by Ben Galley
‘What crime?’
Rhin spoke, his voice like stones clacking together. ‘Stealing the Hoard.’
‘The what?’
‘The Hoard,’ Merion answered. ‘An entire kingdom’s fortune in gold, held in whatever shape you want it to be. A room. A trunk. A cave. Queen Sift chose a small purple and gold purse, right?’
Rhin nodded solemnly. ‘Always one for irony, that maniacal bitch.’
It was marvellously evident in Lurker’s face that he was struggling to believe this story, even despite the obvious fact that he was actually sharing a campfire with a faerie. Merion went on.
‘Rhin managed to escape the Fae and ran for his life. Three weeks, he spent dodging hansom cabs and Rottweilers and the soldiers that had hunted him. He finally found his way to Harker Sheer, my home.’ Merion’s eyes glazed over as the scenes replayed themselves in his mind. ‘The best hiding spot was always the rhododendron.’
‘What’s one of those?’
Merion sniffed. Perhaps rhododendrons were not all that common in the desert. ‘A big plant, with big, waxy-green leaves. Gunderton could never find me there. One of the under-butlers. Fat as a pig and as dumb as one too.’
‘I always hid opposite the kitchens, so I could run in if he got too close. Never did though. One October day, I was lying on my stomach, peeking out behind two fat leaves, watching Gunderton run in circles around the grounds, when I heard a choking sound from behind me. There was this little grey thing, Rhin, crawling out of the bushes towards me, half-dead and with a hole through his side. He managed to say “arrow” before he passed out against my leg. He was white like parchment, and covered in his own vomit. His eyes were just two pools of black blood, and he was shaking like a leaf.’ Merion looked at Rhin, who was drumming his lithe fingers against the crossbar of his sword.
‘Took him two weeks to speak again. I hid him in a suitcase under my bed and fed him anything I could steal from dinner or pinch from the kitchen. Father almost found him once, whilst I was dragging the suitcase into the attic of the northeast tower. That’s where I put him, so he didn’t have to live in a suitcase for months on end.’
‘There was a long rope to the trees on the northeast corner. Always one step from the woods.’ Rhin almost managed to sound wistful.
‘Not a soul went up there,’ Merion continued. ‘That was four years ago, just before my father began his campaign for the seat of the Prime Lord. I’ve been hiding you ever since.’
‘And I’ve been keeping you safe ever since.’ This was directed more at Lurker than anybody else.
Lurker sniffed several times before he answered. ‘Your own guardian faerie, Merion.’
Rhin nodded. ‘You could say that.’
‘An’ you came all the way to the Endless Land to protect this boy?’
Rhin shrugged, as if it was simply nothing. ‘He is my friend. Somebody’s got to look out for him. Besides,’ and here he scowled, ‘I doubt the Fae have ever forgotten me.
Merion wore a quizzical expression. ‘I thought you said they had stopped looking for you? That you were safe.’
Rhin shook his head. ‘The Fae never forget a wrong. Especially Sift. They can hold a grudge for centuries. That’s the downside to having enemies that think middle age is about three hundred years old.’
Lurker whistled at that. ‘Forty-two years have been plenty enough for me.’
Merion smelled out a chance to turn the conversation around. ‘Oh really? How so?’
Lurker narrowed his eyes. ‘Now just because you told your story don’t mean I forgot you lied to me.’
‘So you get to know my secrets, but I don’t get to know yours? Outrageous,’ Merion groused.
‘I’m done with talking,’ Lurker asserted with a wave of his hand. He laid his gun by his side and sought out his pack for a makeshift pillow. ‘Our tongues have wagged enough for one night. I’m bidding you a goodnight now, so I have the energy to walk tomorrow.’
‘Fine,’ Merion replied, bubbling with irritation at the stubborn prospector. He vowed to try again in the morning.
Merion reached out for the trusty, though now rather battered, rucksack and shoved it under his stinging ear so he could put his back to the faerie and the fire—and to Lurker. Rhin sat back against the boy’s spine and watched Jake retreat to a similar position. ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ the faerie whispered to himself.
It was only as Merion teetered on the precipice of deep, dream-chased darkness that Lurker chose to have the final word. ‘Make sure to sleep sound, boy. Tomorrow you meet the Shohari. And if we’re real lucky, they won’t decide to kill us. Goodnight now,’ he said, as nonchalant as could be.
Chapter XIII
NEW ARRIVALS
‘I don’t know if this boy is fearless or just plain mad. Then again, I’m not too used to nine-year-old human young. I told him what I was and he just nodded as if I had told him the day of the week. He hasn’t stopped asking questions since I croaked a few days ago. Most humans just scream or faint. This one seems utterly delighted to have a faerie under his bed.
Maybe he is mad. Who cares? I think I’m finally safe.’
15th May, 1867
‘Almighty’s balls, boy. Not in the bloody toolbox! Spew somewhere else, you idiot! Bloody hell! It’s on the spanners and everything,’ yelled Master Bowder, the flushed and balding man screaming from the floor, body half-swallowed under a piece of machinery that looked so complex, it gave Juspin a headache just looking at it.
‘Sorry,’ he said, half-mumbling as he wiped his mouth. Now that the ship had come to a halt, the pitching and yawing was even worse. It was playing havoc with his stomach.
‘I’m starting to wonder why I listened to your grandmother, and apprenticed you. If she hadn’t helped raise my ma, then…’ The end of Master Bowder’s sentence was a violent shaking of his fists, greasy knuckles and all.
The engineer shimmied out from under the machine and sighed at his soiled tools. ‘Bloody hell!’ he spat.
Juspin had decided the Iron Ocean did not like him. Ever since he had been manhandled on board the Amitie in Plymouth, the waves had rolled and the wind had howled. The angry sky hadn’t spared a scrap of sunlight, and the sea had battered the prow and flanks of the steamship day and night.
It must have despised him almost as much as his master at that very moment. Juspin shuffled awkwardly and made a show of squinting at the cogs and tubes and greasy cogs. ‘So … what’s wrong with it?’ he asked, quietly.
‘Needs a whole new set of gears is what’s wrong with it, lad,’ huffed Bowder. The man was interminably irritable. ‘Got spares, luck has it, but not the bolts. They’re in the for’ard hold, right in the bow. Square-headed, ‘bout yay long.’
Juspin nodded, but his legs didn’t move. Bowder looked him up and down as he would one of his great steam engines, as if to check to see if he was still functional. ‘Well, lad, get to it!’ he bellowed, panicking Juspin into flight.
The boy skidded through the doorway of the engine room and trotted down the hallway, trying desperately to dig out his internal map of the ship. Four days, and already he was expected to know where everything was on this lurching, dripping ship. A wave of nausea rose and fell, and Juspin swallowed hard as he pressed on, mumbling directions to himself and worrying his carrot-hue hair with nervous fingers. He was desperate not to mess this task up. Just one would be nice.
After another few anxious minutes of jogging through dark corridors, sparsely lit by twitching lanterns, he finally came to a heavy door secured by a wheel. Juspin almost winded himself trying to loosen it, but finally, with a horrendous screech, it came free and spun for him.
The hold was darker than the corridors. In a stroke of brilliance, Juspin fetched a lantern from its hook and thrust it into the shadows. A dozen boxes wrapped in brown sheets greeted him, nothing more. The floor was thick with grime and crusted salt. Juspin held his breath as he wandered deeper into the hold, though he knew not exa
ctly why. More crates, more boxes, more brown sheets. Juspin was starting to wonder whether he had made a wrong turn when he saw the curve of the bulkhead in front of him, and heard the dull crashing of the waves over the drone of the powerful engines. Those confusing bloody engines.
Where the deck met the bulkhead, he saw a little tower of small boxes stacked against crates bursting with cogs and sprockets and all manner of spare parts. Juspin punched the air and ran to the boxes.
The lantern was put on the deck while Juspin delved into the first few boxes. The first was full of washers, the second screws. The third, to his delight, were the bolts Master Bowder had described: square-headed and the length of his hand.
He did not notice the pain at first, only a cold pinch in the back of his legs, just above his ankle. Then he felt the blood seeping into his borrowed, oversized boots, and the pain began to surge. Fae steel cuts deep. With a squeal, Juspin collapsed to the floor and clutched at his leg. His foot flapped uselessly in the air. Blood dripped down his trousers.
‘What in—?’ Juspin gasped.
A cold needle of black steel rested on his forehead, and he fell instantly still. The lad blinked furiously. To his tear-stung eyes, it looked as though a strange white creature with black armour and crystal wings stood by his head, staring down at him with a terrifyingly confident smirk.
‘We’ve caught a rat, Kawn,’ said the creature, in the Queen’s common. Juspin began to howl again, but the steel tapped him sharply. ‘Easy now, rat.’
Another creature loomed out of the shadows, and poked something bloody at his ribs. Juspin whined. ‘And what are we going to do with this rat, Wit?’
‘Can’t have this caelk squeaking, can we?’ said the Wit, cocking his head to the side to get a better view of his prey, sweating profusely as it was, its tears mingled with its sweat.
‘Take him below for the Fingers. See if he gives any sport. If not, throw him in the bilge,’ the Wit ordered, calm and cold as an iceberg. It was then that he lent forward, and offered the poor boy a consoling shrug. ‘Sorry, my lad. Looks like you boarded the wrong ship,’ he said.
As the other faerie clicked his fingers, just before the bag was thrust onto his head, Juspin found himself wholeheartedly agreeing with the murderous little beast.
*
‘And the two onions, that’ll be fine,’ Lilain smiled and pointed at the last surviving onions on the market stall. The deliveries had been sparse. Trouble on the line, they said. Though that didn’t do much to stop the shoving and yelling earlier that day.
‘No fish today, ma’am? Got sardines in.’
Lilain’s ears pricked up. ‘Fresh?’
‘No ma’am, in brine.’
Lilain frowned. ‘Spoils the meat,’ she said.
‘Yes ma’am.’
Lilain paid and cast around for her next objective: the sheriff’s office, to see if there had been word of that damned Merion. The boy would not have gone far. He must be hiding in the town somewhere. Lilain couldn’t wait to give him a hiding when she saw him. She didn’t trust herself to dally with the other thoughts, the dark alternatives. Lilain put a little more kick in her urgent stride, eager to weave a little faster through the crowds. The streets were choked and excitable. Lilain slowed a little, watching how the tide of townspeople moved against her, surging slowly yet inexorably towards the railway line.
Clutching her bag of vegetables and dried meats close to her chest, Lilain decided to follow the flow, and let herself join the rank and file of the curious crowds. Together they kept moving until they reached the platform, and found it already awash with crowds and clumps of people. Green and yellow pennants fluttered here and there, twitching with anticipation. Lilain bent her ear to some of the surrounding gossip, and soon found herself frowning.
‘Lord Serped and his whole family!’
‘Come to sort this wraith nonsense out, I hear.’
‘For once and for all.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said the last, a sullen-looking worker.
Lilain found herself slowing to a crawl, and letting the others nudge and brush past. There she waited. Slowly but confidently, the whispers began to grow and grow. Lilain stood on her tiptoes to see, but the press on the platform was too thick. As the thick-knitted crowd on the platform began to cheer, others surged forwards to catch a glimpse. Whether they were there to grin or to glower, everybody wanted to see the Serpeds up close. Even Lilain crept forward, partly because it was futile to push against the flow of the crowd. Soon enough, she glimpsed a pale hand waving above the crowds, stiff and stoic. Lilain raised herself on tiptoes to drink it all in.
Lord Serped stood tall in his open-top carriage, decked with silver and painted coat of arms: a green wyrm, coiled casually around a silver spinning-top. The ladies Serped sat upright and prim on either side of their lord and master, surveying the dusty crowds with carefully drawn smiles. The mother, Ferida, and her daughter, Calidae, were copies, mere decades apart.
Their clothes were fine enough to draw some grumbles from a scattering of workers in the crowd. The lordsguards, trotting proudly on their horses and decked out in black cloth and mail, kept a watchful eye for any trouble. Sheriffsmen walked between the gaps in the crowd, their narrowed eyes vigilant.
Lilain sneered. Pomp and ceremony, purely for the inflation of the bastard’s ego, she thought to herself. It was then that she caught it; the space between the elbows and waving arms, forging a clear channel for her to stare down, straight into Castor Serped’s eyes. Lilain froze for the briefest moments, and then made sure to glare right back as his gaze locked on hers. For all the shortness of the moment, the space in the crowd, enough silent words were said. Then Serped’s eyes were lost in the throng of hands and faces, and Lilain turned away, to glare at the dust instead. As she waded her way out of the crowd, she could not help but shiver at the chill that ran down her spine. The boiling sunshine failed to warm her.
Chapter XIV
RAILWRAITH
‘The boy’s name is Merion, for short, and today he officially welcomed me to his home as a permanent guest. I’m not sure the boy’s father would be so welcoming. He’s a powerful man. You can tell just by the way he walks. And men of power don’t have time for flights of fancy. He’s stern, but he seems wise. There’s a scent on him I can’t figure.’
15th May, 1867
If you have ever been roughly or rudely awoken, you will know exactly how unpleasant and jarring it is to be dragged from the soft, amorphous haze of your dreams and thrown into the light of day without so much as an ‘excuse me’. Panic and confusion, both at once, do not a joyous experience make.
Tonmerion found two rough leather hands grabbing at his shirt collar, shaking him violently. His eyes snapped open, and he instantly wished they hadn’t. Lurker’s weather-worn face was an inch from his. Merion could almost taste his stale, tobacco-stained breath. So very different from the smell of fresh bread and spitting sausages wafting up the stairwells of Harker Sheer that he had been dreaming of.
‘Get up!’ Lurker hissed, voice strangled with urgency. Merion had never heard Lurker so panicked, and that kept the boy’s mouth shut and his body obedient. Something really must have been wrong.
‘An’ tell that bloody faerie of yours to back down, afore I make him,’ Lurker snapped, eying Rhin, who was hard-eyed and hovering by Merion’s side, blade half-drawn from his grey scabbard.
‘Rhin,’ Merion croaked, and Rhin shoved the blade away.
‘Follow me, fast and quiet. No shoutin’, no arguin’, no questions. Lest you want to end up as dead meat for the vultures.’
Merion didn’t speak a word as Lurker pushed his head low and led him in a scrambling run over the lip of their hollow and down onto the hillside. He did not take them far. He found them a boulder to hide behind and shoved Merion up against it. Merion desperately wanted to know what was going on, but he was too scared to talk. Lurker was rattle
d, and seeing him so fidgety and wide-eyed kept Merion’s lips tightly sealed. He watched the big man creep to the edge of the boulder. A dull bang echoed through the crisp morning air. It was barely an hour past sunrise, and already the heat was beginning to creep into the air. Merion flinched as another thud shook his still-sleepy bones.
‘Am I the only one who wants to know what the hell is going on?’ Rhin whispered, his words barely audible. Lurker waved a hand at him to be silent.
Rhin’s question was soon answered. After several more ominous bangs, the stomach-clenching form of a hulking railwraith emerged at the foot of the slope, and paused to scratch its face. Even from half a mile away, they could hear the screeching of ragged claws on iron cheekbones.
The railwraith was quite the monster. It must have been ten feet tall, and even then it was hunched over, glaring at the wasteland. Twisted iron rails formed its bones and frame. Greased bolts and shards of wood gave it tooth, skin, and sinew. Railspikes gave it claws and spines to decorate its shoulders. Its eyes were simple: black and empty holes bored in the tortured iron. It was a monster from the darkest of nightmares. By the backside of the Almighty did Merion want to run! Only fear pinned him down.
The three of them froze as the railwraith turned its hollow gaze to the higher hillside. Sunlight flirted with its sharp features, danced on its dusty claws.
Rhin was the only one who dared to move. He reached out and touched both Merion and Lurker with his hands. Then he began to shake. His eyes became tightly-scrunched whorls of grey skin, and his sharp nails dug at their clothing. Merion had to bite his tongue to keep himself from yelling. Gradually, they began to fade. Not completely, for that would have made Rhin’s eyes bleed, but enough for them to look like rock and pebble rather than two quivering humans. It worked a charm. The railwraith’s gaze passed them by, and the creature looked to the east instead. With a screech of metal, the monster lumbered off, its footsteps thundering across the desert.