Death Bringer. Derek Landy

      reath watched her, while the others fawned. She sat like she was delicate, as if a sudden move might snap her in two. She was pale, sickly. Her blond hair was limp, her face a network of small, raised scars. She was still the tall, skinny girl she’d always been, but there was something different about her, even Wreath had to admit that. There was something in the way she looked at the people around her. No longer the student, no longer the girl who opened doors and fetched the High Priest’s meals. She was special. She was important. She was the most important person who would ever live.

      Craven was loving it, of course. Over the past few months he had taken a personal interest in Melancholia’s studies, which was distinctly unusual for a man who despised helping anyone other than himself. But here he was, shaking his head in an attempt to appear modest, the man who had recognised the potential and nursed the Death Bringer through her Surge. Wreath had hoped that he would have been the one to do that, to guide Valkyrie when she needed guidance the most. It was not to be, however. The honour had never been meant for him. But why, oh why, had it gone to someone like Craven?

      “Here sits our saviour,” Cleric Quiver said from Wreath’s elbow. Wreath hadn’t even heard him approach.

      “I suppose she does,” Wreath said. “I have to hand it to Craven, though – he saw something in Melancholia that I completely missed. I had always viewed her as somewhat … unexceptional.”

      “As had I,” Quiver responded. “I fully expected young Valkyrie to be the one.”

      Wreath raised an eyebrow. “You never told me that.”

      “It’s not my job to tell you things, Cleric Wreath.”

      “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a hard man to like?”

      “My mother may have said something along those lines.”

      “That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”

      “Not to put a dampener on the occasion, but does the Death Bringer appear … weak to you?”

      “She looks tired,” said Wreath, nodding. “She looks drained. From what I’ve heard, it was an unusually long Surge. What do you think those scars are for?”

      “Cleric Craven says they are protection sigils, to guard her from her own power.”

      “Do you believe him?”

      The ghost of a shrug was all Quiver offered. “Our tests have shown extreme spikes and drops in her power level,” he said. “It is quite conceivable that she could hurt herself if careless. You don’t believe him, I take it?”

      “I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t even know if it matters. If she gets the job done, who am I to complain? Have your tests told you when she’ll be strong enough to initiate the Passage?”

      “Every spike is stronger than the one preceding it. If she continues in this fashion, a few days. Maybe a week.”

      “With our dear friend Cleric Craven holding her hand every step of the way,” Wreath said, allowing the distaste to creep into his voice. “Are you ready for the world to be a better place?”

      “I never really liked this world all that much to begin with, so any change would be an improvement. And you? You’ve always seemed to like things the way they are.”

      “I got used to it,” Wreath admitted. “But I’ve lived my entire life waiting for the Passage – I’m not going to bemoan the fact that we’re finally about to get it. You know, I think this is the most we’ve ever talked, you and I. Why is that, do you think?”

      Quiver shrugged. “Until this point, I confess that I was never sure if I liked you. Now I just don’t care any more.”

      Wreath smiled.

      

      oarhaven stood like a dirty inkblot on a nice clean page. A small town, barely even that, beside a dark and stagnant lake, it was hemmed in on two sides by steep banks of brown grasses. It had its main street and its offshoots, its houses and bars and grim-windowed shops. Sorcerers lived in this town, but only the truly bitter, the genuinely resentful. The outside world was a world gone wrong, a world of ignorant mortals with their squabbling ways. In the bars of Roarhaven, of which there were two, the citizens were known to whisper of some future time when the mortals would fall and the sorcerers rise. And when the drink gave them the courage, these whispers would grow louder, turn to muttered oaths punctuated by fists pounding on tabletops.

      Change, they said, was coming.

      Roarhaven, Valkyrie knew, was many things. One thing it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, was a tourist town. So when the Bentley passed a rental car stopped outside what passed for the town’s corner shop, Valkyrie frowned.

      “Pull over,” she said.

      Skulduggery looked at her as they slowed. “Here?”

      “I’ve seen how this place treats strangers. I just want to make sure we’re not going to need Geoffrey Scrutinous to come in and smooth things over.”

      The Bentley stopped and Valkyrie got out. Skulduggery continued on to the Sanctuary as she walked back to the rental car. A woman sat in the passenger seat. Three kids were squashed in behind. American accents.

      She smiled at the woman, got a curt nod back, and then she entered the shop. A few newspapers on the racks. No magazines. Some food, confectioneries, stationery, a fridge with cartons of milk and ham slices, and a broad American man arguing over the counter with the tight-lipped shopkeeper.

      Valkyrie smiled as she walked up. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

      “This man won’t leave me alone,” said the shopkeeper.

      The American frowned at him. “I’m trying to buy something.”

      The shopkeeper ignored him. “He just won’t leave.”

      The American turned to Valkyrie. “We came into this store—”

      “It’s not a store,” interrupted the shopkeeper, “it’s a shop.”

      “Fine,” the American growled. “We came into this shop ten minutes ago. My kids picked out what they wanted, brought them up to the counter to pay. This jerk stood there, right where he is now, looking up at the ceiling while we tried to get his attention.”

      “I was ignoring them,” said the shopkeeper. “I had heard that if you ignore them, they go away. This one did not go away.”

      “You’re damn right I’m not going away. I’m a customer and you will serve me.”

      The shopkeeper sneered. “We don’t serve your kind here.”

      “You don’t serve Americans?”

      “I don’t serve mortals.”

      The American raised his eyebrows at Valkyrie. “And then he starts with this nonsense.”

      Valkyrie looked at the shopkeeper. “Wouldn’t it be easier at this stage to just let him buy the stuff and leave?”

      The shopkeeper shook his head. “You do that for one of them, you’ll have to do it for all of them.”

      “For