The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

It was then that Merion chose to explode, with no warning or apology.

  ‘Now, just wait one … bloody … SECOND!’ He had not really meant to yell, but he had, and now it was too late to take it back. He dumped his rucksack in the dust and squared up to his aunt. He brandished a finger as if he meant to poke her with it, but he could not quite summon the tenacity. Instead he just vented, as he had wanted to since getting on that blasted locomotive in Boston.

  ‘In case Mr Witchazel has proven thoroughly incompetent, and you are not aware of what I have been through, the last three weeks of my life have been utter torture. My father—your brother—has been murdered. My home has been taken away from me. My life has been torn apart at the seams. I spent two weeks in a tiny cabin on a ship more rust than metal. I have thrown up more times than I can bear to count, and several of those times through my nose, which until then I hadn’t even thought possible. I have seen icebergs decorated with dead soldiers. I was battered senseless by the crowds of Boston and nearly bored to death by a lawyer’s assistant. And to top it all off, I have just spent the last week on a variety of trains travelling across this godforsaken country of yours, only to be made aware that my final destination, my last hope for refuge, is a meagre scratch in the middle of a desert, surrounded by creatures that want to tear me in half, and shamans who want to peel the skin off my bones at a hundred yards. So in summary, Aunt Lilain, please do excuse me if I don’t currently have the stomach for carrying dead bodies around in the dark! I would have thought my own aunt, my father’s sister, would be a little more sympathetic to my plight! I half-expected this nightmare to end in Fell Falls, not begin anew!’

  Merion suddenly realised he had not taken a breath in quite a while. He decided to remedy that before he passed out. His head swam. Aunt Lilain had crossed her arms about halfway through his tirade, and now she just stood there, staring, a nothing expression on her tanned face. Merion decided to throw caution to the wind and just carry on. ‘Now, if you will point me in the right direction, I would like to find whatever bed you’ve prepared for me, and go to sleep in it. I will be leaving in the morning.’

  Lilain answered so quickly she nearly snipped off the end of his sentence. ‘Is that so?’ she retorted.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  The two stared at each other for a moment, until Merion realised that his aunt was the sort of person who needed to be asked twice. ‘If you could show me which way to go, please, it would be very much appreciated.’

  Lilain’s only reply was to brush past him and reach for his abandoned rucksack, which was leaning against the side of the barrel. Merion chased after her, but she had a head start. The sack was on her shoulder by the time he could interfere.

  ‘That’s my rucksack …’ he said as he reached out to grab it.

  ‘Oh, no problem. You’ve had a hard couple of weeks. I’ve got it,’ she replied, striding towards the centre of town. Merion had no choice but to hurry along in the wake of her long, loping strides. Rhin winked from under the lip of the rucksack. Merion could see his purple eyes glowing softly.

  ‘Are you taking me to the body, or your house?’ Merion enquired, hoping it was the latter.

  ‘The house,’ his aunt replied. He sighed in relief. ‘Via the body.’

  ‘Did you not hear what …’

  This time, Lilain did cut him off. ‘Oh, I heard just fine, thank you. It’s a left here.’ Lilain swung into a short alleyway, and then out along a hip-high fence that guarded patches of vegetables. A goat bleated somewhere in the shadows.

  ‘Do you live out on the edges of town?’

  ‘Last house in the Runnels. It’s where they always put people like me.’

  ‘People like you?’

  ‘Undertakers. They like our business, but don’t want to see it on their doorstep … especially not in a town like this.’

  Merion wasn’t quite sure he got her meaning, but he mumbled an ‘I see’ all the same. She was leading him up a very gentle rise now. The houses, or shacks in some cases, were thinning out. The road became less defined and more rugged. Soon enough, they came to a long cart, its handles propped up on the arm of a fence so it lay almost flat. On it lay a macabre object covered by a sack. Merion gulped.

  ‘Come on out, Eugin. Boy’s not interested in games,’ Lilain called to the darkness.

  Merion’s heart stopped for a brief moment as the sack moved. A pair of arms groped for air. Lilain grabbed the corner of the sacking and yanked it free, revealing a portly man with a pair of spectacles hanging on his grime-smeared nose. He looked at the boy, then at Lilain.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Tired.’

  ‘Oh. Well, Boston is almost two thousand miles away, as the crow flies. Boy has come a long way.’

  ‘At least somebody realises that,’ Merion said. He had not really meant to say that out loud. Why did that keep happening?

  ‘Don’t encourage him, Eugin. Go home. I want to see you working on that cooler bright and early. No slacking, you hear?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Eugin sloped off, waving a hand at Merion as he scuttled away.

  Lilain snapped her fingers and shouted over her shoulder, ‘Oh, and Eugin?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘Is the body on the table?’

  ‘Both halves, ma’am,’ came the reply.

  Merion’s stomach churned. He looked around him, peering into the darkness, as if he were trying to root out this offensive table. In truth, he was considering whether he could make a break for it, as if running might solve all his problems, but this desert all looked the same: dark, empty, and dangerous. Lilain called to him, and he froze.

  ‘You coming or not?’

  Merion bit the inside of his lip again, nursing the perpetual scab that had formed there thanks to his new habit. ‘Do I have to sleep near the body?’

  ‘Well that depends on where you’re sleepin’, doesn’t it?’

  Lilain’s house was slightly larger than the other houses, and a little more ornate. It definitely was not a shack, as Merion had feared. It looked like there might have been some money under its pillows and floorboards once, but no longer. It appeared young and yet old. Even in the dark, Merion could see the flaking paint, the little crack in the window to the left of the door, the missing roof-tiles. Lilain thrust her key into a lock, and waved. She still had the bag over her shoulders. ‘Come on, do you want to see your options?’

  Merion shrugged then. It was a tiny movement, but it spoke volumes. It was a shrug for the world and everything in it, for fate and destiny too, for all the blasted things that had brought him here, and for his father’s murderer. It told them that tonight, they had won, but tomorrow might be different. One night couldn’t hurt, he told himself, as he stepped over the threshold into his new, if not temporary, life.

  Chapter VI

  SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND

  ‘She’s persistent. Two weeks now, and I’m still running, still being chased. She’ll have my head on a spike if it’s the last thing she does. There’s no going back now. Onwards.’

  7th May, 1867

  In the bustling core of London, to the west of its beating heart, was Jekyll Park. It was a sprawling carpet of green fields and huddled trees, stretching from the backside of Bucking Tower, all the way up to Kensing Town Gardens. In fact, Jekyll Park was so vast, that if you stood at its very centre, just to the west of the Long Water, and ignored the towering spires of Knightsbridge and Westminster—and the cloying smog—you wouldn’t have a clue you were standing in the middle of the largest city on earth.

  In the park’s southwest corner, in the very centre of a square field of grass, sat a copse of old oak and elm. The trees were so tightly packed together that it was nigh on impossible to see the old well at its centre. A hundred years ago, a boy had drowned in it. He was one of the gardener’s lads, and a sad funeral it was. The father almost tore the well to pieces, but the other gardeners had calmed him down, and planted a ring of saplings around it to ke
ep other children from meeting a similar end.

  Within seven years the wood had swallowed up the well and the darkness between the trees had become thick and impenetrable. A rumour spread that the copse was cursed. This reputation stuck. Even a century later, it still had the power to rattle teeth. Nobody ever went near the copse nowadays; not even waifs or strays slept nearby. This was a wise decision to make.

  *

  Dawn was starting to claw its way across the bruised sky. Jekyll Park was empty. The air was dead and silent, and not a single breath of air stirred the trees. And yet, at the foot of one infamous copse, the grass was shivering, writhing to and fro as quick feet sought a bit of rest.

  It had been a long walk—a very long walk, in fact. From the misty Bodmin moors into London is not a jolly in the country by any stretch of the imagination. These faerie feet were worn sore and blistered. They were tired of flitting about and using their magic. It was time for a fire and some nectar, by their master’s reckoning.

  One by one the faeries reached the base of the old well, and one by one they materialised out of thin air, hooded and hollow-eyed. Thirteen altogether. The tallest one waved a hand in an upwards motion and without a word they began to ascend the crumbling face of the old well. The faeries didn’t make a sound as they grabbed the old granite. Their wings didn’t even twitch beneath their cloaks.

  The rope was there, as they’d been promised, hanging from an arch of wood and pointing down into a deep chasm. It was completely out of faerie reach. The tall fellow, their leader it seemed, looked about for a bucket, platform or lever, but there was nothing. So, he shrugged and leapt into mid-air to catch the fine, silver rope.

  ‘Onwards,’ he hissed, and his crew followed suit.

  Soon enough they were all sliding down the rope using only their bare hands. Had they paused to sniff, it might have smelled like burning rubber. For what seemed like an age they descended, hand over hand and with ankles pressed against the rope. The darkness was soft at first. The rope could still be seen as well as felt. The little coin of morning light still hovered above them. But then the darkness became absolute, and all-consuming. It lasted so long they began to wonder whether they had been cursed with blindness, but then the first outpost appeared.

  Built straight into the walls of the well-shaft, the outpost glowed a greenish-blue thanks to its myriad glow-worm lanterns. It was a fuzzy sort of light, the kind that looked like you could stroke it if you tried hard enough. Dark eyes and grim faces peered out at them from between arrow slits.

  As soon as the first outpost had faded into the darkness, the second appeared, chased by the third. Soon enough, garrisons and guard houses encircled the whole circumference of the well shaft, so that the faeries descended through hoops and rings of glowing blue.

  And then they saw it: the fortress of Shanarh, capital of Undering, last Fae stronghold of London. It glittered like a thousand burning sapphires on a thick dark carpet of stone and black faerie steel. The silver rope held them high over its sharp ramparts and pointed turrets. A lesser creature might have wailed and come to a scrabbling halt on the rope, but not these. As they descended, the faeries silently and calmly noted their destination: a wide courtyard set deep into the twisting spire that was the Coil of Cela’h Dor, home of the Fae Queen.

  It was only when the thirteenth pair of feet graced the brown marble that the doors at the far end of the courtyard were flung open. Three shadows emerged from the bright blue light of the spire’s innards, becoming faeries as they marched into the half-dark of the courtyard. The upper world, now drenched in morning, was nothing but a speck in the darkness. Undering’s Lonely Star, for that is what the people of Shanarh had come to call it.

  The lead man was shouting before he was even halfway to reaching them. ‘At long last! The White Wit and his Black Fingers finally decide to answer our call. It has been two weeks since—’

  Finrig Everwit, infamously dubbed the White Wit, leader of his crew, the Black Fingers, stood even taller than normal, and beneath his cloak his wings buzzed angrily. His hair was white as snow, and long, so that it curled out from underneath his hood and hung against his neck. Finrig cut the faerie’s sentence off coldly. ‘Listen here, Magistrate. Two hundred and thirty-eight miles it is, to this hole in the ground from Bodmin country. Two days it’s taken us. Two days for your messenger to get to us. Four days for us to prepare. That’s eight days by my count, Magistrate, just over one whole week, nothing like two weeks. Hear that!’ he said, in a deep voice for a faerie. Rumours had it this Finrig Everwit had a smidgeon of dwarf running through his veins, from long ago.

  The magistrate stopped so close to Finrig that their noses almost touched. He waved a sharp-clawed finger in his ear. ‘Hear this: Sift is livid. She is beside herself with rage, I will have you know. The job wasn’t done right, Finrig.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘The job wasn’t done right, I said!’ The magistrate was brave for a short faerie. He stood over a whole head shorter than Finrig. From his height, Finrig could stare right down at the magistrate’s bald little head, and imagine cracking it against the side of a hot pan to make an omelette. These cave-dwellers were paler than a sheet of parchment, that was for sure—almost as pale as he was.

  Finrig folded his arms, conveniently nudging the magistrate back a step. The shorter faerie responded by ruffling his long black coat and adjusting his collar authoritatively. He glanced at each of his guards, and they took a step forwards, standing at the magistrate’s shoulders. It only made him look smaller.

  Finrig was not one for shouting. ‘Calm down,’ he said, ‘before I lose my temper. What exactly are you accusing us of?’

  The magistrate shook his fists. ‘He’s gone, Finrig. Gone, I tell you. He did not return with the … item as you yourself assured us he would. We wanted him marched back here, not given an option! Now he’s gone, and the item with him.’

  ‘By the bloody Roots! Gone where?’

  ‘Over the bloody sea is where! America.’

  ‘His boy took him?’

  ‘Of course! His father? Murdered. Human problems by the looks of it. The boy was sent to the Endless Land, or so our spies tell us.’

  ‘So you know where he is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have spies?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but …!’

  Finrig slowly bent forwards until his eyes were perfectly level with the magistrate’s. He couldn’t help but relish the way the other faerie recoiled. ‘Then why by the bloody Roots have you summoned us? Surely you have other Fae that are capable. We were right in the middle of another job.’

  The magistrate bared his sharp teeth and held on tightly to the collar of his long coat. ‘Don’t you dare use those filthy human words in my presence, you hear me? You’ve spent too long on the fringes, dallying with them. You’re in danger of becoming like Rhin.’ The magistrate narrowed his eyes until it almost looked as if he was asleep, in the midst of an angry dream. ‘You are here, Finrig Everwit, because she demanded it. You are still Fae, are you not? Then you answer to Queen Sift! You and your men. You left the job half done, took your gold and left. It’s time to set it right!’

  Finrig raised a hand, but one of the guards batted it away, his armour clanking. The faerie growled, and said no more.

  ‘Take them inside,’ ordered the magistrate, in a voice a little higher-pitched than he would have liked. The Wit brushed past him, nearly knocking him to the floor.

  Inside the Coil, the halls were blindingly bright. There was a glow-worm lantern every five paces, and together they painted the inside of the twisted spire a deep, electric blue, the sort of colour that would play havoc with human eyes.

  The faeries did not even notice it. Such were the habits of an underground race. They had learnt to live with the glowing, the slithering, and the scuttling, and whatever else the dirt kept as its own.

  The Wit and his Fingers were marched up a spiralling set of steps and ushered int
o the very peak of the Coil. The guards made sure not to step too close. They had all heard the rumours. They didn’t dare poke their guests, didn’t dare hurry them. Feeling more like captives than guards, they were entranced by the mere reputation of this giant of a faerie they followed up the endless steps.

  At long last, they came to the Queen’s quarters, and the magistrate barged his way through the crowd of gathered courtlings to knock on Sift’s door. He did so with great ceremony, waving his hand about in a circular motion before knocking once, twice, thrice. There was a brief pause, and then a shrill voice commanded them to enter. Finrig took a breath, and pulled his hood down, as did his men, and the guards gawped on.

  When the door was shut, and the whispering guards locked out, Queen Sift of the Fae emerged from behind a desk piled high with scrolls and walked with long slow paces to a small, but regal chair made of stag beetle horn. It sat very much alone, compared to the other furniture in the grand room. As the Wit, the Fingers, and the magistrate shuffled forwards to bow, she waved a hand, and took a seat upon her thorny throne.

  ‘Finrig,’ she spoke his name as if weighing it. Her voice was deep for a female, even for the husky tones of faerie women. It had an echo to it, a strange quality that Finrig, much to his annoyance, had never been able to fathom. But it was her face that never failed to make his wings shiver. He raised his head to meet her bright golden eyes, and found words to say.

  ‘Your Majesty.’

  The only splash of colour to mar Sift’s pure ashen skin were the thin veins of dark crimson that circled her ears and temples. Her frame was tall and long yet wiry, like a coiled fangworm, always ready to strike. Her ears were devilishly pointed, and her teeth, when she smiled, were needle-like daggers. Finring, a faerie who had successfully fought and killed almost everything the wild had to throw at him, could not help but quail slightly in her presence.

  Sift drummed her sharp nails on the antlers of her throne for a moment, while she thought. It was an uncomfortable sound.