Mort

turn by heart.
    “Is there one glass for everyone, Albert?”
    “Yes.”
    “This place doesn’t look big enough.”
    “Do you know anything about m-dimensional topography?”
    “Um. No.”
    “Then I shouldn’t aspire to hold any opinions, if I was you,” said Albert.
    He paused in front of a shelf of glasses, glanced at the paper again, ran his hand along the row and suddenly snatched up a glass. The top bulb was almost empty.
    “Hold this,” he said. “If this is right, then the other should be somewhere near. Ah. Here.”
    Mort turned the two glasses around in his hands. One had all the markings of an important life, while the other one was squat and quite unremarkable.
    Mort read the names. The first seemed to refer to a nobleman in the Agatean Empire regions. The second was a collection of pictograms that he recognized as originating in Turnwise Klatch.
    “Over to you,” Albert sneered. “The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be finished. I’ll bring Binky round to the front door.”
    “Do my eyes look all right to you?” said Mort, anxiously.
    “Nothing wrong with them that I can see,” said Albert. “Bit red round the edges, bit bluer than usual, nothing special.”
    Mort followed him back past the long shelves of glass, looking thoughtful. Ysabell watched him take the sword from the rack by the door and test its edge by swishing it through the air, just as Death did, and grinning mirthlessly at the satisfactory sound of the thunderclap.
    She recognized the walk. He was stalking .
    “Mort?” she whispered.
    Y ES ?
    “Something’s happening to you.”
    I KNOW , said Mort. “But I think I can control it.”
    They heard the sound of hooves outside, and Albert pushed the door open and came in rubbing his hands.
    “Right, lad, no time to—”
    Mort swung the sword at arm’s length. It scythed through the air with a noise like ripping silk and buried itself in the doorpost by Albert’s ear.
    O N YOUR KNEES , A LBERTO M ALICH .
    Albert’s mouth dropped open. His eyes rolled sideways to the shimmering blade a few inches from his head, and then narrowed to tight little lines.
    “You surely wouldn’t dare, boy,” he said.
    M ORT . The syllable snapped out as fast as a whiplash and twice as vicious.
    “There was a pact,” said Albert, but there was the barest gnat-song of doubt in his voice. “There was an agreement.”
    “Not with me.”
    “There was an agreement! Where would we be if we could not honor an agreement?”
    “I don’t know where I would be,” said Mort softly. B UT I KNOW WHERE YOU WOULD GO .
    “That’s not fair!” Now it was a whine.
    T HERE’S NO JUSTICE . T HERE’S JUST ME .
    “Stop it,” said Ysabell. “Mort, you’re being silly. You can’t kill anyone here. Anyway, you don’t really want to kill Albert.”
    “Not here. But I could send him back to the world.”
    Albert went pale.
    “You wouldn’t!”
    “No? I can take you back and leave you there. I shouldn’t think you’ve got much time left, have you?” H AVE YOU ?
    “Don’t talk like that,” said Albert, quite failing to meet his gaze. “You sound like the master when you talk like that.”
    “I could be a lot worse than the master,” said Mort evenly. “Ysabell, go and get Albert’s book, will you?”
    “Mort, I really think you’re—”
    S HALL I ASK YOU AGAIN ?
    She fled from the room, white-faced.
    Albert squinted at Mort along the length of the sword, and smiled a lopsided, humorless smile.
    “You won’t be able to control it forever,” he said.
    “I don’t want to. I just want to control it for long enough.”
    “You’re receptive now, see? The longer the master is away, the more you’ll become just like him. Only it’ll be worse, because you’ll remember all about being human and—”
    “What about you, then?” snapped Mort. “What can you remember about being human? If you went back, how much life have you got left?”
    “Ninety-one days, three hours and five minutes,” said Albert promptly. “I knew he was on my trail, see? But I’m safe here and he’s not such a bad master. Sometimes I don’t know what he’d do without me.”
    “Yes, no one dies in Death’s own kingdom. And you’re pleased with that?” said Mort.
    “I’m more than two thousand years old, I am. I’ve lived longer than anyone in the world.”
    Mort shook his head.
    “You haven’t, you know,” he said. “You’ve just stretched things out more. No one really lives