by Ben Galley
‘Rioting? Shit.’ Lurker pressed his forehead to the bars. He suddenly didn’t care about the blood any more. ‘The Shohari are about to attack for a second time.’ Lurker sniffed then, and said: ‘And you smell like gold. Lots of gold.’
Rhin frowned and shook his head. ‘None of that matters right n—’
There was a bang as the door at the end of the corridor flew open. Two lordsguards burst in and hollered at the top of their lungs. ‘The workers are up in arms! There’s a damn riot on Main Street! We need your help!’
Another chorus of cursing began as the sheriffsmen scrambled for the door. One of them called out to the dying sheriffsman. ‘Iker, get a move on! There’s a riot going on!’
Lurker acted quickly, shouting out on behalf of the unfortunate Iker. ‘I’ll be right there! You go on!’
‘Well, hurry up!’ came the reply, but the man was already halfway out the door.
‘See?’ shrugged Rhin. ‘And you even did a reasonable impression, too.’
Lurker let the man slump to the floor, but not before relieving him of his keys.
‘You were saying?’ he asked as he unlocked his cell door.
Rhin took a breath. ‘It’s Merion. And Lilain. The Serpeds have taken her and Merion is on the war path. He’s taken a gun and is marching on Castor’s riverboat right now. We have to help, or he’ll get himself killed.’
Lurker looked as though he were having a hard time processing all of that information at once. He scratched his shaved, scarred head, wondering how long he had actually been in jail. ‘How?’ he croaked.
‘It’s a long story and one we don’t have time for.’
Lurker took one last look at the dead sheriffsman, pulled a wry face, and then nodded. ‘I need my hat. It’s raining,’ he said as they jogged down the corridor.
‘I don’t know about that, but your gun is hanging on that wall,’ Rhin replied, managing to keep up with Lurker’s loping strides.
Lurker had already spied it, and was currently tucking it into his belt. He also took a spare rifle from a rack. He was about to leave when he noticed a hat hanging from a peg. It was rounder, and sandier in colour than he liked, but a hat was a hat, and he couldn’t go without. He grunted, and slipped it onto his head.
‘You done?’ Rhin snapped.
Lurker nodded, pulling the brim of his new hat low. ‘Lead the way,’ he growled.
*
The house was a smouldering, hissing wreck when the Wit and his Fingers arrived. He stood in the middle of the muddy road, crossed his arms, and tapped his feet. They stood in plain sight. The town’s thoughts were on the riot that had abruptly sprung to life, and was raging through the streets. Doors in the Runnels had been tightly locked, and windows shuttered. If a house fire could not gain their attention, then a gang of thirteen heavily armed and armoured faeries would hardly cause a stir.
The sky rumbled and Wit shrugged. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ he ordered, and his Fingers swarmed forwards as one. He strolled behind them as they picked their way through the blackened, sodden wreckage of the front door. The downpour was showing no signs of letting up, and though fortunate for a burning house, it was a terrible inconvenience for faeries on the hunt for other faeries. The Wit was in a foul mood now. There was knife-work to be had, and his fingers itched for it.
His eyes fluttered as they illuminated the smoky, wet darkness for him. Everything was black. The upstairs was gutted, and the kitchen had fared no better. The Wit could still feel the heat in the floorboards beneath him. The rain had a job left to do. As the Fingers prowled and poked about in the corners and under fallen beams, Finrig moved to the right, to the one room the fire had failed to turn to charcoal, some sort of bedroom.
The Wit stood in the doorway and let his eyes wander, as they had a habit of doing. He drank in every grubby little detail, every crease and burn, every corner, every … There was a mound of something under the bed. Finrig moved forward, hands creeping onto his knife, eyes widening to take advantage of what feeble light the stormy night had to offer.
Then came lightning. The night froze, drenched in haunting blue light, and in that blinding flash, the Wit saw his prizes, strewn across an old and dusty suitcase, wrapped in old clothes. Bending underneath the frame, he began to pick through the moth-bitten detritus: a whetstone that fit his hand perfectly; a fork far too small for any human; shoes made of thick leather, just short of the Wit’s own; and paper—reams of paper covered with crude and tiny diagrams written in stolen ink. This was a faerie’s den, just as sure as the Wit was a bastard.
But Finrig did not seem at all happy. He let his wings rattle angrily. Rhin was nowhere to be seen. The Wit pulled out his knife and poked around in the mess, looking for something to assuage his dark mood and itchy fingers. There was a dull thud as the knifepoint found something unyielding. He flicked a cloth aside to uncover a small but thick book, bitten at the edges and yellower than a beggar’s teeth.
‘What do we have here?’ The Wit whispered to himself. Faeries were great keepers of books, but the road was not a joyous place for those with heavy packs. If a faerie carried a book with him, there was bound to be an important reason for it. His knifepoint tickled the corner of the book and made it yawn. The Wit sank down to peer at its scrawled words, like the barely legible scribblings of a shivering child.
The Diary of Rhin Rehn’ar.
The Wit did not need to read any further than that to make him smile. He reached down to seize the diary and then backed out from under the bed. His Fingers were standing, waiting.
‘There ain’t nothing here, Wit. Not a sniff of the boy or Rehn’ar,’ spat one of the Fingers.
Finrig smirked, tucking the heavy diary under his arm. ‘I think there may have been a falling out of the houses, lads,’ he said.
‘Trouble in paradise?’ chuckled another.
‘Looks like we’ve got some more walking to do.’
‘Which way?’
Finrig looked around at the blackened walls. ‘To a finer house than this, that’s for sure. Might even get some loot out of it, once we’ve wiped our blades,’ he grunted with a grin.
The murmuring of eager anticipation that followed would have chilled any bone in your body, and sent your soul scarpering, had you been unfortunate enough to witness it. The Wit sheathed his knife and pointed to the door. ‘Let’s get to it,’ he barked, and the Fingers did his bidding with a will.
Chapter XXXIII
TRIGGER FINGER
‘The fucking Wit. Of all Fae, Sift sent him, and his Black Fingers, all twelve of them. They stepped right out of the bushes at the foot of the tower, as if they were out for a stroll. It was a miracle they weren’t seen. I thought I would have to fight my way out, but Sift had sent him with an offer—an offer of truce if I handed back the Hoard. I couldn’t tell him I had given it away, especially not to Karrigan. They threatened to cut Merion’s throat if I didn’t. And mine. Roots damn it! After all these years!’
6th June, 1867
Hearts are treacherous things. At times they can beat so proudly it feels as though they will burst from your ribcage at any moment. They can drum a tune to run to, or fight to, or love to. But they are not to be trusted, for every heart will skip or slump, sickeningly so, and always when you need it not to.
Merion cursed his quietly as he stood, dripping, on the rise above the landing. His feet were numb blocks, his hair a matted, swimming mess, his clothes chafing strips of cloth, and his legs dead and buried. But his heart was the true criminal, slinking away, deeper into his chest, purged of all vim and vigour.
The riverboat sparkled through the thick curtains of pouring rain. A hundred lights glittered along its side, yellow, white, some even red. Smoke scattered from a half-dozen chimneys, chased by the storm. She looked altogether too awake for Merion’s liking.
Merion gripped his gun as tightly as his numb fingers would allow, and gritted his teeth. He stirred up every dark thought, every desperate mental c
ry, every flash of emotion he had borne to that muddy rise, and brought them to the boil again. He felt the heat spread from his face to his chest. Slowly his heart began to lurch and obey. Slowly his blood began to simmer again. Lurker had told him that boiling blood was a fine thing every once in a while, and that time was now. The young Hark bared his teeth and set off down the hill, keeping his gun low and slightly behind him. Two hooded figures stood at the riverboat’s gangplank, guns on their shoulders, and looking entirely too miserable. Merion racked his brains as he marched through the mud, as the lightning flickered around him, bleaching the night into terrible starkness.
They had seen him. He was only a hundred yards away now. Even the rain couldn’t hide him in the orange glow of the riverboat. Merion slipped the vial of ox blood from his pocket and set the glass to his lips. He could smell the copper stinging his nostrils as he flicked his head back and drank it down, putting the red in his belly. The vial was thrown to the mud and crushed underneath his shoes as he marched.
Confidence was his ploy, he had decided somewhere about halfway down the hill. That, and the innocence of youth. Merion pasted a sad and desolate look on his pale, rain-streaked face as he approached the two men. They were already signalling him to halt. One had raised his rifle. Merion kept the Mistress out of sight, carefully turning it around so he could hold her by the barrel.
Twenty yards now, and already he could feel the hot blood coursing through his veins. Now his heart wanted to thunder, that was for sure. He had to strain hard to keep it from bursting into pieces. As the blood entered his skull his vision swam, and for a split second he faltered, almost tumbling into the mud.
‘Stop there, I said!’ shouted one of the lordsguards over the hammering of the rain. He was peering out from under his hood, trying to get a gauge on this bedraggled wastrel. Was it just a boy, just a young lad?
Merion held himself hard against the magick as it yanked at every fibre in his scrawny body. This shade was strong indeed, but then again, oxen do have a reputation for strength.
The lordsguard was now jogging to meet him, holding his hands up. ‘Just hold it there! Damn it, boy. What are you doing out here in the—Ooof!’
Merion swung that gun as though he were trying to shake off a tiger. The handle caught the man square in the jaw, and Merion winced at the wet, squelching crack he heard as most of the guard’s teeth were ripped free of their sockets. The lordsguard flew backwards and collided heavily with his awestruck comrade. There was a shocked cry, then a bang, and then an even louder cry as the two men landed in the mud. The second guard had shot himself in the foot, and now half of his boot was missing. Sprinting over to the man, Merion drove a fist to the side of his head, knocking him out cold. Merion grunted as his muscles screamed for more. His legs felt as though they were going to gallop off without him at any moment. He was wise to follow them.
With a grim face, and thoughts of what he had just done ricocheting around his skull, Merion marched for the gangplank. Those men probably had families to feed. Now they had lost their teeth and a foot. Merion had done that to them, and it made his teeth chatter.
‘Whatever it takes,’ he growled at himself, repeating it over and over until each syllable became a stamp of the foot. He was rushing the blood of an animal four times his size. It felt as though there was an ox trying to explode out of his own skeleton. It took everything he had to contain it.
The door shattered in two kicks, and suddenly Merion was standing inside the plush atrium of the riverboat, alone and bewildered, breathing like a locomotive at full speed.
There were no lordsguards in sight. There were no bells, no sirens, or shouts. Just the drumming of the rain on the windows and hull, and the repetitive groaning of thunder. The storm had drowned out his approach. Merion headed right, following his earlier route, though this time he had no servant to guide him.
Up the stairs and right again.
Merion found a guard at the top of the stairs. The man was already unslinging his gun from his shoulder, a curious look on his face at the sight of a bedraggled, mud-splattered boy running at him at full pelt.
‘Halt!’ he cried, just before Merion barged him into the opposite wall, breaking a picture in half and leaving a man-sized dent in the woodwork. The noise was horrendous. Shouts came from down the hall. Merion’s brain was still being overridden by the blood and his anger, but whatever they were doing, he was happy to go along. The boy grabbed the nearest thing he could find: a small table, and lifted it above his head. With a grunt, he threw it just as two guards rounded the corner. The table caught them in the faces, one after the other as it span through the air. There were more cries, and more teeth skittering over the floor. Merion gulped, but somehow he knew he had to fall a little deeper into hell, before he could climb back out.
‘Better press on,’ he growled to himself. His own voice managed to scare him.
Hearing further shouting, Merion decided to dip into the nearest room, to sneak through the inner doors until he founded that blasted, roasting sitting room the Serpeds insisted on frequenting. If they were expecting him, that’s where they would be, sitting smugly in their armchairs while his aunt was tied to hers. He would smack the bloody wine glass right out of Castor’s hand, Almighty help him.
Merion made sure to rush hard before he stepped through the door into the next room. Feet fell outside his door and clattered on, leaving him alone in the dark, ornate study he had found. The room beyond that was a little brighter—a smaller lounge with windows looking out onto the river. Merion scowled at the luxurious chairs and sparkling decanters lining the shelves.
Merion put a hand to the next door and took a breath. If he was right, this was the infernal sitting room. The door handle certainly felt warm enough. Merion put a hand to his chest and tested his magick, letting it dizzy his head. He was about halfway through, he could feel it. He would have to make this quick, whatever the hell this was. Raising his gun, he cocked it as quietly as he could manage. The single click of the mechanism sounded like a thunderclap. Merion put his hand on the door handle. His palms were slick with sweat and his fingers shook. A twist and a push, such a simple movement for all the weight and danger it carried.
The light inside the room was hot and blinding. Every candle shone, every lantern blazed, and the fire crackled defiantly in its place. Merion blinked as he strode into the room, waving his gun in wide sweeps until his eyes adjusted.
‘I’m insulted,’ said a voice, rasping like a file. Unmistakeable. Merion rubbed the stars away from his eyes and saw Castor standing near another door, Gile in tow, and grinning gold as always. Castor wore a venomous glare. ‘To bring a gun into my house. How positively common of you. Can we not settle this like gentlemen?’ he asked, raising open hands.
Merion could taste the poison in his tone. He shook his head, disgusted. ‘Gentlemen do not play sadistic little games,’ he growled, waving his gun between the two of them. His finger ran along the trigger, itching and yet cowardly at the same time. The blood raged, urging him on, begging him to rip their arms from their sockets, but something held him back. ‘And lords don’t dirty their hands with kidnapping. It seems you are neither, Serped. You should be ashamed of yourself,’ spat the boy.
Castor was unarmed, as far as Merion could tell. There was no gun at his hip, no dangerous bulge hiding under the folds of his perfectly tailored dinner suit. Gile was half-hidden behind his lord, arms crossed and twiddling his fingers, waiting for something.
Castor looked as though he were eager to get this over with. ‘Have you heard the saying “All’s fair in war and business”?’ he asked.
‘Where is my aunt, Castor?’ Merion cut to the chase.
Lord Serped sneered. ‘Waiting for you to save her, Hark.’
Merion was trying. ‘Then give her to me,’ he said. ‘No more men need to have their faces broken tonight.’
‘Her release is not conditional on how many jaws you break, Hark,’ Castor snapped. He reache
d inside his pocket and dragged out a tightly rolled scroll of papers. ‘Sign your estate over to me, and she will be yours to take.’
‘And if I don’t?’ Merion had to ask.
Something hungry twinkled in Castor’s eyes. ‘Then Mister Gile here,’ he gestured to his associate, who had the sick audacity to wink, ‘would be happy to help you stuff her broken body into a barrel and shove it overboard. Wouldn’t you, Mister Gile?’
‘More than happy, your lordship,’ Gile breathed.
Merion lurched forwards, spit flying from his bared teeth and his gun pointing straight at Castor’s forehead. ‘I will shoot you, if I have to. Make no mistake about it. Don’t push me …’ Merion threatened, still wondering whether he could or not.
Castor cut him off with an unnerving laugh. And there it was, the difference between man and boy, carved in the air between them. Merion was rash and angry and hot, Serped calm and devious. That laugh rattled the young Hark deeply, blood or no blood. He felt the tremor in his hand, tried to stop it creeping to the muzzle. Castor and Gile were already smirking. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
As Merion tried to rush his blood back into a frenzy, Castor walked around him to erode his authority. Merion tried to keep the gun on him, but Gile was already creeping forwards, fingers delving into his coat, his strange eyes narrowed.
‘What did you think would happen here tonight, Merion? You thought bringing a gun and a handful of vials to my door would break me, did you not? You thought you could save your aunt with force, with intimidation, with a little spark and gunpowder, am I correct? Thought Mister Gile and I would just capitulate, fall to our knees with a few harsh words, is that it? Pah!’ Castor sneered, the very definition of belittlement. ‘You have no idea of the hands working behind the scenes, or the power they wield. This is not about you, or I, but about the Empire. If some must die for the preservation of the many, then so be it. This isn’t one of your fairy tales, boy. There are no happy endings here for y—’