Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter One: One Treacle-Black, Choking Thing

Jack moved aside the fire-screen and tipped himself into the demon realms before he could have any second thoughts about it.

He didn't say goodbye to anyone except Sita – although he wasn't sure how much of the 'goodbye' she'd heard over all that yelling.

It would be all right. Ellini would comfort her when she got back. She was coming back.

He tried to summon an image of the Ellini he had seen and heard about in the past few days – the woman who leapt naked out of pools and deprived teachers of their voices. The woman with the crimson sleeve and the smoke at her back who had fought Anna outside the Academy. She was a force of nature. She would always come back.

It was just that, if she didn't, his options were shrinking. He was starting to realize that Sita was another bracelet, shackling him to this world, forcing him to stay, no matter how badly things went wrong. He had to stick around to make sure she was looked after. And he didn't – he didn't want her to lose anyone ever again.

He found his own way to Vassago's canyon, not being anxious to encounter the Queen again. But it wasn't deserted in the demon realms. He saw guards and pages in the same livery Joel and Alim had worn – others in simple, belted tunics, raking the black sand into curious patterns. And workers – much more shabbily dressed – quarrying stone on the steep sides of the canyon.

The people had one thing in common: he had seen them all before. Some of them had crowd-faces he couldn't put a name to. Some were soldiers from the Indian campaign. Some were insufferable music-teachers, or tour managers from his days as Spring-heeled Jack.

Increasingly, as he got nearer the black lake, they were people he knew to be dead. They didn't return his gaze. They seemed to have no idea they were fooling him.

And the loneliness of this was unutterable. He was surrounded by people, but they were all from inside his head. Even if he talked to them – even if he forced them to speak – they couldn't possibly say anything to surprise him. They were him.

He trudged on through the black sand, trying not to look at them.

The lake's water – if it really was water – lapped innocently against the shore when he reached it. It had an oily rainbow-sheen that he hadn't noticed before. In many ways, it was like the sand, glittering with every shade of black it was possible to imagine.

Infinite variety, one drab colour.

That was a phrase Manda was fond of saying whenever she went shopping for her mourning paraphernalia – jet beads, crêpe bows, black hairpins, and those bizarre tear-collecting bottles known as lachrymatories.

He thought it was a quote from one of Lily's letters. Hadn't Manda shown him the passage once? Lily had been talking about the myriad ways to despair – all the bright, attention-grabbing things that might drive you to it – and yet despair itself erased all specifics. It was all one treacle-black, choking thing. Infinite variety, one drab colour.

Trust Manda to take the gloom out of Lily's words and use them to make jokes while she was shopping.

Jack had never wanted to read Lily's letters – or even touch them if he could help it. He felt obscurely as though she'd had some kind of disease. As though she had been consumptive and had spent her last hours coughing over the paper. OK, you probably couldn't catch despair, but if you could, what better way to do it than by reading a desperate person's words? You had to internalize words, didn't you? You had to take them in to decipher them. And then they were in your head.

But that was stupid. He hadn't caught despair from Lily Hamilton, for all the hours he had spent in the damp, unhealthy atmosphere of her room. He had caught it from his own unique combination of circumstances.