Kill Fish Jones (10 page)

Grimshaw scratched an ear. He peered over the edge of the precipice to the dizzying drop below. It went down a lot. Then it went down some more. Then it went on going down until it met a shelf of rock that stuck out a little. After that it just got going again in a downwardly way, only this time it kept at it.

To be honest, Grimshaw didn't see the point. He certainly didn't understand the Horseman's comment about the mountain making Tun feel powerful again. Surely Tun was powerful enough already, without needing to see the world laid out at his feet in this way?

Not that you could see much of anything so high up – there was no view as such, unless you counted downwards as scenery. This being Limbo, there weren't even any clouds to look at. Grimshaw looked up to see if there was anything overhead. There wasn't. The grey Limbo sky just sat there.

Grimshaw yawned and scratched his ear again. It occurred to him to wonder what the mountain would be like in Real Space. He wondered what the Horseman had meant when he said it was a pity that Tun never looked beyond. Beyond what?

Tun stirred. Slowly, he raised and spread his arms and began to laugh. With his arms outstretched, the
midnight robe that draped them resembled the wings of something vast and bat-like.

‘Yes! BOOOOM!!' Unlike Grimshaw's annoyingly soft voice, Tun's was as clear and deep as a bell. The sort of bell that rings out when someone has died. ‘Humanity seared and shrivelled before the terrible might of FIRE!'

‘I … s'pose,' mumbled Grimshaw.

‘Running, screaming, begging, pleading …' Tun bowed his hooded face and folded his arms again. He stood, silent and brooding. ‘You did well, small one.'

‘There wasn't any of that. The running and the screaming, I mean.'

‘How many did you kill?'

‘Just the one.' Grimshaw looked puzzled. ‘The next one on the list.'

Tun's terrible eyes settled on Grimshaw again.

‘Nobody else? You created an explosion and only killed ONE person?'

Grimshaw nodded, flattening his ears to his skull. He swished his tail in embarrassment, though he didn't know what it was that he had to be embarrassed about.

‘What a waste of BOOM!' Tun sighed, then went back to staring at the grey swathe of rock and land far below. ‘Still, it was better than sheep. And I have to say, the knives were interesting. I do like a good showing of blood. You'll have to tell me all about that one too.'

‘But …' said Grimshaw anxiously, going back to the explosion, ‘I couldn't kill all of my Litany, could I? That
wouldn't be proper. You have to do them one at a time. It's more … ominous.'

‘Of course! You pick them off one by one, that's traditional. But you don't only have to kill the humans in your Litany. You can kill other ones too, you know. Innocent Bystanders, I think they're called. Take out as many Innocent Bystanders as you like. Especially with a good BOOM. That's what it's for. Cataclysm. Catastrophe. Devastation. You can't have cataclysm with one death! I once used pestilence for a Sufferer – well, a whole branch of the family actually – and took out hundreds besides! Their precious city was a morgue by the time I finished.'

Grimshaw looked crestfallen.

‘You were on the right track, though,' added Tun kindly.

‘I didn't know you could do that.'

‘Of course you can! That's what humans are all about. Blood, screaming, insanity, horrible death. That's why they are made so fragile, so easily broken. So … so … deliciously destructible.'

For the umpteenth time, Grimshaw wondered what it must be like to visit Death upon a Sufferer personally, not through some silly string of events. He shivered. It put BOOM in the shade all right, but the idea of personally visiting Death on someone like Susan Jones made him feel oddly churned up inside.

‘I was wondering …' he said suddenly, even before he realised he was going to speak.

‘Mmmhmm?'

‘Do we have to kill everyone on the Litany? I mean, even the noble humans?' Although Grimshaw was talking about Susan Jones in particular, he thought that Jon Figg had been noble too, and Marsha's last words had earned her the phrase, ‘Died with Courage!' in Grimshaw's notebook. But it was too late for them. Susan was still alive, although she wouldn't be for much longer. Soon she would see her only son die, and then there would be nothing left for Grimshaw to take but her life. In the back of his mind he was worrying about it. Somehow it seemed like a shame.

‘Noble?'

‘Yes, you know. Brave. Dignified in the face of calamity. That type of thing.'

Although Grimshaw couldn't see the expression on Tun's face, hidden deep within the cowl, his friend's silence conveyed only puzzled blankness.

‘If we can kill humans not on the Litany, then maybe we can
not
kill humans who
are
on the Litany.'

‘Don't understand you, small one.'

Grimshaw swished his tail urgently, wanting to make Tun understand, but not sure how to do it.

‘You know. Choose …'

‘Choose? We don't get to choose!' Tun's deep voice was scandalised. ‘We are the Curse! We cannot decide which of our Litany is to live or die! It's death to all!'

‘Sorry!'

Silence fell for a few moments. Tun stared down the
mountainside. Grimshaw watched him, fidgeting nervously, then switched his gaze elsewhere. Not for any reason other than that it was somewhere to look, he glanced up again. This time his eyes went wide with shock. He stared, trying to work out what he was seeing.

The sky in Limbo was always grey, apart from when the Horsemen were around, and nothing had changed, not really. The grey was still there. Except that suddenly Grimshaw had the feeling that he could almost
see through it
! As if, on the other side of the sky, something was shining. He knew that there was no sun in Limbo, just like there was no moon, no stars and no constellations, but he could sense a light that was like the sun only more so and without any sunburn. It was a light with warmth and gentleness, but bright too, bright enough to illuminate everything. It was the light of the brightest of days, and looking at it gave Grimshaw an ache deep inside.

‘Besides, there are no noble humans,' went on Tun. ‘It's a myth.'

Grimshaw dragged his eyes away from the sky and tried to focus on Tun.

‘There are the powerful ones, the Architects, well,
most
of them are powerful anyway. And then there are the rest, those who are just the playthings of fate. Whose lives are as bright as the bloom of a flower and just as ephemeral.'

Grimshaw didn't know what ephemeral meant, but he got the general idea.

‘Ours to pluck at will!' Tun stretched out a hand, bony fingers spread out in an open gesture, and then snapped it shut into a fist. ‘Brief sparks to be snuffed out.'

He fell silent again. He sighed. It was a deep sigh, full of meaning that Grimshaw didn't understand. It puzzled him, but sometimes he got the feeling that Tun was unhappy. While he waited for Tun to say something else, he took a furtive glance upwards. It was still there, that strange brilliance on the other side of the sky. He wished he could see past the Limbo grey, see that light without anything in the way.

‘What's that?'

‘What?'

‘That up there.' Grimshaw pointed. ‘Behind the sky.' It dawned on him that this might be the Beyond that the Horseman had referred to.

Tun looked up, then peered down at Grimshaw. ‘There is no up there, you foolish creature,' he said indulgently. ‘This is the roof of the world. There is nothing above but sky.'

‘I meant
behind
the sky.'

Tun shook his head. ‘Funny little demon,' he murmured.

Grimshaw flipped his ears and gave Tun an agonised stare. It was as if Tun couldn't see what Grimshaw could see, which was a puzzle. But then, only a moment ago Grimshaw hadn't been able to see it himself. He flicked his tail to and fro, trying to work out what had changed,
what he had said or done to make him suddenly able to see this hint of Beyond. They had been talking about noble humans and the possibility of choice, but surely that couldn't have anything to do with it?

Tun had turned away, his gaze roaming thoughtfully over the grey world of cloud and rock at his feet.

‘Did I ever tell you,' he said, ‘about William Frederick Ombre, the seventeenth son of the house? Of all my Sufferers he was the only one who came close to courage. He had the makings of a first-rate Architect, but he refused to practise the Art.'

Usually, Grimshaw liked to hear stories about Tun's reign of terror, about how he had tormented, driven insane and finally wiped out a whole dynasty, persecuting them down the years until their name was spoken with hushed horror and they were shunned by their fellow men. So he settled down to listen, while Tun cleared his throat and began to speak. But somehow the story wasn't as good as usual and part of Grimshaw's mind was elsewhere, thinking about Beyond, and about the existence of noble humans too. Deep inside, he was wondering if maybe, just maybe, Tun was wrong, though he didn't know how that could possibly be.

Still, he listened until his own Sufferers had started their day and it was time for him to go back to work.

But before he did, he took a short detour to see what the mountain was like in Real Space and ended up in a blizzard.

Grimshaw flipped his ears thoughtfully. He knew that mountain tops were often covered in snow, but hadn't realised that it would be quite so cold or quite so wet, or even quite so deep. He floundered about for a while, then found that he was sinking rather than moving so he sat still and peered up. His teeth were chattering, but he couldn't hear the noise they made over the howling of the wind. The sound of that wind gave him the willies. It was so … lonely. It chilled his heart even more than the sound of Tun's death-knell voice. If he hadn't already been shaking like a leaf from the cold, he would have trembled at its constant, eerie wail.

Up above he could see more snow that was whirling about in the air rather than lying on the ground. Hurled around by the wind, no doubt. Apart from the snow, there was little to see.

Just as Grimshaw was about to give up and go, the
storm blew over. With all the whirling white gone, he saw at once that here, in Real Space, the sky was full of only sky. There didn't seem to be any Beyond. It occurred to him that perhaps Beyond existed only on the Limbo side. Still, the mountain was interesting, so to find out a little more he checked the Acts and Facts.

This was what Tun called the web of common knowledge that all of the half-dead and half-alive shared with others of their type. Grimshaw had access to the knowledge web belonging to curse demons and their Architects, but not to that belonging to any other type of Avatar. The Acts and Facts provided a combined information bank and grapevine. So, as well as entries posted by other demons, any significant deeds done were also automatically recorded and circulated. What the Acts and Facts didn't do, however, was provide any colour or atmosphere.

So, now, it told him that this particular mountain, the one that Tun liked the Grey Space version of so much, was situated in the Himalayan mountains in the country of Nepal. It also told him that the mountain was known to be the tallest in the world, rising to a height of nearly nine kilometres above sea level. This information had been provided by Conick, a second-rate Avatar who had once visited death upon a Sufferer by forcing him from his path to wander lost and terrified on the lonely mountain until he fell screaming into a glacier.

Grimshaw thought it all very interesting, but noticed
that the entry by Conick failed to convey a couple of significant details. In Grey Space everything was static. In Real Space he was surrounded by the snow-topped mountain range with its awesome cliffs and distant plateaux. Below him, the ever-changing cloud was shaped by the wind into vast cathedrals of vapour. Here the snow and the rock and the hurrying cloud made a tapestry of shadow and light, of dark-gold and white and blue and indigo that made his head spin at the sheer size and beauty of it all.

But most amazing was the sky, even without Beyond. Although Grimshaw had set his watch for morning, the sky over the mountain was a strangely thrilling dark blue. He was truly sitting on the top of the world. It gave him a sort of buoyant feeling that was also bright, like he had a balloon of light in his middle. In Real Space, the mountain was beautiful.

Even so, Grimshaw felt it was time to go. He was turning blue and was so numb he could hardly feel his limbs. Floundering about, it took him a moment to realise that the snow had began to move around him, gathering pace as it slid towards the sheer face of the precipice. And over it.

Because there was so much down to fall through, he had plenty of time to admire the cloud-wreathed cliffs of brilliant ice, before he felt the need to reset his watch and move somewhere a little safer.