Читать книгу Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12 - Derek Landy - Страница 43

24

PLANNING FOR MURDER

ister Bliss stood in the palm of the Grasping Rock and watched Serpine approach. The Grasping Rock was shaped like a massive upturned hand, jutting from the peak of the mountain, fingers curled, as if reaching for the sun in the blood-red sky.

Serpine climbed into the palm with ease and Bliss bowed slightly. Serpine, for his part, merely smiled.

“Do you have it?” Bliss asked.

“Luckily for you, yes.”

“Luckily for me?”

“My dear Mr Bliss, if I had gone down to those caves and emerged without the Sceptre, where would that have left you? You would be standing in one of those cages in the Sanctuary’s Gaol, powerless, awaiting judgement. Instead, you are here, standing with me, on the verge of a new world. Be thankful.”

“You seem to forget that if you had emerged with nothing, you’d be in the cage next to me…”

Serpine looked at him. A short time ago they would have been equals. But not now.

“… my master,” Bliss finished respectfully, inclining his head.

Serpine smiled again and turned his back to him, looking out through the curled fingers of the rock and down at the valley below them.

“Is it as powerful as the scholars have imagined?” Bliss asked.

“What the scholars have imagined pales in comparison to the reality. No one can stop us now.”

“The Elders,” Bliss said.

Serpine turned his head. “I have a plan to deal with the Elders. They are nothing if not predictable, and they will die because of it. Meritorious himself will crumble to dust. Nothing can stand in our way.”

“The Elders may be predictable,” Bliss responded, “but that is not a trait Skulduggery Pleasant shares with them. He’s cunning, powerful, and very, very dangerous.”

“Do not concern yourself with the detective. I also have a plan to deal with him.”

“Oh?”

“Skulduggery Pleasant has always had one weakness – he forms attachments to people who are very easily killed. In the past, it was his wife and child. Now, it is this girl that is with him, this Valkyrie Cain. He is only a threat to us if he is thinking clearly. You know as well as I do that once he becomes angry, his judgement is clouded.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I have already done it, Bliss. I have sent someone to… cloud his judgement. In less than an hour, Valkyrie Cain will be dead and Skulduggery Pleasant will trouble us no longer.”