“If you’re going to work with poison, Rafe, you need to make the tea a lot stronger, to disguise the taste. And you put enough strychnine in that cup to see off a dozen normal men. But I haven’t been that easy to kill for a long time now. Poison is as mother’s milk to such as I. Why, Rafe? Is it Penny? Was she a friend of yours? Or perhaps something more?”
Rafe stood up abruptly, throwing his cup aside. He stood towering over Mr. Stab for a long moment, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Mr. Stab rose easily to his feet to face him. Rafe couldn’t get the words out at first, he was breathing so hard. His face was twisted with hatred and loathing.
“We were never close,” Rafe said hoarsely. “But we might have been. She never knew I cared about her. And now, thanks to you, she never will. Damn your soul to Hell.”
“Already done,” said Mr. Stab.
Rafe attacked him, throwing himself at the calm and unmoving immortal. He beat at Mr. Stab with his fists, while hot tears ran down his face, and Mr. Stab just stood there and took it. Rafe armoured up, and his golden fists hammered at Mr. Stab’s impassive face. The armoured strength behind the blows must have been hideous, but Mr. Stab took no obvious damage from them. And if he felt any pain, he didn’t show it. In the end, Rafe stood before Mr. Stab with his arms hanging heavily, armoured down, his face wet with sweat and tears. Mr. Stab looked at him.
“Cry, boy,” he said. “It’s all right. I would too, if I could.”
William Drood came along then, to see what all the noise was about, and took in the scene in a moment. He looked fiercely at Mr. Stab, who immediately stepped back, and William came forward and took Rafe away. Mr. Stab stood very still, not even looking around him, until William returned on his own. I watched Mr. Stab’s face all the time. It never changed once. I had no idea at all what he was thinking, or feeling. If he felt anything at all. There were times… when I wished I could be like that, and not have to feel all the things that hurt me so. William gestured for Mr. Stab to sit down, and he did so. William sat opposite him. He looked sadly at the discarded tea things.
“Don’t drink the tea,” Mr. Stab said calmly.
“So I gather,” William said dryly. “Sorry about that. He’s young. They take things so personally, at that age. Still, nothing you haven’t encountered and deserved before, I expect. What do you want here?”
“Molly Metcalf said I might find answers here,” said Mr. Stab. They might have been discussing the weather. “Old knowledge, unavailable anywhere else. Perhaps even the means to a cure for my condition. Or at least, to ameliorate certain aspects of it.”
William considered him thoughtfully. “You chose to make yourself what you are. Have you now come to regret it?”
“You know this library better than anyone,” said Mr. Stab. “Can you help me?”
“Why should I?” William said bluntly. “After all you’ve done, why shouldn’t I delight in the prospect of your inevitable descent into Hell?”
“To save future lives?” Mr. Stab said calmly. “So that there might be no more Pennys, and no more Rafes.”
William sniffed. “I suppose there might be something here. We have books on every subject under several suns; from the unusual to the improbable, the unlikely to the downright impossible. I’m pretty sure you’re in there somewhere. It depends… on exactly what it is you want me to find.”
“I made myself what I am,” said Mr. Stab. “Everything I am and everything I have ever done… is my responsibility. But for the first time… I wish to change things.”
“That would depend on who or what you made your original deal with,” William said carefully. “Some deals can be… renegotiated. Do you wish to become human again?”
“I’ve always been human,” said Mr. Stab. “That’s the problem. I want… something else. I want to find a way to bring back my victims. All of them. To raise from the dead all the woman I have slaughtered, down the many years, and give them life again. Right back to those five poor women who made it all possible, back in that unseasonably hot autumn of 1888.”
“I’m sorry,” said William. “But it can’t be done.”
Mr. Stab surged forward impossibly quickly, a long, gleaming blade suddenly in his hand. Before William could even react, the razor-sharp edge was pressed against his throat, just above his Adam’s apple. Mr. Stab stared coldly into William’s face, his cold breath beating on William’s wide-open eyes. The blade pressed against the skin of his throat, and a single slow trickle of blood ran down his neck as the skin parted just a little under the sharp edge. William sat very still.
“That is not the answer I wanted to hear,” said Mr. Stab.
“We all have things in our life that we would wish undone,” William said carefully. He clearly wanted very much to swallow, but didn’t dare. “But sins can never be undone. Only pardoned.”
“It’s not enough,” said Mr. Stab.
“I know,” said William. He kept looking right into Mr. Stab’s unwavering gaze, unnerving as that was, because it was better than looking down at the blade at his throat. “But there’s nothing here in this library, no book or knowledge, that will let you bring the dead back to life. Only one man could ever do that, and I think we can definitely agree that you’re not him. I could help you raise the spirits of those poor unfortunate women, so you could commune with them, or raise up their bodies as zombies; but that isn’t what you want. What you need.”
Mr. Stab thought about that for a long moment, while William scarcely breathed, and then he stepped back abruptly and made his long blade disappear again. William put a hesitant hand to his throat, and breathed a little more easily as he only saw a few drops of blood on his fingertips.
“What else is there?” said Mr. Stab. He wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, and William clearly wondered if Mr. Stab was still talking to him.
“Else?” said William.
“I can’t undo what I did, can’t stop being who I am. Can’t even stop or escape through death. What does that leave?”
“There’s always atonement,” said William. “Perform enough good deeds to balance out your sins.”
Mr. Stab considered that. “Would killing in a good cause count?”
“I would say so, yes.” Mr. Stab smiled for the first time. “Good thing there’s a war on, then.” He turned and walked away. William watched him go, and then looked again at the blood on his fingertips.
Some time later I stood in the rose-coloured glow of the Sanctity with the Matriarch at my side, waiting for the others I had summoned to arrive. I didn’t know whether it was me, or the times, but Strange’s ruddy glow no longer calmed or comforted as it once had. Strange himself was very quiet. Perhaps he didn’t approve of the things I was having the family do, with the armour and power he so selflessly provided. I couldn’t allow myself to care. I had a war to win. I’d care later, if I was still alive.
Or at least I hoped I would.
“It’s never easy,” Martha said suddenly, her harsh, cold voice echoing in the great empty chamber. “Never easy, sending agents out into the field, possibly or even quite probably to their deaths. We do it because it’s necessary, for the good of the family and the world. But it never gets any easier.”
“Thanks for the thought,” I said. “But knowing that doesn’t help.”
“It will,” said Martha. “In time. I’m glad you came home, Edwin. Who could have known we’d have so much in common?”
“Eddie,” Strange said abruptly. “Sorry to intrude, but your meeting will have to wait. I’ve just been informed by the security people at the holding cells that Sebastian has been murdered.”
“What?” said the Matriarch. “That’s impossible! Not under our security!”
“What happened?” I said, cutting across the Matriarch. “Did he try to escape?”
“No,” said Strange. “He was just found dead in his cell.”
“How could this have happened?” said the Matriarch. She sounded honestly outraged. “Our security is the best in the world. It has to be.”