by Ben Galley
Rhin stared at the tip of the pine-knife. It was frozen solid. He touched it gingerly before examining his sword. The blade was notched, ever so slightly. Rhin ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair and let out a strangled cough: Fae steel does not notch.
Chapter XXII
A BLOODMOON RISES
16th July, 1867
Merion was beside himself with excitement. He couldn’t help it. It was infectious. The atmosphere was a wriggling, electric eel, swimming between legs and wrapping stomachs up tight, forcing a grin onto faces with its tickling.
It was the applause, more than anything. The rising roar as an act finished. The short, rapturous moments between the amazement and the shock. It stirred his belly into a gurgling mess of nerves and thrill. In equal measures.
The show was barely halfway through, and already Merion was struggling to keep his mind fixed on what he was there to do. He felt washed-away by the excitement, distracted, just a child again, on that first tour of a circus.
Spetzig had juggled practically the entire circus—all its sharp and dangerous bits, at least: a dozen glowing brands, fresh from Hemzi’s forge; a score of knives, spinning in a wheel; axes, spades, even a lit cigar. All whilst capering about the stage to the furious screeching of a violo.
Cabele stunned them breathless as she took to the ropes and hoops. She was forever a hairsbreadth away from plummeting to her death. Cabele did not believe in safety nets. And yet she audaciously flung herself from swinging bars, cart-wheeling through the air at nausea-inducing speeds. There was always that awful pause between sailing through empty space and the whump! of chalked hands on something safe.
Devan had spent his half-hour defeating gravity, over and over again. Rushing hard, he lifted a small wagon clean over his head, then a wheelbarrow of rocks. He ripped a shelf of books to shreds, bent an iron bar to spell out his name, and then proceeded to use two of the plumper women from the front row as dumbbells, one in each hand. He flexed and he growled, making more than a few of the ladies blush.
Miss Mien of Cathay soon drove the colour from their cheeks, as she shattered their preconceptions of the flexibility of the human body. Mien rushed octopus, and it turned her bones into rubber. One man actually had to make a swift exit as she wrapped her leg around her neck whilst touching her fingertips to the top of her wrist.
And Itch Magrey, rushing dragon-blood, turned their stomachs a little tighter by holding his limbs in fire, or running some of Yara’s knives along his skin. Not a single blade managed to break the skin, and the fire left nothing but soot. He even let a few of the audience come up and try it, urging them to poke and prod at his warped and scarred skin.
Merion bit the inside of his lip hard and forced himself to concentrate. He stood at the bottom of the stage-steps, stuck halfway between the main tent and the backstage marquee. If he jumped, he could see the top rows of the audience, crammed into their tall benches. If he jumped higher, he could see Lincoln himself, square in the centre of the audience, leaning forward, his fingers tented, enraptured like the rest.
‘You ready?’ coughed a voice behind him. Rahan stood with a leopard at his heel, no leash in sight. Merion would have cowered had he not known the man’s way with felines. Beside them stood his younger assistant, Hashna, who had one milky eye with a dubious scratch across it. A practice mark, so Rahan had told him. The young man wore his usual awkward smile. Common was not a tongue he spoke well. Rahan spoke for the both of them.
Merion shook his head. ‘I’m not on until the finale.’
‘Not for that, Harlequin. The rising.’ Rahan pointed out to the south-east, where the dark sky was taking on a peculiar ruby glow behind the black spines of buildings.
Of course! Merion recognised the stirring in his stomach for what it really was. ‘I don’t know …’
‘Isn’t nothing to it.’ The man grinned, his teeth telling of a fondness for chewing tobacco. As if to further prove the point, he spat at a nearby jug with a ping. Before Merion could find out more, Rahan whispered to his leopard and they took to the stairs. Hashna bobbed his head and muttered something unintelligible, following at his elder’s heels.
Behind him, Merion felt the air of bustle turn softer, quieter. Eyes and heads flicked up to the city spires. Elbows nudged ribs. The young Hark walked out of the marquee and stood in the night, watching the horizon, where the clouds were singed crimson at their feathered edges. Merion lifted a hand to feel the air, as if he could touch the glow. He wasn’t surprised to find his fingers trembling. One by one, others began to join him, whispering reverently. The roar of the show continued unabated and unaware.
Whether because it was shy or arrogant, Merion could not tell, but the Bloodmoon took its merry time in rising. Ten minutes crept by, and no sliver of moon appeared above the city’s rooftops. Merion even tried jumping again. It was useless.
‘This is unbearable,’ he said aloud, getting resoundingly shushed by Devan, standing behind him with his mighty arms crossed. His eyes were half-closed, as if he were drunk on anticipation.
Yara was soon amongst them, weaving between her rushers, touching shoulders and muttering in ears. She was smiling widely, and more so with every step. She stood at Merion’s side and rested a hand on his shoulder. It was almost enough to sour the whole moment.
‘Are you ready, Master Harlequin?’ she asked, echoing Rahan. ‘Ready to taste the Bloodmoon?’
‘I am,’ Merion replied, meaning it more than she knew.
Yara only nodded, tilting back her head and closing her eyes like the others. It was time, it seemed. The waiting was finally over. Merion kept his eyes fixed on the horizon. If this was heresy, then he chose to be damned. This night was already teetering on the brink of damnation as it was.
And there, a tingle in his temples. Something itching behind his eye. A shiver in his gut. Merion tensed as if he were rushing, excited and perturbed all at once. The crowd became deathly silent.
Merion half-expected them to cheer as a sliver of red poked its head over the rooftops, but silence reigned. In moments it was a shallow dome of the deepest crimson, as if the buildings themselves oozed blood or fire. The Bloodmoon rose, up and up through the strands of cloud, eager to claim its throne of starless black. It was a jagged half-circle now, red as a sunset. Merion felt his mouth drop as his eyes roved over the moon’s puckered face: a colossal ruby battered by the hammers of forgotten gods. He could not tear himself away from it. It was a giant of a moon. Twice the size of any he had ever seen. It felt as though it would tumble out of the sky at any moment and reduce the world to cinders. Its scars glowed with a deep crimson fire, burning the sky around it to a russet brown. The lights of the circus were overpowered. The grass and tent-cloth turned to flame.
With every inch the Bloodmoon climbed, every wave of light it poured on the earth, Merion felt his own body climb with it. His teeth chattered as the pressure built up inside him. It felt as though his stomach wanted to clamber out of his mouth and run to greet it. Merion pushed back hard, wincing.
And then, as the Bloodmoon hauled itself from the horizon and stood alone, unchallenged even by cloud, it felt as though a valve were released. Intoxicated, he crested the wave of shivers and rode it down. The Bloodmoon’s power became a constant trembling of his insides. A fire burnt inside him, as hot as the moon’s pitted surface. He flexed his arms and felt the surge of his own blood. He felt every pulse and twitch of his veins.
With a guilty grin, Merion turned to Yara, who, along with the others, was busy raising her arms to the mighty moon. Merion felt it rude not to do the same. He lifted his arms and felt the blood rush into them, clamouring to be that little bit closer, like a doting subject reaching to grasp the coattails of a king.
The Bloodmoon now held sway over the sky, holding fast in the vastness. Yara clapped her hands, once, twice. Devan added his own thumping to it, and before Merion knew it, the small crowd was gripped in exultant applause. Several of the rushers even bowed. He
joined with them, not wanting to be left out.
‘And there it is, Master Harlequin.’ Yara raised her voice. ‘The Bloodmoon in all its glory.’
‘Stunning,’ he mouthed back.
‘Is it not? A year is far too long to wait for such a thing.’
‘What now?’
‘Now, we put the red in our bellies!’ Devan barked, lifting a vial to his lips and throwing his head back. Others followed suit. Wide smiles appeared on their faces, their eyes rolling back. The looks on their faces were halfway between pain and euphoria. Merion patted his pockets for his own vials, doled out by Shan barely an hour ago. He held one with trembling hands, letting the shaking guide it up to his mouth. He could smell every particle of the eel blood: its copper, its salt, its magick. He felt an inescapable thirst driving his chin upwards and his mouth open. Down, the blood went, and Merion felt like a first-time rusher once again.
Burning didn’t begin to describe it. He would have doubled up had his stomach not lurched inside him. Merion clenched his fists and pushed against the rising magick. It was unbearable for just a moment, but then as the blood made the jump from his stomach to his veins, he felt rhapsodic dizziness rising with it. He laughed uncontrollably as the magick swallowed his skull.
Stronger, easier, faster, and a thousand other things, Merion put his hands together and felt the lightning run over them like water from a tap.
‘You feel it now?’ Yara asked of him.
Merion was gritting his teeth so hard he almost forgot to answer. ‘I do,’ he said, working his strain into a wide smile. ‘I do.’
‘I said you would be ready,’ she smiled, walking away to bask in the glory of the others.
More than ever, he thought to himself, grinning at the moon.
Thrumming with magick and with grins and laughs aplenty, the crowd filtered back to the marquee, leaving Merion to stare up at the Bloodmoon. He could not take his eyes from it, and with each passing moment he felt as though he were drinking more and more of its power in. Whether that was even possible, Merion didn’t care. He felt it, and that was all that mattered. He found himself wishing for a ladder, or a rope and hook, anything that could get him closer to it. Such was the allure of the blood-red moon.
*
An hour passed, and still the show raged. Like a whirling machine, getting faster and faster, slipping closer to the edge of control. The crowd felt it, breathed it, and urged it on. All things that teeter beg to be pushed. Yara was a master of spinning that particular illusion. Merion hated to admit it. Every act topped itself, again and again, with every trick the Lightning had up her sleeve. Merion hovered in the shadow of the stage stairs, watching wide eyed as Jackabo, rushing impossibly hard in the Bloodmoon’s presence, spun a thunderstorm out of fire, much to the crowd’s delight.
The refined can always find some savagery in them when in the presence of real magick, even if they don’t quite know it. A shelved memory, somewhere deep in the roots of the mind, of an olden time huddled in a cave, coaxing fire from a stone, listening to the roar of the night’s monsters. They gawped and goggled, hooted and brayed, letting sense fall away. Merion would have been doing the same, had he not been a scant handful of minutes from the peak of the evening. His finale. His one, only, and singular chance.
Merion looked around, surreptitiously trying to spot Rhin. The faerie should be here by now. The marquee was a hive of laughter with the swigging of moonshine and blood. The show was coming to a climax. Their jobs were done, and now they waited patiently to take their positions for the closing bow. Merion clenched his fists, letting his magick pulsate. There would be no bowing. No gracious kiss-blowing and waving.
There, in the long grass, something glinted dully. Fae steel. Merion just nodded, scratched behind his ear, and walked deeper into the big tent. A hollering call echoed through the tent.
‘Now presenting! All the way from frozen Roisya, the master of Cirque Kadabra, Yara the Lightning!’
Merion flinched as Yara brushed past him, taking to the stage with Devan. Merion felt an itch to see this, and so he edged along the stage, under its struts and out to where Lincoln’s guards lined the fringes of the audience. A few of them cast him cautionary looks, but he settled down in front of them, in the shadow behind the lanterns, and watched.
Yara bowed deep and low to Lincoln and his entourage. A polite, eager clapping followed her as she did a lap of the stage. With a wave of her hand, drums began to play, somewhere on the other side of the tent. They hammered out a throbbing beat, savage in itself. Merion could hear the audience mumbling in anticipation, hear the benches creaking as they edged forwards in their seats.
Devan was still wearing his thin costume, the one that exposed as much of him as possible without being rude. He went to the end of the stage, where a stack of wooden boards had been piled. He took two and held them outstretched. Yara bowed again, and as she rose a hand darted inside her skirt-folds.
Babam!
Two daggers struck the boards in quick succession, quivering only slightly. The crowd gasped as their wonder-addled minds caught up. Yara grinned and bowed once more as the roar rose. Devan hoisted up two more boards, holding one in his teeth and tilting his head. The other was held in front of his groin. Yara magicked two more knives from her sleeves, holding them between her fingers. The audience oohed appropriately. With a slim hand covering her eyes, she threw as if shaking out a wet towel. The knives sailed through the air, lazy in their accuracy. The audience held its breath, fearing the worst for Devan’s neck and family jewels. Two sharp thuds sounded, and Yara grinned at their cheering.
And so it went. Sharp blades raced from her deft hands, each a blur of silver or dusty black streaking across the stage to torment the boards. The audience were enraptured. Devan held a stoic smile, keeping his fingers in and his body still. He need not have worried. Merion could see it in his face: utter confidence. And why not? Yara the Lightning was the finest knife-thrower this side of the ocean, and most likely of the other side too. Even when Devan began to spin around, the boards dancing, there wasn’t a target she couldn’t hit.
It crept over Merion like a bitter frost. The realisation, cold as winter’s claws, even though he was sweating something chronic in the stuffy tent. There wasn’t a target she couldn’t hit.
Merion’s eyes did his terrible work for him, inching from Yara to the regal figure sitting tall at the audience’s heart. The boy felt the frost reach his innards, and he shivered. Lincoln.
This was bigger than him. Much bigger indeed.
Understanding came like a landslide. The shadows of Yara’s machinations were drawn back. Dizali. Victorious. Lincoln. How had he not seen this? Merion slapped a furious palm to his forehead, making a nearby guard flinch warily. The guards!
The young Hark scrabbled to his feet, kicking dust, and worked some saliva into his dry mouth. He would spill it all if he had to, or weave some lie, anything to make them understand Lincoln was in danger.
The nearest guard regarded him suspiciously as Merion sidled up to him. Before he could open his mouth, a figure appeared from the shadow of the stage. Itch, a finger bending towards him, his eyes fierce.
‘It’s time, boy,’ he mouthed over the roar of the audience.
Merion felt stuck in treacle. The guard just raised an eyebrow questioningly. All Merion could do was flick a glance at Lincoln before Itch put a wiry arm around his shoulder.
‘What exactly you doin’, boy?’ he hissed.
‘Nothing,’ Merion lied. ‘Just wanted to ask if he was enjoying it.’ He had to give him something.
‘Don’t you worry about that. You just worry about your finale.’
Merion clamped his jaw shut, feeling the cold sweat drip down his chest. He was led to the stairs, where one of the girls dabbed the sweat from his makeup and brushed the dust from his costume.
He was shoved in the small of his back as the audience jumped to his feet, applauding madly for the Lightning. Her knife-play w
as over. It was Merion’s turn. His heart tried to keep up with the pounding drums. He put his feet to work and crept slowly into the blinding light. A vial was pushed into his hands and he threw it down, using the magick to distract him from the panic.
Yara was holding her hands up for silence. ‘They call me the Lightning,’ she announced when she received it, her voice low and brimming with intrigue. ‘But it gives me the greatest pleasure to introduce to you a young boy who is far more deserving of that name than I. A boy born in the middle of a storm. A boy struck by lightning more times than his fingers or toes can count. A boy favoured by the old gods of thunder and dark nights … Introducing Cirque Kadabra’s newest wonder, your final entertainer for the evening, Master Harlequin!’
The audience stayed standing, raising its hands high and its voices higher as the boy took to the blinding lights of the stage. Merion’s heart might as well have belonged to a hummingbird. Every inch of him shivered as trepidation and blood burnt his insides. A score of different emotions fought for space in his crowded head. His thoughts bellowed at him.
How dare they!
Save him!
Bring them to their knees!
Destroy them!
Run!
Don’t choke!
Merion forced a grin onto his face as Yara stole his arm to wave with. He felt close to passing out.
‘Do not be scared, Merion. Trust the Bloodmoon, and you shall do us proud,’ she whispered in his ear over the adoring applause. Merion didn’t bother to temper the scowl he gave her. Pretences be damned.
‘I’m not scared,’ he hissed. And he wasn’t. A thousand things, but not scared. Angry. Nervous. Vengeful. Full of doubt, but not afraid. He relished that as best he could.