Death's Avenger (Ebook)

Master, said Ootapi one rainy afternoon. You have been too long idle, and it sours your temper. You require an occupation.

‘Quite,’ said Konrad, with a curl of his lip. ‘Not nearly enough people are being murdered. It is highly inconvenient of everybody to keep breathing in this detestably ceaseless fashion.’

Eetapi drifted closer, her chill, incorporeal presence causing the hairs on the back of Konrad’s neck to rise. Her voice whispered in his mind, in the mournful tones of funeral bells: Shall I kill someone for you, Master?

Konrad closed his newspaper with a snap. ‘A commendable thought, dear serpent, but you overlook one or two important details. One being that, if I am informed ahead of time as to the identity of the culprit, the search will not occupy me for very long. Two, since you are possessed of neither a body nor, strictly speaking, a soul, my customary response to the crime would not be required. I am afraid the idea, meritorious as it is, will not suit our purposes today.’

Eetapi vibrated with disappointment and slunk away, coiling her ethereal serpentine body into a sulky spiral in the corner of the study. To Konrad’s annoyance, he experienced a flicker of guilt.

Ootapi was in no hurry to relinquish the idea. I will hire someone, he decided.

‘Excellent thought,’ Konrad agreed.

Without telling you, Ootapi added.

‘Alas, it is too late for that.’

Ootapi lapsed into silent thought, an interlude which Konrad spent in looking out of the window. The sky was full of the brooding, murderous type of clouds which threatened a dramatic flourish of snow every moment, yet succeeded in producing only a feeble drizzle of rain. The conditions reflected Konrad’s mood and predicament nicely, for not only was he insufficiently productive, he felt as grey as a winter morn and twice as cold at heart.

Who would you like to die? Ootapi queried.

Konrad’s lips quirked. ‘Oh, who hasn’t wished a speedy and painless demise upon one’s fellow creatures, at one point or another? Sometimes without the painless part, even.’ His thoughts flitted to Danil Dubin, the acknowledged admirer of his closest friend, Irinanda Falenia. The young man was harmless, for all his occupation as a trader of poisons. Mild-mannered, rather meek, a little on the feeble side. Why he should irritate Konrad so much remained firmly in question, but nonetheless: if anybody of his acquaintance were to meet a swift and untimely death, it had better be Mr. Dubin.

So lost was he in these pleasant, if guilty, reflections, it took him some time to notice that Ootapi had fallen silent, and offered no further enquiries. So uncharacteristic was this of his servant’s usual persistence that he was bemused, and for a moment, concerned. Had he uttered his shameful wishes aloud?

‘Ootapi?’ he called.

Yes, Master.

It was inconvenient, sometimes, having invisible ghosts for assistants. ‘Do not kill anyone on my behalf, if you please.’

Yes, Master.

‘I think you mean No, Master.’

No, Master.

Was that, though, a double negative? Did they cancel each other out, and result at last in a positive? Konrad grappled with the problem for thirty seconds, and then abandoned the question in exasperation.

‘You are right, serpents. I need an occupation. Perhaps I will take up a hobby.’

Ice fishing, suggested Ootapi.

‘Too cold. And dull.’

Gambling! offered Eetapi, apparently recovered from her sulks.

‘Too costly.’

Embroidery? said Ootapi.

Konrad thought of embroidering Dubin’s name in blood red silk, the letters dripping in gore, and struck through with a shiny silver knife.

‘I need a hobby,’ he said again with a sigh.

Drinking! Ootapi enthused.

‘You have the best ideas, Ootapi.’

It was not yet late enough in the afternoon to make drinking respectable, but the members of Konrad’s favourite gentlemen’s club were resistant to such mundane considerations as that. He collected his hat, his stick and his coat and went out into the rain, reflecting with pleasant anticipation upon the state of blissful, untroubled inebriation he would soon enjoy.

The clouds got their act together halfway there and produced snow, in quantity.

Perfect.

* * *

For several years, Konrad had felt nothing at all, near enough. His Master, The Malykt, had judged Konrad’s tumultuous emotions obstructive to his duties as the Malykant, and had accordingly stifled them. Konrad had enjoyed — or suffered — only the barest flickers of feeling, easily missed and soon gone.

He had never fully decided whether he welcomed the interference, or lamented the loss. His role was the bringer of justice, and a harsh justice it was: The Malykt meted out only death, to those who took a life, and it was the Malykant’s duty to administer that punishment. A lack of feeling permitted him to conduct the role more easily, perhaps; he was not plagued with the guilt, the horror, the fear or the revulsion that had often afflicted him before. But he ceased to feel hope or joy or love either, and the price had often seemed a high one.

Now that had all changed.

Irinanda had turned out to be a trusted servant of The Shandrigal, a being who presided over life and the living in the same way that The Malykt ruled over the dead. And by her Mistress’s intervention, Konrad and his emotions had been, at long last, reunited.

It hurt.

It was hard, he thought bitterly, that when at last he became reacquainted with the business of feeling he should overwhelmingly experience those of a negative character. For every flicker of hope, he suffered a crushing weight of despair, self-reproach and terror. Well, terror at least was still familiar; his Master had, so kindly, permitted him to feel plenty of that, on the rare occasions He chose to show Himself. But to live with it day in, day out, was new, and when it came attendant with so many other terrible, soul-destroying feelings, Konrad frequently wondered whether he would not rather return to the blissful, relatively unfeeling state he had existed in before.

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