by Ben Galley
Merion heard the rustling first, ominous in the darkness. Lilain did not seem worried by it, so Merion held his tongue. But then he heard their yowling, their cawing and screeching, and the sweat began to flow. Whatever was making that noise could smell them now, could see the flicker of the lantern, and they sounded hungry. Far too hungry for Merion’s liking.
The dull gleam of cage doors assuaged his fears somewhat, but with the doors came the beasts that hid behind them. Merion spied their eyes, some glowing, others merely glinting, staring back at him through the shadows. Their fangs and flickering tongues were not far behind. Their whines and growls rose in pitch, until Merion was almost forced to cover his ears.
Lilain reached for a nearby broom handle and began to whack it against the bars. ‘Shhh! Pipe down. Food’s coming, food’s coming,’ she told her pets, or her captives—Merion wasn’t too sure of the terminology.
As Lilain paraded around the small half-circle of cages, the lantern-light drew their curves and features for Merion to gawp at.
The cockatrice was old and dishevelled. It seemed happy enough, in its rather spacious cage. At first it seemed too small for the space, but as Merion’s eyes moved from its feathered rooster’s head to its scaly belly and coiled tail, it was plain to see the creature would have stood at least four foot tall had it the room.
The tiny wood nymph sat cross-legged and tucked up. There was ivy wrapped around the bars of her cage, and moss growing in its corners. The nymph’s skin was fractured and frayed like the skin of a birch tree. Her eyes were bright emeralds thumbed into hollows, and they glowed back at the boy as he stared.
His aunt pointed at the next cage along. ‘This is a mockinghawk. You can tell from its rainbow feathers and bright eyes. It’ll change plumage to mimic any bird it wants. That way it can join a flock and go unnoticed, picking off the weak or young whenever it pleases,’ Lilain intoned. ‘And this,’ she said, pointing at a rather excitable-looking slug-like thing in a higher cage, ‘this is a sandworm. Eats rocks like they were butter. Lives off the mould and bacteria.’
‘What’s bacteria?’
Lilain waved her hand dismissively. ‘That’s another story for another day. Don’t want to give you a headache now, do I? Now, I think you know the others, pretty much. Aside from the stunted huldra over there, and maybe the wampus.’
Merion did indeed. Aside from the huldra, which turned out to be a small shrivelled woman with a long cow’s tail, and the feral, cat-like wampus, which was the one apparently making all the noise, the rest were just plain old animals. The only remarkable thing about them was that they were behind bars, hidden under the earth in a strange woman’s basement, in this far-flung corner of the world.
There was a young wolf pup with a missing ear, a snake or two, kept behind a grate. There were birds in most of the higher cages, but nothing out of the ordinary. There was even a large bowl full of odd-looking fish, nudging shoulders with a grimy tank full of what appeared to be huge spiders, or maybe crickets.
Merion stuck his hands in his pockets and wondered what to make of it all. ‘I take it this is not just your own private zoo?’
‘Far from it, Nephew,’ Lilain replied, running her hands over the bars and letting her beasts sniff and scratch at them if they could be bothered. ‘Some shades are pure enough in their natural state. These are just a handful of creatures I’ve been lucky enough to trap over the years, and as long as they’re kept alive and well, I can take as much blood as I please without hurting them.’
Merion stepped forwards to take a closer look at the stunted huldra. Her eyes were sad, her face glum, and her cow-tail flicked back and forth impatiently. ‘What can their shades do?’ Merion asked. The huldra smiled at him then, and the boy took a step back. It was strange to see such a human smile in such a wild creature. Its teeth, despite its shrivelled appearance, were perfect and white.
‘Not as much as you think. The wampus might give you claws, if you’re strong. The mockinghawk can change the colour of your skin, but not the shape of it. The cockatrice will spit hot venom, if you poke it long enough. I hear its blood tastes like acid. It can give you a poisonous kiss, however,’ Lilain lectured.
Merion turned and took a few paces back towards the shelves. He reached out and plucked a slim vial of dark red blood from its place and held it close to his face. The thick blood clung to the glass as he turned it over in his dusty hands. Could I really drink this? he asked himself. Could he? There was no denying the little hiccup of bile he tasted in his throat. He looked up at his aunt. ‘And what do you suppose is to be my shade?’
With a flick of his aunt’s wrist, the vial was snatched away and placed back on the shelf. She kept her fingers on it as she spoke, as if it were a chess piece she had not yet decided what to do with. She narrowed her eyes at him.
‘You’re too excited by it all, I can tell. You need respect for rushing, and I don’t think you have it yet. Your father was wise enough to entrust you to me, and I will honour that wisdom by making sure you don’t go putting the red in your belly any time soon. Not until you learn otherwise,’ she said, shaking her head.
Merion’s face turned fierce. ‘That’s not fair. I could be a leech for all you know. A rarity.’
Lilain shook her head. ‘Or you could be some grubsnout addicted to woodpecker blood and rue the day you ever asked. What a fine little lord you would make then,’ she told him.
‘But it is my right to choose,’ Merion cried.
‘Not when you don’t have the first clue about what you’re choosing!’
Merion bit the inside of his lip, wracking his brains for some magic words to make his aunt change her mind. ‘You said there’s no going back. I know what I am now, what I can do. Would you rather keep me under your roof, and teach me yourself, or would you rather I run off again, and have the Shohari show me how it’s done?’ he challenged her.
Lilain rolled her lips inwards and glowered at him. Merion pressed on.
‘Surely you know more on this subject than any shaman—’
‘Yes, alright! You’ve made your point, Nephew. Maker’s hands, if you haven’t got your father’s wicked tongue.’
‘Among other things,’ Merion retorted, fighting not to punch the air.
‘Yes, well, we shall see. But you listen to me. The moment I decide you ain’t fit to taste a shade, you do as I say. I won’t be disobeyed on this matter. Not when your life is at stake. Do we have an agreement?’ Lilain stuck out a bloody hand and waited for Merion to grab it.
Merion slowly reached out, painfully mindful of the blood still drying on Lilain’s palm and fingers. His aunt could see his eyes, and his face twitching.
‘Better get used to it fast, Merion. Imagine a bloodrusher who’s afraid of the sight of blood,’ she said drily, half-hoping he would falter, and give up, decide it wasn’t for him after all. Merion grabbed her bloody hand and squeezed it with everything he had.
Chapter XVIII
LEECH
‘Almost caught again today. Three months since the suitcase and today I decide to let my guard down. Karrigan was in his study. I stupidly knocked a table. Rookie error. The man moves fast, that’s for sure. Far too fast for my liking. His fingers must have brushed my wings as I made it to the fireplace. Thank the Roots it wasn’t alight.
There’s something about him that makes my skin crawl, and I can’t figure it. Merion must know.’
19th May, 1867
It was almost three o’clock when Merion strode out into the roasting sun. He had not waited to watch Mister Khurt get sewn up. He had barely waited for his aunt to seal up her alcove. There was an excitement in his heart that failed miserably to understand why he should sit around in dark basements on stools, watching corpses get poked by the needle. For the tenth time in almost as many paces, he readjusted the strap of his rucksack.
‘Will you please stop that?’ Rhin hissed, flicking him through the fabric.
‘Sorry,’ Merion said, fingers al
ready itching to do it again.
‘All you needed was a dead body to change your tune, I see.’
‘That, and a conversation I’ve been aching to have since I arrived in this cursed little hole,’ Merion said, unable to stop his lips from curling and his eyes from narrowing. ‘What’s that old peasant saying? Where there is a will, there is a way? Well now I have a way, and a will.’
‘So, you can rush then?’
Merion stopped dead. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you knew … all this time …?’
‘No,’ Rhin sighed. ‘I heard Lurker say rushing. It doesn’t take an idiot to figure it out. The Fae have always known about humans and your blood-magick. I just thought it had died out with your ancestors.’
Merion moved off, wiping his brow. ‘Well, apparently it hasn’t. I may be a leech, Rhin, a leech.’
‘A blood-sucking parasite?’
‘A rusher that can stomach all sorts of different shades,’ Merion said, his excitement as clear as a bell.
‘You’ve lost me,’ Rhin muttered.
The boy tutted and walked on down the hill, past the houses of the Runnels and into Fell Falls. There was a subdued feel about the town. The saloons were quieter, the crowds thinner. Every worker Merion passed looked hollow-eyed and robbed of sleep. The sheriffsmen wore a little more armour than usual; sported more than the usual number of knives. When he had left, Fell Falls had been a brave outpost jutting out into the wilds. The Fell Falls he trudged through today felt like a town under siege, as though the town had suddenly realised its weakness. Everybody seemed to be mechanically going about their business as if monotony and routine would save them, as if breaking it would admit defeat to their intangible enemy.
Despite the mood lingering about the town, there was an awful lot of activity near the station and around the work-camp. Fresh scaffolding poked at the bright blue sky. The smell of cut wood and pitch was thick in the air. If this town was truly under siege, somebody was making arrangements. Merion suspected it had to do with whoever’s coat of arms now streamed from the taller scaffolding poles and weathervanes: a coat of arms displaying a green wyrm coiled around a silver spinning-top. The Serpeds had come to town. Merion was still intent on seeking them out, but for now the Serpeds could wait just a little longer. He had more pressing things to attend to, namely blood, and rushing, and Lurker.
The young Hark knew that the prospector was still in town. He would not leave, not after Lilain had told him to. That was the exact reason he would stay. Lurker’s face may have been a mask of dead emotion most of the time, but he had seen the little twitches in that mask on the road whenever Lil was mentioned. If Merion knew anything of men and their sorrows, Lurker would be seeking out something strong and wet, so to speak. He traipsed through the dust and heat of the streets, one by one, peering into each of the town’s saloons as he went. Through each set of swinging doors he found only frowning gazes and leering, lead-toothed stares, the punch of acrid pipe-smoke and the smell of sweat and dust. There were plenty of burly men with hats pulled low over their eyes, and plenty of figures in leather, but none of them Lurker. Merion pursed his lips and moved on. There were some more saloons on the western edge of town, near the railroad and the worker camp.
The boy’s path took him through the centre of town. A fresh batch of horses had been driven in from Kaspar in the wake of the Serpeds’ arrival. More horses for the rails and the workers—and for the lordsguards too. As the stableboys led them through streets towards the western stables, Merion stood by to watch them prance and whinny. Their eyes were wide, as if they could smell the blood in the sand.
Merion turned left and came to the postal office. With all the news of magick, he had forgotten about the irksome place and its dolt of a clerk. He put his feet to the steps and his hands to the swinging doors. Lo and behold, the pouting face of the chubby clerk swung up to greet him. Whatever barely courteous look he had pasted on quickly crumbled away, and was replaced with a scowl.
‘Well, look who it is. I thought you dead, or disappeared, Empire. I see I was wrong.’
Merion smirked. Not even this poltroon could drag him down today. ‘Letters. Have there been any for me?’
The clerk sighed. ‘Your name again, Empire?’
‘Tonmerion Hark, son of Karrigan Hark.’
‘Don’t care whose son you are, just your name will do.’ the clerk muttered as he rummaged underneath the counter and in the square pigeon-holes at his back. He did not make much of an effort, tossing letters and small paper-wrapped bundles aside as he searched. ‘No. Nothing for you,’ he said, seeming a little pleased with his news.
Merion shrugged off the disappointment. ‘Please, look again,’ he ordered.
The clerk put his fingers, templed, on the counter. ‘I am not a peasant on one of your farms, Empire, to be ordered around as you please,’ he said, sternly.
Merion put his own fingers down on the counter. ‘No, but I am a customer and you are a clerk, and I am asking that you check again.’
The pudgy clerk spat on the floor. ‘I’ve checked.’
Merion raised a finger and waggled it under the man’s nose. ‘Just you wait,’ he said, feeling the pride of his new power fuel his words. Not that it mattered; his words had ruffled the clerk about as much as a fart. The snotty little man would have his comeuppance, just not today.
Merion stomped back to the rough, dusty street. He sighed as he looked up and down its length: still no Lurker. Just horses carving sickle-moons in the dirt as they stomped around. Just sheriffsmen and lordsguards leaning idly against posts, chatting in low tones. Just working women shuffling about, half-cut and half-caring. Merion sighed once more.
‘Maybe he did wander off,’ Rhin remarked, voice muffled.
Merion began to retrace his steps. ‘No, he has to be here. He has to teach me how to bloodrush. I don’t care what my aunt thinks. I need to learn what I can do.’
‘Pardon the pun,’ Rhin cut in, ‘but don’t you think you’re rushing into this a little quickly?’
Merion shrugged. ‘We don’t have all the time in the world, Rhin. London isn’t frozen, patiently waiting for me to come and thaw it. The quicker I can learn my father’s skills, the quicker I can use them to get out of this place and back to the Empire, and my estate, where we belong,’ Merion said, laying out his new grand plan, the one he had thought up on the walk into town.
‘Where you belong,’ Rhin muttered.
‘Pardon?’ Merion’s head snapped around. He may have been wrong, but it sounded as though Rhin had said…
‘I said it sounds as though you speak of vengeance,’ Rhin hissed.
Before Merion could retort, a harsh cry echoed down the street. A few of the sheriffsmen peeled off from their hushed huddles, and marched towards a saloon with red doors and green windows. Merion began to move, talking as he marched.
‘Why shouldn’t I? It was the murderer that put me here. He was the one who banished me. I will not take that lying down. I’m a Hark, not a cowa—’
It was not a day for finishing sentences.
An almighty crash split the afternoon air as two men burst from the window of the saloon in a cloud of glass and shredded curtain.
‘Lurker!’ Merion cried. There was no mistaking the hat and the gloves. The very same gloves that were now curled into fists, busy pummelling the nose of the unfortunate brawler sprawled on the saloon’s steps. The sheriffsmen moved like lightning. They dragged Lurker up so quickly that his feet left the floor. It was graceful, for a thin whisker of a second, until Lurker’s boots returned to the decking, and the rest of his body followed like a sack of drunken cats.
‘He’s bladdered,’ whispered Rhin. Merion nodded and gawped as Lurker began to, well, pedal at the floor. His legs flailed and his boots scraped, but they gained not a scrap of purchase. It was a wonderful impression of a donkey in the grip of a fit.
A crowd of half-drunk workers and whores poured out of the saloon to watch the fight. They
brayed and roared with laughter and cheering. Whiskey sprayed. Bottles smashed. Fists jabbed the air fiercely. A good drunken fight can lift even the glummest of spirits.
‘Sirs!’ Merion called, chasing after the sheriffsmen. They spared him not a glance as they fought to keep Lurker still, and more importantly, upright. ‘Sirs! If you please, allow me to take him home.’
One of the men, an officer by the look of his silver braids, threw a quick look at the boy. ‘He your father or summin’?’ he barked.
Merion shook his head. ‘Er, no. A family friend.’
‘Some friend you got.’
‘Jaaaaake!’ Lurker was yowling.
There was a dull smack as one of the sheriffsmen thwacked Lurker across the back with a truncheon.
‘Aaaagh!’
‘Pipe down!’
‘Please!’ pleaded Merion, ‘I’ll see him home. You’ll have no more trouble from him, I swear it.’
‘No can do, boy. Man’s broken a window, so man’s gotta spend a night or two in jail.’
‘And then what?’ asked Merion, suddenly fearing the worst.
‘Then he’s to pay for the window. With gold or work. Either one will do.’
‘I see.’
The sheriffsman quickly tipped his hat. ‘Now, if you could kindly shift your ass, we’ll be on our way.’
Merion hopped to the side to let the men drag the almost unconscious Lurker off to jail. The boy ran a hand through his hair and puffed out his cheeks. He wasn’t quite sure whether Lilain would be pleased or further enraged by this news. Maybe it would be best if he just held his tongue, for now.
‘A friend of yours, then?’ enquired a voice like bells, high and clear. Merion turned and looked upon the speaker, and his tongue turned into a fat lump of lead.
‘Erm…’ Merion said, clawing for words. ‘Family. Friend of the family, that is.’ Merion was painfully aware of how fantastic a first impression he must be making, mumbling like an idiot, with a tongue like sand. The poor young girl was already wincing a little, a half-smile lingering on her blood-red lips. Merion couldn’t help but stare at them. He vaguely noted a blue dress in his peripheral vision, and white gloves, maybe. He felt the sweat creeping across his scalp. This was not your average girl of Fell Falls. They tended to be covered in mud and horse dung, with brown, tangled hair. Merion had seen them in the alleys, and in the Runnels. They had giggled at him, and he had scowled. This particular girl was very different. She was Empire.