Managing death sds-2

by Trent Jamieson

  Neill pours, then passes me a glass of twenty-year-old scotch. Without even bothering to ask if I want one. The bottle of scotch is the only thing sitting on his desk, other than a couple of sheets of paper, over which he has made notes in an extremely neat hand. I try not to look but I think I can see my name. Neill slides the papers away and into a drawer under his desk. I almost expect him to pull out a gun. See what a paranoid state I'm in?

  'There are some things you're better off not reading,' Neill says. 'Besides, my spelling is atrocious.'

  I sip my scotch. It's good stuff. I compare this with the beer Mr D has been foisting on me. My old RM has sunk a long way. 'I think you need a mentor, Steven. Hope that doesn't make me sound too much like a wanker. But Mr D, he was never the best of us, had a habit of making enemies.'

  'I've already made a deal with Suzanne Whitman.' Not that I trust her in the least.

  Neill's expression hardly changes. 'I wouldn't trust her. Suzanne is many things, but trustworthy is not one of them.'

  Is this bugger reading my mind? 'And why should I trust you?'

  Neill smiles. 'Mr de Selby, there really isn't anyone you should trust. Not friends, nor family. Everyone can betray you. Why, you can betray yourself – and that's the worst sort of betrayal, isn't it?'

  'You're telling me that trust is pointless. Then why bother making any deals at all?'

  'They're no guarantee against betrayal, but they do, with the right amount of paranoia, make it harder. It's as much about information. Sharing.'

  'What do you want from me? You seem to know everything anyway.'

  'Not at all. I know less than you think. But I do have something for you. Rillman – I have heard that he's causing you trouble.' Neill sighs. 'You're not the first. Rillman is a pain, and your Mr D should have stopped him years ago. Do you know that he regularly crosses the boundary between the land of the living and the Underworld?'

  'What?' Well, that explains a lot. The bastard's got a passcard to Hell. I'm not sure whether I feel relieved he's back on the table as a suspect or horrified by the implications of what he can do.

  Neill's eyes crinkle with the slightest of smiles. 'Death holds no dominion over him. You might want to ask just who is letting it happen.'

  'Do you have any idea?' He can't give me this and not have an idea!

  Neill shrugs. 'Perhaps your new mentor knows. She has promised you much. The Orcus has plans for you. You would do well to ask just what they are.'

  'Why don't you tell me now?' I want to bang my fist on the table.

  Neill grins. 'If I could. Yes, but then she would know. This, I can get away with. This, you should have been able to guess yourself. You're new, of course the Orcus would fit you into their strategies. But if I tell you any more I risk… Well, it would not be good.'

  'I'll think about your offer.' I finish my scotch and force a smile, wondering if he's being genuine, if I can even trust the information about Rillman that he's given me. I've seen Neill's Negotiation, just as I've seen all the others: one nasty gift I wish I'd never received.

  You see someone decapitate their foe, you think differently of them.

  'Yes, please consider it carefully.'

  The phone rings. He glances over to it. 'I need to take this call.'

  He stands up, shakes my hand. 'Be very careful, my friend.'

  I nod and shift out of there.

  There is a knock at my office door, almost at the same second I arrive back. I'm a little woozy, but otherwise OK.

  'Come in,' I say, trying to hide the irritation from my voice.

  A giant of a man walks into the room. At first I think it's the New Zealand-South Pacific RM. He's at least this big, but it's not Kiri Baker. I feel guilty – another couple of movements I haven't let the security crew know about.

  The big guy blinks. 'Just thought I'd let you know there's been a shift change.' His lips move a little oddly, as though they're scarred. I know I shouldn't but I stare at them, trying to work out just what is wrong.

  He comes towards me, his hand out. 'Jacob. I'm Oscar's replacement.'

  'Thanks,' I say, standing up to shake his hand. 'I really appreciate what you're doing. And I've promised Oscar that I'll be good.'

  His hand encloses mine. And I catch the movement of his other hand far too late: it's not open.

  Jacob's fist slams into my head. I see stars, literally all sorts of unnerving constellations. Aquarius – today you will have the shit beaten out of you, dope. Dress for wet weather, and probable death.

  'You're welcome,' he says, swinging another fist at my head. I sense him changing. Shrinking somehow, or maybe it's just that the room is spinning. 'You're so welcome.'

  Shift. Got to shift. Close my eyes. Focus on anywhere but here!

  But that's the end of me. Five shifts in such close proximity was never going to happen. I'm on the floor, stunned, one nostril sheathed in a bubble of blood that's expanding and contracting with my breath. He lifts me up easily, and the bloody bubble bursts. I'm shaking my head, trying to stop the ringing in my ears. All I can see between long blinks is the carpet, and my blood splattering in Rorschach patterns.

  I try to speak, just manage a couple of grunts. And then we shift. It doesn't feel like far, but I've no way of knowing. For a moment my assailant's heartbeat races.

  More carpet, a familiar colour. A door swings open, and we move into another room. I'm tossed into a chair. The door clicks shut. Darkness. A chance. I've got a chance.

  I try to get up, legs hardly like springs, and the Hulk punches me down again. 'Not yet, we've a way to go,' he says, in the dark. 'I've just started with you.'

  15

  My head's clearing. The ringing's gone, replaced with a headache almost the equal of my worst hangover.

  I can only hear one heartbeat. Nothing else. A single steady beating that races again for a moment, then slows. Something just happened. I'm not sure what. There is a metallic clunk. The air smells of dust, with a background hint of industrial cleaning products. Where the hell am I?

  A match is struck. Some sort of fragrant candle must be burning because I can smell oranges, or the candle-chemical equivalent of them. Or I am having a stroke. My swollen eyelids admit a little of that flickering light: it's as red as the blood that I can taste in my mouth.

  I open my eyes, and recognise the room, even with the candlelight. It's the broom cupboard on the third floor of Number Four, the same broom cupboard that Morrigan used to imprison Mr D when he began his Schism. The door in front of me is solid wood and is bound in some sort of alloy. You can pretty much guarantee that no other cupboard in the world has that sort of door.

  And no one is likely to visit this space anytime soon.

  This is not good. Morrigan had the whole place soundproofed before he threw Mr D into it. I should have had the door knocked out, and a regular one installed. But I never expected to end up here myself. I try to move. My hands are free but rough cord digs into the flesh of my arms: the movement only tightens my bonds. This is serious malevolent-scout knot-work.

  'I wouldn't do that if I was you.' The voice is unfamiliar, clipped and rasping, certainly not Jacob's. Cold metal brushes my cheek. 'Don't move if you want to keep your eyes.'

  I freeze. The knife travels down my face, drawing blood here and there. I try and shift. Nothing. Something's damping my abilities here. I guess that's how Mr D was contained here. Yes, this room has to go.

  Time for some bluster. 'You're going to have to work harder than that if you want to frighten me with a knife.'

  'I will, really I will.' He sounds amused.

  I turn my head as far around to the right as I am able and nod at the candles behind me. 'You've certainly picked an intimate setting for a… Well, what is this? A torture session?'

  There's a wry exhalation, almost a laugh, and a hand passes in front of my face. It's lined with scars all across the palm. 'You RMs. You really think you know it all.'

  'I tend to find it's the A
nkous with the problem, Mr Rillman.'

  There is a definite intake of breath. I don't know whether it's an act or not, but he sounds genuinely surprised. 'Where did you hear that name? I thought they had forgotten me.'

  'Oh, around the traps. You're quite a popular bloke here. Mr D talks of you with a great deal of fondness.'

  'That shit ground my name out of the company's history. You will not speak of him again.' He strikes the back of my head, hard enough that I bite my tongue, and see stars.

  'OK, I won't. Just tell me: why are you trying to kill me?'

  'Oh, you're something of an experiment, Mr de Selby. A new RM, first in living memory. Who would have believed it?' Rillman says. 'We both know there are deaths, and then there are deaths.'

  'How did you do it?' I ask, my tongue swollen and bloody in my mouth. 'How did you die and come back?'

  Rillman snorts. 'Does it offend you? After all, you've done it. All you RMs must, death is the only way to win at the Negotiation. It is the single requisite, wouldn't you say?'

  Rillman walks around to face me. There's something not quite right about his features. He's hiding them from me. They're waxy, and his hair doesn't look quite real. Now I think of it, Jacob had something of that look about him, too. Rillman smiles tightly and, slips back behind me, where I can't turn my head to follow. He's just a blur back there, a blur holding sharp things.

  'Look, I know you failed an Orpheus Manoeuvre. But that -'

  Something strikes me hard in the back of the head again. Next, I realise I've come to, I can't tell how much time has passed but it can't be much. Rillman walks in circles around me, agitated. He steps in close, almost enough for me to headbutt him. He slides the knife across my cheek.

  'You will not talk about that. I did not fail. I was betrayed. Ask your Mr D. Here you will not talk about anything.'

  'What the fuck do you want?'

  'All in good time.'

  He lifts the knife from my cheek. Drives it into the meat just above my knee. And God help me, I scream. Not that it does any good.

  'Knives don't need to terrify, they just need a good cutting edge or a point, or in this case, both.'

  Blood and spittle run down my chin. 'Can't we just… What do you want?'

  He pulls the knife out of my knee, and slams the pommel into my jaw.

  'I want you to shut up.'

  I spit more blood, and a tooth. My mouth is a mess, I have to keep spitting or I will choke, but it doesn't stop me from straining against the ropes binding me here. It doesn't stop me from growling in his face. 'This is my region. You come in here and threaten me.'

  I'm almost convincing.

  I try to shift again, damping field be damned. I'm desperate. I need to get out of here. But there is a cold hand, a pressure sitting in the back of my mind. Not that different to the force that held me in the Tethys.

  Rillman lowers his waxen face towards mine, and smiles. 'Every emperor, every RM, can be destroyed. You must know that now. You must know that nowhere is safe for you and your kind.'

  'Then kill me.' I lift my neck to him. 'Just get it over and done with.'

  'Oh, if it was that easy, I would.'

  And he's right. Already my wounds are healing; there is less blood in my mouth. The flesh of my leg is drawing together.

  The phone in my pocket starts ringing, I'm amazed that I can get a signal in here, but there you go. 'They're going to start looking for me,' I say.

  Rillman nods, reaches into my pocket and pulls out the phone. After two stomps of his left boot the phone's in pieces on the floor. 'Yes, and I am sure that the broom cupboard is the first place they'll look. They're not going to worry about you for several hours. I have time.'

  He swings a fist into my ribs. Things break. Things tear. I'm choking on my own blood again. For a while I can't see anything. Rillman is right; this could go on for a while. My nature is such that I can take a lot of pain.

  'She was mine. And I lost her. Of course, you can't understand that, because you didn't. You cheated. You stumbled and pratfalled and somehow, you called your love back.' Another blow to the side of my head. 'Fourteen years of marriage. Do you not understand? What do you know of that kind of love?'

  More teeth are loosened. Blood chokes my throat.

  What do I know of love? I think of Lissa. Wonder if I'll ever see her again. I haven't spent enough time with her, not nearly enough. There is so much we haven't done together. Things we haven't experienced. Christ, I want to marry her.

  I don't care if it's unwise for RMs to marry. I don't care if it's the stupidest thing in the world. She's my girl. Mine.

  'Why are you grinning?' Rillman demands.

  'What do I know of love? I got her back. I got her back, you prick.'

  There's another couple of punches. More pain. A knife is jammed into my spine and left there.

  When the pain dulls, and I can breathe again, I lift my head. 'What do you want, Rillman?'

  'Agony, isn't it? And with the way you heal I don't need to be delicate.'

  He pulls out another knife, pale as moonlight, and as narrow as a regular dinner knife. He grabs my left pinkie finger. I struggle against him, but he is stronger than I am, and the ropes that bind me are tight. 'This knife isn't steel,' he says, 'but something I picked up in the Deepest Dark. Let's see how it works.'

  He pushes the blade over, and then into, my pinkie finger, hard. Skin and bone part in a swift and agonising jolt. I feel the cracking of that bone through my entire body. I scream. And I scream. And I scream until something tears in my throat.

  'Oh, we have so much more fun ahead, believe me.' I struggle, my bonds tighten, and Rillman lets me; so confident that I can't escape.

  He brings the knife towards my cheek.

  But this time I'm ready for him. I swing my head up against his skull. Bone cracks into bone. Rillman goes down hard.

  He groans. I rock backwards and forwards in my chair, and then I'm tipping over, landing on Rillman. I crack my skull into his head, again and again. His knife is next to him on the floor. I slide over towards it, grab it with a hand sticky with blood and cut at my bindings.

  The knife's damn sharp. I'm free in a moment and I stagger to my feet. Rillman groans again. And I kick him in the head. Once. Twice. I bend down and rest the knife against his face. There's a rather large part of me taking too much delight in this.

  'Oh, we have so much fun ahead, believe me.' I try and reach the other knife in my back, but can't.

  I find my finger on the floor. The little thing's twitching. I wonder whether, if I left it alone long enough, it would grow a new me. I push it against my wound and finger and hand begin to reconnect. It's agony, but I'll be whole again soon.

  I need to get out of this tiny room. The walls are closing in.

  I stumble over to the door, swing it open and stagger outside. Rillman is on the floor behind me. He isn't going anywhere.

  Laughter and music echo down from the floor above. I stagger to the stairs and climb up to the fourth floor. The nearer I get the more I can make out. Christmas carols? Worse than that – contemporised Christmas carols doof doof doofing.

  I kick open the door. And there are my staff having their Christmas party. A big Christmas tree is in one corner, someone is giggling by the photocopying machine. Tim is talking to some bigwigs from the state government. For all this, everything seems so forced; a party going through the motions. The door slams shut behind me.

  Everyone, glasses in hand, spins around, and there I am. Me with my blood staining my shirt. Me with a bloody knife in one hand. Me with the torn and gore-stained pants. Me with blood squelching in my shoes with every step.

  I walk over to the bar and pour myself a Bundy – a tall glass, neat. My pinkie finger still dangles a little. I down the rum in one gulp. No one has moved, not even Tim.

  'Oh, and merry fucking Christmas,' I say, waving the glass in the air. If it weren't for the bar I'm leaning on I'd drop to the floor in a heap. I
nearly do, and whatever shock my presence created is broken. The whole room seems to move towards me.

  'What the hell happened to you?' Tim asks, rushing from where the two government guys stand: both of them looking at me curiously. What are they going to write in their reports tomorrow?

  I lift up the mess that is my left hand – though it's not nearly as messy as it was – and point at the door. 'Downstairs. Broom cupboard. Francis Rillman. The fucker tried – well, more than tried – to torture me.'

  Tim's out of there, running back the way I've come. I look around me. Where's Lissa? Then I'm swaying. The rest of my staff aren't sure what they should be doing. I don't blame them. I can hear their elevated heartbeats. And then there's one I recognise.

  'Steven! Oh, Steven.'

  Lissa's there, she's found me, she's holding me up. I've never been so happy to be held up, to be bound up in her arms. There's stuff we need to discuss. Not here, not now, but as soon as we can.

  'Where were you?' I ask.

  'Your office. Jesus, Steve, I've been trying to call you. I was getting worried, but I thought… Well, you've been all over the place lately.' She touches my face. 'Oh, my darling.'

  'Francis Rillman just tortured me.' I grin at her. 'I've never been tortured before. I think I did I all right.'

  She walks me to a chair. The staff are all looking on. The poor green bastards, I really should say something, but the breath is out of me.

  'Could you get the knife out of my back?' I manage at last.

  She pulls, then reconsiders. 'Maybe we should wait for Dr Brooker. It seems to be lodged in your spine.'

  'Might explain why it hurts so much.'

  'It's going to be OK,' she says, wiping blood from my face. And while I don't seem to be bleeding, there's a lot of it.

  'Yeah, absolutely.'

  No one else seems sure what to do. I get the feeling that I'm letting them all down. I don't want to do that. After all, Rillman's taken care of. My wounds will heal and no one else has been hurt.