by Ben Galley
‘This is going to sound a little strange,’ the faerie began, as if that were how all good stories should start. ‘When you first found me, in the bushes, I told you I had been wrongly accused, and that I had chosen exile and been chased from the kingdom, right? Well, that wasn’t exactly true.’ Rhin paused to scratch his head.
Merion took a seat on the bed and put his fingers to his temples. As if the day could not get any worse. Now he was discovering his best friend had lied to him. ‘If you don’t keep talking I’ll call for my aunt so she can gut you like a fish.’
‘I wasn’t wrongly accused; I was actually very accurately and correctly accused. I stole the Hoard. Sift’s Hoard.’ Rhin faltered again, and Merion started to notice the streak of cowardice in him.
‘Rhin!’
The faerie glared at the floor. ‘A whole fortune in a purse. It made it rather easy to steal. Power goes to the head, they say. I say power reaches for the nearest knife. Sift was maniacal, and I didn’t want anything to do with it. So one day, while the Queen was hunting moles with her royal entourage and half the Coil guard, I decided to steal her Hoard. To teach her a lesson and start my new life over.
‘Made it halfway to the park before the bells began to sound. I lost them in the woods for a while, but had to fight my way out. When they caught me at the riverbank, they stuck a few blades in me, along with an arrow. But I managed to swim away even with my armour on. Thank the Roots for paying extra for a blacksmith’s blessing.
‘It took me three weeks to find safety, to find you at the edges of the garden. I was just thankful you weren’t another dog. I had no idea that I would stay, that we were going to become friends, or come here to Fell Falls,’ Rhin’s voice was low and sombre. He looked up to see if Merion had cracked slightly, there was nothing in the boy’s face besides an expectant look that demanded he continue.
‘Because it had been so long, I assumed I was safe, but a few weeks before your father died …’
‘Was murdered,’ Merion corrected him.
‘…before your father was murdered, some old friends paid me a visit in the woods by the north wing. Finrig the White Wit and his Black Fingers: assassins, thieves, and mercenaries, the lot of them. It was fitting that Sift should send Wit after me. I worked with Finrig in the old days, I’m ashamed to say, during the Bloody Uprising, in Ti’firi, when the weasels had come out to play. He demanded I return the Hoard, otherwise he would kill you, and then me. I said I didn’t have it.’
‘You lied to me?’
Rhin fidgeted, then shook his head. ‘No, I told the truth. I lost it long ago.’
‘How the hell do you just lose a fortune?’
Rhin waved a hand. ‘It’s a purse, Merion, it’s a lot easier than you think. The Wit was having none of it. He said that if I gave it back, Sift might pardon me. Leave me in peace. I told him to go fuck himself and that was that. They left, thinking I would crumble, and we left for America shortly after,’ Rhin said, his gauntlet creaking as he clenched his sword hilt.
Merion looked him up and down. ‘So what’s the problem?’
Rhin sighed. ‘The problem is that the Wit followed me here, and now they want another Hoard, or we have to pay it in blood. Yours. Mine. Your aunt’s. They’ll kill us all unless I find them a pile of gold,’ he confessed, voice cracking slightly at the end.
Despite the fact his faerie had lied to him, Merion had never seen him look so apologetic in all the time he had known him. ‘As if I didn’t have enough to deal with …’ Merion whispered, his voice tight with strain.
Rhin stepped forward. ‘But I have a plan, Merion, and it will work. I’ve found the gold we need. Wit will take it and leave us alone for good.’
‘Where? How?’
‘Tomorrow night, there’s a train coming in from Kaspar filled with gold. Workers’ wages, long overdue. It’s a Hoard, as true as any. I’m going to rob it and deliver it straight to the Wit.’
Merion was quick to his feet. ‘A train robbery?! That’s what you’ve been planning?’ he hissed, incandescent. ‘And a Serped train! Why must everybody insist on sabotaging my one and only chance to get out of this place! You, of all people, Rhin! This is absolutely unbelievable!’
‘I’m trying to save our lives!’ Rhin hissed right back. Cowardice can quickly turn sharp, when it is goaded.
Merion pushed a finger in Rhin’s face. ‘You are robbing from the only people that can help us out of here! I forbid you to rob that train! We can deal with this Wit together.’
‘You have idea how dangerous he is, Merion!’
‘And so? I fought off three men today with nothing but my magick. I can handle a dozen faeries.’
‘No, you can’t!’ Rhin asserted. ‘This is the only way Sift will ever leave me alone. Leave us alone. Then we can stay here and be safe!’
‘I DON’T WANT TO STAY HERE!’ Merion roared. Soon enough, the boots came thudding. Rhin vanished in a blink. Merion threw himself onto his bed, face-down and fists in his pillow.
Lilain swept into the room brandishing a dirty fork in one hand. ‘Merion? Whatever’s going on?’
Merion rolled over to look up, blinking as though tears were assailing his eyes. ‘Nothing, Aunt. I just knocked my nose on the table.’
Lilain squinted at him before nodding. ‘Well, be careful. Don’t want you bleeding all over my sheets,’ she said, and left.
The door clicked shut, snuffing the dying candle in its wake. Merion listened to the sounds of Rhin returning to his place under the bed, to his open suitcase and hidden books. A dark question hovered on his tongue, one that was burning to be asked.
‘Tell me the truth, Rhin. Did these faeries kill my father?’ Merion whispered to the shadows.
Rhin rustled underneath him. Merion could hear his mouth flapping, could imagine the cogs whirling in his head. His fingers began to throttle the threadbare sheets as the silence stretched and stretched.
‘No,’ came the answer from under the bed. ‘No, they didn’t.’
Merion released the sheets and let his heart get its beat back. ‘You will not rob that train, do you hear me?’ he ordered the faerie.
No answer came this time, just more rustling.
‘Rhin? You hear me, damn you?’
Under the bed, Rhin sat cross-legged with his head buried in his hands. Tiredness and guilt tugged at him in equal measure. He could almost feel the pressure pushing him down into the collection of rags he called a bed.
Merion spoke once more before he too gave into sleep. ‘Don’t you dare ruin this for me,’ he murmured.
Rhin waited until he heard the soft raspings of snoring before he answered. ‘I think I already have,’ the faerie said to himself. ‘I think I already have.’
*
If you have ever known the inside of a jail cell, then you will know how singularly uncomfortable they are. Lurker was sure that was the point of it all, but this one excelled in ways he had never known, and he had seen plenty of jails in his life. Maybe this one was reserved for traitors only. It barely had a place to lie down.
Lurker’s only distraction was the thin whisker of moon, hovering just over the rooftops. As he stared at the moon’s pockmarked curve, he counted the number of ways his situation could turn out. He sniffed at the cold night air. He had been lots of things to lots of people, but never a traitor, and he didn’t much like the idea of hanging for something he wasn’t. Thumbing his nose, he pressed his forehead against the iron bars, rough with rust.
That was when he heard it; a familiar cawing noise, a cackling almost, as if the night itself was laughing at him. Lurker moved this way and that, swivelling so he could stare into the shadows of the streets beyond the bars. Nothing moved. His heart almost burst with shock when a black shape flapped wildly against the bars. It was Jake. Lurker grabbed him quickly, pinching his beak shut as he wiggled him through the bars.
‘What is it? Is Lil alright? Merion?’ he asked.
Jake did a sort of shrug before c
hattering away, as quietly as a bird can manage. To any eavesdropper it would have sounded like the conversation of a madman. Lurker fired question after question as the bird croaked and cawed.
‘Another? When?’
‘When?’
‘How many?’
‘Shit. Where are they now?’
‘Shit. That’s far too close.’
‘Well I can’t do anything ’bout that, can I?’
‘Can you find Merion? Or Rhin? He can unnerstan’ you. Gotta warn ’em, Jake before they strike again. This town won’t last another night. I know Mayut and his pride. He won’t stop now.’
The magpie flapped and Lurker stroked his head. After a little squeezing and pushing, Jake flapped back into the cold night, hunting for a boy and his faerie. He uttered one last lonely croak before he melted into the dark sky. Lurker reached up to touch his hat, but found nothing but empty air. He grunted. Where was his darn hat?
Such was the way of men and problems, always using the little ones to distract them from the large and looming ones. It works, for a while.
Chapter XXVIII
“STORM’S COMING”
‘All quiet on the faerie front. It’s been a few months since I last saw anything. I’m starting to think I was wrong. My eyes must be getting old.
Speaking of old, that boy grows up faster and faster every day. He’s still got too much of his father in him, but I like to think I’ve tempered that, just a little bit. I’m teaching him all the troll names. He’s got a mind like a blade. Shame he doesn’t use it more, and give his heart a break.’
6th June, 1867
Days always move like treacle when you’re in a hurry. The sun inched across the sky with a terrible, torpid pace. Morning dragged and the afternoon was lethargic. Merion was painfully aware of each passing second, sat as he was on the roof, with a wooden-cased clock he had pinched from the kitchen. Its ticks and tocks were like the unsteady tapping of a drunken cripple on old crutches and wet cobbles. More than once throughout his vigil on the roof, Merion considered tossing the damned thing over the edge, to be done with its infernal slowness. Night was what he needed, not this blasted day. The day had no opportunities to tempt him with.
The roof was the only place he felt remotely comfortable. The day was stuffy. The house was even more so. Clouds had gathered at the corners of the world, grey fingers groping at the blue sky.
The basement was still awash with corpses, as it had been since yesterday. Lilain had worked through the night. Men had come to take them to the pits and pyres. They had offered him a few silvers to help with the digging, but Merion had politely informed them that he would rather dig out his kidneys with a spoon. He’d had enough of the dead and their cold touch.
His room was soured by the presence of his stubborn faerie. Rhin was busy blackening his armour and putting an even finer edge on his blades. He meant business, and Merion was infuriated it. Rhin’s business would ruin his, and yet the faerie refused to empathise. They had argued again that morning, and neither had come away remotely content.
Merion felt as though he was running out of time, and yet he had plenty to spare. It was a perplexing situation to be stuck in.
It was halfway through the afternoon when Lilain popped her head out of the window, hollering his name. ‘Merion? You out here?’
‘I am indeed.’
‘Why, might I ask?’
‘Nowhere else to be.’
‘You’re going to get burnt to a crisp.’
Merion reached into his pocket and showed her an empty vial. ‘Lungfish,’ he said, flicking its label.
Lilain raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re learning your Sanguine fast. And you’ve also been sneaking into my store without asking.’
‘You were busy with the men. I only took the one vial.’
Lilain shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Any word on Lurker?’
‘I spoke to the sheriff. He’s far from pleased, and demanded a fistful of sil’erbits for the saloon owner. Seems your Calidae put in a word after all. Lurker’s going to be kept behind bars for a few days to “teach him a lesson”. Nobody’s being hanged just yet,’ she replied. ‘I’d put my trust in the prospector, Merion. He’s managed to line many a pocket in this town with gold over the years, payment for this and that. That might count for something.’
Merion breathed a sigh of relief. At least there was some good news to be had today.
His aunt took a moment to look around at the town and the desert. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘Anything,’ Merion sighed. ‘Just passing the time. I’ve seen three work parties head out west to clear the line. I watched the sheriff arrest a few wastrels over by that Serped barn. I’ve seen sixteen carriages rattle in from two different roads. Three trains come and go again, one vulture, and a beggar selling roast rat on a stick. Wandered past just a moment ago.’
‘You’ve been busy then,’ she smirked.
‘Not as busy as I would like to be.’
Lilain couldn’t resist trying to cheer him up. ‘This is the problem with dinners. They happen in the evening. You should have asked to come to lunch instead,’ she chuckled for a moment, but at the sight of Merion’s unimpressed face, she fell to silence, busying herself by picking sand from between the tiles.
‘Storm’s coming,’ she said, nodding over at the clouds in the north.
A storm. Great. ‘When?’ he asked.
‘Tonight maybe. Or in the morning. Serped’s not going to be happy. The rail hasn’t moved in two days.’
‘And apparently none of the workers have been paid yet,’ Merion informed her. ‘I overheard some talk at the saloon yesterday. Shortly before it all went to shit.’
His aunt clipped his ear lightly. ‘You mind your tongue, nephew. I hear too much of Lurker in you for my liking.’
Merion shook his head. ‘This is all happening too fast. The Shohari. Lurker. Rioting. Rain. All I want to do is go to dinner and put an end to it all.’
Lilain had nothing to say to that. Perhaps she did not trust her tongue with an answer. Merion would not have listened anyway. His heart and its path were set.
‘What time?’ she said at last.
‘A coach will come at seven, or not at all,’ Merion replied, echoing Calidae’s words.
‘Well, good luck,’ his aunt said quietly. He knew she was trying her hardest to mean it, but in truth he didn’t care either way. The simple fact she had said it at all was enough to bring a little glow of warmth to his otherwise icy, impatient mood. He could not remember the last time somebody had spoken to him just to be kind.
‘I will see you off,’ Lilain said, ruffling his hair before getting up to leave. She had a few more bodies to tend to, and the sun was hot on her face.
Merion listened to her leave before sighing. His aunt’s kind words may have been refreshing, but they’d done nothing to shove the sun along its way. He rolled his eyes, and slumped against the chimney.
*
Six finally rolled around the clock and it found Merion back in his bedroom. Faerie or not, he had to wash and change. At least Rhin had the decency to keep his mouth shut. If it had not been for the nervous, intermittent buzzing of his wings, and the occasional rustle of paper, Merion would have thought himself alone.
Six-thirty came, and Merion had run out of things to wash and press and button and comb. He sat on the bed and twiddled his thumbs, all the while fighting a growing urge to say something, to have one last swing at knocking some sense into this moronic faerie.
A quarter to seven, said the clock, perched on the bedside table, its ticking as gelatinous as ever. Merion could not fight it any more. He stamped his foot and pushed himself off the bed.
‘I won’t let you do it. I can’t let you do it,’ Merion hissed.
‘I have to,’ Rhin sighed, after a moment.
‘You don’t have to. You can wait here until I secure us a ticket home, and then we’ll deal with those faeries together.’
There was a grunt and a curse as Rhin rolled out from under the bed. ‘If you had listened to a single story I’ve told you, you’d know there would be a long cut across your throat before you even caught a glimpse of the Wit or his Fingers! They make a living cutting throats, Merion. You make yours manhandling bodies onto carts. Your rushing won’t save you. Just trust me!’ he shouted.
‘This is not my living. It’s over the sea, back in London! You call yourself a friend? A friend would know how much I hate this place. A friend wouldn’t knowingly rob me of that. But I guess you are a thief, after all,’ Merion spat.
Rhin flickered with anger. ‘Serped has more gold than the desert has sand, Merion. You really think he’ll blame you? Cast you in irons? He’ll have another train in town by the weekend, and you and I will be as safe as houses.’
‘The town will bloody riot!’ Merion was struggling to keep his voice down. Lilain was only in the kitchen.
Rhin snorted. ‘Let it riot! What do you care?’
‘They could hurt Castor and Calidae. The Shohari could attack, and they’ll refuse to fight. Then where will we be?’
‘I don’t know, but we won’t have a band of murderous faeries on our tail.’
Merion tore at his hair in frustration and stamped his feet. ‘By the Almighty!’
Boots in the corridor once more. The door-handle rattling.
Lilain peered into every nook and cranny the room had to offer. ‘What is it this time?’
Merion paused his hopping to point at his foot. ‘Stubbed my toe.’
‘Are you ready?’ she asked. ‘It’s almost seven.’
Merion shot a glance under the bed before he answered. ‘I am,’ he replied. ‘Let me just comb my hair.’
Lilain wore a suspicious look, but she said nothing more than, ‘I’ll be on the porch.’
Merion nodded and let her leave. He ran his fingers through his hair before kicking the frame of the bed. ‘I have to go. You do this, and you’re dead to me.’
‘If I don’t do this, you’re dead anyway,’ Rhin grunted. ‘Simple as that.’
Rhin’s words put a chill in the boy’s chest. ‘So be it,’ Merion whispered. He did not need this thief of a faerie, this liar. He could fend for himself from now on. Merion had his rushing now, and Lurker, and Lilain. And the Serpeds, Almighty willing. He would be the master of his own destiny, not a selfish, twelve-inch tall beast with shit for brains. To hell with him, Merion told himself.