by Ben Galley
‘All I know is I can’t count that high, okay? Too many there were, dozens and dozens.’
‘Took us half the day.’
Another whispered by the stairs, thinking they could not be heard. A woman it was this time, young, and urgent. Merion could imagine her curls bobbing as she talked.
‘Brigan said he’s got one in ’is basement.’
‘A live one?’ said a man with a deep voice, possibly portly.
‘Course a live one. What sport would a dead one be?’
‘None, I suppose.’
‘You want in?’
A pause. Merion held his breath.
‘What time.’
‘Sunset. You know the place. Bring coin.’
Merion shuddered at that. So cold.
‘So I say to him, Lenni, if you don’t put that rifle down right now, it’ll be bedtime and no supper.’ A weasel-voice man was holding court to his right.
‘And what he do?’ asked another, in an earnest tone.
‘Shot me right in the knee, little bastard. But it got me in the ’firmary nice and easy. I was on the other side of the town when the savages came. Stayed tucked up in my bed all night.’
‘Same,’ snickered the second voice. ‘Though I was at Shell’s not too far from the jail. At the bottom of the Runnels. Got myself a young redhead, and not a peep ‘til dawn.’
There was a clink as glasses kissed.
Merion turned his head to make sense of the low mumbling he heard from further along the bar, barely a few yards away. There were three voices, all of them low and conspiratorial. Merion leant forward, straining his ears.
‘If we don’t get paid soon, Serped’s going to have a riot on his hands, that’s all I’m sayin’. We ain’t fighters. We’re rail workers. Leave the fighting to the Sheriff and his men. And those damned lordsguards,’ said a sharp voice.
‘They wouldn’t have won without us.’ This speaker had a voice almost as deep as Lurker’s.
‘Day after tomorrow, foreman said. We’ll get paid.’ A third spoke up. His tone was older and gravelly.
‘There’s talk of a union,’ said the first man, quieter now.
‘A union of what?’ asked Deep-Voice.
‘Us workers. To campaign against Serped. Get more money, see?’
‘They’ll shoot every last one of you,’ said Gravel.
‘They wouldn’t dare. They need us.’
‘You think there’s a shortage of workers out here, Nate? You think we work for cheap? If you go marching over to Castor’s riverboat, he’s going to line you up and shoot you. And while you’re all lined up there, sweating and shittin’ yourself, you’ll be watching the newest train come in, full to the brim with slanty-eyed Cathayans. They’d have your boots off your feet before you stopped breathin’.’
That seemed to shut this Nate up.
Deep-Voice spoke slowly and thoughtfully. ‘If they want us to fight, then we should get extra. We don’t owe no allegiance to this town or its people, just our wallets. If we don’t get extra, we leave. Let the town drown in its own blood if’n that’s what it takes.’
Merion’s eyes cracked open then, just a tiny bit, so they could wander the room and put faces to the voices of brigands, cowards, and thugs. If you ever play the game of guessing faces from voices, you will know precisely how jarring it can be when the truth is revealed. Merion was experiencing that this very moment, as he spied the fat, toothless woman with scraped-back hair and a loose, patchwork dress. Or the pair of sheriffsmen huddled around a table, still in their blackened leathers, sniggering to themselves. And of the three at the bar, Gravel was indeed old, yet his face was like that of a hatchet. Deep-Voice was a barrel of a youth, blonde, and with quick, narrow eyes. Nate was a rat-faced runt, all limbs, buck-teeth, and greasy hair. He was currently fiddling with a skinny cigar.
Merion looked back at his beer and found a hair in it. He fished it out with a pinch of his fingers. One of his own from the colour, and far too long. His hair was now long enough so that if he gave it a second chance it would hang down and pester his eyes for hours. It might have been annoying, but there was always something unbound about growing hair, something very brink-of-civilisation.
Now that his ears were tuned, Merion found he could not ignore the grumbling from along the bar. His eyes flicked between the beer and the rail workers. Gravel was holding court, and Nate seemed bored of it. He rolled his beady eyes around the tavern until they came to rest upon Merion, who flinched, coughed, and made a show of swilling his half-empty beer around.
As he watched the golden liquid swirl itself to bubbles and foam, he tried to wager whether it was safe to look up again. Gravel’s talk was becoming heated. Deep-Voice growled along.
‘They ain’t got no right to use as their army, when it suits ‘em—’ went the grumbling.
Merion felt his eyes moving before he could stop them. Eyes were like that sometimes, even more curious than the brain they were tethered to. Nate was still looking right at him.
‘Problem, boy?’ he spat, slicing Gravel’s current sentence in half. With the squeak of stools and the creaking of tired bones, Gravel and Deep-Voice both turned to see who Nate was staring at.
‘Who are you …? Well, fuck me,’ swore Gravel, smirking, when he saw the leathery lump of a man sitting next to Merion. ‘If it ain’t ole Lurker. How’s business, prospector?’
Lurker had been sitting with his eyes-half closed and dazed, staring at the dusty chandelier that hung lopsidedly from the wooden ceiling. He seemed confused that anybody besides Merion would be talking to him. After a bewildered glance at the boy, he turned to Gravel and his friends. Several of the creases on his forehead deepened at the sight of them. Something in that expression made Merion want to hide behind his beer, to peek through the glass. Nate was still staring.
‘Slow,’ replied Lurker, raising his glass.
‘Well, ain’t that a shame?’ Gravel said. There was no smirk this time, but he nudged Deep-Voice and Nate. ‘You remember me?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t,’ Lurker lied.
Gravel sighed at that. ‘Kass is the name. This is Big Brint and Nate. You know ’em?’
‘No.’
That made Kass tut. Big Brint and Nate shook their heads. ‘Maker’s Dick. Last year? I’d just arrived from Iowa. Drank a whole bottle of Whore’s Kiss? No? Ah, never mind.’ Kass waved a hand. ‘Prospectin’ type, ain’t you, Lurker? Got himself a magic magpie they say. Can sniff out gold like nobody can.’
‘Gold you say,’ Nate sniffed. ‘Could do with a bit of that, couldn’t we? Where’s this magic bird of yours, then?’
‘Haven’t seen it in days,’ Lurker said to the bottom of his glass. He signalled to the barman for another round, and an extra three to keep the peace.
It seemed that Kass was not too interested in free beer, much to Nate and Big Brint’s apparent disappointment. ‘And who’s the boy? Can’t be your son,’ he asked.
‘Family friend.’
Nate chimed in again, eyes still on Merion. ‘He’s got some nosy eyes on ’im.’
Lurker ruffled Merion’s hair. ‘He didn’t mean no harm, did you, boy?’
‘No sir.’
‘See? Boys stare at everything, you know how it is.’
Kass decided that it was time for them to get a little closer. Stools scraped as they stood and sauntered over. Nate relit his cigar while Kass and Big Brint came to sit uncomfortably close to Lurker. He did not move one muscle.
Kass pointed at Merion. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s from around here.’
The beers came and Lurker slid a pair of coins across the bar. The jingling in his pocket was painfully obvious. Merion saw Nate’s eyes shift for just a moment. ‘He ain’t,’ replied Lurker.
‘Looks Empire to me,’ rumbled Brint.
‘Like one of those Serpeds,’ hissed Nate, beady eyes narrowing.
Kass nodded. ‘That he does,’ he rasped. ‘What brings you here, boy?’
> Merion drew himself up on his stool and raised his chin. ‘Death,’ he said, in a vain attempt to sound ominous. All they did was chuckle at him.
‘There’s plenty of that ’round here,’ Big Brint told him. ‘Come to the right place.’
Nate was getting twitchy now. ‘So how many you take down last night, hmm?’ he asked Lurker, mouthing the words around his cigar. It smelled like burning paper, acrid and cheap. Nothing like the cigars his father had kept in that golden box of his. They had smelled like toffee, and mahogany.
‘How many what?’ Lurker replied.
Nate puffed out an impatient cloud of smoke. ‘Take down. Kill. Hack to bits. Shoot between the eyes.’
‘Shohari, man,’ Kass added.
Big Brint swelled that barrel chest of his. ‘I got a dozen myself.’
‘Fourteen,’ Kass boasted.
‘Sixteen,’ Nate said, garnering a look from Big Brint that screamed bullshit.
‘I don’t talk about the men I kill,’ Lurker replied with a wrinkle of his lip, as if his beer had turned sour.
Kass shook his head. ‘They ain’t men. They’re animals. Beasts.’
‘Fuckin’ savages,’ Nate spat.
Their talk had pricked the ears of a few nearby patrons. The conversation in the rest of the saloon had lulled. Eyes turned in their direction. The barman had retreated to the far end of his bar to polish glasses. Merion could feel the tension building.
It was at that moment his fingers began to slide under his shirt, surreptitious and slow, lest he catch the attention of Nate and the others. But they seemed fixated on Lurker now, and nobody saw Merion unclip something from under his shirt, and slide it into his pocket. He was not quite sure what he intended to do with it, but something within him itched to find out.
‘How many?’ Nate asked again.
Lurker took another sip of his beer, not caring an inch for the foam that stuck to his grizzled lip.
‘How many?’ This time a prod accompanied the question. Lurker slowly pushed his beer away.
‘None,’ he said, eyes burning into Nate’s. ‘Not a single one. And so what? Don’t make me a coward,’ Lurker asserted. He had turned slightly, placing himself between the men and Merion.
‘Oh that’s right, I remember now,’ Kass said. ‘You got somethin’ for ’em haven’t you?’
Lurker’s face was that of stone. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, friend,’ he replied.
Kass’s tone had turned hard. His voice was louder now. ‘I ain’t your friend.’
‘Friend of the savages more like.’
‘Yeah, I ’eard about you,’ Big Brint was nodding. ‘Folks say you got a Shohari wife or somthin’.’
Lurker’s lip twitched. Only Merion noticed. ‘Ain’t got no wife,’ he growled.
‘Sounds like we got a traitor here, gentlemen,’ Nate hissed.
Murmurs rippled across the saloon. Talk of a traitor had been heard, and in a town still bleeding from the night before, nothing lifts the spirits like a noose around a traitor’s neck. The intrigue was spreading like a bad smell.
One man got up and quickly slipped through the doors. The two sheriffsmen were slowly rising to their feet. If felt as though the faded walls of the saloon were slowly inching inwards. Merion could feel the sweat gathering on his brow. His thumb rubbed pensively against the cork of the vial in his pocket.
‘I’m no traitor,’ Lurker asserted gruffly. ‘I fought for this country.’
‘Spy!’ a lonely shout rang out, cold and yet hot with rage at the same time. It is easy to tell the ones who are still reeling from loss. The first stones always come from their direction. There were more murmurs now. Teeth chattered, and fingers pointed. The walls inched ever closer.
Two things happened then, and in rather quick succession. First, Lurker’s fist plunged into the bridge of Kass’ nose, shattering the cartilage and reducing his face to a bloody mess. Secondly, Merion learnt a very valuable lesson about the importance of striking first and striking hard. It was all in the shock, he realised, as he watched Kass disappear behind the lip of the bar, and the extra few moments it bought.
The vial was at his lips before the cork touched the dusty floor. He sucked the warm blood back, caring not a smidgeon for the taste. Fists had already begun to swing. Chairs and stools screeched in unison as the saloon surged forwards as one. Merion just prayed he had reached for eel. Nate was already around the corner of the bar and heading straight for him. There was violence in his rat-eyes. His cigar glowed furiously in the corner of his mouth. Merion backed away, shoving the stool between them. Nate batted it away and kept on coming. The boy drank in a deep breath as he tensed. He felt the blood begin to surge, making his extremities tingle and his face grow warm.
Nate’s hands seized him by the collar and slammed him back against the wall. His head struck the wood hard and he blinked away stars. Nate was leaning close, the glowing cigar creeping closer and closer to Merion’s cheek. He could feel the heat of it already. He struggled, even though he felt the power rising in him. Come on come on come on! screamed his brain. Alcohol slowed it; he should have remembered. Come on!
‘You know what we do with traitors, before we hang ‘em? Hmm?’ Nate snarled in his face, spit flying. ‘We brand ‘em!’
Merion felt the power swirling and bulging inside his head. This shade was strong, but it was not eel. He could feel his skin prickling with heat. It was nothing short of intoxicating, rushing as he’d not yet known. With it came a defiant smile. He surprised himself as the strong words stampeded out of his mouth. It is a marvellous thing, the upper hand.
‘My father always told me smoking was bad for you,’ he grunted, as the rushing reached its apex.
The cigar in Nate’s mouth sputtered with fire. In seconds it was ablaze, and devilishly hungry. The fire surged into his mouth and crawled over his face, its crackling joined by Nate’s howls and screams. He fell to the floor and clawed at his face like a man possessed.
Merion felt his consciousness tugging at the corners of the flames. He reached out and pinched them, dragging them from Nate and onto the boots of Kass, still writhing on the floor as Big Brint and Lurker danced over him. The flames did as they were bid, tumbling across the floor to lick at Kass’ boots, much to Nate’s relief. Kass set to screaming almost immediately. The fire was hungry indeed. Merion dealt Nate a hearty kick in the ribs, as hard as he could manage. The man doubled up in pain. Always kick a man when he’s down, as Rhin had always opined. That way they don’t have a chance to get up.
As Kass crawled a hasty retreat to the other end of the bar, still flailing at his burning clothes, Lurker took a hefty blow from the barrel that was Big Brint. He reeled into the wall beneath the stairs. Brint leered, and turned his sights on Merion. Any other boy of thirteen might have quailed in the man’s presence. Or worse, vacated their bladders. But Merion was not your ordinary thirteen year old boy, or so he was quickly discovering. This boy was a leech. He met Big Brint’s leer head on with a wide smile of his own.
What the barrel-chested, blood-spattered rail worker failed to notice was the speck of blood on Merion’s lower lip, and the hand sliding an empty vial into his right pocket. Big Brint lunged with an angry yell.
The bloody fists raised up, ready to come hammering down with full force, right onto Merion’s unfortunate head. But the fists never met their mark. They met nothing but thin air and embarrassment as Merion darted out of reach. He had done it so swiftly, he had almost become a blur. The crowd gasped collectively. It was almost comical. Big Brint swung again, and again, but Merion was always faster. He even got a few of his own punches in: one to the ribs, and two to the face. Brint’s whirling arms couldn’t keep up with his eyes. He took a knee and swung his arms in vicious circles, hoping to get lucky. It was embarrassing to watch. In the end, Lurker put him to bed with the thick end of a bar stool.
Now it was just them and the angry yet rather confused crowd. The sheriffsmen took a few cautious step forwards
. Merion and Lurker took twice as many back.
‘There’s another way out,’ Lurker whispered, eyes flicking to a curtained door behind the bar. Merion nodded, and eyed the blood streaming from Lurker’s lopsided nose, and a deep cut in his lip. The prospector suddenly looked very tired.
‘Want me to carry you?’ Merion asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Lurker sniffed, and then winced. ‘On the count of three…’
There is always one in every crowd—the inciter, the instigator, that shit-stirrer that has the uncanny ability to turn a crowd into a riotous mob with nothing but a lungful of panicked twaddle. This crowd did not disappoint. It was the man who Merion had heard crying. He smashed a bottle against a table and waved it in the air.
‘Get ‘em! Traitors!’
The crowd surged forwards with an angry roar. Merion was up and over the bar in the space of a blink, dragging the still-smouldering fire like a wall behind him, keeping the crowd as bay as best he could. Lurker went a little slower, but he was still through the curtain before the fists and broken bottles came crashing down.
*
‘Note this building here, milady, with the scorched side. We can have that fixed within an afternoon,’ mewed the dwarf of a foreman. He was terribly short, without doubt the runt of whatever litter he had been born into. He was sweating rather profusely, constantly having to dab his face with a cloth that did nothing except get dirtier with every dab. ‘Shall we add it to the list?’ he asked, turning around to face her with a weak smile.
Calidae paused her fan-waving to ponder the half-burnt saloon for a moment. Its grimy windows made it looked surly and quiet. She could not tell if there was actually anybody in there. However, before she could say ‘Add it to the list’, her answer came in the form of an explosion of glass and a man being violently defenestrated from the saloon. He crumpled to a heap against the charred railings, out cold.
A muscular dark-skinned man all clad in leather came next, flying head first out of the shattered window, though this time he had something to break his fall. A boy came next, with a river of blood sprayed down his shirt. Others were trying to scramble out of the window after them, yelling something about traitorous scum.