by Ben Galley
22nd May, 1867
It was just after dawn when they let Lurker free of the jail. Some gold had apparently greased the wheels of freedom. Lurker did not mind too much. A little expenditure was worth it. His cell had stunk of piss and the bread they had given him could have dented the bars. So it was that Lurker now stood outside of the jail, on the eastern outskirts of town, trying to shake the smell of three days’ worth of piss-stench and sweat out of his clothes. The crisp morning air was doing the job.
The sun had barely begun its climb. The sky was still tinted with reds and swirling orange where brave wisps of cloud dared to face the onslaught of the sun. The streets were empty at that time of the morning. Well, for the most part anyway. Empty, save for the stern face of Lilain Rennevie, crossed arms and all.
‘Well,’ he rasped. ‘I knew you were an early riser, but …’
‘Stow it.’
Lurker raised his gloved hands and bowed his head.
‘I will have my say, John Hobble, and I will have it first. Let me see, where do I begin? Oh yes, with the luring of my nephew into the desert. Or perhaps you takin’ him to the Shohari, knowing full-well your friends and their witch or their tree would tell him everything.’
‘I did no such thing as lure the boy,’ Lurker protested, but then quickly softened. ‘But you’re right on the second part,’ he admitted.
‘You’re damn right I am. You could have turned him away. You could have …’
‘Lil,’ Lurker interjected, ‘I’m sorry. But the way I see it, the boy is better off knowin’ the truth about his father. Might be all he’s got left. Otherwise he’ll end up trying something stupid. Takin’ chances.
Lilain raised a menacing finger. ‘Thanks to you, he’s done just that,’ she hissed.
Lurker tilted his hat back. ‘What?’
‘Drank a load of bat blood, all because you filled his head with nonsense.’
Lurker brought his hat right back down. ‘How’s he doin’?’
‘Alive. Thank the Maker. Found him in a patch of his own vomit and shit. I won’t be telling him about the latter. He’s been asleep since then, pale as a sheet.’
‘Can I see him?’
Lilain jutted out her chin. ‘And why do you care? Don’t often catch you caring about anything besides blood, gold, and that magpie of yours.’
Lurker didn’t have to pause to think up a fitting answer. He already had the words on his lips. ‘Because I know what it’s like to be a young boy learnin’ to rush, who’s excited because he thinks it can get him out, get his life changed. Or back the way it was, whichever. I know what he’s thinkin’. Maybe more than you,’ Lurker asserted, his words gruff but firm.
Lilain scowled, wearing that trademark frown of hers. ‘You … you just keep your nose out of our business, understand?’ she snarled, before storming away from him.
‘Lil!’ Lurker called out, and she stopped.
‘What?’
This time Lurker did have to pause. He spent it toeing the dirt with the edge of his boot. ‘I was thinking …’ he began.
‘What?’ Lilain shouted.
Lurker looked up. ‘I was thinkin’ about some breakfast?’
Lilain crossed her arms, quick as a flash. ‘You’re lucky I don’t take you back and crack your head open with a frying pan, like my dead husband,’ she spat. Then she turned away again, but this time her pace was slower, almost calmer. ‘You can cook it yourself.’
*
The first thing Merion felt was pain. His stomach was in a knot, and not just your average sort of knot, but the sort that even sailors spend years failing to tie. And all the while the ropes of it burned with bitter flames. At least that’s how it felt. The second thing was the sweat, oozing from every pore. Every drop of liquid in his body ached to escape, like rats from a burning barn.
Almighty if it wasn’t hot. His mouth felt like a pocketful of sandpaper. His tongue was a fat slug contemplating the merits of suicide. But it was the vacuum of sound that bothered him the most. Not his stomach, not the dripping of his body, not how parched he was—it was the dull smothering of the world’s noises, as if somebody had filled his ears with clay while he slept. If three days of fitting and squirming could be called sleeping.
When he finally prised open his leaden eyelids, he found two shadows standing by his bedside: one, tall and willowy; the other dark, foreboding, and muscled. Merion briefly wondered whether he had died, and whether these two figures were to be his new guardian angels. If that were the case, the House of the Almighty must be sorely in need of new staff. His voice was but a croak, audible only in his head. The willowy figure leant forward, and came briefly into focus: his aunt. The other must have been Lurker. Merion felt himself relax slightly, sagging deeper into the greedy, sweat-drenched sheets of his bed.
‘Here,’ she said. Merion barely discerned the word. It was an echo within an echo.
He found a glass in front of his nose and a hand behind his head, and with its help he leant forwards to fill his mouth with sweet, cold water. It was joyous. Mountain waterfalls had nothing on this little beaker of water. The sweetest wine could be forgotten. It was the best sip he had ever taken. All until the cold water met the fire in his belly, and fuelled its burn. Merion cried out and rolled over.
‘See? Lucky to be alive.’ The words came as slow as treacle.
‘He’s strong.’
‘But stupid.’
Merion groaned a little louder.
‘Drink it down, boy,’ he heard Lurker say. Merion couldn’t think of anything worse, but there was the beaker, pressing against his lips, spilling into his mouth. It was all Merion could do not to choke.
Another wave of pain shook him, and another, and another, until finally, when the beaker had nothing left to give, the pain began to ebb away. Mercifully.
‘How long?’ Merion managed to croak, after a few good minutes of deep, long breaths and copious amounts of eye-scrunching.
‘Three days.’
Merion felt as though he had been left out in the sun for a week, like a forgotten shirt hanging from a line. He just groaned, and looked up to find Lilain staring down at him with a questioning look on her face. There was a frown there too, and Merion didn’t much like it.
‘What?’ he asked in barely a whisper.
‘Don’t you have something to say?’
Merion blinked. ‘Erm,’ he mumbled. ‘Thank you?’
‘You’re welcome, but that’s not what I’m looking for.’
‘Lil…’ Lurker nudged her, but she nudged him right back with the point of her elbow. He grunted and held his tongue.
Merion looked from Lurker to Lilain and back again. ‘Erm …’
Lilain put her hands on her hips. ‘It begins with an S, Merion.’
‘Sorry,’ Merion muttered. He looked down at his bedsheets. If there was one thing he did not like in this world, it was apologising. To apologise is to admit mistake or defeat. A Hark trifles with neither.
And there he was again, his father, keeping Merion’s back straight and his chin held high even from the grave.
Merion cleared his throat. ‘But I’m alive though, aren’t I? That proves something.’
For a moment, Lilain looked as though she would give him a good thwack around the ear. But she didn’t, much to Merion’s gratitude. Instead she held her breath until she could trust herself to speak rather than bellowing in the stubborn boy’s face.
‘It proves,’ she began, her voice strained, ‘that you’re nothing but a damn fool and a thief. You could have killed yourself. I’ve got a good mind to throw you out of this house and see how you do beggin’ on the streets.’
Merion sat up. ‘You wouldn’t dare …’
Lilain cocked her head to the side. ‘Wouldn’t I? This is my house, and in my house I expect my guests to respect my wishes. If they don’t, then I will gladly show them the door, and how it looks from the outside, if necessary. You are nothing more than a guest at this momen
t, Merion, a guest that is causing me quite a lot of grief. I won’t have it. Not here. Not now.’
Merion was stunned. How could his aunt be so callous? So cold? He was flesh and blood, after all. Her last flesh and blood. A place in this house was a right, not a gift. ‘I said I’m sorry,’ he muttered.
Lilain seemed happy enough with that. She nudged Lurker once again and together they shuffled out of the room. ‘You sleep for the rest of the day, no arguments,’ she ordered.
Merion coughed and grasped at the air between them. ‘Will you train me? Please, Aunt Lilain?’
The door hovered an inch from shut. There was a pause, and then a whisper floated to his deafened ears. ‘I’ll think about it.’
When the door clicked shut, and Merion was alone, he licked his lips and croaked out a name. ‘Rhin.’
Nothing. Not a rustle.
‘Rhin?’ he said again, a little louder. Still nothing.
‘Almighty damn it.’
Where on earth was that faerie? Merion wondered.
*
The faerie in question was currently sequestered beneath the boards of a whorehouse, on the outskirts of the town. Not the most glamorous of places to be sequestered, you may agree, but Rhin did not seem bothered. It was good to be out sneaking again.
He had already spoken to a few horses. They were dumber animals than what he was used to, unlike the wise old carthorses at Sheer Gate, with stories to tell and yarns to spin. Rhin had often crept to the outskirts of the Harker Sheer estate, under the half-moon, to wander through the peasant fields, and chat a while with a horse or two. Animals and Fae had always been close allies, for the most part.
Fell Falls horses, however, had never seen a faerie in their lives. A little stupefaction might have been forgiven, but not whinnying terror. Even after the dull beasts had managed to get over their shock, their words were slow and drawled, all backwards and upside down. They had mumbled of rails and wraiths, but that was all, and Rhin was left to sigh and creep on, in search of brighter beasts to mine secrets from. If there is one thing that is true of all faeries, it is that they love a good secret. Or two.
Further down the road, a crow told him quite pointedly to piss off. In the shadow of an outhouse, a rabbit just shrugged, and kept on munching. But in the garden of a barbershop, he found an old, shaggy dog slumped at the edge of a porcelain water bowl, hot and tired—an old, shaggy dog with a pleasing amount of things to grumble about.
There was talk of a new lady in town, Rhin was told. Smelled awful strange, she did, all silver and flowers. Not from around here. Rhin had a slight suspicion as to who that could be. The rail was moving too, and that was something the dog did not seem happy about. His owner was a foreman, he whined. Out all day on the rail, he was. Forgetful man it seemed too; often forgot to fill the water bowl or let the poor dog in at night-time. Awful shame. The new lord was a sour bastard, now that was for sure. Worked him longer hours, hadn’t paid him in a while, which of course meant no food for the dog … With a sigh, the panting beast went back to his staring.
Rhin wished him good luck and then wandered on, scuttling and darting from building to building, hiding under their short stilts and decks, listening to the feet plod and the tongues wag above him. It was only when he had reached the whorehouse that he had grown bored. The day was becoming sweltering, and his wings were beginning to droop. Faeries are fond of the wet earth and the dark, not dust and sand. Besides, the people there today were dull, mechanical almost.
Rhin got up from his crouch, wincing as his legs creaked. He ran a grey hand across his brow and flicked the sweat away. ‘Roots be damned. This is a hellhole,’ he muttered to himself. His black armour was not helping things. It clung to him like hot pastry, heavy and chafing. Rhin turned to face the way he had come, and then he saw it.
He slid his sword from its sheath, just an inch. More than enough to be deadly in Rhin’s hands. The rat was waddling towards him, and not just in his general direction; directly towards him. There was a dead look in its obsidian eyes.
‘Back, skindr,’ Rhin hissed in his own tongue, calling the rat by its cursename. Rats do not take too kindly to the Fae, nor Fae to rats. They are old enemies. Rats were actually the reason the early Fae began to wear armour. Giant, gnashing teeth are a very good motivator. ‘Back, I say!’
The rat kept on coming. It was a big specimen, brown from nose to rump with bristling, rumpled fur. Rhin had killed more than a few rats in his time, and he was well aware of what a rat on the attack looked like. This one was calm as could be. Docile even, like the dull horses in the stables. He kept his hand on his sword all the same.
When the rat was barely a foot away, it stopped and then did something very strange indeed. It turned to the left and then rolled over on its side, exposing its belly and, curiously, a thin roll of brown paper, strapped to its underside with a ragged length of twine.
Rhin stepped forward, heart beating and mouth souring with suspicion. With each step, he came to new conclusions, ones that numbed his fingers and made him sweat even more. ‘Please, no,’ he gasped, reaching to cut the twine with the tip of his sword. The rat flinched when the blade came close, but Rhin was careful. The sharp black steel split the twine as if it were nothing. The scroll rolled free, and came to a rest against the toes of his black boots. ‘Please,’ Rhin said as he bent down.
With fingers that were too nervous for their own good, he slowly unravelled the paper. Rhin barely noticed the rat rolling back onto its legs and calmly trundling back to whence it came, leaving him alone to read his message.
Tonight. The Serped barn. East. The Queen demands it.
The Wit
Every internal organ Rhin possessed dropped like a stone. The Wit. The name was a sharp blade in the gullet. The Queen demands it. After all those miles.
Rhin’s fingers slowly began to close around the paper, crunching it into an ugly ribbon, then a ball, and then finally, as he gripped and strangled and gritted his teeth, it became dust. He wiped its charred remnants from his burning hands and then clapped them together. And he kept clapping. And clapping. Until his lips split apart and a shout came out. It was no word a human could understand. Old Fae, and there was no translation for it. The meaning is one of pure anger and frustration, with a little pain thrown in; the sort you get when banging a knee against a table. Only in this context, the knee is your bare, beating heart, and the table is made of needles. Once the last ragged gasps of that word had been ripped from his lungs, Rhin fell to his knees. His nails dug at the earth.
It took him some time before he could get to his feet again. And before he did so, he took out one of his knives, and ran a finger along the blade. Three drops of lavender blood painted the dust before the hand was closed and the wound smothered with magick.
His business concluded, Rhin set off, one hand on his sword and the other on a knife, each ready to go to work. But the rat was long gone, and that caelk Finrig nowhere to be seen. Tonight, was all he could think on the long, lonely walk home.
*
The house was dead. Lilain was nowhere to be seen. Lurker had gone. Only the soft, laboured snoring of a boy in the front room. Rhin tiptoed through the kitchen and across the hall, and after jumping for the door-handle, he slipped into the room without a sound. A mouse would have been embarrassed.
Merion was drowning in a nightmare. His eyes roved madly beneath their lids. Great beads of sweat were busy making their way down to his chin. His clammy fingers grasped at the rumpled sheets. Rhin shook his head and climbed up to stand on the boy’s chest.
Merion awoke with a cough and a start. Faeries might be small, but they are peculiarly heavy for their size. Armour and swords did not help matters.
‘So,’ Rhin mused. ‘You’re alive then.’
Once he had regained his breath, Merion eyed him suspiciously. Rhin was paler than usual, and his knees were caked in dirt. He smelled vaguely of dog. ‘Have you also come to tell me how much of a fool I am? Because
I’m growing tired of it,’ he snapped, his voice still as hoarse as a rusty gate on an icy winter’s morning.
Rhin narrowed his eyes. ‘As long as you’re in agreement, I’ll hold my tongue.’
Merion rubbed his sweaty cheeks. ‘Where were you?’
Rhin looked away and then began to climb down on to the floor. ‘Exploring.’
‘That’s too dangerous, Rhin.’
The look the faerie threw Merion was chilling. ‘Don’t you dare lecture me on what is dangerous and what is not.’
Merion sighed, but said no more. He left Rhin to crawl under the bed and into his makeshift bedroom. But instead of lying down, or silencing his rumbling stomach with a stolen biscuit, he sat with his knees drawn into his chest, and stared wide-eyed at the door. He did not speak and nor did he move. He just kept thinking the same word over and over again. Tonight. Tonight. Tonight.
*
No matter how hard Rhin prayed for the sun to linger a little while longer in the sky, no god nor daemon nor spirit heard him. His pleas fell on deaf ears, and the sun fell as it always did. The night was now a bruised purple. A sickle moon was peering over the hills in the north. It was a wicked moon, and beneath it, Fell Falls sparkled with candles and lanterns. There was a feast of some sort tonight. Somebody important in the work-camp was having a birthday, or so said the whispers of the uninvited. Hired out the Bettermost, and the Thirty Dead Men, right across from each other. Lady Caboose has brought most of her girls too. It would be a wild night for Fell Falls.
Rhin couldn’t give two shits for Lady Caboose and her girls, nor for birthdays and important men. That’s what he told himself, over and over again, listing all the things he had no particular defecatory urges for. The Wit was mentioned more than a few times, as was that damn Queen of his, and all his Black Fingers. Not to mention the accursed ship that brought them here.
He had been safe, and that was the sour heart of it all. He was supposed to be forgotten here. Lost. In all the ways a runaway should be. Uncontactable. And yet here he was, sat cross-legged under an old bed and busy sweating, on the cusp of meeting up with the enemies he thought he had left four and a half thousand miles behind him.