Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

“Hasty work and crude, I apologize.” I focused on the man behind it, holding a lantern aloft.

“Double?” He wore the household uniform though the arms of it were thick with gore past the elbows.

“Not really my name of course, but you’ve been using it for the past year so why not let’s keep it that way for the last night of your life.”

“But . . . you’re . . .” When I thought about it Double seemed an unlikely name. I’d met him for the first time escorting Snorri to the Marsail keep the day Grandmother set him to be freed after telling his story in the throne room.

“I would stay to chat but I’ve things to do in the church. I just came in to see what the noise was.” Double lifted his lantern a little higher. “And you brought the Northman back, I see. Where has he been? I see death all over him.”

“Yours,” Snorri said and moved toward the flesh-spider, a grimace on his face as if the distasteful shape of it worried him more than the actual combat.

Double reached his hand toward Snorri, extending his fingers around the rounded black object he was holding. Snorri stopped, distaste turning to surprise.

“What?” Snorri tried to move but it seemed as if his body had frozen into one solid piece. Even forcing the question past his lips took effort.

“This really is quite remarkable.” Double showed a smile wholly at odds with my memories of his bland and friendly face. “You’re clearly alive and yet death has seeped into you almost bone deep. We really will have to have a discussion before I kill you.”

And that left just me guarding Lisa’s door against a treacherous necromancer and his pet horror.

“It was you who searched my room when I came back from the North!” The main thing about not fighting someone is to not let the fight start. In some circles this is known as stalling.

“There’s no point trying to stall me, Prince Jalan.” Double focused on his creation and it scuttled forward a yard or so. “But yes. Me. If you’d had the decency to leave Loki’s key with your other possessions then all this unpleasantness might have been delayed.” He returned his attention to the flesh-spider and it jittered forward another yard, the head in the middle of it all watching me with the same avid attention the hawk reserves for the mouse.

“What is that thing?” I pointed at the object in the hand Double had extended toward Snorri.

“Oh please.” Double advanced his creature a few more steps.

“No, really, it looks familiar.” At first I’d thought his hand wrapped about some kind of necromantic blackness-but it was something solid and real and I’d seen it somewhere before.

“This?” Double inverted his palm so the object rested on his palm. “A young woman threw it at me while I was organizing things in the church.”

“A holy stone!” Father’s holy stone, to be precise.

“Yes. One of the DeVeer sisters threw it. I’ll return it to her soon.” Again that stranger’s smile. “I suppose she thought one of the cardinal’s symbols might hold some power over me? What is it they say? Let she that is without sin cast the first stone? But the DeVeer sisters are hardly innocents now, are they? And your father never was very much of a cardinal . . .”

“Why don’t you give it to me instead?” I needed Father’s seal to defend me against my sister if she broke through-when she broke through. Darin’s death had nearly given her the doorway she needed and with so much dying in the city it could only be getting easier for her. I needed a cardinal’s seal Marco had said, but the other symbols of his office were almost as holy-they might be enough.

“This?” Double set his lantern on one of the support posts for the railings that ran alongside the landing. He passed the holy stone from hand to hand, like the lichkin enjoying his moment of power. I guess it had grated on him serving my father’s house in such a lowly capacity while all the time hiding such talents. “You think I don’t know why you want it?” He held it by the dark metal handle that followed the curve of the stone’s black iron body. “Sister,” he said. “Sister . . .” drawing out the word into a taunt. “Your father’s seal would serve you better against her, but Archbishop Larrin made off with that. The one that got away. If I’d caught him I would have had the whole set from choirboy to archbishop.”

In the corner of my eye Snorri struggled against the bonds holding him. He’d been too long in Hell, steeped in the dryness of the deadlands, and necromancy would have a hold on him until the living world fully accepted him back. Double’s monstrosity began to advance again.

“Wait!” I shouted. You’d be surprised how often that works.

The flesh-spider paused and Double raised his eyebrows, inviting me to elaborate.

“If you could put down my father’s holy stone. I don’t want to damage it when I kill you.” I lifted my sword. Bravado is as good a delaying tactic as begging. I just needed to buy a few minutes for Snorri to shake off the necromancer’s spell.

“I might take my time with you, Prince Jalan.” Double examined the holy stone. “You’ve no idea how dull it is waiting on your family. How difficult it is to nod and bow before such a collection of pompous morons puffed up on their own misplaced sense of self-importance . . .” He banged the stone against the banister, hard, examined it with a scowl, then waved his creation on to finish me.

“On second thoughts, keep the stone. I don’t think you can damage it.” Although I wanted the thing myself I would rather spend the next minute watching him smashing it against the banisters than spend it with me going man to men against his ugly monster.

Double rose to the bait. I didn’t expect him to. Still, I played along, shouting out an agonized “no!” as he beat the thing against the wall. Bullies are to be avoided but often their cruel streak does allow them to be manipulated. “No!” I cried, as if he were swinging my child against the doorposts. When he finally did manage to pull some minor piece free, a metal pin of some kind, nobody was more surprised than me to see the whole side clasp come away in his hand. I’d always thought of the holy stone as an iron pineapple, impervious to any harm.

“There!” He grinned. “I doubt that’s holy any more. It’s not even whole. What do you think of that, Prince Jalan?”

I don’t recall making any reply. In fact the next thing I recall is finding myself horizontal, on a bed, in a room with an oak panelled ceiling.

“What?” I’ve never been very creative with opening lines when recovering consciousness.

Lisa DeVeer’s face swam into focus above me. I jerked into a sitting position, narrowly missing breaking her nose with my forehead. Micha stood at the foot of the bed, clutching Nia to her breast. Snorri occupied the doorway, his back to us.

“Double!” I patted my hip, hoping to find the hilt of my sword. “Where’s Double?”

Lisa pointed to the left and slightly up, Micha to the right and down. Both of them seemed to be speaking at once but I couldn’t make out the words through the ringing in my ears. I lurched off the bed, found my sword on the dresser close by, and pushed Snorri aside.

An acrid smoke hung over the landing outside. Ten yards of the banister had vanished, splintered stumps of the railings punctuating the gap. The flesh-spider appeared to have been returned to a scattered collection of ill-matched limbs, and I could see that the sisters had technically both been correct about the location of Double. Some pieces of him were sticking to the wall on both sides of the doorway.

Snorri said something but the only word I caught was “exploded.”