This was not a mortal policeman who stood before her, but an Ancient Sovereign clad in human flesh.
“I should have saved myself the bother of trying to fetch you here, shouldn’t I, since you were bound to come anyway,” said Holly conversationally. “I thought those old booksellers would off you straight away, so I had to act quick. Soon as I knew about you, that is, which was not soon enough, no, not by a long shot. I’ve got to hand it to your old dad, the cunning bugger.”
There was a flurry of gunshots below them.
“Shame Merrihew hasn’t got anything better than a popgun on her,” said Holly. Susan noticed that his left eye was unfocused, presumably because that one was seeing through the dead eyes of his servant below. “I’d put ten quid on her dealing with one Cauldron-Born, but not two. Not without an axe or the like.”
Susan didn’t speak. She watched him, and let her right hand fall on the opening of the ruler pocket. With the left, she made a fist and raised it to her mouth as she looked down, ostensibly to cover a cough but actually to tear the end of the salt packet open with her teeth.
“I’ll give it to you straight, Ms. Susan Arkshaw,” said Holly. He stepped closer, flexing his powerful hands. “I bound your dad and took his power when he was carrying on with your mum and stupid with it, not paying attention and weak as piss in mortal flesh. Though I admit I had help from Merrihew to lure him onto my patch. But he found a loophole, didn’t he? He could give up the power I took to his heir when she came of age, bypassing my strictures!”
Holly pounded a massive fist into his palm, the sound almost like another gunshot.
“So it’s all leaking away to you, and the oaths I’ve had witnessed by Coniston are coming undone, which is fucking inconvenient! We got to get them done again. So here’s the deal. You freely give up your dad’s power to me, and you get to live. Oh, and your mum gets to stay alive, too.”
There was nothing in his face or words to give away that the men he’d sent to take care of Jassmine had fallen foul of guardians from the brook, the sky, and the earth. But Susan knew he lied. Here, even only in the beginning of her power, she could see the shape of his words and when they came straight or twisted from his mouth.
“What about my father?” she asked. She put her hands behind her back and emptied the packet into her fingers, hoping they would catch enough salt to smear upon the knife.
“He’s made his choice,” said Holly. “He’s given up everything to you. He’s fading, soon to be gone. Forget about him.”
Something about that was not true, but some of it was.
“What happens to his power if it doesn’t come to me?” asked Susan. “If you kill me first.”
Holly grunted angrily.
“Gone. Wasted. Which will make me very, very unhappy. It’s your choice. Your dad’s had it, but you can live.”
“You used Dad’s power to make oaths binding,” said Susan. She felt the rightness of that. This was a great part of her . . . her father’s . . . power. To witness oaths and make them concrete, not to be broken. He was an Oath-Maker, binding together those who asked him to witness their oaths and make them concrete. Her father was one of the benign Ancient Sovereigns.
And Holly was exactly the opposite. One of the malign Old Ones.
The big man grunted again, then flinched, and his unfocused eye filled with tears, a single drop escaping to run down his ruddy cheek.
“That’s finished Merrihew,” he said. “Costly, but worth it.”
“What about the rest of the booksellers?” asked Susan. She edged forward a step. “Even if I give up Dad’s power, let you have it, they’ll kill us both, won’t they?”
Holly snorted.
“Why do you think I’ve gone to all this effort to extend my rule over the Old World and the New, to gather under my hand such creatures as Shucks and goblins, Nikker and Boggart, Yetuns and Yallery, and all the rest, not to mention stooping to master the dreary hired killers and gangland thugs of mortal England? I was always going to deal with the booksellers. That’s the whole point. Merrihew will only be the first to die. As befits a dupe.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
A blood tide they called it
For even the sea could not wash clean
So many killed in so narrow a span
As between the low water and the high
MERRIHEW BROUGHT A GREAT STONE DOWN UPON THE SECOND Cauldron-Born, but it was too swift. It caught her and dragged her back even as the boulder rolled across. Her legs were crushed to the knee and blood already pooled about her thighs. So much blood . . .
The other Cauldron-Born scrabbled and growled six or seven feet away, pinned through the elbows by the two seventh-century seaxes Merrihew always wore hidden across her back under her fishing vest. But even the ancient, many times bespelled iron would not prevent the Cauldron-Born from eventually tearing its own flesh and bone to pieces in order to get free.
Merlin came through the fog, the old sword in his hand, with Vivien close behind.
“Good,” rasped Merrihew. She pointed, weakly. “Cut that one to pieces before it breaks out.”
Merlin stepped past, and the ancient sword rose and fell, rose and fell. Vivien knelt by Merrihew’s side, and looked at her smashed legs, at the blood swirling its way downhill. She took a vial of Sipper blood from her inside jacket pocket, then slowly put it back.
“Yes, yes, I know,” snapped Merrihew. “Too late, too late. Never mind. I go to join the Grandmother.”
“No,” said a soft, calm voice, but there was steel in that single word. All three booksellers looked up, and there sitting on the stone Merrihew had rolled in desperation to kill a Cauldron-Born and, inadvertently, herself, was the oldest Grandmother. The strawberry blonde in the toga-like garment. The chestnut-brown wolfhound sat on his haunches next to her, growled, and showed his teeth.
Both of them looked entirely corporeal, not like ghosts or Shades at all.
“You will not join us,” continued the Grandmother. “You have betrayed the clan. You will die unlamented, your name struck from the rolls.”
“I did what I did for the good of the St. Jacques!” said Merrihew. “I didn’t know about the cauldron, or the . . . other matters.”
“You mean Mother?” asked Merlin.
He had left the Cauldron-Born in pieces under slabs of shale and came to stand over Merrihew. He held the heavy sword negligently, point down, six inches above the older bookseller’s right eye. It looked like he might let it fall at any moment.
“It was simply bad luck!” protested Merrihew. “She’d met Coniston and his woman in London, early on, and then she saw the woman again, with a child, and was going to make inquiries. She would have found out what happened to Coniston. We couldn’t have that, but I didn’t want her dead, I didn’t know about it. Not until afterwards—”
The sword point dropped an inch, cold fury on Merlin’s face.
“Southaw arranged it! He was concerned Antigone would release Coniston—”
“Southaw?” asked Vivien. “The London Southaw?”
“Yes, the London Southaw!” retorted Merrihew. “Is there any other one?”