I don't trust 'em,' Lissa says. 'Especially ones that take over my body and talk about what we owe it.'
'I understand, but -'
'No buts. That Stirrer was in our house. It should never have been here.'
Christ, I wish I could see things in such black and white ways. It can only mean that the Stirrer god is nearing. I have to sort this mess out with Rillman and fast; the sideshow is obscuring the main event.
Lissa frowns and crouches down by the corpse. One of its palms is marked in black ink with a bisected half circle.
'Do you recognise that?' I ask.
'Yeah, it's the same symbol our electrical friends in their safe house had on them.'
'I think the Stirrers have found themselves something that counteracts the brace symbol.'
'Something that simple? It's hard to believe it has any efficacy,' Lissa says.
'The brace symbol is simple too. It has to be. Mr D told me that the universe rails against complexity, it likes to break the curlicues and the squiggles down.'
'He's a poet,' Lissa says, with a wry grin. 'Maybe he has something to say about all of this. Maybe you should go and find out.'
'Are you going to be all right here?'
Lissa raises her bloody palm. 'As long as this works I will.'
If you lose your trust in blood, what do you have left? Up until the last couple of days I would have found it impossible to believe anything could trip up the old ways of stalling. Yet here we are.
'Be safe,' we say simultaneously. 'I was expecting you. I could feel it, don't ask me how. Maybe we're developing some sort of link. After all, you are the closest thing I have to a living relative,' Mr D says, with two cups of steaming tea on a table by his chair. I don't bother asking where the new furniture came from. The One Tree creaks around us. He's just put down a copy of Fritz Leiber's novel Our Lady of Darkness. He's halfway through the book, I see. I slide a chair over to the table. There's no point rushing Mr D. Even if I'm in a hurry, he isn't.
On the uppermost branch above us is where my Negotiation took place. A Negotiation involving more pain than I'd ever thought possible. I keep finding new limits to that. My capacity to contain it has increased and the universe seems intent on filling it.
On the branches beneath us people clamber and climb, finding places where the tree is happy to absorb them and pass them on to the Deepest Dark. Every soul has a different spot, a different length of time to be spent in the Underworld. But Pomps, once they pass, don't spend much time here. Maybe the One Tree is frightened that we'll mess it up.
'Sometimes I can feel the tree calling me,' Mr D says. 'It would dearly love to have my soul. I've been here for so long and the tree is something of a stickler for the natural order of things.'
'You're not tempted to go?'
He nods towards the Leiber novel, and the pile of paperbacks behind it replenished by visits to the markets below. 'I've a lot of reading to catch up on. Besides, you need my help.'
It's as good a reason as any I suppose. If only he was giving me more than the barest slivers of help. I bite my tongue, though.
'What do you think of your little world?' Mr D asks gesturing out at the Underworld.
'It doesn't feel like mine.'
'I was surprised by that myself. You went into this with no expectations. I envied you that.'
'What do you mean?'
'There were no expectations to be disappointed. You're the regional Death. This land bows to you, but it also has a very strong sense of what it wants to be. You can either fight it, and it will struggle, even as it bends to your will, or reach some sort of agreement. During my, er, tenure, I preferred the latter. I'd already had my fill of fighting. Nature will win out. I will, one day, let the tree take me.'
'But nature doesn't always win out. A Stirrer visited me today. Walked through my braces, and it had this on its wrist.' I draw the symbol in the air.
Mr D slaps my hand. 'You don't want to be drawing that symbol here!'
'What is it?'
'Nothing good, that's for sure.'
'I thought this was my region.'
'It is, but regions are always imperilled, and that symbol's a siege engine of a most terrible sort. I haven't seen it since -'
'Would the name Francis Rillman be tied up with it by any chance?' I get out of my chair and round on Mr D. 'What the fuck is it that you're hiding from me?'
Mr D smiles. It's an expression that I suspect he thinks is calming but it's actually the most irritating thing I've seen all day, particularly as it is wrapped in his various faces. 'I assure you, Steven, that I'm not trying to hide anything from you. I don't work that way, and if anyone should know that it's you.' He sees his approach isn't exactly working and sighs. 'Yes, Rillman is involved. He was one of the best Ankous I ever had. Better than Morrigan, and more trustworthy – or so I thought. Francis failed the Orpheus Manoeuvre, but before that he had started a Schism. And like Morrigan he made deals with the Stirrers, but unlike Morrigan he'd designed a new symbol. I can't tell you what sort of genius that must take, but there hadn't been a new symbol in pomping since the Renaissance.
'He used his in a most peculiar way. He stole my powers – well, learnt to mimic them. But he wasn't smart
