by Ben Galley
‘What …?’ Calidae moaned as she cracked open her eyes. At the sight of a bloody Merion and a small black creature wrapped around her wrist, she started to scream.
‘You bastard!’ she cried, clawing at his arms and leaving long scratches down her arm. Merion gritted his teeth and snarled. ‘You let me go this instant!’ she screeched.
‘I’m saving your life, you idiot. Or haven’t you noticed the fire?’ Merion shouted.
Calidae had not, but now her gaping mouth and wide, bloodshot eyes said differently.
‘My father? Mother!’
‘Dead,’ spat Lilain.
Calidae seethed as she tottered to her feet. Her hands hung curled as fists at her side. She glared at them, one by one, though her gaze faltered slightly when it came to Rhin, until she could bring herself to speak.
‘Then I will die with them,’ she hissed, backing away. Merion snatched for her, but she darted away. ‘I’d rather die than accept your help.’
Merion growled, baring teeth sharper than normal. ‘Don’t be a fool, Calidae! You don’t need to die for those murderers!’
But Calidae shook her head stubbornly.
Lilain pulled at her nephew’s sleeve. ‘Let her go, Merion. If she wants to die, then let her. The world will be a better place.’
The bobcat blood told him his aunt was right, but the human clinging on inside him said otherwise. ‘I’ve seen that look in your eye, Calidae. I know you doubted what your father was doing. Come with us. Start over.’
Calidae looked up as the stairs began to fall to pieces, crashing in swirling clouds of sparks. ‘You’ve destroyed everything we worked for …’ she muttered. ‘Everything.’
‘Trust me, I know the feeling, now come on! Please!’ Merion urged her.
Calidae simply smiled, waved, and turned to face the inferno. She raised her hands and walked slowly into the centre of the atrium, to feel the world burn down around her.
‘Leave her!’ Rhin snarled, pulling the boy away. Merion bared his teeth, but he knew Rhin was right. She was as rotten as the rest of them, he reminded himself, as he trudged towards the smoking hole that was the main door.
Chapter XXXV
THE DIARY OF RHIN REHN’AR
‘I stewed for days, hidden in the tower. I put on a brave face for Merion, but inside I raged. Like old times. Dark times. Karrigan had dismissed me as a fool, and coldly condemned his son to cold Fae steel.
‘Stop dragging Merion into your tiny little world of lies,’ he had said.
That made me boil. I couldn’t allow him to do that to me, or to his son. He is a stubborn bastard, and I knew there was only one way to make him listen to me, to get him to understand how important Merion was, how terrible a father Karrigan was and how much Merion needed me. Like he always bloody has.
It didn’t take much to get into his study …’
7th June, 1867
The night that greeted them couldn’t have been further from the blazing havoc they left inside the riverboat. Instead of searing heat and thick smoke, they were met with biting rain and a wind that tugged and pulled at their limbs and clothes, trying to steal them away into the darkness. Merion blinked furiously as the rain lashed his face. His eyes were blind from the fire. The night was black and impenetrable. The boy staggered into the darkness, as each lightning flash painted the edges of the world.
Thunder rolled in the wake of a blue flicker, and he saw the trail leading up to the rise only a few hundred yards away. ‘This way!’ he cried to Rhin, who was already casting around in the shadows, wary and silent. His sword was out and on guard.
Merion sloshed through the mud. He could see his feet now that his eyes were adjusting, now that the fire was breaking out through the windows and doors of the riverboat and giving the desert a faint glow. Oranges, yellows and reds met the bruised black of the night sky. The hot colours played in the puddles around his tattered shoes.
‘You said the town was rioting?’ Merion asked over the drumming of the rain.
‘It is,’ Rhin hissed.
‘Why?’ Lilain whispered. She was getting heavier with every step.
‘They didn’t get paid,’ muttered the faerie.
Merion snarled. ‘I wonder why.’
Another lightning strike turned the night into day, and Merion saw the two lordsguards still sprawled on the ground, ruined faces lying in the muck. He bared his sharp teeth again and battled on.
‘We’ll get to the hill, then we’ll take a look at you,’ Merion told his aunt. She didn’t answer, and Merion shook her, eliciting a groan. He was not about to let anybody else die tonight.
‘We need to get Lurker out of the jail,’ Lilain breathed.
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Rhin replied.
Yet another fork of lightning split the sky. Merion froze. ‘Rhin,’ he snapped. ‘Stay here.’
‘What?’
Merion pointed as the sky flashed again.
Thirteen little figures stood in a line in the mud, a stone’s throw away.
Darkness returned, and despite the hot glow of the fire, they had vanished. No matter how hard Merion peered into the curtains of rain, he couldn’t see them.
‘Friends of yours, Rhin?’ Merion asked, pawing at the empty space at his belt where the Mistress had been. She was now lost to the fire and the flame. All Rhin had to offer was a nod.
When the next flash showed the canyons in the clouds above, Merion squinted. There they were again, somehow closer now, yet unmoving, standing still with their arms crossed across their black breastplates, hooded and pale-faced. Merion slowly bent an aching knee and slid his aunt from his aching shoulder.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, the wet mud jolting her awake.
‘Faeries,’ Merion hissed.
Lilain squinted through blood and puffed-up eyes at Rhin, standing beside her. ‘I only see one,’ she replied. Merion gently put a finger against her swollen cheek and turned her head, just as the lightning came once more.
Thirteen little figures were standing all around them, etched in rainwater and cold light. Lilain pushed herself upright as the tallest of them marched forward. His face and armour glowed orange in the firelight. As if they had not already dealt with enough that evening.
‘Your handiwork, Rehn’ar? Or the boy’s? he asked, bold as brass.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Merion challenged him.
The faerie looked shocked, and batted Rhin a look of disbelief. ‘Haven’t you told him about me, Rehn’ar?’ he said.
Merion raised his chin, eying this intruder up. He had never seen another faerie besides Rhin. Now he was surrounded by thirteen of them. He couldn’t help but stare at them, marvelling at the scars, and the narrowed eyes, and their various sharp implements. ‘I know who you are. You’re the White Wit, aren’t you, and your Black Fingers?’
‘Ah, so word does get around.’
Rhin waggled his sword-point at Finrig. ‘No more, Wit. You’ve got your Hoard, and that was the deal. It’s over. Go back to Sift and tell her it’s done.’
The Wit hummed, making a show of picking at his nails. ‘Like I said before you sprinted off into the darkness earlier tonight, I think she would rather hear it from you, rather than me,’ he sighed, as if the whole situation was a tiresome affair.
‘He’s not going anywhere with you,’ Merion snapped. The faeries around him tensed. One even went as far as to growl. Merion bared his teeth, still sharp from the bobcat blood. He may have exhausted, but seeing as the last hour of his life had consisted purely of gunfire, blood, and death, the prospect of another fight hardly shocked him. Even Rhin cast a glance in surprise.
‘Oh yes?’ Wit replied. ‘Are you going to stop us, rusher? Make a mess of us as you did the Serpeds?’
The Fingers sniggered among themselves. Merion would have taken a step forward, if he had any vials. His pockets were painfully empty.
‘We know all about you,’ grinned the Wit.
�
��You told them?’ Merion flashed an accusatory look at Rhin.
‘Oh, we’ve been watching you all,’ smirked the Wit. He looked between each of them from Merion to Lilain, and then to Rhin as he spoke. ‘Watching you go about your training in the desert, or playing with your corpses in your basement, or writing in your diary, under the bed.’
Rhin flinched. His sword tip lowered an inch. Lilain groaned, still slumped in the mud, as if she’d known all along.
‘My what?’ Rhin breathed in sharply.
The Wit grinned from ear to pale ear, and took a moment to wipe the rain from his white face. He reached behind his back and brought forth a battered old tome from under his cloak, dog-eared and wrapped in a cloth to keep it from the incessant rain.
Rhin started forward, but the nearest Finger raised an axe, and Rhin stopped dead, shaking all the same.
‘I’ve only had a chance to thumb through it on the walk, but by the Roots, it’s interesting reading, Rehn’ar. Have you told the boy yet?’
Merion felt a cold chill run up his spine, independent of the rainfall or the adrenalin of the recent fight. ‘What’s he talking about, Rhin?’ asked Merion.
The lightning flashed, and even in its bleaching light, Merion saw it. There was a colour in the faerie’s face the like of which Merion had never seen before, and it was not from the glow of the burning riverboat roaring behind them, nor his rain-soaked stubble, born of frantic days. Merion felt the chill climb his spine.
‘You don’t know, Tonmerion Hark?’ The Wit asked, smirking again. Merion wanted to drive his foot into his face, to see if he could boot him over the rise. He let the bobcat burn and roil inside him.
‘Spit it out, damn you,’ Merion cursed at him, and the Wit shrugged. ‘Whatever you have to say, just say it and be done with the theatrics.’
The Wit bowed sardonically. ‘As you wish, Lordling,’ he said, and then cleared his throat, as if he were a bard in a tavern.
‘“I asked again. And again he told me it was impossible. He ignored my pleas, my reminders of our bargain. His face was like stone. I see why Merion fears him the way he does. I saw then why they call him the Bulldog.”’ Here the Wit paused, flicking his eyes up to linger on Rhin and Merion.
‘Keep reading,’ Merion ground the words out. His aunt reached up to touch his hand, and he seized it.
‘“I told him of Sift and the Black Fingers’ visit, told him of the White Wit and who he’d threatened. His fucking son, I told him. And if that wasn’t a reason to pay them, I didn’t know what was.” It really does have a ring to it, doesn’t it?’ the Wit snapped his fingers.
Rhin felt Merion’s eyes upon him. He spat in the mud and pointed his sword at the Wit once more. ‘How dare you!’ the faerie growled, his voice like a landslide of gravel.
‘“I raged for days. He is a stubborn bastard, and I knew there was only one way to make him listen to me. It didn’t take much to get into his study … nor to find that little pistol of his. When I took the gun from the closet, I only meant to threaten him. To see how he liked it …” And here it becomes a little scribbly, Merion, my apologies. “It was bastard of a thing. Like lugging a cannon, but the magick held strong. When I met him on the stairs as I had the day before, he seemed surprised. I had never seen him surprised before.’
‘You shut your mouth, Wit! Stop reading these lies!’ Rhin blurted. ‘He’s taken bits out!’
‘You keep bloody reading,’ Merion hissed, hands shaking. His eyes were locked on Rhin, and the faerie could feel the heat of them.
The Wit tugged the top of his hood. ‘Be delighted to. “I held the gun and pointed it up at him, but he just crossed his arms. ‘Don’t be a damn fool,’ he told me, as if he were scolding Merion. ‘Give me the Hoard,’ I demanded of him, but he shook his head. ‘It’s spent, don’t you understand? Put to good use. Bought half the tribes in Indus with that little bounty.’ I couldn’t breathe. The bastard had spent it all, after agreeing to take his cut for sanctuary, and to keep the rest safe, until I was. Until Merion was older.”’
Here the Wit began to pace forward, first towards Rhin, then at Merion. His voice dropped, and his tone was sickeningly earnest. He even had the gall to wave a hand around in the air as he read, as if he were flicking each syllable at them. Merion felt sick to his core. He didn’t know which faerie he wanted to kill first, but he knew it had to happen. His fists clenched so hard that his knuckles popped. He felt the blood rushing to his head. The Wit read on.
‘“I couldn’t believe it, but I did all the same. I didn’t remind him of our agreement. I didn’t shout and curse. I didn’t march away and hand myself in. I just gripped that trigger with my hand and I pul—”’
‘Now Lurker!’ Rhin bellowed, cutting right through Finrig’s performance. As he shouted, he pulsed with a blinding blue light. It was so bright, Merion had to cover his eyes, and reeled backwards. Before he could cry out, the gunshot rang out through the roar of rain and shouting faeries. When he took his hands away, he saw the Wit.
There was a vacant look in his eye, almost as though he were in the midst of deciding whether he had left the stove on. He looked up, shaking, and raised his arms. Merion blinked, and saw two halves of the diary, one in each hand, and strangely far apart. There was a hole where its spine had been, and when Merion looked closer, there was a hole where Finrig’s should have been too. He was staring right through him at the mud beyond. Lightning flickered, and drew the edges of the oozing hole. The Wit was being held together by his armour alone.
If he’d had lungs to speak with, he might have finished his sentence, not that Merion needed to hear it. He already knew the truth, but sadly, it would have to wait. The Fingers had realised why their leader had stopped talking, and why his armour smoked and glowed. As one, they began to hiss, rattling almost like snakes. They crept forward, low and dangerous, wings flickering and weapons held low.
‘Enough,’ Merion grunted, as the pure rage swept through every orifice of his body, chased by the ferocious blood. He’d had enough, he said again, in his spinning head. He didn’t want to be lied to any more. He didn’t want to deal with traitorous lords any more. He didn’t want to see faeries any more. He just wanted to go home.
Through bloodshot eyes, Merion watched himself go to work. Punching, kicking, even biting at one point, whirling, and screaming … the young Hark let the rage drive him. That rage that had been building up ever since he had stared down at the gun in the impossibly clean tray. It had been building with every twist and turn he had taken through this cursed town and its desert. With every lie, and disappointment, it had grown. It surged through him now in equal parts to the rushing blood, and together they boiled into something altogether monstrous—monstrous, and magickal.
Limbs were torn from sockets, swords and spears knocked aside and shattered. The cuts and gashes did not matter. Bodies flew through the air, only to be grabbed and hurled into the mud, stamped until the armour bent inwards. The spears bothered him not. Rhin was in trouble, a blade at his throat and a snarling face in his. One kick saw him saved. Then his fingers found the rock, and the others’ black steel did not matter under the furious boy’s raging swings.
After the rock in his hand had taken the head clean off the last Finger, he collapsed into a breathless heap. His chest pulsated like the bellows of a forge, and anybody looking would forever remember the sparks of electricity flitting through his matted, drenched hair. He was completely covered in mud, he and Rhin. The only surviving faerie breathed in ragged gasps, staring around him at the battered and crushed bodies of the thirteen finest mercenaries known to the Buried Kingdoms, despatched by a thirteen-year-old boy.
Merion wasn’t done yet. With a half-roar, half-sob, the boy rolled over and brought the rock down, aiming for Rhin’s head. The faerie rolled to the side, just in time to see the rock plunge into the muddy earth with a bang. ‘Merion, stop!’ he gasped, suddenly wordless after all these months of practising under the bed, of pinching him
self so he wouldn’t scream though the middle of the night. ‘I never meant …’ he croaked.
‘YOU DON’T GET TO SPEAK!’ Merion bellowed raggedly. His words made him pant. ‘You don’t get to talk to me … ever … again.’
‘I would hold your tongue, if I were you, faerie,’ Lilain muttered from behind them. She had only just shaken the carnage out of her swollen eyes. Now they shot daggers at Rhin.
Rhin bowed his head, and walked away, to stand at the edge of the carnage, and hold his head in his rain-soaked hands.
‘Maker’s balls, Merion!’ Lurker shouted as he ran up, coming to a sloshing halt just short of a faerie corpse. Its head was either buried in the mud, or it was missing altogether. Lurker looked up at the boy with a desperate look in his rain-soaked eyes, as if he were trying to find a sliver of humanity in the boy’s face, a trace of sanity in those mad eyes.
It was a long while before the boy found himself. Nobody said a thing. Not a sound, save for the tumbling sky and the wet slapping of the hammering rain. Slowly, the human in Merion fought back against the animal. With it his face took on a grave pallor, so Lurker took off his hat and held it over the boy’s head, to shield him from the rain.
‘How on earth, boy?’ Lurker asked, words failing him.
‘My blood boiled,’ Merion whispered, before reaching up to take the hat. He pulled it down, over his soaking hair. His eyes were closed and his lips trembling.
With equally unsteady legs, he forced himself to his feet and stumbled a few steps down the slope. Lurker reached for him, but Merion waved him away, grunting. Without another sound, he stomped his way towards the inferno that was the riverboat. The shell of the vessel was a skeleton, engulfed in flames. Flames ruled the riverboat, bursting in great towers of red and swirling orange from its windows and funnels. The firestorm paid the rain no mind. It hissed and steamed, but the storm was no match for it. On and on it stubbornly raged, so hot it could have blistered skin at a hundred paces.