The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

  Yara fixed him with a look. ‘And what would you say?’

  He shook his head, suppressing a shiver as the memory of the Serpeds’ scarlet brandy scuttled through his mind. ‘I haven’t had the best experience with them, let’s say that.’

  The circus master chuckled, and resumed her pacing. ‘I will need you, on the night,’ she said.

  The young Hark sat straighter. ‘You will? To do what?’

  ‘I am not sure yet, but I think you should be part of it. You are our only leech after all,’ Yara mused. ‘Perhaps I misjudged. We have never had guests throw themselves so heartily into circus life. I know I have already told you this, but it is a pleasure to have you here. It will be an honour to have you perform if we can arrange it. And when it is all done, and the applause has died, we shall find you your ship. We will talk again soon.’

  Merion stood up to thank her, extending a hand, but Yara slapped it aside and wrapped him in a sharp embrace. The woman was nothing but bone and hard muscle. The boy flinched at first, but then found himself relaxing for a change, letting Yara squeeze him tight. Merion felt the worry lift and the anxiousness wither. ‘Soon,’ he said.

  Yara let him go and nodded. As Merion turned to leave, his arm caught his jacket and the newspaper fell to the floor. He quickly bent down to snatch it up, thanking the Almighty he had folded it so only the back pages were showing. As he looked up to avoid hitting his head on the arm of the chair as he rose, he glimpsed something on the writing desk next to it. Just a snatch of something between a sheaf of powder-blue paper. A coat of arms, perhaps? A sigil? Something with an eagle …

  ‘Reading on the job, were we, Master Harlequin?’ Yara inquired, interrupting his staring. Merion abruptly realised he had frozen, staring at the desk. He pasted a smile onto his face. He could not tell if her haughty look was in jest or not.

  ‘An old man left it behind. I was going to give it back to him.’

  Yara hummed, then nodded.

  ‘It looks like more than one thing has been lost tonight, then,’ she replied sombrely, running a hand through her russet hair. Merion nodded, wondering what had become of Mr Jarlbor and his missing daughter.

  It was then that she reached out for the newspaper. Merion had to give it to her, and though his hand wanted to recoil, he could not, and he concentrated so very hard on not letting up his polite smile.

  With narrowed eyes she examined the paper, unfolding it so she could take in the Empire’s headlines. Merion ached to snatch it away from her, but it would have spelled guilt, clear and cold, so he held back, and listened to her mouth the words: war, reputation, treachery.

  ‘Has anybody ever told you your country is mad?’

  ‘Many times, Ms Mizar,’ he replied cheerily, and then feigned fighting back a yawn. ‘Well I better be turning in. I’m exhausted.’ After a great show of folding and rustling, Merion retrieved his newspaper and moved towards the door.

  Yara waved another blade at him, making it flash in the lantern light as she went back to strutting back and forth. ‘That we all are, Master Harlequin. You shall be boarding your ship back to your Empire soon, have no fear,’ she said, smiling.

  Merion smiled right back, bowed, and took his leave.

  Walking back through the tents and wagons, the young Hark’s mind churned like a troubled machine, trying to make sense of what had just happened. There was one wrench in his gears that he could not shake loose. He had seen the flick of her eyes, just before he turned away—looking at the desk, to see what she had left there. He had also seen the imperceptible twitch in her mouth as she read the name: Tonmerion. He knew where it lay on the newspaper’s page, next to the words ‘traitorous son’. And that was exactly how he knew there was something deeply wrong about all of this. It all boiled down to one, bone-dry fact:

  She had not uttered a thing about it.

  Chapter XVI

  BLOOD AND BLASPHEMY

  10th July, 1867

  It must have been the only tree for miles. And what a gnarled thing it was, bent double like an old hag, gnawed and sucked dry by the hot wind. It had precious little shade to offer, but in the noon sun, you took what you were given.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Calidae muttered, pointedly, busy drawing idle circles in the dust between the scraggly plants.

  ‘Anything,’ came the gruff reply.

  Calidae shielded her eyes with a hand and stared again at the man-shaped lump lying on a low rise several hundred yards away. It had not moved in half an hour. It must have been freshly dead, or on the doorstep, for the vultures were only now beginning to circle, high up in the crystal blue, mere flecks against the open sky.

  ‘Well I’m bored,’ she huffed. ‘He’s obviously dead. Whoever’s shown him his end is long gone. Let’s just go around.’

  Gavisham adjusted himself, his long grey coat rasping against the dry tree bark. ‘Then we’d have them at our backs.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever’s put him there. Whoever saw us coming and laid out a trap.’

  ‘What trap? What could we want with a dead body?’

  ‘Boots, a belt, coin, bullets … a hundred different things. You’d be surprised what people see as treasure in places like this,’ Gavisham lectured.

  The tall man was holding a coiled hand to his eye, as if making a telescope out of skin and bone. Calidae highly suspected he was already rushing something, eagle perhaps. Suffrous had told her all about it.

  Irritatingly, Gavisham’s guard had not dropped one iota in the last few days. They had walked and walked, and then walked some more, and not a single time had his tongue slipped to blood or wagged of his employment. No more was mentioned of the boy, either. For that at least, Calidae was glad. She did not trust herself to hide her quietly bubbling rage, ever-constant since their last talk.

  Calidae shrugged. ‘I’m sure you could handle them.’

  ‘The secret to winning fights, Asha, is knowing who’ll be swinging the punches, and how hard.’

  There was another huff, and she went back to drawing spirals in the sand.

  ‘Fine,’ he announced, pushing himself from the tree. ‘But you stay back, behind me. If anything happens,’ he paused to draw his hunting knife, ‘then use this. You know how?’

  ‘Sharp end goes in first,’ she hissed as she took it.

  Gavisham winked. ‘More or less. Quietly now.’

  Together they stalked across the sun-burnt prairie. Calidae looked about with wary eyes. Gavisham’s suspicion was contagious. But the wilds were empty, as usual.

  The prairie was slowly winning the fight against the dust. Hardy plants, dark green or brown, clutched onto what life they could steal from the sand. They buzzed with crickets and lazy flies. The air shivered around them as the heat bounced from the baked earth.

  In the distance a wall of red-brown rock stretched from north to south, where the desert paths led to gulches and old river canyons—and shade, most importantly. Atop their dusty ridges, cacti and more trees poked at the sky, just jagged spines at that distance.

  There was the faintest breeze washing over the prairie, and it brought them the stink of recent death: the odour of warm meat, the stench of soiled britches, the tang of copper. Calidae wrinkled her nose and kept her eyes on the body.

  It did not take long to reach it. Gavisham approached slowly, looking at anything but the dead man, sprawled like a mangled spider in the dust, glaring sightlessly at the sky, his face frozen in outrageous shock. Calidae let Gavisham do the looking and eyed the corpse. He had been shot in the chest, twice in the heart it seemed, so that the blood had bubbled out and stained the sand a dark red in a gruesome circle around him. Calidae, despite herself, noticed her stomach gurgling quietly. A bit more saliva boldly attempted to encroach on her dry mouth. It had been weeks now since she had put the red in her belly, and she ached for it.

  Gavisham had been right. The man had a pair of good boots, and a wide belt notched with copper-clad bullets, shinin
g gold in the sun. There was no gun at his hip, only an empty holster. Calidae began to creep forward.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Gavisham whispered at her, and she begrudgingly did as she was told, hunkering down.

  It was he who crept forwards to nudge the corpse. It was simply a formality at this point; the man was clearly as dead as a gravestone. The stiff body creaked as he kicked it with a boot.

  Calidae was about to tell him exactly how right she was when there came a whooping and a hollering from somewhere nearby. Four trapdoors burst out of the sand, and four dusty men rose up out of the haze, rifles in hand and grins on their faces. They were a makeshift lot: their outfits cobbled together from whatever they could steal or sew together. Their beards were wild and speckled with sand, their hair long and greasy. Sweat covered their foreheads and darkened the seams of their rumpled shirts. It must have been hot down in their traps.

  ‘The Sand Rabbits strike again!’ one cackled. He was clearly the ringleader, Calidae thought, by the amount of pilfered jewellery that lined his wrists and neck.

  ‘Hands to the sky!’ yelled another, a scrawny, jittery fellow with a rifle held at his hip.

  Gavisham and Calidae slowly did as they were told.

  ‘My my, what have we here?’ said their leader with a gap-toothed grin, looking at Calidae. ‘Better drop the knife there, girl. Don’t want no trouble, do you?’

  Gavisham slowly doffed his hat. ‘Not in the slightest, my friends. And that’s why we’ll be on our way,’ he said, matching the man’s smile.

  ‘Not so fast,’ the scrawny fellow piped up again, marching up and out of his shallow hole. He waved his rifle around in worrying arcs. ‘Empty your pockets.’

  ‘Shake ‘em down, Dallow,’ murmured the others.

  Gavisham was a sneaky one, that was for sure. Calidae had been distracted by the body, of course, but even out of the corner of her eye, she had not once seen him lift his hands to his mouth. But somehow, he was already rushing. And rushing something brutal to boot.

  His fist was a blur as it caught the eager Dallow on the chin with a horrendous crack, sending him sprawling. In the same move, the fist hammered down on the rifle and splintered the barrel from the wooden handle.

  The rest of the Sand Rabbits were a little shocked to tell the truth, frozen in confusion. But not for long. Rifles were quickly raised and triggers fondled.

  Calidae hit the ground hard as the first shots rang out—sharp thunder without the clouds. A puff of sand exploded near her face and she flattened herself. She saw Gavisham in her peripheral vision, darting to and fro, his limbs a blur. One cry rang out, then another, and then finally, after several frantic shots, there was a crunch, and a muffled sob.

  Calidae pushed herself up to her knees. Gavisham was standing over the bandit leader, who had a face like a mask of blood. He was whimpering, holding his hands up over his face. Gavisham was brandishing a fist, painted red.

  The other three bandits were out cold, noses broken, bruises already flourishing. Calidae went to each one, kicking them hard in the stomach or the head, before joining Gavisham.

  ‘I think they were already down, Asha,’ he muttered, as they watched the fourth bandit writhe and wheeze in front of them.

  ‘Not going to let you have all the fun though, am I?’ she said, raising her knife. But she found Gavisham’s hand grasping hers. He shook his head.

  Calidae narrowed her eyes at him, giving him a cold stare. ‘What, you’re just going to leave them alive, so they can rob the next traveller that comes along?’

  ‘No,’ Gavisham replied, much to the whimpering of the bandit at their feet. ‘But you aren’t the one to do it, girl. Give me the knife and get walking. I’ll catch you up.’

  Calidae wondered if she should protest, and whether that would change anything. She saw the stubborn glint in Gavisham’s mismatched eyes and shrugged. ‘Fine,’ she said, handing over the knife, blade first.

  Obediently, she began to walk, stomping her way back down the rise, She aimed towards the cliffs in the distance. The sounds of quiet murder joined the buzzing and rustling of the desert. The grating of a knife against bone. A muffled moan of pain escaping through tough fingers. The wiping of a blade on a dusty shirt or two.

  ‘I could have done it,’ Calidae muttered to herself. More than that, she had wanted to. Practice, was how she saw it, as callous as that was. A rehearsal for when the knife would truly be needed, sliding between Merion’s ribs. Soon enough, she told herself, secretly hoping for more bandits. Soon enough.

  A sweaty strand of hair pestered her eyes, and as she moved to wipe it away, she noticed the smear of blood on her wrist, from where Gavisham’s hand had stayed hers. Calidae slowly lifted it to her mouth, keeping her movements slow and steady. Her heart thrummed. Her mouth salivated. She clamped her wrist to her mouth and sucked hard, tasting the tang of the warm blood in her mouth. She felt the shiver in her mouth as it seeped into her gums and tongue. She felt the warmth begin to spread. Calidae wanted to stop in her tracks and savour it. But she heard footsteps behind her. She licked the rest of the blood away and contented herself with swirling it around her mouth.

  ‘Look what I found,’ Gavisham said when he had caught her up. He waved a folded piece of paper in his hands.

  Calidae snatched it from him and picked at the folds. It was a leaflet. ‘Cirque Kadabra,’ she read aloud.

  ‘One of them had it in his pocket. It’s heading east, like we are.’

  ‘Surely we don’t have time for circuses,’ Calidae replied, though she could not deny a little curiosity. She was only fourteen, after all. An envenomed, vengeful fourteen-year-old, of course, but that was all the more reason for it: to remind herself she was still a girl, to hold onto a little of the innocence.

  Gavisham tapped his nose again. ‘I have a feeling they might be able to help,’ he said.

  ‘And if your feeling is wrong?’ Calidae challenged.

  There came a chuckle. ‘I’m never wrong, my dear Asha.’

  *

  That night the infrequent rain came to break the monotony of the heat. They cowered in a shallow cave, deep in one of the wind-cut canyons the cliffs had to offer.

  Calidae watched the rain patter on the dust, churning it to mud, and let the drumming distract her from her rambling thoughts. There was something calming about rain, something about the way it frantically hurled itself to the earth with neither a care nor a trouble, which did wonders for distraction.

  No matter how she tried, she could not keep Merion out of her head. Every single encounter, every moment sitting in the lounge, or at the dinner table, everything her father had ever told her to do or say to him—she played it all over in her head, like an ever-changing book without an ending.

  Even though she had nurtured her hatred for weeks now, tonight she was bored of it, tired of being consumed by it. She wanted to let it rest for a moment. Merion was still out of her reach, and it would do no good burning her mind to ashes with anger while she had no choice about the matter. His time would come. For the moment, she could afford to rest.

  Gavisham was cooking up the last of their food—a meagre stew of bacon and pickled things that Calidae had no hope of recognising. The smell was barely appetising, but her stomach strongly disagreed. When a steaming bowl was finally passed to her, she wolfed it down.

  ‘Got quite the appetite tonight, girl,’ Gavisham commented.

  ‘Busy day, killing bandits,’ she smirked wryly.

  Gavisham had to nod at that. He sipped his stew slowly and watched the rain.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ she asked, after a while.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  The man took a moment to chew. ‘We’re on the border of Nebraskar, a day’s walk from Orling. We’ll stop there.’ Gavisham held a cup out in the rain to collect some water. ‘There’ll be a wiregram waiting for me,’ he said.

  There was a pause as Calidae thought. ‘
Don’t you ever get tired of doing what you’re told?’

  Gavisham took a minute to pick something out of his teeth. ‘It’s all I’ve ever done.’

  ‘The masters?’

  Gavisham nodded. ‘Got a sharp memory, Asha,’ he said. ‘Masters, generals, majors, warlords, lords, an emperor here and there if you believe it—all my life I’ve been ordered about.’

  ‘And you like it?’

  Grinning, he replied. ‘Not that I ever had a choice, but yes, there are perks to being the right hand to the mighty of Europe. And of course, every now and again I get a job that means a little extra to me. Like this one. Oh, the secrets I could tell you, yarns I could weave!’ He winked.

  Calidae shrugged. ‘Then tell me. Who am I going to blab to?’

  ‘I know what they say about campfires and stories, girl, but you know my rules.’

  ‘Tell me anything then. Tell me something about Suffrous.’

  Gavisham poked the fire for a bit, trying to dig up something he was comfortable repeating. ‘Suffrous,’ he mused. ‘He and I used to work alongside each other, long ago. Did you know that?’

  ‘He never spoke much about his past.’

  ‘It’s rare for brothers to work together, almost unheard of. We were working for some Emerald Lord or another. A man with some interest in trade routes, as it happened. We were barely a year out of our training, still green as spring wood, but eager to please. This lord, one of the Cardinal party, if I remember rightly, wanted to put a stop to the Dutch using the ports in Kernow. They were embarrassing him, you see, sailing in before dawn and beating his ships to the mark. By the time his ships arrived, the prices had either flattened out or gone too high, and he was shedding coin faster than a rich man in a back alley.’

  Calidae was not sure she understood the metaphor, but she nodded anyway. The story was like the rain, distracting, and she liked it.

  ‘So this lord had us down on the sea-battered cliffs, watching for ships. The plan was to lure them in and break them up on the rocks, pretending we were just simple wreckers. It was our job to see that the captain and officers never made it to shore alive.’