The Death of Me: A Tor.Com Original Read Online Free Page B

meeting. As Cabal turned, the coachman grabbed his wrist, tore his Gladstone bag from his hand, and tossed it to the verge of the road as if it were dripping pus. Before Cabal could protest, the coachman had opened the landau’s door, picked Cabal up by the scruff of his jacket, and thrown him in. The adjective unceremonious occurred to him as he landed face-first on the carriage’s floor. Disconcerting as his first entrance to the carriage had been, it seemed greatly preferable to the second. He heard the door slam shut.
    “Are you all right down there?” she asked.
    “Oh, good,” he replied as he climbed into the seat facing her. “Insult to injury. Why no legerdemain this time? Run out of pixie dust or just couldn’t be bothered? After all, you’ve won your little game, haven’t you?”
    She looked at him, silent and serious, for several seconds. “Not a game, Mr Cabal. No game at all.”
    “No game,” said Cabal in a low, dangerous voice. “No game? You have … manipulated me right from the moment I first saw you. Induced me to draw false inferences. I should have thought something was wrong. The black landau, the black horses, the silent coachman, the widow’s weeds—it was all so much more … banal than I would have expected.”
    “Then why did you believe?”
    “Because … because supernatural entities insist on melodrama. I’ve met Satan. Did you know that? He is such a drama … What is the phrase?”
    “Queen?” She seemed amused.
    “Yes, just so. Brimstone, devils, fiery depths, cribbage. It is all so theatrical.” He considered. “Well, perhaps not the cribbage. I think that’s more of a hobby. But the point is that when a mysterious funereal black carriage materialises out of thin air, abducts me, alters the passage of time, and its occupant lectures me on fate and life expectations, I apply Occam’s Razor and arrive at the obvious solution.”
    “Which was…?”
    “Which was that you are Death.”
    “I never said it,” she said, serious again.
    “You didn’t. You just implied it with sledgehammer subtlety and I accepted it, based on the evidence. There was only one other alternative, and that I proved was not the case. At least”—he took the piece of cold iron from his pocket and held it up—“I thought I’d proved it.” He watched her. She seemed calm, but her eyes never wavered from the small bit of metal. “You are of the Fay, aren’t you? I admit, you still have me at a loss to explain the lack of reaction. The metal should have burned you.”
    “You have a reputation for great deductive powers, Mr Cabal. I shan’t insult you by offering a solution.”
    He hardly heard her. The threads were finally coming together. “Unless, of course, you are not of pure blood. Your mortal heritage would prevent the worst physical effects.”
    She nodded. “Your reputation is well-earned.”
    “I would thank you not to patronise me, fräulein. I have killed on your behalf. I am not happy about it.”
    “Jones was a murderer, and you were his employer, Cabal. You should be thankful that you are not sharing his fate.”
    “I should kill you.”
    “You should not. You would surely die in the attempt, especially without Jones’s filthy knife.” She saw Cabal’s expression. “Oh, with Jones dead, the defences he’d placed upon his shop collapsed. It was searched as soon as you had skulked out of the door.” Cabal began to protest that he did not skulk, but she talked over him. “I would have been far more surprised if you had not taken the knife with you.”
    Cabal weighed the piece of metal in his hand. It seemed altogether too feeble an ace to do him any good at this juncture. He slid it back into his pocket. “This all seems very calculated.”
    “It has been planned for a long time. You should be flattered, Cabal. Both the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts cooperated in this. It takes a great deal to make them sit down together.”
    “But you … you planned