horrified.
Morrigan's body spills blood as it topples to the broad limb of the tree. It shudders once, then is still. And he lies there, an old man, bent and broken and bloody, and I killed him. The Negotiation is ended. Jesus, how did it end up this way?
'Good work,' Mr. D says.
'No, it wasn't.' That's all I can manage. My breath is whistling through the hole in my cheek. Every heaving breath is agony, and it feels like I'm leaking fluids from every pore and orifice. As the rain lightens and the storm heads out, deeper into the Underworld or out of it altogether, I'm ready for death myself.
Mr. D pats my back, and the touch is gentle, but even that hurts enough to send a painful shudder through me. 'Yes, it was. You know, you're the first person to ever win a Negotiation who hadn't engineered it in the first place. I don't know what that means, but-'
'Some fucking negotiation!' I spit blood. It splatters across the rough bark of the tree.
'It's not finished yet. You've won the right to exist, to be RM, to sit upon the throne of Death, to have the high six-figure salary.'
Mr. D's fingers drive into my back. Agony runs through me. It's jagged and dirty and I scream. Then the deeper pain melts from me. Ribs shift beneath my chest. The torn cheek knits closed. I'm almost a whole man again, except I'm more than that. Something passes from Mr. D to me, a coiling and vast prescience. Mr. D is diminished and I, well, I don't know what I am anymore.
'So it's over?'
Mr. D shakes his head. 'Steven, it's only beginning.'
Go the cliche, but he's right. Oh, is he ever right. There's no sense of closure, merely a cruel momentum. When am I ever going to get a chance to stop, to mourn?
37
The other Regional Managers crowd around. They're quick, as management always is to recover from shock outcomes, each one slick and ready to engage in damage control. It's all I can do to stop scowling at them. Not a single one of them stepped in to help while my family and workmates were being slaughtered. But is there any point railing against death?
I'm going to find out, but not today. Healed or not, I'm exhausted.
I look up and Wal winks at me, then winks out of existence. I glance at my arm, and he's back there, a motionless 2D inky presence, smiling benignly. This job has some perks after all.
The sparrows are all gone.
No one else seems to have noticed either event. New Zealand's Regional Manager, Kiri, nods at me, then grins a huge grin. The sort that shows far too many perfect teeth, all of them sharp. At least he doesn't go for Mr. D's theatrics, his face keeps the one terrifying visage. 'Good one, eh mate.' He slaps my back warmly. 'Never liked Morrigan. He was a prick as far as I'm concerned.'
Still, you didn't help, now, did you? There might be no point in remaining bitter, but I damn well intend staying pissed off about this for some time.
The UK Death smiles, as bloodthirsty as a lion. 'I was hoping for Morrigan, I'm afraid.' Well, thank you. Let's let bygones be bygones, eh. 'But I'm sure you'll make a wonderful Regional Death.' He doesn't sound sincere, but at least he's honest, and I realize what a minefield it is I've stepped into. A ruthless minefield built on countless little dirty deaths. They're all murderers, they're all ambitious, and they all see me as a new player, a new way of getting one over the others.
Africa's Deaths look on. There are three of them, all in suits well out of my price range. The only one that is less than eons old is South Africa-Neill something or other. I can tell their ages, now, just by looking at them. Some of these Regional Managers, particularly in Europe, are 'only' a few hundred years old. The next youngest to me is only a hundred. But in each and every one of them I can see, suddenly and vividly, the sharp memory of the violence that was their Schism, their rise to power, and it sickens me, because none of them would have it any other way. And I can see in each Schism each poor idiot like me who was put to the knife. Already this is mine, this knowledge, this seeing, and I hate it.
Perhaps that is what needs to be done, perhaps only people who hunger for this can handle the job. Well, we'll see. I have a problem with perceived wisdom.
'Excellent,' says Suzanne Whitman, the North American RM. She smiles warmly at me, and that grin is hungry and cruel at the same time. 'Morrigan was too ambitious. I trust you'll still be organizing Brisbane's Death Moot in December?'
I look over at Mr. D. Death Moot? Shit, I'd forgotten about what amounts to the APEC for the Underworld, all those RMs in one room together for two days. And we're holding it in Brisbane this year. Mr. D nods his head.
Suzanne's still waiting for some sort of response, even as the One Tree gives me an image of her stabbing her own opponent in the heart, in her Negotiation.
'I suppose so,' I say. God, I'm actually RM. I'm not even sure what that entails, but I know that I'll find out.
She shakes my hand and grins another deathly, horrifying grin. 'Mr. de Selby, you are perhaps the luckiest person I have ever met. It's good to have you on board.'
'Yeah, thank you,' I say. 'Every single last one of you.'
'You're welcome,' she says warmly and without the slightest hint of irony.
And then they're gone, and it's just me and Mr. D and Morrigan's body.
'You don't want to be offending your fellow RMs, Steven. In their defense, though none of them need defending, I wouldn't have stepped in to help any of them. In the event of a Schism you don't. It's bad form, and there are rules to be followed. That said, I wouldn't trust a single one of them, and they certainly won't trust you.' Mr. D looks at me sternly. 'You don't get to be RM unless you're prepared to kill everyone you love for it. Well… until now. And that's the worrying thing. Steven, you represent a change, and don't for a minute believe that any of those RMs won't try and exploit it. You've more sensitivity than all of them combined, and that means more chinks in your armor.'
He leads me away from the Negotiation and all those bloody battles, enacted over and over again. 'But I'll be around for a while, to ease the transition. It's traditional, and I can't tell you how glad I am it's you and not Morrigan that I will be advising. If you need me, you know where I'll be.'
Mr. D motions at a treetop nearby and a small platform there which looks much more cozy than it ought to. There's a pile of books on a small table by an old wooden rocking chair. Classics, mainly. I even spy Asimov's Foundation and a few of P. K. Dick's. 'I'm going to catch up on my reading, and enjoy the aspect, not to mention watching what you might do with it all.'
The view's both fantastic and terrible at once. The city stretches into the distance, and then up rise the mountains of the Underworld like the shoulders of some mad beast, vaster and more enduring than the One Tree. At the mountains' base crashes the sea, its waves a raging, dizzying vastness. They slam into the stony cliffs and rise up hundreds of meters, their spume blown on the winds over the city. It's a mixture of salt and ash and fire.
Mr. D catches my gaze. 'You really should go fishing there one of these days, once everything is sorted out. I'll instruct you, it's very relaxing.' I wonder how a sea that huge and wild could ever be relaxing. 'And the fish… Tremendous. Certainly a marvelous way to celebrate your victory.'
I'm not really ready to celebrate anything. I'm not even sure if there is anything worth celebrating. I'm the new RM of Mortmax Industries, Australia, I've lost all my workmates and replaced them with the twelve most bloodthirsty people on the planet, and my only advisor is as bad as the rest of them. Don't trust anyone, Mr. D had said. Yeah, well, I'm starting with him.
I look at Morrigan's body, and I'm crying.
I'm angry and sad. And that's not exactly what I'm weeping about. It's more for the other things that I've lost, and so swiftly. The man's died twice to me. Ambition had proven as bad as a Stirrer, possessing him cruelly and completely. But he had chosen that path. I think about how long he must have been planning it all, working side
