Managing Death (15 page)

‘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.

I get out of the chair, with a little help from Lissa.

‘Sorry,’ I say to my crew. ‘You all party on. Really, it’s OK. Someone turn up the music.’

As inspirational speeches go it really doesn’t cut it.

Lissa wipes some more blood from my face. ‘Steven, most bosses just get drunk and flirt with their staff at Christmas parties.’

Tim belts back up the stairs, panting. Oscar’s behind him looking very pissed off. Tim passes me my phone. It’s whole again. I blink at it. I can see where the glass front is finishing healing itself: the tiniest tracework of cracks. Must be a cracker of a twenty-four month plan.

‘Rillman’s gone,’ Tim says. ‘There’s just the chair, and blood.’ He looks from me to Lissa and back. His eyes are frantic. I can tell he wants to hit something. ‘You poor bastard.’

I don’t have time or the energy to comfort him. ‘The guy was out cold when I left him.’

‘Well, he’s not there now.’

I look up at Oscar he’s only just getting off his mobile. ‘What happened? How did he –’

‘Rillman, it has to be him, he killed Jacob. Stabbed, in his own house.’

‘So who was it that I was talking to in my office?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s reassuring.’

‘Look, someone died today,’ Oscar says. ‘I’m going to find the bastard who did this and there will be payback. No one does this to one of my crew.’

I nod, a bit woozy with lack of blood. I know how he feels. I’m mad enough about this as it is, but if Rillman had tortured anyone else I would not be able to express my rage. At least physical damage is only going to be a memory to me.

Poor Jacob is dead and gone and, for all I know, he wasn’t even properly pomped. That’s too high a price.

‘He was working for me, too,’ I say. ‘We’ll both make the bastard pay.’

A thought strikes me. A dark one. ‘Do you have a photo of Jacob?’

Oscar nods, fiddles with his mobile and passes it to me. The face I’m staring at is the face of the man who hit me. This is not good.

‘That’s him, the man who attacked me.’

Oscar shakes his head. ‘Couldn’t be. He’s been dead for twelve hours.’

Great, Rillman can change his appearance. The question is, can he change his appearance only to those who are dead? Or are all the living open to him as well?

Just where might Rillman be now?

My gaze shifts from Oscar to Tim and Lissa, then to the crowd of Pomps around me.

Paranoia plus.

‘D
idn’t I tell you to keep out of trouble?’ Dr Brooker grunts, looking at my hand. The finger has melded nicely. Not bad for a couple of hours. The wound in my leg is scabbed up too. He looks from me to Lissa and Tim. ‘I did tell him to keep out of trouble.’

I’m on a drip, blood filling my veins. I’m on my second bag, and I’m starting to feel great. Brooker had nearly fainted at the sight of me. Anyone else and I would have been dead, or at the very least in a coma, he reckons.

‘This is getting irritating,’ I say.

‘It’d be rather more fatal than irritating if you weren’t who you are. So it’s definitely Rillman?’ Tim says.

‘Yeah, but I still can’t understand why he did it. I mean, I can’t have pissed him off. The bastard doesn’t know me.’ Rillman may not be the first person who has wanted to torture me, but he’s certainly been the first to try.

‘I think Rillman’s testing the limits of your abilities. Trying to find out what can kill you.’

‘Neill said that Rillman’s been a thorn in Mortmax’s side for a while.’

‘Not here,’ Tim says. ‘There’s no record of a Rillman for years in our system.’ He sighs. ‘Do you think that perhaps the Orcus are using you to draw Rillman out? I mean, there are links, plenty of them. If Rillman’s seeking an end to the status quo you would be attractive to him.’

I chew on that for a while. ‘Yeah, I’m new to my powers. I don’t have any allies as such.’

‘And you managed what he failed to do,’ Lissa says. ‘You brought someone back from Hell.’

‘You pomped him. You said he seemed calm.’

Lissa nods. ‘Maybe resigned is the better term. Most dead people are that. Perhaps he had decided on his plan of action. Maybe he was seeking me out. Death would be an easy way of doing that. He knows how we work, and it seems no real obstacle to him.’

‘Think about that,’ I say. ‘Think about how reckless you might be if death holds no fear, no real consequence, and you want revenge.’

‘It might make you willing to experiment more. Particularly in unconventional ways of killing an RM,’ Tim says.