by Ben Galley
‘I’ll—’ he began to say, but then stiffened like a cat spying a bird. His finger grazed his trigger once more as he shuffled to the edge of the roof, staying as low as he could manage. Ignoring Lilain’s avid gesticulating, Merion followed him, sliding up next to the prospector. He held out the Mistress and pointed it down into the street, just like Lurker.
‘Take your finger off the trigger, boy,’ Lurker hissed. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ He pointed with the nose of his huge gun. ‘There,’ he whispered.
Merion spied the shadow peeking out from behind a fence, betraying its owner. A scrawny Shohari man, painted green, purple, and now red. This Shohari must have been out of his wits with fear. He had no eyes for the rooftops, just the streets. He had a broken tomahawk in his left hand, a lot of blood on his right. There was a cut across his collarbone, from a lordsguard sword.
‘Jus’ a boy, not much older than you,’ Lurker whispered. Merion squinted, and saw that Lurker was right. It was just a skinny boy. Taller than Merion by far, but still a boy.
‘What was he doing in the fight?’ Merion breathed.
‘Fighting for his land, jus’ like the rest.’
‘But he’s no older than I am …’ Merion couldn’t understand.
‘We all got our own fights. And we fight them in our own ways,’ Lurker replied and then he put a leather finger to his chapped lips. The boy was creeping closer.
Merion pondered whether he would have the stomach to wade into battle, if the tables were ever turned. He doubted he would. But what if it was a battle to his avenge his father, or a fight for a ticket home? Would he charge into battle for that, kill for that? Merion gritted his teeth.
If that’s what it would take, then perhaps.
It was then that the Shohari froze, barely a stone’s toss from their front door. He raised his head slowly, until he met the eye of Lurker and Merion, and their gun barrels. They held each other’s gazes for a moment. When that moment became too long and uncomfortable, Lurker made his move: a gentle, slow raise of his gloved hand, and a touch of the brim of his hat. The Shohari nodded, and then turned to run towards the darkness of the desert, dripping a trail of blood in the dust.
Lurker sat up. ‘You two go on inside. I’ll keep watch for an hour or so.’
‘Come, Merion. We have a busy day tomorrow,’ Lilain beckoned her nephew. She was already halfway to the window.
Merion rankled at the prospect of anything busy. He had work to do, work repairing the mess she had caused. ‘I’m afraid you’re on your own,’ he bluntly informed her. ‘I have bridges to rebuild, a lord and his daughter to pacify. I’m not going to let you ruin this chance for me.’
‘Will you just come inside, and stop hissing at me like a goddamned viper?’
Merion shoved the gun through his belt and moodily clambered back into the house, mumbling to himself resolutely with every step.
Lilain was waiting for him in the study, hands on hips. But when she spoke, her tone was far from stern; it was softer, more pleading. Merion had never heard it before. ‘Look,’ she began, ‘you can mutter and curse to yourself all you want. You can ignore me, snub me, shy away from me, even run away, Merion, but no matter what, I’m still your aunt. You’re stuck with me,’ she told him, almost managing to squeeze in a chuckle at the end. ‘We’re bonded with blood, and that’s something you won’t share with any friend, or girlfriend, or dog, cat, anything. So can we please stop hating each other for just a moment, and try to get along instead?’ Lilain held up her hands and pressed them together. ‘I am sorry if I ruined any plan you had. I should have chosen a better time to tell you about what I thought of the Serpeds.’
Merion instantly cut in. ‘You should ha—’
But Lilain held up her hands. ‘I should not have accused Lord Castor,’ she paused here for a spell. This was choking her, Merion could see it. At least she was trying. ‘Of being a lamprey, or anything at all. From now on, we’ll put Lord Castor Serped in a box alongside your father.’
After a great deal of biting his lip and screwing up his dusty face, Merion nodded. ‘Fine.’
Lilain wisely resisted the urge to hug him, but Merion allowed her hands to rest on his shoulders. ‘I would appreciate some help tomorrow, if you have the time.’
Merion rolled his gaze around on the floor, searching for a better answer than ‘I’ll help.’ But sadly there was nothing besides books and dropped bullets, so he gave in and said it.
‘Thank you. Now go to bed,’ she said, shooing him out of the door.
Merion nodded and trod the creaking stairs back to his room. He suddenly found himself exhausted. Both the battle and the day’s training had beaten it out of him, and now all he could think of was bed. He could give the Serpeds one day to cool, he thought, as he collapsed into his bed. The darkness of his room was so very welcome. Castor would be busy with the town, in any case. One day, and then he would beg their forgiveness. Even in the darkness he practised his best smile, though he had no audience save for the shadows. Merion flipped over to the side of the bed, narrowly avoiding hitting his nose on the wooden frame.
‘Rhin,’ he said, as he slid to the floor. ‘Are you there?’
Nothing. Not a faerie in sight. Words would be had with that damned faerie.
Chapter XXVI
THE DEAD AND THE ALMOST
‘I saw a shape in the pines today. I couldn’t be sure, but I would swear blind it was Fae. The way it rippled, it wasn’t just a shadow. I told Merion. I want him to stay out of the woods until I know I was wrong.’
5th June, 1867
It’s strange how alive a barren desert can become when there is something dead to nibble on. Rhin swatted at yet another pesky fly. To a faerie, flies are huge: melon-sized, with red and bulbous compound eyes; wings the length of your forearm; and dangling clawed feet; not to mention their slavering, sucking jaws. Rhin punched another square in its grotesque face and watched it fall into a buzzing heap in the dirt. He wiped its rank spittle from his gauntlet.
Rhin heard a sharp shout on the breeze. He looked up and sniffed the rancid, rotten air, instantly wishing he hadn’t. The dead turn bad very quickly in the Wyoming sun. Rhin had learnt that shortly after dawn, somewhere near the work-camp. The fallen had been piled into heaps in the night: one for men; one for Shohari. Rhin had watched the men kneeling in the dust, some scratching their heads, others weeping quietly. They might have won the battle, but they had lost hundreds. When the hot morning sun reached them, it did not take long for the bloody mess to start festering. The warm westerly breeze made sure the stench was pushed all the way into town.
Rhin ducked his head so he could measure the progress of the unlucky souls charged with clearing the streets of bodies. It was now some time past nine, and already the sweat poured from them. Every now and again he could hear somebody retching, or crying, but the latter was rarer.
The men and women stalked to and fro, already thoroughly browbeaten by their labour. With one hand they clamped dirty rags to their mouths, and with the other they hauled the broken corpses across the dust and into their allotted piles. The Shohari pile was considerably larger than the other. Perhaps that was what drove the workers on through the raw heat, the stench and the gore, with their rags and their bloody hands. Even though what drove them was how high they could pile their dead enemies, Rhin had to admire their tenacity. We won. They didn’t. That was enough.
Rhin crept on, keen to be rid of the flies. He shimmered into nothing as he approached the edge of the house, pausing just the same in the brink of its shadow, looking left and right and left again before hopping across the alley, into the shadow of the next house.
It was wonderful how these Americans built their houses, almost as if they were too precious to touch the earth. Either that, or they were afraid their houses might be roasted alive by the hot sand. It was cool enough in the gaps beneath them. Even in full armour.
A corpse was lying half under this house, face-down in the d
irt with its arms spread out, almost as if surrendering to the dust. There was a rather large chunk of its skull missing, just behind its right ear. Rhin wrinkled his lip.
As Rhin looked out into the street once more, he heard a whistle, though not that of any man. Human lips can’t whistle like Fae lips can, never just a single note. Rhin felt his heart sinking.
‘What brings you out here, Rehn’ar? Picking the corpses of their loot? I had expected a bigger Hoard than that,’ The Wit called out. He and three of his Fingers stepped out from behind the corpse, arms crossed and looking cheery. ‘I think you’ve got a lot of balls wasting our time like this.’
If they were in the mood to play games, Rhin could be too. ‘I don’t like the idea of you thinking about my balls. Rather forward of you, Finrig,’ Rhin sneered. It was a cheap joke, but it found its mark.
The Wit sneered right back. ‘You’ll be the unnatural one, when I set to yours with my dagger, Rhin,’ Finrig offered. ‘Maybe I’ll keep ’em as a trophy. I’ll get a little glass case, all velvet inside, and show them around at parties when she makes me a lord.’
Rhin knew he should not laugh, but then again he had never been any good at saying no to things he should not do. ‘And I hope those silk-clad fawners poison you on your first day in court, Wit,’ he chuckled.
‘Enough,’ spat Finrig. ‘Where’s our Hoard?’
Rhin tensed his jaw. ‘I don’t have it yet.’
‘It’s been two weeks, Rhin.’
‘I just need a little more time. I have a plan.’
For a moment, Finrig looked as though he would walk around that broken head and stab Rhin in the chest, but he restrained himself. ‘We want our gold,’ he snarled.
Rhin held up his hands. ‘And you will get it. I’m going to bring it straight to the barn.’
‘When?’ Finrig snapped.
‘Tomorrow night. Be at that barn of yours and you shall have your Hoard.’
The Wit pointed a sharp finger. ‘We had better, Rhin, or—’
The faeries shivered and vanished as the corpse between them began to move. Formless as heat waves on a horizon they became, utterly invisible to the squinting eyes that came to peer under the house.
‘He ain’t stuck or nothin’. Mus’ just be a heavy one,’ somebody drawled.
‘Shit. Give me a hand.’
‘And one, two …’
With some grunting, the body began to slide out from under the house, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. The faeries stayed right where they were, visibly only to themselves. Rhin stared at Finrig until the shattered skull had been dragged past them. Only then did he see the knife in Finrig’s hand. Its point weaved a little figure-of-eight in the air.
‘Or it won’t be just your balls I take. Figure I’ll get me some lungs too, and a heart.’
Rhin tried to swallow whatever was stuck in his throat. ‘You’ll get your gold, Wit. Tomorrow.’
The knife came up to aim at his face. Finrig smiled. ‘We’d better,’ he said, his voice cold as steel, and just as hard. His Fingers chuckled between themselves as they passed by. The Wit made sure to knock Rhin with his shoulder before he left, armour clanking on armour.
‘Don’t forget about us,’ he hissed, before strolling away with a whistle.
Rhin waited until their chuckling and whistled faded, and then waited some more. It was almost lunchtime when he finally decided to move. His body flickered with anger, jumping in and out of visibility as he ground his teeth together and muttered dark things to himself. Promises of blood and the Wit’s head on a pike were churned out under his breath. Sometimes it just helps to be angry, to feel your face flush with rage and savour the taste of your own burning. Men can do mighty things when they are full of hate. And so can faeries. Robbing a train would take something mighty indeed. So Rhin let himself burn, let himself churn his hate over like the coals of a forge, hoping it would give him what he needed. It had seemed to help Merion, after all.
*
‘No lupus.’ Lilain sighed. ‘No lupus. I guess she was first to the torch.’
Merion nodded. They had watched the black smoke rising over a brisk lunch, before getting back to the bodies. Bodies. There was an entire graveyard of them down in the basement. Those that were not lucky enough to have a table or plank to rest on were laid on the floor. The lift had rattled on for hours, up and down, up and down, with Lurker busy at the ropes. The carts had kept on coming, ever since dawn.
Merion was tired of dead things. He kept his eyes on Lilain or Lurker whenever he could, just to know that something was still alive in this world.
There is a certain power in a corpse. If you handle enough of them, you start to feel like one of them, become one. Maybe it is the hungry pit left by the soul that draws us in, or maybe it is the horrific holes and missing bits. Maybe we’re just too empathetic, and the task too grisly. In any case, Merion was under the spell of the dead, and his limbs felt sluggish and cold, even though he had not stopped sweating since sunrise. Were he shown a mirror, he imagined he would look grey. He had to keep pinching himself to prove he wasn’t going numb.
Scrape, thud, scrape, squelch went the tune of his work. He bent down to seize the broken ankles of the next body and heaved. Scrape.
‘Heavy one, that!’ Lurker called down.
‘He is indeed,’ Merion grunted. The body came free of the lift and slid onto the floor of the basement. Thud.
‘How many is that?’
‘Thirty … nine, with two more on the lift.’
‘By the Maker, I know it’s wrong to think of the gold at this moment in time, but …’ Lilain looked up to wink. ‘Think of the gold.’
‘Battles sure are good for business,’ Merion said, echoing her morbid pragmatism. Jokes kept the gloom at bay. He dragged the body to the back of the basement. Scrape.
‘Sadly, I doubt that will be the last,’ came the reply. Lilain had foregone her usual investigation with these bodies. She was simply preparing them for burial, removing the splinters and bullets, sewing on the wayward bits if available, sewing up the holes if not. Then, with great deliberation, she would carve a small cog-like symbol on the forehead—to mark them as the Maker’s workers, ready for the great forge in the sky.
‘Are we safe?’ Merion asked. It seemed a very fair question to him, but Lilain looked a little shocked. He watched her think as he rolled the body onto its side. Squelch.
‘Of course we are, Merion. Serped has filled the town with lordsguards. Sheriffsmen are coming up from Kenaday—mercenaries too, if Jake is right. There’s a war on now. There’s fighting to be done. Their numbers make us safe, for now.’
‘It’s the “for now” bit that worries me, Aunt,’ Merion said whilst wiping his hands. ‘What if they come from another direction next time? Or bring more shamans?’
‘They’ll have more of that clockwork weaponry coming down from Kaspar, you can be sure of it. This town will be a fortress in no time. I’ve seen it before.’
‘And it doesn’t worry you?’
Lilain shook her head. ‘Nephew, if this town showed any signs of falling, and falling for good, I’d be the first one runnin’ along the train tracks to the next town, believe me. And you’d be there beside me. Lurker as well, if his old backside could keep up.’
That seemed to satisfy Merion. Perhaps it was the taste of corpse he had on his tongue, or the lead-weight limbs he now dragged across the dusty floor, but Merion didn’t much fancy being a corpse for real. When his aunt turned back to her body, Merion reached up to pat the three vials sitting in a little cloth sling across his chest. They were hidden under his shirt, and Merion had a mind to keep them that way. An idea had struck him in the night, as he danced along the edges of sleep. What if he showed Calidae what he could do? She would understand he was like them, and trust him. She would tell her father it was a misunderstanding, keep it a secret, and he would be back in the fold, quick as a flash. Merion had let that plan roll around in his head for most of the
morning, testing the edge of it. With every hour that passed, the more he liked the sound of it.
‘Are we done?’ Lilain called to him.
‘Lurker?’ Merion called up the lift shaft. ‘We done?’
‘This fella says we are. The rest of the bodies are goin’ to be burned.
‘Easier for me,’ Lilain shouted.
‘Then I say it’s time for a drink,’ Lurker proposed.
Merion felt how rough his parched tongue felt against his mouth and was inclined to agree. ‘Water?’ he asked.
Lurker popped his head and hat over the edge of the hole and smiled. ‘If you’re meanin’ firewater, then yes sir.’
*
There was a sickly air in the saloon. The swinging doors did nothing to keep the stench of the dead at bay. It roamed freely, heavy and sour. The crowds of tired workers, sweaty and bloody from their work, did nothing to quench it.
Merion looked around the busy saloon, at the dirty bodies that had wandered in to drink their sorrow. He saw the same look on their faces as the one he imagined he himself wore. The dead had cast their spell on them too, and now they were here to drown it with beer and whiskey. Alcohol: that bosom that humans adore to nuzzle in, that slippery mistress—part solution, part just another problem. Merion was currently at the solution stage. He sipped at his beer and savoured the feel of it trickling into his empty stomach. The warm buzz in his face was more than welcome, as was the bubbling in his belly. It made him feel like one of the living again, and the more he drank, the more alive he felt.
Lurker had sat them at the bar, in the far corner, where the polished wood curved into the wall. From there, backs to the wood and plaster, they watched the comings and goings of the workers, and got lost in half a dozen fractured conversations.
Merion was fine with listening. His tongue was too busy with sipping beer, and besides, all boys like to listen in, when they can, and glean what nuggets of precious information they could: the location of a treasure map perhaps; a bawdy tale fit only for sailors’ ears; talk of the Lord and his daughter maybe. Merion closed his eyes and let himself melt into the loud hubbub of conversation. This was a strange place, and he wanted to hear strange things. Somebody was whimpering at a nearby table.