Page 91 of Confounding Oaths
“Is it her?” asked the captain.
Barryson shook his head and then immediately regretted it. “Feels different. Familiar though.”
“Something from the men in red?”
That drew a less committal reaction. “I’m a sorcerer, Captain, not a fucking encyclopaedia.”
Always more drawn to action than discussion, the captain gestured for Barryson to follow him and led the grumbling vitki out into the streets of St. Giles. I followed, confident now that Barryson’s powers would permit him to see me only if he wore the right runes over his eyes.
They darted down a sequence of alleys that would doubtlesshave confounded any mortal pursuer but which presented me—swift and airborne as I am—with no difficulties.
“Well?” demanded Captain James.
Blearily, Barryson scanned the skies and the shadows for me. “Still here.”
Drawing his sword, the captain addressed a challenge to the night in general. “Show yourself,” he demanded. “If you’ve a scrap of honour, show yourself.”
I do not, of course, have a scrap of honour. At least not that I will permit mortals to judge. But it did strike me that it would hinder my collection of the narrative if I did not give these fellowssomethingto which to attribute their persistent feeling of observation.
So I materialised.
I elected, in the end, to lean towards the dramatic and the gothic. Soldiers are superstitious folk and take omens and portents very seriously. Robing myself in darkness I took the form of a skeletal crone, traces of skin clinging in places to bones otherwise bleached white with age, eyes still incongruously bright in the sockets.
With commendable fortitude, Captain James levelled his sword at me. “What do you want, ghost?”
By way of answer I let out a long, rattling breath (how did I manage this without lungs? Reader, you take things far too literally) and pointed at an ambiguous space between the two gentlemen.
“It’s death, Captain,” Barryson declared. “Every soldier’s constant companion. It was there when we fought the Lady as well. Looked like a crow then, though.”
I had, I confess, been hoping for him to reach exactly this conclusion. The advantage of being thought the personification of an abstract concept was that one could come and go at will and arouselittle suspicion. It would, regrettably, oblige me to take on a rather more sepulchral aspect while Barryson was around, in case he had the capacity to detect the inconsistency.
Bold, but not to the point of foolishness, Captain James continued to glare but made no effort to actually strike me.
“Just fuck off,” he said at last.
“I thinkbegoneis more traditional,” Barryson suggested.
This did not go down especially well with the captain, but he tried it anyway. “Fine.Begone.Leave us alone. We’re busy.”
Deciding that wordless was the best way to depart, I allowed myself to fade from view, and then to become a faint eddy of cold air, dancing morosely.
“It’ll be the lad,” Barryson said, once I was gone. “We had none of that until he showed up.”
Captain James scowled. “Not what I wanted to ask you about.”
“Never ignore an apparition.” From how seriously Barryson was taking this, I was beginning to worry I might have overplayed my hand. “If there’s death following you, it’ll mean something.”
“It means I’ll be off to war soon,” replied the captain. “As will you. But right now we’ve a glass girl and a blood cult to think about.”
In the dark, Barryson shivered, and only partly because I’d blown an icy wind down his spine. “Those could both kill you just as dead.”
“They could. But until they do, how about you help me out?”
Drawing himself to a semblance of attention, Barryson endeavoured to look slightly less of a disgrace to the uniform. “Of course, Captain.”
“The lad’s sister is falling to pieces,” Captain James explained. “And she’s made contact with a witch lives around these parts. Thought you might be able to help with one or the other.”
Barryson picked at a tooth with his tongue while he was thinking. “Falling apart probably can’t be fixed. I can paint her up with strength-runes, but I can’t promise it’ll work. Glass is still glass and it’s made to break. As for the witch”—he gave a loose, insolent shrug—“could be anybody. The slums are swarming with enchanters. Most of them are frauds, but it’s the ones that aren’t you’ve got to watch out for.”
