She leads me gently to my throne. And the moment I sit down I can feel things healing faster. It hurts though, and she wipes my brow with a handkerchief that she's pulled from a pocket.
'You'll be OK,' she says.
'How can I be? No one's safe. He said he wanted to hurt me.'
'He can't, not really.'
'Lissa -'
'She's safe. I have her watched. Now, tell me what happened.'
I run through the ambush, the fight. The injuries that Rillman sustained.
Suzanne considers this. 'He'll go and lick his wounds. Rillman isn't an RM. He will need some rest after doing the things that he did in that fight, to heal his injuries. Throw in the couple of savage punches to the head that Oscar delivered and Rillman will be quiet, he has to be. He may have wanted to hurt you, but it has cost him, too.'
'What do you mean you have Lissa watched?'
Suzanne laughs. 'She's too important a person in your life not to be watched. You have your Avian Pomps. Well, I have my own means. She is safe.' She tilts her head. 'As a matter of fact she's almost here.' She jabs a finger in my chest. 'Don't think that this gets you out of a lesson. I'll see you in the Deepest Dark later tonight.'
She shifts just as Lissa opens the door.
Lissa looks at me. 'Was somebody in here?'
'Suzanne. I needed her to shift me here,' I say. 'I'd get up, but -'
'Jesus, if she -'
'No, Rillman. He killed Travis.'
'What?'
'The bastard was fast. He got us just after we walked off the bridge. We hurt him, but Travis died. Oscar looked pretty bad when I left him with Brooker.'
Lissa rushes towards me and grabs my face. 'And you?'
'I'm fine. I'm fine. Though I've got my twinges. How was your day, my love?'
'Far, far better than yours. Why Suzanne?'
'Tim can't shift yet, certainly not well enough to get me back here. What would you have me do, catch a bus?'
Lissa scrunches up her face. 'You know how I feel about her.'
'Yes, but she saved Oscar's life. I did call you first.'
'OK, enough. Now tell me everything.' I sit in the throne, the heartbeats of my country playing around me. Thirty more people die in the space of my healing, though I'm angry over only one of them. Travis shouldn't have died for me. I've already looked into the schedule; his name is flagged as too early. He had another thirty-eight years.
My wounds have knitted well, though they're quite red and inflamed. Not bad for a couple of hours. I stretch in my chair, look over at Lissa. She's let me grump for a while now. She's rubbing at her brow like she has a headache and looks ready to collapse.
'Are you all right?' I ask.
'Yeah, the new staff are great. So that's one thing.
And the other states, especially Sydney and Perth, are doing well, oddly enough.' She sighs. 'I know accepting Suzanne's Pomps would reduce the stress on us, but I don't want you to do it.'
Guilt buzzes inside me. I should feel better about it, somehow justified that me taking up Suzanne's offer was really necessary. How much longer can I keep up this lying? 'Well, looks like we're going this alone. Travis is gone and Oscar isn't getting out of a hospital bed for a while,' I say.
'Yeah. But we're used to that. Weren't you kind of expecting it?'
'No, I wasn't. Call me optimistic, but I really wasn't.'
It's so easy to have these things taken from me, RM or not, no matter how hard I work – or don't. Ah, fatalist much, Mr de Selby?
Lissa strokes my face. There's an ache deep in the back of my throat and it becomes a burning when I look into her eyes.
I rise from the throne, slowly; every movement has its quotient of pain. I kiss her briefly, pull back and stare at her. Lissa's lips tremble and her face is lit with something that I can only hope I am the cause of.
'It always comes down to us,' I say, trying to inject more hope into my words than I feel. Then I kiss her again, a longer lingering contact this time. 'What the hell are we going to do?'
Lissa sighs. 'What we always do. Keep going. We can't hide from Rillman. He can chase us anywhere. Besides, neither of us is the hiding type – it didn't work with Morrigan and it won't work with Rillman. Tomorrow's Christmas, then it's three days until the Moot. We live our lives and we fight,' she says.
Hiding certainly didn't work with Morrigan. But he never wanted me to die – until the end, when he was ready and my running was done. Rillman's motives are so much darker and murkier.
There's loss on the horizon, and we're bolting towards it, faster and faster. Rillman, the Stirrer god, the Hungry Death, the bloody Death Moot. All of it's terrifying me. Lissa must see it there in my face, because she rests a hand against my cheek, bears a little of the weight of my head for a moment.
'It's Christmas tomorrow,' I say. 'I can't believe it. To be honest, I'd forgotten.'
'What? You're telling me you haven't got me a present?'
'Of course I have!'
She smiles, eyes flaring. Gorgeous, utterly gorgeous.
'Just kiss me again,' she says.
And I do.
26
The Deepest Dark is a soothing chill against my newly healed flesh. I've showered and pulled a T-shirt and jeans over my scars. It feels odd to be here, out of a suit. Sure, I'd worn a tracksuit down here once, but that feels like it was an age ago.
'You're looking good for a man who nearly died tonight.'
'Thank you again for your quick assistance.'
'I have a lot riding on you, Mr de Selby.'
'Things are coming to a head,' I say. 'I can feel it. I need to know how you know so much. And I need to know just what is important.'
'These sessions aren't about how I know things, but what I know. I assure you that you will have access to an incredible network of information. Not just Twitter, not just Facebook, or Mortepedia. Give yourself time.'
'What network? And what the hell is Mortepedia?'
But Suzanne puts a finger to my lips. 'You know about the Hungry Death now.' I push her hand away.
'Yeah, let's call it HD, for short.'
Suzanne sighs. 'And you know that, once, pomping was a pleasurable thing. But do you understand why we use blood?'
'It has to be blood, and your own, and it has to hurt,' I say. These are things I learnt from my parents, as every Pomp does. And it feels good to say them. 'The drawing of lines in the sand must always have consequences. It costs to fight battles. It's not just HD that drives this. You told me as much, when you told me how it was defeated. It's the will to make a difference despite the cost, and the realisation that you might fail. If failure costs nothing, perhaps we would be too reckless. If it didn't hurt to stall a Stirrer, perhaps we would just rush in with no plan, our guns blazing and find ourselves surrounded, cut off, defeated.'
The grin Suzanne gives me is huge. 'Blood isn't just life, it represents how delicate life is. Now, symbols are very important in this business, as you already know. The brace symbol, for one. But something as simple as a gesture can be powerful. If you give yourself to it.' She raises her hand, and dust lifts from the ground and follows her, fanning out, then condensing into a tight tube that spirals around her arm. 'Try it.'
