Skulduggery Pleasant

They weren’t too tired to look scared, however. Their eyes flickered over everything, trying to spot the differences between this reality and theirs, but avoided the gaze of Valkyrie or anyone who stood watching. This was a battered people. All they wanted was to stop walking, to lay down their packs, to get some sense of a journey completed, but that wasn’t about to happen just yet. As they came through the portal, the doorway sliced from their universe to this one, they were directed to follow a trail of flags to the makeshift town of tents that had sprung up along the outside of Roarhaven’s west wall. Shrinking away from the grey-suited Cleavers on either side, the mortals trudged onwards in a broad, unbroken line.

“Thirteen thousand in thirty-six hours,” Skulduggery said.

“What are we going to do with them?” Valkyrie asked. “China wouldn’t send them back to their own reality, would she? We send them back and Mevolent’s army will either execute them or use them as slaves. Maybe they could stay in Roarhaven. There are plenty of uninhabited districts. Loads of empty houses.”

“Roarhaven is a city for sorcerers,” Skulduggery said. “I don’t know how welcoming its citizens would be to mortal families moving in beside them.”

“What’s wrong with them moving in? We’re supposed to live in peace, aren’t we? That’s why Sanctuaries exist.”

“Roarhaven has a Sanctuary,” Skulduggery pointed out. “It isn’t itself a Sanctuary.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” she said. “It’s not like we can send them to live in Dublin or London or anything. They’re mortals, but they’re not like our mortals. They’ve lived their entire lives in a reality ruled by sorcerers.”

Skulduggery nodded. “It would definitely require a period of adjustment.”

“I think China’s going to do the right thing. She knows she has to set an example as the Supreme Mage, so I reckon she’ll hand over all those empty houses to these nice people from Dimension X.”

“That’s not what it’s called.”

“We can’t call it the Leibniz Universe. It’s boring, and nobody knows who Leibniz is.”

“He was a German philosopher and physicist back in the late seventeenth—”

“Exactly,” said Valkyrie. “No one’s ever heard of him. And I think I should be the one to name it because I’m the one who discovered it.”

“You didn’t discover it.”

“Well, OK, maybe not discovered it, but I found it.”

“It wasn’t lost, Valkyrie. It had billions of people living in it.”

“And I found them, too.”

He shook his head. “Silas Nadir shunted you over there. By your rationale, he should be the one naming it.”

“He’s a serial killer. He’d pick a stupid name.”

Temper Fray walked through the portal, saw Skulduggery and Valkyrie and immediately started over. One of the Cleavers moved to block his way, but he flashed his City Guard badge and the Cleaver backed down.

“What did you find out?” Skulduggery asked.

Temper frowned. “No hug?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Skulduggery. “Valkyrie, hug him.”

“I’m hugging him with my mind.”

“You two are weird,” Temper said. “It’s telling that I get back from a twelve-hour trip to an alternate dimension and you two are the strangest things I’ve seen all morning. How was your little jaunt to the mountains, by the way? Meet anyone interesting? And by interesting I mean anyone tall, green and ugly?”

“Not quite so tall or so green any more,” Valkyrie said, “but Nye is still as ugly as I remember. We chatted, yes. We have a lead, a man named Quidnunc.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Neither have we,” Skulduggery said. “We’re hoping once we get to him, he’ll lead us to Abyssinia and then we’ll be able to stop her from doing whatever it is she’s planning on doing.”

“You still haven’t found out what that is, huh?”

“Not even close,” Skulduggery said, “but I’ve known her a long time, and, whatever her master plan is, it will not be good news for the rest of us.”

Temper frowned, and looked at Valkyrie. “Is he downplaying it?”

“I think he’s downplaying it.”

Temper nodded. “There’s definitely some downplaying going on. Come on, Skulduggery – you had a thing with her. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“She’s a very good-looking lady – you know, once she grew her body back and all. I’ve always found that ex-girlfriends with bodies are better than ex-girlfriends who are just internal organs locked away in a box somewhere. But I’m old-fashioned like that.”

Skulduggery sighed. “Can we stop talking about this?”

“We can,” Temper said, “once you accept that there is no shame in dating a murderous psychic who sucks the life out of people. No shame at all.”

“Thank you, Temper.”

“There’s a bit of shame in losing her to someone like Lord Vile, though. I mean, that dude was evil.”

“Are you finished?”

Temper grinned. “Not even close. But for right now? Yeah, I’m finished.”

“Thank you,” said Skulduggery. “We just got back into the country a few hours ago and we were going to follow up on this Quidnunc person, but decided to take a little detour here instead. Correct me if I’m wrong, Temper, but this portal wasn’t here when we left, was it?”

“It was not,” Temper said, and clapped his hands. “OK then, first things first: that is one messed-up reality they have back there. Seriously. Why anyone would venture into it, I have no idea.”

“You ventured,” Valkyrie said.

“I’m a City Guard now – I have my orders.”

“I heard you volunteered.”

“It’s a portal to another dimension,” Temper said. “What, am I not gonna go through? Anyway, there are thousands of people lining up on the other side of that thing. More coming every hour. With anyone else, I’d be expecting a stampede, but these folks are just so beaten down I doubt they could muster the energy to panic.”

“Did you see any of Mevolent’s men?” Skulduggery asked.

Temper shook his head. “Not a one.”

“We were told there’s a device that’s sustaining the portal. Is that true?”