Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SILAS HAD not lied about being unafraid, but he was overwhelmed. The warning Izanami had sent him, through the child Herbert, had hardly been sufficient.

Do not let them distract him? How the bloody hell could he prevent it?

The whispers had begun the moment they had left Ambleside. Grown to quiet conversation an hour later, and grown again to the louder hubbub of a drunken tavern an hour after that.

Whatever protections Izanami had set around the graveyard of Ambleside was not evident here, and Silas suffered for it.

The cacophony was ridiculous. As if he stood in the busiest train station in London, and every passenger held a blasted mega-phone, their melodies pounding the airwaves, each fighting for dominance.

Despite the maelstrom of sound, if he focused just so, he could name each melody.

All manner of dead were here.

There were the simple lost souls, those trapped by their grief, a murderous end, perhaps, a regret so powerful it kept them from finding peace, from wanting to move on. Their quiet notes were near drowned by the sharper trills of the hungry ghosts; the ravenous souls of the worst of mankind, the murderers, the violators, the ones who hunted down the weaker souls and devoured them. Then, over the top of it all, was the bombastic notes of the Blight-stricken teratisms.

It was not a concert Silas enjoyed; all the less for how it made Pitch's voice so small. Barely discernible as he begged to know what ailed the ankou.

Silas would answer–he was desperate to do so–he just needed a moment to gather himself. To understand this newfound intensity.

The goddess had done too well in resurrecting his strength. She had made him too much in her image.

You shall hear more keenly , Herbert had said.

‘One moment, just one moment.' His words were a whisper among shouts.

Silas kept his eyes shut. Needing the stillness behind his lids.

That was not what the goddess had said.

Her words, from Herbert's lips had been: it is not they who sing louder, but you who hear keenly, once more.

He inhaled, drawing in the centuries, filling in a fine crack of lost memory.

He listened to the death that surrounded him. That had always surrounded him as the Pale Horseman. A calamity of the collision of life and death. ‘I forgot how to listen.'

His words were instantly consumed by the chorus of the dead; picked apart by the messiness of their nature.

A touch landed on his shoulder, and the furore dimmed. The manic discord lowered its volume.

‘Silas? Is someone hurting you?'

Charlie stood by his side, the lad whose blood anchored him more securely to the land of the living. Blood that provided a quiet place, where a lost soul might remember himself.

Silas exhaled, breathing into the space where he existed in the world. A place that housed neither the dead nor living. And he understood; the subtle slink of returning memory warming his mind.

‘No,' he said. ‘It is not me they harm. I had just forgotten what it was to hear them. I have forgotten how to listen.'

He placed his hand over Charlie's. The lad frowned with confusion, and Pitch cursed at Lalassu when the mare held him fast on her back.

‘Start making sense, Mr Mercer, or I swear I'll burn myself clear of your nag.'

Both of his companions were easily heard now, the din of the dead was pressed to the background by Charlie's touch. While there was sense to be made of his own thoughts, Silas listened.

And remembered.

And understood how much violence had been done to the dead, since last he'd ridden with his scythe.

Stronger now, clear-headed, Silas looked to Pitch. ‘I can hear all the damage done. The ruin the Blight has made of the melody that should run peaceably between life and death. The goddess warned me how great it had become, but I hear it myself now.' He could not suppress a shudder. ‘The Blight knows our threat, and it does not like us. Izanami seeks to make a haven for those most vulnerable, Sybilla shall take her place among the ankou…' He paused, listening anew.

‘Sybilla?' Pitch's fingers were aglow, but he'd not made good on his threat to burn Lalassu's mane, thankfully. ‘You told me she had come over unwell again, and that was why she did not ride with us. When the fuck were you going to tell –'

Silas held up his hand. ‘Hush. Please.'

There was something there. Distant. Sweeping through the noise, like wind through a wheat-field. But so desperately faint. Charlie shifted, and Silas tightened his grip on the lad's hand.

‘Wait.'

Silas closed his eyes, shaping his senses towards that faint whisper. Sifting his way through the clamour, the chaos that had been more of his making than that of the souls. But now his old mind, ancient and tired as it had been, was rejuvenated by Ambleside's dead. Revived in its ability to understand the notes he heard.

Teratisms, certainly, but they could be counted among those who had learned to struggle against the grip of the Blight.

‘What do you wish to tell me?' he whispered. ‘Speak up, just a little louder.'

Silas squeezed his eyes tighter shut, sinking down into that fathomless place in the darkness where the quiet held court. He drew the whispers to him there. Encouraged them closer.

Ankou of the Pale Horse.

‘Yes. Are you there?'

The noise that came was grating, the slash of the needle on a phonograph, the rusty drag of a prison cell door.

Interference. Whoever sought to reach him had those who wished them stopped.

For all the teratisms he had saved, converted, there were many more being birthed anew by the Blight. But Silas had experienced a rebirth of sorts, too; he was not so feeble now.

He let go of Charlie's hand. And sank into the ocean of sound before him.

If the teratisms could not reach him, he'd move closer to where they were.

Silas wove his mind through the tangle of death notes, through the anguish that drifted there, ever-present, through the rotten grief and profound regret that the Blight stirred.

‘Are you there?' he asked again.

We are, Lord Death. Here at the graveyard.

Which bloody one? Silas wanted to shout. Make your damned point. But he caught his fury in time, reeled in it, and let gentler thoughts go ahead. ‘Where might you be? What do you need me to know?'

The sombre tunes surrounded him; death notes that lashed out at the intrusion of his own melody. There came again the cringe worthy grating, the harsh crunch of cog wheels being broken.

‘Speak now. Quickly.'

We stand by the church you bade us guard. Where the witches lay.

Silas's shock nearly cost him the frail connection he held. These were the teratisms who'd aided Sybilla and the Dullahan in keeping open the entrance to the cockaigne; still at their posts, just as he'd asked. ‘And what do you know?'

The answer was nearly buried beneath an onslaught of targeted grief, a wave in the ocean that sought to catch Silas in its whirlpool.

But familiarity not only bred contempt, it bred resilience. Silas was no stranger to the machinations of the Blight.

‘What do you know?' His note resonated through the depths, an ironic lifeline, one the teratisms clung to now.

An angel came for the bones of his kind, those beyond the church.

‘In the cockaigne? Someone has entered?'

Yes.

‘Who is it?' Christ, were they not done with nefarious angels?

A great one. White as lightning. We will not go closer. He frightens us. He frightened the fae.

‘The fae? Do you mean the Dullahan?'

The angel took the fae from the glass. Freed him. Wanted answers. The fae gave him lies, to save himself. Told him it was the Daemon King's doing that trapped him there.

‘What does the angel want?'

To know where the simurgh has gone.

The roar of the crowded ocean of death gathered greater strength. The clamour of anguished voices, of lives lost and spent unwisely, grew louder, goaded on by the Blight. Silas held his eyes closed so tight his cheeks stung with pain. His ears bled. The warmth of it unmistakable. But he did not have enough.

‘He knows of the simurgh?' Silas hummed with frantic energy, desperation that sputtered useless questions from his mouth.

He knows much, Lord Death.

‘Tell me more. Do you have a name? What was the angel's name?'

Michael.

The Blight drove in, and deafened him.

Silas was hurled from the depths to which he'd sunk. A bodily throw of the mind that sent him tumbling, only to be caught before he'd had chance to draw a breath.

Pitch held him, Charlie stood over him. The lad clutched his hand to his chest, his worry clear.

‘Are you hurt?' Silas knew he spoke aloud, but he could barely hear himself. He sounded as though buried beneath snow.

He had to translate Charlie's reply through the reading of the lad's lips. I'm fine. What of you?

Not terrible here perhaps, but elsewhere far more dire things stirred. Pitch's breath against Silas's hair told him he was being spoken too. He shifted, rocking onto his knees. The fog hung like sheets around them, and the fire in Pitch's eyes had it glowing.

The daemon touched his fingers to Silas's ears, and they came away bloody.

What the fuck is happening? Silas read the question on perfect, cupid-bow lips.

But he countered with a question of his own; unsure how loudly he spoke, for his hearing was still as though buried beneath great muffling layers. ‘Who is the angel Michael?

The flames at the heart of Pitch's eyes flared. Heat flowed from him, making the fog shift and sway.

‘He is one of the Seraph.'