by Ben Galley
Lilain wanted to curse the boy for all his worth. But the truth was crystal-sharp: to protect them; to keep from asking them to cross the Iron Ocean; to keep them out of it. ‘He may be an orphan, Sir, but he still has family. It may be a strange one, but it’s ours.’
‘Family takes many forms, Madam.’ Here Lincoln paused to sigh, as if the decision to help the boy weighed heavy on him. ‘History might have told a different story had it not been for your nephew. He saved my life. It was the least I could do to send him home.’
‘He has a habit of that,’ Lilain confessed, joining Lincoln in his sighing. ‘Which way, Sir?’
Lincoln beckoned two of his men closer. ‘My guards will take you to the docks. Though I can’t promise the Black Rosa will still be at anchor. They were quite eager to leave. And who can blame them? I had half a mind to join them, see to the Prime Lord myself.’ Another growl there.
‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ Lurker mumbled.
Lincoln laughed at that. ‘They call me Red King Lincoln, and you’d have me start another war?’
‘If it’s a just one,’ Lurker bowed again.
‘There are other ways to win a battle than to build a war around it,’ Lincoln smiled warmly, and reached for their hands. ‘I wish you good luck and safe travels. Something tells me your family is stronger than an ocean.’
Lilain and Lurker said their goodbyes and let the soldiers lead them away, more than a little numb. Lurker too, by the looks of him, seemed to understand, but that didn’t mean it sat well with either of them.
‘I take it we’re followin’ him.’
She nodded firmly. ‘Of course we are.’
‘Even if he don’t want us to?’
Lilain looked up at the Bloodmoon, maybe for a little patience, maybe to blame it for all the mess, or maybe just for somewhere to look while she reached for Lurker’s rough hand. She held it lightly, as though if she squeezed too hard he might crumble. ‘You boys don’t know what you want, or what you need. That’s why you need someone like me around,’ she whispered. ‘I hope you like the sea, John Hobble, because we’re catching a ship.’
Lurker patted his chest for his flask, but when he came up empty, he just shrugged. He squeezed her hand. ‘Looks like it’s a day of firsts.’
*
Rhin stood alone on the dock, half-visible, watching the stern of the Black Rosa disappear into the crimson-washed waves of the Potomac estuary. She was just a dark hunk of steel, with cinder-specked steam billowing from her jagged stack and two thick masts sporting grey sails. One solitary light hung from the railing at her stern. Even Rhin’s eyes couldn’t be sure, but something told him that the light had a shadow for company. A boy, staring back at the glittering city and the faerie he had left behind. Rhin could almost feel his angst washing up under the dock with the red-tipped waves.
The decision had been made weeks ago, when the black cross on his hand was still raw, when Merion had looked down at him and sworn murder to protect him. It been painful in its simplicity: the bean sidhe would kill anything that stood in the way of their prey. They had done it before, and they would do so again. Rhin would not subject the boy to their cold bones, to their teeth. He would save him, though it tore his heart to do so.
Rhin knelt one knee to the wood and let his hands rove over his armour, old habits of checking the straps and plates; and finally his blades, two of black steel, and one of pine. Rhin ran his hands through his hair and calmly blinked his violet eyes, waiting for the cold wind he knew was coming.
His wait was brief. It came from behind, blowing out to sea. It was graveyard-cold, and sought out all the gaps in his armour that blades could never find.
Then came the wailing, just as before. Rhin couldn’t ignore the hammering of his heart. He got to his feet, took the deepest breath of his life, and drew his blades, both pine and steel.
The banshees came cautiously this time, one wailing just a little louder, its screech tainted with pain. Rhin wondered if it bled. He turned to see.
The three gathered behind him, standing between him and escape. Rhin swallowed his heart as he stared at their fell faces: worm-eaten skulls, black and brown with age, a greenish light lingering behind the hollow sockets they called eyes. The rest of them was covered in rags and grave-dirt, betraying pockmarked bones here and there, giving way only to skeletal claws like winter tree branches. Mist gave them flesh where it could, wrapping around their ancient bones. Their tongues were made of it, their expressions forged by it. All in all, they were terrifying to stare at, but Rhin refused to give them the satisfaction of cowering. He stood and waited.
Their voices were distant, as if their vocal chords had been buried with their souls, just a shrill wailing with words for bones. They rasped and they rattled as they delivered Rhin his sentence:
‘The one called Rehn’ar,’ the first creaked.
‘You have been summoned,’ added the second.
‘By Fae Queen Sift,’ the third screeched, the one he had cut. There was a fiercer glint to its sickly glow. Rhin noticed its eyes sneaking between his pine-knife and trying to bore a hole in his forehead.
‘She’s never been one for the dirty work,’ Rhin mused, carving an arc of splinters in the decking of the dock with his sword.
Several wails answered him, echoes of the dead dragged back to the world. Rhin shuddered. The banshees floated forward, arms reaching out for him. The cross in his hand burnt the closer they got. Rhin brandished the pine-knife, and one of them slunk back. The others had yet to be bitten.
‘It’s inevitable,’ one moaned, clearly the leader. It crept closer. Rhin balanced his sword under its chin. The banshee barely flinched. It did not fear Fae steel. ‘None have escaped the bean sidhe.’
‘Then let’s see if we can break that tradition, shall we?’ Rhin snarled, finding bravery in his anger. He didn’t wait for them to strike first. He didn’t wait for them to grasp him with their dead fingers. Instead he raised his sword in a warrior’s salute and, with his heart encamped in his throat, his voice raised to a bloodcurdling roar, he swung for all his might.
Epilogue
A BLOODFEUD BEGINS …
17th July, 1867
The festivities had drilled deep into the early hours, daring dawn to rise before they were over. The Bloodmoon still hovered on the horizon, reticent to give up its throne, even though the lightening sky was already tarnishing its vermeil glow.
Dizali eyed it over the rim of his glass, busying himself with the counting of its scars, trying to ignore the noise around him, filling the room—the hollering, hooting, swigging, laughing, and underneath it, the rustle of gasps and mumbling. Behind him a colourful crowd went about their celebrations, the cream of London’s elite. They were an echelon even most of the Emerald House were unaware existed, an echelon that was currently in the grip of debauchery. As the Bloodmoon demanded.
They were a crowd of two halves. One half were draped in silks and finery, or in varying degrees of nakedness, running about and giggling, fuelled by wine and crimson. Jewellery dripped from necks and wrists. Hands were forever full of glasses, or titbits from silver trays.
The other half were a less fortunate lot, from a class far below the rung of their betters. They wore no finery. They wore nothing at all save for bonds and fine ropes. They lay here and here like broken dolls, some left on couches, others crumpled on the marble floor in little scarlet pools. The ones that were still alive looked about in dull horror as they watched their captors frolic and laugh. Every one bore the marks of knives or teeth. There was no difference between them and the trout or duck that lingered on plates. The lampreys had drunk their fill that night.
Dizali sat alone in an opulent armchair, swallowed by velvet and gold-trim. A loud cackle rang out and he cast an eye to where several figures writhed and entwined in the corner of the grand room, bathed in candlelight. Dizali wrinkled his lip.
It was a celebration steeped in ages, revered as the very practice
itself, and yet still Dizali found no mirth or enjoyment in it. The blood may have swirled through his veins, but it did nothing to wash away the bitter taste in his mouth, or the unease in his chest. Something that tasted very much like a failure that had yet to reach his doorstep.
Dizali leant forwards and throttled his wine glass until the stem snapped. He let it smash on the floor. The crowd around him barely noticed, drowning in revelry. His lip curled, and from between gapless teeth he bit off a name, one that had he had nurtured and cursed for hours.
‘Tonmerion Hark.’
Waiting can be torture.
*
‘What’s bothering you? You’ve been silent since we left Washingtown,’ Calidae grumbled, from her place at the railing, several feet away. Together they both stared at the black sea rushing past beneath them, sliced apart by the Black Rosa’s blade-like hull. It was a far cry from the Tamarassie.
Merion toyed with an answer, turning it over his swollen tongue before just shrugging and shaking his head. He had waited for this moment ever since seeing his father, cold and dead on the surgeon’s tiled table. He had pined to feel the swell of the Iron Ocean under his feet again, and yet here he was, staring at the black coastline and the blood-red moon, chewing on something bitter in his mind. He thought of Lilain, of Lurker, and most of all, of Rhin. There had been no sign of him. No shimmer. No whisper, even though he had shouted his name to the streets as they had run for the docks. In his heart, he knew the faerie had done it to save him, but it still brought a tremble to his lips.
‘You know they will follow you, don’t you, your aunt and that prospector?’ Calidae offered. There was a softer feel to her voice, if only a fraction, lacking in its usual wrappings of smugness, dripping with less contempt. She almost sounded like she cared.
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Merion sighed, thinking back to the yarn he had spun Lincoln, as he’d stood in the scorched grass, staring up at the man as if he were regarding the tip of a tall tree.
‘Alone?’
‘Yes alone, Sir. Just her and I.’
‘No family?’
‘We’re orphans. You knew my father, Karrigan Hark. He was murdered on the steps of my halls.’
‘I knew him well. Better than you even know, Master Hark. And you?’ Lincoln had turned to the girl.
‘The same,’ she had said.
‘What brought you here?’
‘Lies and betrayal.’
‘And now there’s nothing left for us here. But there’s plenty in the east.’
‘Dizali did this.’
‘And he will pay for what he’s done.’
‘With blood and more.’
Merion could still feel those oaken eyes on him, searching his own for truth. Merion had spilled all he knew—about Yara, about Gavisham, about the letters. He kept only the magick back, though he had the impression that Lincoln already knew full well. In the end the Red King had rubbed his beard, shaken their hands, and pointed them to the docks. Luck was all he had given them.
And here they were, two unlikely allies, standing on the deck of a borrowed ship, finally heading home. Merion didn’t know whether to sigh or cheer at this bittersweet victory. He should have known: victories always have a cost.
‘Tell me you aren’t going to be like this the entire journey,’ Calidae hissed.
Merion shook his pounding head. ‘It’s about time I grew out of sulking,’ he replied.
‘Good.’ Calidae narrowed her eyes at him before heading below. ‘You should get some sleep, Merion. I doubt we’ll get any once we reach London.’
‘Not with your threat hanging over me.’ Merion matched her look, and watched her leave. She said nothing in reply. It was a strange thing, sharing a ship with your potential murderer. Merion wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. He guessed he would deal with it when the time came.
Merion turned back to the sea and to the moon, letting Dizali fill his mind, conjuring up all sorts of tortures for the man. It was odd, but he could barely remember his face, and yet his mind was consumed by him.
That, and one other thought, one that had niggled and poked at him, making him doubt whether it had even happened at all. It was so small a moment it kept falling through the cracks in his memory. And yet Merion kept dragging it back up.
The tap of Lincoln’s finger as he had shaken the Red King’s hand.
Ars Magica
Bloodrushing, or haemomancy, is the consumption and exploitation of blood. There lies a power in the blood of most animals, accessible by those with the ability to rush, or ‘stomach’ it.
The History:
Bloodrushing is not a new art, nor has it always been called ‘rushing’. It has been called many names over the centuries. The Scythians, as they were called by the Greeks, first practised the art a thousand years before the First Empire. It was originally a warrior’s sport, consuming the blood of the first enemy killed in battle. The Mongols would consume the blood of their horses. The indigenous peoples of Brasilia, the new-worlders, spilt and drank the blood of their enemies to appease their gods. Bloodletters of the First Empire collected and examined the blood of the sick.
When the Age of Enlightenment dawned, the practise of rushing shifted from that of pagans and warriors to that of scientists, pioneers, and the influential. With influence came coin, and with coin, expansion. As the corners of the world were uncovered, one by one, the opportunity for exotic bloods only increased its popularity. Rushers began to travel the spice runs and trade routes to Indus and Africanus. Bloodetters flourished in every port and city across Europe and Asia. Books were written and rules wrought. In short, bloodrushing saw its first and only golden age.
But all ages must tarnish, and with new passion came thirst for power, for apparent immortality. The rushing of human blood began to increase, splitting rushers into warring factions. Unavoidably, the Church became involved, citing sorcery, demonism, and black magic. Rushers were dubbed as heretics, and many were burned at the stake. Bloodrushing was chased into the shadows, leaving only myth and folklore behind. Vampires and pagans, they were dubbed. It became a secretive art, its practitioners a dying breed, and the knowledge was passed down only through families and dusty books.
The Practice:
Rushers usually drink the blood, ingesting it through the stomach wall. In the past, however, some were known to inject blood directly into veins or arteries. This can only be described as foolhardy as the blood is somewhat filtered, or concentrated, by the stomach acids and digestive juices.
Letters:
Practitioners of the ancient art of bloodletting. Originally healers and surgeons, a modern letter focuses solely on collecting, extracting, and purifying blood of all different types. Also known as butchers, or draugrs in some parts of Europe.
Rushers:
Those who can drink blood and tolerate its effects. Not all humans can withstand the strain of bloodrushing, but those who can are usually able to tolerate between one and three shades. Also known as haemomancers.
Leeches:
A rare form of rusher who can tolerate multiple shades from different veins. Only a few have ever been recorded, as many are forced into secrecy for their own safety. Being a leech is highly coveted indeed.
Lamprey:
The term for those who focus solely on rushing human blood, a practice that was shunned by early rushers from the first Empire, yet adopted later by the powerful as a way of cheating death. Also known as parasite, or vampire.
The six veins of rushing, as ordered on the Scarlet Star:
Shades:
Listed below are some of the primary shades within each vein. While not all rushers will experience either the positive or negative effects, they are listed below for reference.
—Birds—
Known as ‘Hollowbone’ or ‘Pinion’
Magpie—Goldnose
Bestows the ability to sniff out precious metals. Increased use can result in short-term memory loss and gr
eed.
Seagull/Cormorant/Puffin
Gives the rusher a heightened passion for fish
Vulture—Mortscent
Rushers are able to sniff out corpses or those near death. Can cause nosebleeds in minor cases, and/or cannibalistic tendencies with continued use
Eagle—The Hunter’s Gaze, or Goldeyes
Enhances the sight of the rusher. Can cause cataracts or complete blindness in later life.
Cardinal—Beacon
Flushes skin to a near-fluorescent red colour
Overuse can result in permanency.
Pelican
The rusher is gifted the ability to drink great quantities of saltwater. Causes an incredible thirst once rushing is over.
Turkey
Rusher becomes desperately gluttonous. Often used as a poison.
Roadrunner—Dustkicker
Increased speed and reflexes. Can result in blisters or injury to ankles and knees.
Peacock/Oriole/Bird of Paradise—Colourbuck
Rusher’s skin takes on an iridescent quality. This may result in the shedding of skin after rushing.