Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT WAS not simply the desire to avoid goodbyes that had Pitch hurrying from the dining room. There was necessity too.

The simurgh, or at least some part of the Cultivation, called to him. No, call was too gentle a word; the bastard thing was demanding Pitch pay heed. Leading him on.

He made his way quickly to the back entrance of the Churchill, stepping out into a narrow courtyard where an unlocked gate gave him access to the alleyway behind. He moved unhindered, passing by only two other living beings, one of which was a black cat that hissed and slunk back through a hole in the fence. The other was a chap carrying a barrel on his shoulder, which hid Pitch from his view for the most part, and spared the need for any enchantments. At one point there was no choice but to cross the main road, and then follow the North Road along a while, before he reached the rough white stucco and dark beams of the Golden Rule public house.

He stepped inside, struck at once by the staleness of hops, the rich scents of cooked meat and the low hum of the clientele. Pitch found his way upstairs, keeping his gaze fixed, showing pompous disregard for all who sought to catch his attention. His head was fuzzy with the drink. The only clarity was there in the ceaseless guiding whine of the simurgh.

Ignoring the bobbing housemaid in the hallway, her cheeks cherry red with a blush, and breathless with offer of assistance, Pitch stepped into Sybilla's room. His temper had swayed far to the nasty side of reasonable.

‘Stop.' He slammed the door shut. ‘You are giving me a headache. I'm here, damn you.'

He turned around and was promptly assaulted.

A squeaking blot of vibrant yellow and blue, hurtled at him at a rate of knots. Scarlet flattened themselves against his cheek. The wisp kissed him, butterfly wings touching at his skin, before darting into his hair, and wriggling about like a mad thing.

They had taken to this ridiculous behaviour on the ride from the cockaigne. Leaving their guarding duties alongside the simurgh to make a further tangle of Pitch's hair, and pepper him with those weightless kisses. He'd grumbled and cursed and shook his head of course, hoping that no one took any notice of the smile he sought to wipe from his lips. He was certain Silas had noticed–of course the blasted ankou would have done–but he had said nothing of it.

‘Scarlet, that's enough.'

The wisp settled a little, but remained in his hair. Pitch strode over to the bed, where the curtains had been closed around the four-poster. Each pillar was utterly covered with runework. He swept the curtains back, and the simurgh lifted its head, dusk-pink crest rising, golden beak raised and topaz eyes watchful, but not alarmed. The creature's colours had a greater vibrancy now, far more so than on the journey, where their dullness had concerned him. That dullness remained upon the damaged feathers though, with no visible improvement there; those upon the wing and the creature's neck, which had been stripped of their vivacity by Gabriel's meddling. The Cultivation was not self-repairing, Pitch's hopes to the contrary were all but faded now.

The simurgh's intense gaze had Pitch's meal stirring unpleasantly in his belly. Or perhaps it was the wine. He'd drunk far too much. But he'd hoped to dull himself for more than just goodbye.

‘So, you wish to return to me.'

The simurgh said nothing, of course, it neither could, nor needed to. Pitch knew the purpose of his summons. His overfull stomach roiled.

‘You could have fucking well given me greater warning. I would have left that last potato.' He made light of a situation that was anything but.

Scarlet chittered at him. Pitch grabbed the wisp from his hair, causing Scarlet's cheerful humming to morph into a tiny screech. ‘I want you to stay back, do you hear. Everyone shall be pissed off with me if anything untoward happens to you. Never mind me, of course.'

Scarlet stood on stubby little legs on his palm. Those wretched, wide-open eyes the creature insisted on giving itself stared at him vacantly. Scarlet crooned, a sound intolerably close to sympathetic.

‘Go on,' he tossed his hand, forcing the wisp to fly. ‘Get away until I say it is safe.'

Scarlet did partly as ordered. Putting a few feet between them, crossing tiny stubby arms as it fluttered. Pitch interpreted it as meaning it would go no further. But he was not going to waste anymore time arguing. Besides, if this went wrong, it might be useful to have a messenger who'd gather help.

Pitch winced at the thought. What the blazes had happened to him? Fierce warrior of the Hellfield who hadn't given a fuck about his own legion half the time, now reliant on a creature no bigger than one of his balls to race off and cry for help if the need arose. Help that would arrive. But this growing reliance on assistance was dangerous.

A flaw to be flaunted by enemies.

Pitch was vulnerable if he did not take care of things himself. And if he were vulnerable, so would Silas be in turn.

He stalked closer to the bed. The simurgh rose to its feet, or rather, foot. One claw still curled up, blackened and useless. The Cultivation stretched its wings, the way of someone waking from a decent night's sleep.

‘Well? Go on then.' He glared, adding a touch of flame to his gaze. ‘You shall have to lead this. I have no idea how to put you back.' Another roll of the stomach came at that, and a sense of the empty place inside him flexing. A terrible combination of feelings, really. ‘Do what you must, and know that I'm not pleased with it in the slightest.'

But it made sense. They could hardly ride out with the simurgh sitting upon his shoulder.

The bird stretched its swan-like neck, and arched its expanded wings. Truly, the creature was beautiful, even with its blemishes and colour-drained scars. But it was also fucking big. And he had not forgotten how agonising it was, to have it torn from him. Before his fears took too great a hold, Pitch stretched his hand towards the Cultivation.

‘Do it. Get on with it. Return to me.' Was it that simple?

The answer seemed to be no. Unblinking topaz pinned him, the creature resettling its wings. Making no move towards him.

‘Fuck's sake, just do it, will you?' Before he lost his nerve. He reached for the creature.

The simurgh made a disconcerting noise, like the distant bellow of a bull. There was such power there, despite the sound's faintness. The simurgh's tail lifted and fanned out, the myriad of pastel colours mimicking the spread of a peacock's tail. The Cultivation shifted back, hopping on its one undamaged leg.

The tips of its fanned tail tilted forward, and down.

Like spear tips aimed toward an enemy.

Realisation brought a twisted smile to Pitch's lips. ‘You don't want this either, do you?'

But amusing as it was, the simurgh's reticence was also exasperating. He was not going to beg for the wretched, fucking thing to come to him, but nor could he leave this room without their rejoining. He knew it as certainly as he knew that if he delayed too long either Sybilla would return, or Silas would come looking for him. And he was in no mood for anyone, especially Silas, to see him writhing about, with feathers sticking out his damned gob. If that was how this bloody process played out.

‘Get on with it. You may have all the freedom you want, once we get you to the Sanctuary.' For the first time, he allowed himself to toy more thoroughly with the idea that perhaps…just perhaps…his part in this would end once the simurgh was delivered to the Sanctuary. That his freedom was not the illusion he'd always imagined.

And it was that thought that had him lunging.

‘Come to me. Now. I command you.'

He grabbed at whatever first came to hand. As it turned out, it was the simurgh's slender neck. The growl that came from the creature would make any troll envious.

‘Shut up,' Pitch hissed.

A blast of something unseen, a torrent of power, ran beneath the pretty skin and nearly launched Pitch's Christmas dinner into the room. He hissed again, this time with sheer discomfort.

The creature thrashed, and Pitch was dragged across the bed, holding on for dear life. The simurgh pulled them to the far edge, and they tumbled off, taking quilts and pillows with them. The girth of the creature's neck was no more than that of an actual swan, but Pitch had the sense of holding on to something much, much larger. Overwhelmingly enormous.

Pitch landed on his hip upon the hardwood floor, and promptly bit his tongue.

‘Fuck,' he said through a mouthful of warm blood. ‘Fuck you.'

The urge to let go was intense, but he knew only a part of that urge was his.

The simurgh was mammoth, far more than its form belied, that much was true. But Pitch did not wish to give up now.

‘I don't like it,' he grunted as they rolled, and something fell from the bedside table, ‘any more than you…but we are too close…'

He'd been ruled by this confounded arsehole of a creature and its powerful magick, for too long.

He was tired of being overruled.

‘Still yourself, you fucking imbecile.' The simurgh's attempts to escape him had them rolling again, and he ground his shoulder into the knotted fringe of the rug. ‘We are on the same side. Stop, damn you.'

The next bodily shift saw Pitch's legs slip beneath the bed. The simurgh's one good claw found purchase on the wooden bed frame. Stunning pink diamond talons dug in.

There was a violent wrench upwards, and Pitch's groin was slammed into the bedframe. The shock of pain through his balls was truly eye-watering, but there was little time for crying over such things. The sudden stop had thrown the simurgh off-kilter, and in that pause as the creature gathered itself, Pitch tried to wriggle beneath the bed once more, as a way to anchor himself down.

The simurgh recovered too quickly, and flew upwards once more. Glass shattered as the tips of its wings hit the window, and Pitch's knee met the solid mass of the mahogany bedframe. His kneecap dislocated, before his shins were dragged at a painful angle against the immovable solidness of the four-poster. The simurgh pecked at his arm, not breaking skin, but giving very clear encouragement to let go. The pastels of its feathers shone brighter, causing him to blink against their brilliance.

‘Stay still, curse you.'

The downdraft from sweeping wings ruffled his hair, and Pitch was drawing his flame to hand, ready for more drastic manners of control, when Scarlet flew in, nearly blinding him entirely with its added glare.

‘Get back!' he shouted.

But the simurgh was not the only creature ignoring him. The wisp darted off, right up close to where topaz eyes were luminous, and a golden beak was parted, ready to strike. Pitch squeezed his eyes shut against the onslaught of pretty hues: sunrises, sunsets, fields of lavender and groves of fruiting lemon trees.

The wisp began to hum. A tuneless sound that rose in volume; slowly, assuredly, over the frantic clawing and beat of pink wings. The intonation was deep–astonishingly so for such a tiny thing–and it was not a melody, nor a language. At least, not one he knew. This was more than either, greater than their sum; it was the rumble of the earth as it quaked, the groan of an ancient tree as it fell, the crack of a glacier. And all came from a creature that could be swatted from the air like a fly.

The sound touched at his ribs, at his sinews and that empty place inside.

His body hummed, not with the power of the simurgh, but with this strange sonority.

Pitch, still barely able to see, had the strangest compunction to still, and listen.

So did the simurgh.

The creature gave up its manic efforts to flee him, relaxing in his grasp. He softened his hold as the beast settled on the rug beside him, lowering its head, all the fight leaving it. Pitch blinked his eyes open. The light was not so harsh now, as the simurgh calmed. The Cultivation glanced at him, but only briefly, for its attention was all for the wisp.

Pitch released the simurgh, and dragged his legs from beneath the bed, rocking onto his knees. He stared, as the Cultivation was doing, at the tiny creature who perched on the fallen pile of bedclothes, like a victorious mountaineer upon a linen Mount Everest.

Scarlet did not hum, nor sing. They played a harp. Surely the smallest harp in the world. One of tangerine, glowing like a tiny setting sun in the wisp's hold. Scarlet plucked at strings no thicker than spider's web, and in fact, Pitch was quite certain that is exactly what they were.

The wisp swayed back and forth, like a rainbow metronome, strumming at the harp with fingers like bloated little sausages, setting off those deep, resonating, Earthly notes that tickled at Pitch's ribs. Scarlet saw him staring, mesmerised. The cheeky sod blew him a kiss.

He laughed, of all things. And the simurgh settled itself like a dragon at the base of its pile of treasures, its gem-eyes never leaving the wisp atop their makeshift mountain.

Scarlet hit a particularly lovely note, one of a low bass register, the boom of a distant thundercloud, that sent delightful shivers up Pitch's spine. It was a massage upon the senses. The wisp jerked their chin, once towards him, then another down at the gazing simurgh.

The will-o'-the-wisp repeated the move. Their intention clear.

‘I am trying to put it back, but you might have noticed the beast is not so keen,' he whispered, like an irate librarian. ‘All well and good that you've calmed it…but that doesn't help me with –'

The simurgh suddenly moved, shook itself hard, feathers coming loose and filling the air so thickly that Pitch shrank back, squinting, trying to see what the blazes the damned thing intended now.

The fucking thing had best not fly off, not after all this.

Scarlet's strumming altered, the resonance giving way to something lighter. The lift of the storm, the melting of the ice.

The clarity of morning as it dawned.

Pitch's vision cleared.

The simurgh had not flown off. It perched upon the bed, standing upon its one decent leg, the other held curled and close to its violet belly.

But it was not the same creature he'd seen when he entered the room. There would be no holding onto this swan's neck.

The simurgh had shed more than its feathers.

The Cultivation was translucent. Its corporeal form was gone.

The harp playing ceased. Scarlet's small mouth hung open as it stared with its horrid lifeless eyes at the simurgh.

Pitch remained on his knees. He did not shift when the wildness once again lifted its wings. This time it did not seek to strike at him, but rather, embraced him. Wings wrapped about him, soft to the touch as clouds.

Enormous clouds that stretched on with an endlessness that made Pitch breathless.

The sense of the ancient about this bird, gods, it made his heart stumble.

The simurgh…what the simurgh truly was…was fathomless.

Pitch shivered. Not fear, not exactly. He was wary…cautious…a little dry-mouthed at the thought of taking in this monstrosity.

He knelt before the infinite. But did not fear it.

Pitch had lived with this creature for a long time.

He had contained this creature within him. Found a way to live without being swallowed by the gaping depths of its existence.

Pitch pushed up off his knees, hearing the crack of joints as he did so. There was no pain, but there would be.

He lay down upon the bed, finding his place beside the wild and terrible beauty of the simurgh.

A topaz eye was fixed on him, more like a gemstone than ever, now that the creature had shed its corporeal layers.

‘I'm ready. Hurry now.'

The intangible wings brought their endlessness near.

The simurgh rose into the air, drifting just a few feet above him. Pitch's fingers curled into the remaining sheet, clutching at its useless protection.

He was not afraid of pain. Gods knew he'd felt enough of it to grow accustomed to its company. But he was tired of being its whipping boy.

The simurgh bore down on him. Silent as falling snow. Spreading wings wide, its primordial presence the slow descent of the morning star. Far too much for him.

Pitch bit at his lip.

Fuck, he did not want to do this. But what choice was there? So close to the end? He suddenly abhorred his choice to do this alone. To keep Silas away.

Something touched at his knuckles. Warm. Gentle.

He dared look down.

Pitch nearly embarrassed himself with a cry of relief. Scarlet was there. Wriggling in between his clenched thumb and forefinger. Laying their head against his hand, and crooning whilst they caressed the curve of his knuckle.

The wisp did not stop, even as Pitch's back arched, and his teeth cracked, even as he held in screams that punched at the back of his throat.

The simurgh's return was only marginally less painful than its removal, forced as that had been. The agony was exquisite, but it was not his alone. The Cultivation's movements were not fluid, there was a resistance there. Pitch swallowed, seeing for the first time what his own self-absorption had blinded him too. There was not one prisoner to Seraphiel's machinations here…but two. Some part of this being, this magickal creation, knew itself bound, and did not enjoy it. The primordial flame perhaps? Too ancient and powerful an entity to submit to being kept in a cage.

With diaphanous wings jerking unbecomingly, the simurgh began to disappear into him, sinking into Pitch's skin as if it were a pale sea.

Submitting, albeit with obvious protest, to its cage once more.

Perhaps knowing, as he did, that the only way for them to escape one another was to reunite now.

The creature's ruined claw dragged at his skin, the injury striking like a branding iron where it sought to enter him. Pitch flung up his hand, sending Scarlet scattering. He grabbed at a pillow, covering his face so he could release the scream that no measure of pressed lips could suppress.

The agony echoed through him, made his marrow fight to be free of its bones. His tendons stretched, straining to free from where they anchored his joints.

This was not right.

This was most certainly not right.

He had underestimated the damage done to the simurgh by Azazel.

And it hurt. Sweet taints of all the highest Celestials, it hurt.

Until it did not.

The Cultivation's broken parts finally drew into him, and he sobbed. Scarlet returned, with a warm touch that soothed; a glow that worked at loosening the tightness of his muscles.

The pain wrought on him by the damage done to the Cultivation was no small thing.

‘Find Silas. We must go now,' Pitch rasped.

The journey to the Sanctuary needed to be swift. So they'd learn sooner rather than later, if this whole fucking quest was in vain.