by Ben Galley
Merion’s face met the dust, hard, and he wheezed as the air was driven from him. ‘Rhin!’ he shouted hoarsely.
‘Merion!’ came the shout, somewhere to the right, in the darkness. By the Almighty it was hot, skin-peelingly hot. Merion winced as he felt the burn on his back.
‘Where are you?’ he cried.
‘Over here,’ said a shape, tottering out of the inky shadows.
‘What the hell happened?’
Rhin waved his arm back and forth and flapped his mouth like a fish, but no answer came.
Merion knelt down to grab him. Rhin batted him away and almost fell over in the process. ‘Where is my aunt? Where’s Lilain?’
‘They took her! Serped’s men! They’ve only just left.’
Merion must have missed them on the turn to town. He had been too fixated on the smoke. He was frozen to the spot, half-choking, half-burning, and gawping at the new world he was suddenly party to—a world where houses were ransacked and burnt; friends beaten; family kidnapped; a world filled with lies and murder; magick and mayhem. They had taken his aunt hostage, to force him to sign the contract. She would be hurt, tortured even, until he did. How could Castor behave so despicably? Merion felt the rage surging within him. He buried his chin on his chest, trying to fight the tears that were rushing to his eyes. Real men cannot be seen to cry, came the words, echoing in his head over the crackle and snap of the fire behind him.
Merion let the rage loose. He scrambled for what was left of his aunt’s bookcase, ducking the flames that were licking hungrily at the walls. ‘And why didn’t you stop them from taking her, Rhin? Tell me that! Too busy with your train robbery?’ he shouted, as he dug through the broken, blood-soaked mess that was once Lilain’s proud collection.
‘I …’ Rhin yelled, ‘She and I were coming to find you. They burst in before we could leave. We killed two of them, but one knocked me out and sent me flying. I saw them take her, but … I couldn’t help.’
Merion burst from the doorway with an armful of bottles and broken glass. He wasted no time in sprinting for the stairs. He barely spared a glance for the faerie as he hurried past, curling his lip in disgust. ‘You coward, saving your own skin again.’
Rhin stamped his foot, and his wings buzzed angrily. He chased the boy up the stairs. ‘I tried to help!’
‘You should have tried harder!’ Merion screamed. ‘Now she’s in Castor’s clutches. Almighty damn it!’ He looked around the hallway for something to kick, or punch, or strangle, something to destroy. He almost went for Rhin, but he did not want to waste any more time on the useless creature.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked the faerie, his face was hollow and miserable. His world had also just come crashing down, as any man’s or faerie’s will, when you recognise that streak of cowardice in your veins.
‘Whatever it is, I’m doing it alone!’ Merion shouted, heading for the bedroom. Rhin was left standing alone in the smoke-choked hallway, frozen and crushed by guilt. Rhin wondered if he should just let his legs crumple, and wait for the fire to take him. After all he had done, every wrong decision turned sour, it was probably for the best. Do the world, and the boy for that matter, a favour.
But that’s what a coward would do, Rhin thought, and that put a kick in his bones. ‘Merion!’ he yelled.
Rhin sprinted into the bedroom. The fire hadn’t yet eaten its way to this room, but the smoke surged nonetheless. The air was black, and Rhin could feel his lungs starting to seize up. He put a hand to his chest and wheezed.
‘What are you doing?’
Merion reached under his pillow and brought out a gun, the Mistress that his aunt had forgotten to ask him for. Merion had hidden it there praying he would never need the ugly thing. He held it aloft and glared at it for a moment, even though his lungs were wracked with smoke and the life ebbing out of him with every single breath. He nodded to the weapon. ‘What needs to be done. Castor Serped needs to learn what we Harks are capable of.’
Rhin stepped forward, hands clasped. ‘We can argue about this in a minute, but we need to leave, Merion! Before the house comes crashing down around our ears!’ he rasped.
Merion barked out his words between the clinking of vials and bottles. ‘You can leave whenever you want, Rhin. I’m doing this alone. I have to save my aunt from Castor, and protect my father’s name.’
‘But that’s suicide! I saw what Castor’s men are capable of. You didn’t. You’re a fool if you go,’ Rhin spluttered.
‘And you haven’t seen what I’m capable of,’ Merion replied. ‘And better a fool than a coward.’ The coldness of his words managed to shock Rhin more than he liked to admit. He reeled.
‘Merion, please …’ he said.
But Merion would not be convinced. He shook his head, stuffed the handful of unbroken vials into his pocket, and set a brisk course for the front door. ‘Don’t you dare follow me,’ he spat, as he kicked his way through the broken panels.
Rhin ran for the back door with his hand clamped over his soot-smeared mouth. He slipped easily through a hole in its lower half.
The faerie stumbled across the dirt towards the outhouse, retching and coughing into the clean night air. He was suddenly aware of something pelting him on the back and shoulders, of how his feet dragged against the ground. It was beginning to rain, and rain hard. The mighty storm had finally arrived.
Rhin dropped to one knee so he could soak up the cool drops that battered him and the soil around him, which had already turned halfway to mud. Great clouds of steam began to pour from the blackened ribs of the house, and Rhin found himself letting loose a huge cry of relief. At least the weather gods could find it in their hearts to be kind, Rhin thought.
The faerie pushed himself back to his feet and looked around. The night was awash. Clouds rumbled overhead. And Merion was gone, marching towards death or victory at the Serped riverboat. Rhin bit his lip. Of course he was going to follow. Merion had called him a coward, and by the Roots, if that wasn’t a challenge to prove him wrong, Rhin didn’t know what was. He would see his sins washed away tonight, even if it killed him. He may have been a coward, he may have cheated, lied, and murdered … and here Rhin paused to look at the raindrops exploding at his feet … but even a coward can find redemption in a hero’s actions. Rhin drew his sword with a ring, and set his own course south, for the town and its shadows, for a jail and a certain occupant incarcerated within. If anybody knew something about redemption, it was Lurker.
*
‘What’s goin’ on?’ came yet another shout from the crowd.
The lordsguard held up his hands once again and called for calm. The crowd was multiplying, he swore, growing bigger every second. There must have been five hundred of them already, a sea of green overalls and stern faces, staring right at him. What a shift to pull.
‘Please, gentlemen. I’ve been informed the locomotive is running late, but that it should be here at any moment. Now, I want you to form ten orderly lines in front of these tables here, ready to collect your wages,’ shouted the lordsguard, so that everybody could hear.
‘How late?’ came a question, hollered from the back of the crowd.
‘Half an hour at most,’ lied the lordsguard. The station master hadn’t a clue. He was busy being useless, peering into the gloom to see if he could spy anything on the tracks.
‘We want to be paid!’ somebody else bellowed.
‘And you will! Just a little longer!’ The lordsguard snapped his fingers to his lieutenant and beckoned to him. The younger man came closer and threw a quick salute.
‘Yes, Captain Orst?’
‘I want you and the men to move slowly outwards around the crowd. Form a perimeter, but do it gently and quietly. I don’t want any trouble. This crowd will be hungry for blood if they don’t get their coin, hear me?’
‘Yessir.’
Orst waved him away and turned away to mop the sweat from his brow. This was going to be tough work if this blasted locomotive di
dn’t turn up.
Something struck him in the shoulder, and Orst turned to glare at the crowd, half-expecting to see vegetables, kitchen implements, or tools flying towards him and his men. Nobody had thrown anything. He felt another on the back of his hand, and realised what was happening. The heavens were opening their floodgates.
‘Great,’ Orst muttered himself. He beckoned to the station master. ‘News?’
‘Nothing at all on the tracks, sir,’ he whispered over the drumming of the rain and the grumbling of the growing crowd. ‘Something tells me it may have run into some trouble.’
‘Mechanical?’
The station master bobbed his head from side to side. ‘Possibly. Or somethin’ criminal.’
Orst felt a little something stab him in the gut. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered, before straightening his hat and turning back to the crowd.
‘Gentlemen! Workers! It seems the locomotive has had some trouble …’
The crowd erupted in angry words and shouts.
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Is it lost?’
Are we ever goin’ t’ get paid?’
‘Listen to me!’ Orst bellowed, going some way to quelling the outrage. ‘It isn’t lost. It may just have been waylaid … delayed, that is to say …’ Orst felt like biting his traitorous tongue off right there and then. He watched the crowd inch forward. Fists began to punch the air.
‘Waylaid?’
‘As in robbed?’
The magic words. There’s always one in every crowd.
Orst held up his hands as some of the workers began to inch forward. He could see the panic-stricken looks in the eyes of the guards as they crept around the simmering crowd. ‘No, that’s not what I …’ he tried to explain, motioning for his men to move in.
‘Where is our money?’
‘They’ve lost our money!’
‘How long do we have to wait now?’
Orst began to back up. Some of the workers had reached the platform and were already busy climbing up. Orst put a hand on his sword hilt and tried to wave them back. ‘Now listen to me! I am an officer of his Lord Serped, your employer. This is not my fault. Not if the train got robbed! Stay back, I say!’
One particularly burly man with a slick of ginger hair and a smattering of freckles stepped out of the small group that had now assembled on the platform. The station master had legged it, and Orst could already hear the shouting of his men as they were overrun. The burly man cracked his knuckles and shrugged. ‘Well his lordship ain’t here, so seeing as you’re his officer, we’ll have to take it out on you, won’t we?’ he said.
‘Back I say!’ Orst yelled, swinging his sword out of its scabbard, but steel was useless in the face of the pure anger of a mob. Many things are.
‘Back!’
As Orst fell back under the heavy blows, his head cracked upon the platform and his mouth hung open. He could not help but taste the raindrops, and taste how sour they were. Like acid.
Then again, it may just have been the blood.
*
No matter how hard Merion tried to avert his gaze, his eyes kept creeping back to the gun held firmly in his hand. It was too heavy for his liking. His arm already felt weak, and it had only been half an hour since he had left the burning house.
The rain he was glad for, but not the mud. It turned his journey into a slog, hindering his need for haste. Over and over again he asked himself what exactly he was doing, what he hoped to achieve. Doubt ran through his mind like a cockroach scurrying from the lantern light—doubt mixed with fear. He was about to walk into the snake pit, so to speak. Merion knew that all too well. Memories of Suffrous and his display flashed before his eyes, mimicking the sporadic lightning that darted across the angry sky. Could he fight him? Would a quick bullet to the head suffice? Questions plagued him with every step.
Thunder rolled in the wake of a lightning flash, and Merion found himself wishing for a coat, or an umbrella. He was already soaked to the bone, and there was nothing he could do about that. All he could do was shelter the Mistress and hope that rain wouldn’t jam it. Looking down at it again, Merion wondered whether he could use it, were he pushed. Could he stoop as low as his murderer? He imagined the sight of his aunt tied to a chair, bloodied and beaten, would certainly be enough to throw him over the precipice. If murder had to be committed to protect her, then so be it. That was the truth in its basest form. Merion felt the hot flush of that simplicity through him. It steeled him, and stirred something monstrous inside of him. He let his blood boil, and it felt good. It felt powerful. That rage shouted down the doubt and fear enough to keep his feet moving through the slick mud.
Merion threw a quick look over his shoulder to make sure Rhin wasn’t following him. You could always spot him in the rain. The droplets clung to whatever cloak of invisibility he wore, making his shape easier to see. It was the one flaw of that particular Fae magick. The road behind him was empty, as it should be. No sign of the coward.
Merion did not regret a single word he had uttered to the faerie. It was how he felt, simple as that. Rhin had let him down time and time again, and this time, now that he had stood by while his aunt was kidnapped, was the last straw. Merion let that new anger swirl with the current, and together they helped him burn.
With a wet hand, he rummaged through his pockets and checked his vials. Some of the labels had been blackened or smudged with other blood, but as far as he could tell he had quite a selection, despite the odds.
Ox.
Blue whale.
Pigeon. Useless.
Mongoose.
Bobcat.
Flamingo.
Turtle.
And electric eel. Thank the Almighty.
Merion prayed that these would be enough, and as he smudged the labels with his wet fingers, he wondered what combinations he could make, and whether he dared to.
It was then that he heard a squawk from behind him. Merion whirled around to find Jake flying right at him. Merion threw up his hands and Jake flared his wings, coming to a stop on the boy’s left arm. He winced as the magpie’s claws sunk in. ‘What is it?’ Merion asked, staring into the beady eye of the bird.
The magpie chattered something utterly incomprehensible, and Merion shrugged.
‘I don’t understand, I’m sorry,’ he apologised.
Jake chattered again, this time flapping his wings and bobbing his head. Merion kept his eyes fixed on the bird’s good eye and poured all his concentration into it.
‘War,’ Merion said. Just one word, like a bell chiming in his head.
Jake nodded his head eagerly. The claws unfortunately sank deeper. Merion gasped. ‘I can’t do anything about it,’ he said. ‘What am I supposed to do?’
Jake cawed loudly in his face.
‘Jail? You mean Lurker? I don’t have time. They have my aunt!’
The magpie screeched at him before launching himself back into the rainy sky. He circled once, cawing something disapproving, and then flapped back towards the town.
‘I’m sorry,’ Merion shrugged. Lurker could not help him now. He was in jail, surrounded by sheriffsmen and steel bars. Ox blood would do it, but he needed that for Castor, and his guard dog Gile.
Merion looked down at the gun once again, and let his finger trace the curve of the trigger—practising, almost, for that moment when he would put a bullet in somebody.
There was just one other factor that he had not yet considered, partly because he refused to, and that was Calidae. What side would she choose, when his aunt’s blood was spilled, and Merion’s gun fired? He let that question hang unanswered in the dark parts of his mind, stowing it away for later. He hoped he would not have to ask it of her. The last thing he wanted was Calidae as an enemy.
*
Lurker sniffed at the cold air, and the droplets of rain that splashed through the bars. ‘Don’t smell right,’ he murmured. He looked up at the night to watch the downpour and the lightning playing in the stor
m cloud’s canyons and valleys.
‘Don’t smell right at all,’ Lurker shook his head. ‘Sheriff!’ he yelled, pressing his face up against the bars of his cell. ‘Sheriff! I need to talk to you.’
There was a bark of laughter and cursing from the room along the hall, and then a sigh. A shadow moved against the brick, and sure enough, one of the sheriff’s lackeys ambled down the hall.
‘If you’ve shit yourself, I swear to the Maker, I’ll break your—’
‘I don’t shit myself, man, it’s the Shohari!’
The sheriffsman crossed his arms and put his head on a slant. ‘What about ’em?’
‘They’re goin’ to attack again. Tonight,’ Lurker said.
That seemed to put a little kick into the man. He straightened up and came a little closer. ‘How’d you know, traitor? You tip them off? Feeling guilty all of a sudden, are we?’
‘No, I mean, yes. You have to warn somebody,’ Lurker urged him.
The sheriffsman snorted. ‘And what if that’s exactly what the Shohari want us to do? Huh? What if this is a little plan of yours, you and your painted monster friends. Nice try, traitor.’
The man began to turn away, but Lurker reached through the bars and grabbed his sleeve. ‘Please, you got to—’
Lurker had seen many strange and horrible things in his time, but this one had to take the prize for both categories. Before Lurker could finish his sentence, a hazy, rain-soaked shape jumped onto the sheriffsman’s shoulders and sank a glass-like blade into his throat, cutting a neat crimson stripe across his skin, and opening his veins to the air. Lurker grabbed his other arm and held him upright against the bars so he could clamp a hand over his mouth. The eyes of the sheriffsman were wild and frantic as the blood dribbled.
‘What the hell, Rhin, you demented bastard? They’ll kill us!’ Lurker mouthed.
‘They won’t have time to notice. The town is rioting over late pay,’ hissed the faerie, materialising out of the air. ‘In about ten seconds they’ll be out of that door and we’ll be left alone to deal with him.’ Rhin held the sheriffsman’s head as he struggled.