He’d taken his knife from his belt, said a useless prayer, and stabbed.
He had caught her before she hit the cobbles, and felt something wriggling away from under the blade, tearing into shreds, dissolving in gobbets of black feather, briefly wrapped with something silver that faded like morning mist.
Her eyes turned back in her skull, her breath soft and scurrying, all the strength flown out of her. He’d held her in his arms and tried to call her name.
It hadn’t come. The physickers had, eventually, following the sound of his voice trying to make a noise it no longer could. They had taken her, eventually, after a few broken noses and blackened eyes and dosed him with something so he slept.
Had dosed her too, with everything under the sun.
She’d never awoken; would never awaken. Now she movedonly in that last dance, where he’d hated the smell of her against his skin.
He rubbed the leaves between his palms again, bent forwards, and kissed his wife’s sweat-cold brow.
‘I miss her.’
The voice slides out of nowhere, the body holding it coalescing out of the dark corners, solid only in the corner of the eye.
‘I miss her,’ the voice says again, and Declan is moving even as his head turns, one hand snatching the lamp from the bedside, the other pulling back into a fist.
The figure in the corner flickers, and one arm extends in a series of fluid clicks, a gun barrel unfurling like a forgotten petal to touch lightly against his sternum.
‘No, Declan,’ the voice says.
Declan stops. He can still feel the oily taste of forgetting on his lips as he mouths the words. ‘Slickwalker.’
The body in the corner inclines itself briefly.
‘I suppose I am now.’ Slickwalker tips his head towards the bed. ‘I mean it though, I do miss her.’
Declan’s eyes flick to the barrel resting against his chest.
Slickwalker smiles slightly, a grey ripple in the shadows. ‘No, Declan,’ he says.
Declan spits. ‘No what, you ratshit?’
Slickwalker pushes the gun forwards slightly. It whines hungrily. ‘No, you’re not fast enough.’ Slickwalker shrugs. ‘Anyway, I’m not here to fight.’
Declan sets the lamp down and flexes his shoulder.
‘Just here to reminisce about the time your slit girlfriend sucked the soul out of my wife?’ He grins, all teeth and gums, ‘If you breathe wrong for an instant, I’ll rip out your throat. Just so we’re clear.’
Slickwalker shrugs again, fluidly. ‘Perfectly. Like I said, I’m not here to fight. What you do … well, I can’t do anything about that.’
He tilts the gun barrel slightly. ‘Can I get this out of the way though?’
Declan tips his head. ‘I suppose.’
The gun coils back in on itself like a well-fed snake. Slickwalker shudders and his outline solidifies into the tall, lean man that Declan recognises.Almostrecognises.
‘Oh dear, ratshit. Shacked-up life not agreeing with you?’
Slickwalker smiles ruefully and runs a hand through short-cropped hair now frosted with grey. ‘Oh, this?’ His laugh is loose and easy. ‘Perils of the job. I can’t always look like me. This is,’ – he tilts a hand – ‘a familiar mode.’
Declan curls a lip derisively, ‘Can’t look like yourself. Can’t show yourself. Can’t fuckin’ name yourself. Whatareyou, exactly?’
Slickwalker smiles again and glances down at the shadow of a woman in the bed. ‘Content, mostly. Which is more than I can say for you. It’s a pity you both acted the way you did. It’s not too late though.’ He tugs at his earlobes. ‘I’d vouch for you, you know, if it came to that. Crowkisser’d stop all of this. We could bring Hesper into the fold. You’d be safe. Your wife would be safe. Your son would be safe.’
Declan’s voice is slow and hot when he speaks. ‘Where. Is. My. Son?’
