Tim rolled his eyes. 'Well, obviously they have, but without success, unless it's part of a Schism, killing off an RM's Pomps, weakening them until they're able to be killed. It's messy, convoluted and can really only happen inhouse. Remember, as you've probably read in my briefing notes,' Tim says, giving me a stern look, 'RMs give Pomps the ability to pomp. You turn them into the doorway that gives access to the Underworld and closes out Stirrers, but they also give you something in return. Through them you are able to shift, to heal. One of the reasons the party was so subdued had to do with the amount of energy all of us were expending to keep you alive.'
'That, and the music, I mean those Christmas carols were tragic!' I say. Lissa glares at me, reminds me to stay on track. Tim shakes his head, but continues.
'Rillman is obviously aiming at non-traditional methods.'
I remember Mr D's words about a paradigm shift back when Morrigan was around. 'He's trying to effect a change. A real change to the system.'
Tim nods. 'You'd have to admit that killing an RM without destroying their Pomps is a much less bloody transition.' He grins. 'I hate to say it, Steve, but if it's going to come down to me getting it and you getting it, or just you getting it, I know what I'd rather -'
'Hey!'
He raises his hands in the air. 'With the proviso that I can get my revenge. I'm in no hurry to lose any more of my family.'
'So why would Rillman want to get rid of me? I can't believe it's just because I succeeded in my Orpheus Manoeuvre and he didn't.' But I can believe that, part of me at least. If I had failed, and for a while I thought I had, bitterness would poison me.
'Did Morrigan have any allies? Maybe Rillman was one of them,' Tim says
'No, I don't think so. Morrigan ended all his allegiances brutally. By the Negotiation I think his allies and enemies were indistinguishable.'
Tim nods. 'Even the Stirrers were working against him.'
'What we need to do is find Rillman before he actually succeeds in killing me. As well as organise a Death Moot, run Mortmax efficiently and -'
'Don't forget about the Christmas party.' Tim smiles, nodding to the door outside. 'Well, you've already ruined that.'
Dr Brooker grunts, looks at us both quizzically. 'Christmas party?'
Oh, shit.
'Didn't you get your invitation?' Tim and I say at the same time. 'Maybe we need to cancel the Death Moot,' I continue, changing the subject.
Lissa and Tim shake their heads. 'No. That's one thing you cannot do. A Death Moot must never be cancelled. It's a sign of weakness, and you don't want to present any weakness to the Orcus.'
'But people are trying to kill us.'
'Death may well be preferable,' Tim says.
Speak for yourself. 'How do I look?' I say, getting up, straightening my hair as best I can. My fingers catch on what I suspect are large clumps of dried blood.
Lissa smiles at me. 'Like Death warmed up.'
At least someone's kept their sense of humour. I don't feel safe at home.
The rest of the Christmas party was, well, in a word, awkward. Death is something of a party killer at the best of times. Particularly when I spent a good deal of it staring intently at every staff member, or asking difficult questions that in theory only my people should be able to answer. Yes, there's going to be a staff meeting about that. Some of the basic pomping facts that these people didn't know shocked me. I was almost relieved when a truck collision called a good half-dozen of them away. Call me mean-spirited, but I am Australia's RM and death is my business.
Lissa had stayed by my side the whole evening, even submitted to my paranoid questions – with curt, often embarrassing, answers. Of course I knew it was her, I'm intimately familiar with her heartbeat. I have to believe that Rillman's mimicry doesn't extend that far.
Lissa's asleep almost the moment her head hits the pillow. I text Suzanne: Need to talk.
A few seconds later I have a response: Yes, you do. Usual place. Let's make it another lesson.
Yeah, but this time I'll be directing the questions.
I shift there. The Deepest Dark whispers around me. I wince, expecting more pain than I actually get.
Suzanne smiles at me, and she's in my coat. I'd ask for it back but she seems wounded in some way, a little less confident. It was less than twenty-four hours since we were here last, and I had left her to witness to the fate of one of her agents.
For the first time I see something – I hesitate to call it human – inside her. A vulnerability that I had never expected to encounter in an RM. It actually stops me for a moment. Reminds me that I'm not the only one capable of feeling pain.
'Your agent?'
Suzanne shakes her head. 'It wasn't good. I don't want to talk about it. He is no longer in any pain.'
Above us the great inky mass of the Stirrer god swallows an ever-increasing portion of the sky like some gargantuan and evil lava lamp.
'I was tortured today.'
'I am aware of that,' Suzanne says. 'Don't forget I have ten Pomps on your payroll. They're switched on enough to pick up a phone. I knew you would be in touch soon enough. Your Lissa, she's sleeping?'
'Yeah, what's that got to do with anything?'
'Everything. This is your Lissa. This is all of them.' Suzanne crouches down, picks up a handful of dust and does whatever it is that she does. It dances around her hand, shining ever brighter. I can see Lissa's face there, her eyes closed, whispering in her sleep. Then, with a single chopping gesture, the dust drops to the ground. 'They all need sleep. Not that it is enough in the end. Gravity changes them all. They shift down, they grow heavy in their bones. They lose swift thought and swift action. They decay. That is all they have, a trudging forward into decrepitude and dust. And yet it is so beautiful. So tragic. And far better than it was before. She sleeps, your girl, but it is not enough to hold back the final sleep.'
I don't want a lesson in the obvious. I want answers. 'I know this. I've grown up around death,' I say. 'I was a Pomp, just as the rest of you were Pomps.'
Suzanne gives me a patronising pat on the shoulder. 'You only think you do. You don't know death the way we know death. That knowledge is coming, but you don't have it yet. You're never going to feel gravity again, Steven. It doesn't apply to you, the death you will find will be fast and violent and centuries hence, if you're on your game. You will have time to see the beauty and ugliness of life for what it is: fleeting and yet, somehow, eternal.
'And how you come to that knowledge won't have anything to do with what I say, or Neill. I can guarantee that.' So she's on to me, then. I try to not register any surprise. 'It will come to you in its own way, as everything else has come to you, because that's how it works.'
'I'm a bloody slow learner.'
'There's nothing to learn. This is a bone-deep truth, whether you understand it or not. A hundred years from now you will be the same as you are now, and different in ways you can't even begin to comprehend. You've no choice in the matter.'
'But there are choices to be made.'
'As much as any of us can make them. We're all fighting the same fight. The enemy hasn't changed. That's a constant, too.'
But I feel it has. Morrigan, in his dealings with the Stirrers, has set something in motion. Something I can't quite articulate. Suzanne watches me trying to get it out, and sees that it obviously isn't going to come.
'Rillman, what about him? He wants me dead,' I say, finally.
'And yet you are most obviously not.'
'Tell me how I can find him.'
Suzanne looks away from me, towards the city of Devour. 'If I knew a way, believe me, I would have pursued him a long time ago.'
An idea strikes me then, an unpleasant one. 'Are you using me as bait?'
Suzanne shakes her head. 'You've drawn Rillman out. Before, he was all secrecy – back-door plans and sneaking in and out of Hell. You would make excellent bait, but I fear that the moment we used you as such Rillman would go underground again. I want you on my side,' Suzanne says. 'Neill's bloc is growing too powerful.'