Managing Death Read online

  ‘He really is rubbish, isn’t he?’ Wal says to Mr D. ‘I can’t fly, can’t do a thing when I’m stuck on that arm. And would it hurt to use a little deodorant, mate?’ He lands heavily on my shoulder. Talk about the weight of opinion. And I’m not too happy about being that close to all that pudgy nakedness.

  I raise my hands in supplication and defeat. This all would have been a lot easier if I’d had something to drink beforehand. ‘You’re right. Both of you are right. I’m sorry. I’ll do better. I have to.’

  ‘I forgive you,’ Mr D says, grinning a dozen various but magnanimous grins. ‘But you owe me.’

  I clench my jaw, try not to make it obvious. ‘Yeah, I owe you. But, finally, I’m here to make you work.’

  Mr D dips his head knowingly. ‘Yes. You need to find the Point of Convergence. Without it, you can no more have a Death Moot than you could hold the Olympics sans stadium. And without the Point of Convergence you cannot engage the Caterers.’

  ‘I thought we could just hire someone from a restaurant.’

  Mr D chortles, exchanges an amused glance with Wal. ‘And they would be able to enter the nexus between the living and the Underworld, how?’

  Wal’s laughing too, holding his belly. ‘Oh, he’s beyond bloody naive!’

  ‘Yeah, beyond naive,’ I say, feeling sick. Which is either the residue of the shift, my embarrassment at not knowing this and the fear of all the other things I don’t understand, or just possibly the throbbing filament of rage that is firing up in my brain at all this mockery. ‘And I will continue to be beyond naive if you do not educate me.’

  ‘Right,’ Mr D says, ‘the Point of Convergence is revealed through a ceremony. This is what you need to do …’

  By the end of his instructions, I’m less than pleased.

  He gives me a hearty pat on the back. ‘You’ll be fine, son. Be careful with those Caterers, though. You don’t want to piss them off. Oh, and the canapés, you want them to do the canapés – they have this thing they do with an oyster …’

  Son? Mr D never calls me son.

  Maybe boy, or Steven, or de Selby. Just what is he up to? This is why I’ve barely used him as a mentor. Too many riddles, too much in the way of diversion – and I don’t think he even realises he’s doing it.

  He hands me a piece of paper and a pen. ‘Oh, and I need you to sign this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A release. A legal and magical document. It allows me at least a modicum of movement. Sometimes I would like to be able to visit my friends. Aunt Neti is down there, as are the markets. How am I supposed to sample the Underworld if I am trapped here on the branches of the Tree?’

  Seems fair enough. Maybe a little too fair.

  I glance at him suspiciously and he smiles, almost looks innocent, but for the tumble of faces that follow. Mr D can never settle on just one.

  Still, out of guilt at my neglect of him, I sign it.

  ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he says, and looks at his watch. ‘You better get going. I can’t believe you’ve left it so late.’

  Neither can I. The one thing I don’t want to mess up is a Death Moot. Ruin this, and I’m on my own. And that Stirrer god is approaching. The End of Days is approaching, and it seems I’ve gotta jump through a whole lot of bloody hoops to stop it.

  ‘Oh, and next time? Some books, please,’ Mr D says. ‘Now shoo!’

  Another shift.

  Back in my office.

  I take a deep breath. Maybe it is getting easier. Then I throw up in my wastepaper bin, noisily and messily. Bloody shifting. I rinse my mouth out with cold coffee, put the bin as far away from the desk as possible, to be dealt with later, and walk out into the open workspace of Number Four. People are busy coordinating pomps, getting the right people to the right place. The floor beneath us would be just as hectic, though they deal with the business end of Mortmax: the stuff that finances all of this. Our shares are doing quite well at the moment, so Tim tells me.

  I knock on Tim’s door.

  ‘Enter,’ he says somewhat officiously.

  I poke my head in. Tim’s having a smoke. He juts his jaw out, daring me to comment. I don’t take the bait.

  ‘Lissa out on a job?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah. There’s a stir expected at the Wesley Hospital.’ I remember the last time I was there. Seven Stirrers and me, one of the few Pomps left alive in Brisbane. Still gives me the shivers.

  ‘I miss her when she’s not around.’

  Tim snorts at that. ‘Ah, young love. Give it time. The missing goes, along with all the sex. Believe me.’ Yeah, right, I know how much he misses Sally. Young love, indeed.

  ‘OK, I just wanted to tell you that if anything goes wrong with this whole Convergence Ceremony thing it’s your fault.’

  Tim stabs the cigarette butt into his ashtray. ‘That bad is it?’

  ‘I have to see Aunt Neti.’

  Tim smiles wanly. Aunt Neti freaks him out. Maybe it’s the eight arms, or the murderous glint in her eyes. ‘You going now? Do you want someone to come with?’ It’s the least earnest sounding offer I’ve ever heard. But no surprise there. Our first meeting had been rather memorable, Aunt Neti’s predatory eyes focussed on the both of us as she recounted tales of particularly bloodthirsty Schisms. She’d been very annoyed when Tim didn’t finish his scones. His joke about avoiding carbs had fallen curiously flat, and the air in Neti’s parlour had chilled considerably. I thought she was going to tear his head off.

  ‘Yeah, I’m going now. Better to get it over and done with, obviously. And thanks, but I need to do this one alone. I want to.’ At least I can manage to sound like I mean it.

  ‘OK.’ Tim can’t hide the relief in his voice. ‘On the plus side you’ve only got a short walk.’

  A short walk to Hell; well, a particular part of it. ‘I’ll talk to you when I get back. I’m going to need your help with the ceremony,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how badly I’d let work slip.’

  That’s not true. I knew, but I just couldn’t find a way out. Can’t say that I have yet. But at least I’m trying.

  ‘We were never going to let you fall too far,’ Tim says. ‘We love you too much. Now be safe.’

  ‘I will.’ I shut the door behind me. If I really wanted to be safe there’s no way I’d do what I’m about to do.

  There’s a doorway – and though its door is very heavy, it’s never closed – that leads to a hallway, which in turn leads to Aunt Neti’s parlour.

  Every region’s headquarters has one. As I walk towards the portal, conversation in the workspace dies down. I straighten my back, check my hair in a mirror near the door. I sigh. It’ll have to do. Still no one has said a word. I turn around: a dozen pairs of eyes flick this way and that.

  ‘Don’t you all have work to do?’

  A phone rings. Someone starts typing away furiously. A stapler snap, snap, snaps.

  I enter the hallway, suddenly I need to pee. But I can’t, I have to stay on the path.

  No turning back now.

  3

  The hallway creaks and groans, echoing the One Tree. Two, three steps in and the sounds of phones ringing, the beating of hearts, the snap of staplers grow muted. Then there’s just silence, but for that creaking and groaning. The brown carpet ripples in sympathy with a floor that buckles with the stress of keeping a link between dimensions. It’s hard to stay on your feet here, but I do my best, and I don’t need to grab a wall to steady myself.

  My right biceps starts burning. I take a few more steps and Wal pushes his way out from under my shirt sleeve. He flaps his wings and grins at me.

  ‘Hello again,’ he says, then his eyes widen. His little head swings from left to right. ‘Bugger, wasn’t expecting this.’ His voice is low and quiet.

  Neither was I. The last time I walked down this hallway, about a month ago, Wal didn’t appear. Something’s happening that shouldn’t. Just another thing to disturb me. At least I have company. Wal settle
s down on my shoulder and considers the walls and the rippling floor, his face pinched with distaste.

  The closer I get to Neti’s door, the heavier Wal gets. There’s a subtle hint in the air of scones freshly baked; of butter, jam and cream. Aunt Neti’s expecting company.

  I reach her front door and lift my hand towards the brass knocker which is shaped like a particularly menacing spider.

  The door swings open.

  ‘Good morning, dear,’ Aunt Neti says. Her eyes dart towards Wal, and the little guy almost topples from my shoulder. ‘Oh, and you’ve brought a friend with you, and not your rude Ankou, this time. How sweet.’

  Seeing Neti is like looking at an iceberg and knowing there are immeasurable depths beneath it. More than nine-tenths, I’m betting. And she’s terrifying enough as it is. Aunt Neti is all long limbs and bunches of eyes – eight of each. A purple shawl is wrapped around her shoulders. She straightens it a little, with a spare hand or two, and bends down to peck me on the cheek. Her lips are cold and hard, and the peck so swift and forceful that I’m sure I’ll have bruises tomorrow.

  Aunt Neti bustles me inside, all those hands patting and pushing and pulling at once, so I’m not quite sure what she’s touching, just that I’m being moved from doorway to parlour and that my pockets hold no secrets from her. Her nails are black and sharpened to points, and they click click click with her pinching and prodding. It’s all done before I can even put up a struggle. I’ve gotta say it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that’s how a fly would feel as it’s spun and bound in spider’s silk.

  She shuts the door behind her. Wal’s keeping away from those hands, though at least a couple of her eyes follow him. And I’m making the decision that you always have to make when you’re talking to her: which eyes do you look at? I choose a bunch in the middle of her face. The ones with the most smile lines. They’re crinkling now.

  ‘Sit down, sit down.’ Neti gestures towards one of a pair of overstuffed chairs set across from each other, a low table between them.

  As we sit in her parlour, I keep to the edge of my seat – as though that would save me. The room is tiny and cosy, the walls papered with an old damask design. The paper’s peeling in one corner and a tiny spider has webbed the gap between wall and curling edge. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s staring at me. And those eyes are no less hungry than Aunt Neti’s.

  There are two plates on the table. On both there are crumbs, and butter knives, covered with jam as red as arterial blood. And my seat is warm. Someone was here, only moments ago. I look around, wondering if they’ve really gone. But there’s no one. I look down at the plates. There’s no hint there of whoever I’ve displaced, just crumbs and jam.

  Aunt Neti picks the plates up and slides away to her kitchen with them, saying, ‘Plenty of visitors today, my dear. But none as special as you.’

  Wal raises an eyebrow at me. Neti is one of the two caretakers of the interface between the living and the Underworld. The other one is Charon. Both have their unique ways of running things. Charon with his boats; Neti with her residence, which, like a web, is connected to everything. She lives in these few rooms: a parlour that intersects every office of Mortmax in the living world. Like Charon, Aunt Neti’s an RE, a Recognised Entity.

  And despite appearances, she’s not that fond of me at all. Mr D tried to explain why a few weeks ago. Something about the Orpheus Manoeuvre that I pulled to get Lissa back from the Underworld, and how I should have gone through her, not Charon. At the time I thought I’d had no choice. Seems I did, and it’s made me an enemy – no matter how unknowingly on my part.

  Aunt Neti comes back into the parlour, walks past me to a tall cabinet. It’s covered in scrollwork and seems to be carved out of the same black wood as my throne. Several of her hands apply pressure to different bits of the cabinet, a palm in one corner, a finger tapping on a carving, another hand applying pressure at its back.

  A door slides to one side. Aunt Neti reaches in and pulls out two stone knives that I’m all too familiar with. She grins at me, revealing a mouth full of crooked black teeth, and drops the knives on the table before me.

  ‘You’ll be needing these,’ Aunt Neti says.

  I pick them up. They’re perfectly weighted and heavy. They mumble and hum.

  I used these on the top of the One Tree in a place the Orcus call the Negotiation, to ‘negotiate’ my way into the position of RM. It had been a bloody reckoning between me and Morrigan – once a family friend, a man as dear to me as any uncle. These knives had slashed his throat and blinded his left eye. They’d cut his soul away from existence itself.

  I need these knives for the Convergence Ceremony but seeing them, holding the damn things in my hands, is terrifying.

  ‘Now,’ Aunt Neti says, laying down two clean plates, ‘be careful for goodness sake, or you’ll cut yourself. That’s for later.’

  I hold them away from me gingerly, my hands tight around the stony handles. Until this morning, I hadn’t expected to see them again for a very long time, had hoped that it would be even longer than that. They whisper to me.

  Hello.

  Hello.

  ‘Put them down,’ Neti says, and slaps my wrists. ‘Put them down.’

  I drop them back onto the table, cracking one of her plates with a knife hilt. My breath catches. The stony knives grumble.

  ‘That’ll cost you.’ Neti’s laugh is shrill and horrible. ‘Oh, it starts with plates, and before you know it, you’re putting a vast crack in the world.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Never you mind, Mr de Selby. Never you mind. Was just having a joke at your expense. I’ve a room,’ she jabs a thumb at a door to the left of us, one of many, ‘a big room crammed floor to ceiling with others, just like them. I make them from the bones of the dead – it’s a hobby. You’d be smashing plates from dawn till dusk for a century or more before you’d put a dint in the size of my collection. And how many have I used in all these ages? Just a dozen or so.’ She smacks her lips. ‘Now I trust you will indulge me, and have a scone.’

  I do, and it’s delicious. As long as you don’t think too much about where it’s come from. There’s something too sanguine about that jam. But it’s sweet, and it’s no real trouble to have another one.

  Neti looks at the knives. ‘You know what you have to do with those?’

  I nod. ‘Yes, I have been given instructions.’

  Neti sniffs at that, and I wonder if I haven’t fucked up again and offended her. ‘You’ll have them back before three, thank you.’

  ‘You could always come with me.’ It doesn’t hurt to offer an olive branch.

  Neti grins wryly. ‘Oh, to walk the streets of Brisbane again. To terrorise and shop. Hm, what sort of parasol is in fashion these days?’

  I start to frame an answer and she laughs. ‘Mr de Selby, these rooms and my gardens are enough. But I appreciate the offer. Besides, what you need to do is a private thing, and best shared only with your Ankou. That is, if you trust him.’

  ‘Of course. Absolutely.’

  Neti swings a set of eyes towards the grandfather clock that takes up a large chunk of wall space between two doors. ‘You’re best away. You don’t have much time.’

  I wipe my lips with a linen napkin on which little black spiders have been stitched, far too realistically. I stroke one for a moment, and I swear its legs flutter. I drop it, pick up the knives and leave Neti to her parlour. I feel every single one of her eyes watching me as I walk back down the hallway.

  ‘She’s not kidding,’ Wal says, his eyes fixed on the Knives of Negotiation. ‘You be damn careful with those.’

  ‘I will,’ I say, but he’s already a tattoo on my biceps again. And it’s just me and the knives.

  I walk through the offices, the naked blades in either hand. I’ve got nowhere to put them and they’re certainly not the sort of thing you slip in your pockets. My staff keep their distance. Maybe it’s the slightly manic expression on my
face. No, it’s definitely the knives. It gives the concept of staff cutbacks a certain, well, edge. I feel every eye on me and I try not to look menacing, but with the Knives of Negotiation it’s impossible not to. The knives, too, seem curious. They’re mumbling and somehow staring at everyone and everything. I can feel that rapt attention running through my wrists. They want to jerk this way and that. I don’t let them. Though part of me wants to. Part of me knows how easy it would be to re-create my dreams of blood and cuts.

  Once ensconced in my office, I take a deep breath and call Tim.

  Tim regards the knife in his hand with a look that tells me he’s wishing he was back working in the public service. ‘So, how do we do this?’

  We’re standing in the middle of my office. My back’s to my throne, but I can feel it there, the bloody thing a constant presence.

  ‘I know you haven’t done a lot of pomping, but the cut has to be shallow and long. Just like you would if you were stalling a Stirrer.’

  Tim hasn’t stalled anything since we faced off against Morrigan’s Stirrer allies in these very offices a couple of months ago. I’ve kept him away from all of that. He’s much better at administration, at getting people to do what needs to be done. Lissa’s the opposite. She leads by example; people follow her because she gets down and does it, too. I’ve fallen down on the leadership front, but that’s going to change now.

  Tim’s knife hand shakes.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do this,’ I say, ‘if I didn’t need you, and believe me there are much more confronting ceremonies than this one in a Pomp’s repertoire.’ I remember the binding ceremony I’d once performed with Lissa’s ghost. That had involved arcane symbols and a few good dollops of semen. ‘From what Mr D says, the knives will guide us.’

  For a moment I feel sorry that I’ve pulled Tim into all this. But then he grins at me, and it’s just like old times.