by Ben Galley
The storm burst from him like a crashing wave, plunging into the first rows of the audience. Screams replaced the cheering. Scrabbling feet and whirling arms were now the applause. Merion felt his fingers spreading, leading the chaos to the edges of the crowd. Sparks found the guns of the guards as they rushed forwards to put an end to the boy. Powder exploded in its casings. Barrels split and smoke billowed.
Merion watched aghast as his stolen magick surged through the panicked crowd, searing cloth, blackening benches, cutting scorched paths across bare skin, shaking others to the ground to be trampled, left unconscious or worse. All he could do was strain against his puppet-strings and curse the world at the top of his lungs. He was the perfect weapon, the perfect distraction. A perfect fool. Never had perfection been so sour. He was nought but a conduit, his magick twinned with that of the man’s, burning fierce with the heat of the Bloodmoon.
Merion dug for every scrap of power he had, and for a fleeting moment, the lightning recoiled. He felt the man behind him redouble his efforts, and more magick surged through him. Merion crumpled to his knees under the pressure.
Yara was on stage now, standing tall amidst the chaos, lightning washing around her, inches close, carving her namesake. Merion managed to wrench his head to look at her. She wore a despicable smile as she slipped a hand inside her sleeve. A black knife, silver-edged, crept forth. Her eyes turned to Lincoln, standing tall in the chaotic benches, bellowing commands. Others were attempting to fling themselves over him and his queen.
Another cry ripped from Merion’s throat, like the strangled shriek of a dying witch. There, with the stage-wood crushing against his knees, crippled with panic and magick, he felt a dark undercurrent in the Bloodmoon’s power, like a shadow to its light. His blood was coming to the boil. Sometimes you need it. They were Lurker’s words, yelling in his head. He felt as though he were back in Fell Falls, surrounded by faeries, raining carnage.
Merion quivered violently as each wave of magick surged through him, again and again, out into the crowd. He pushed between them, shoving them aside with his anger and focusing every ounce of his will on simply moving his arm. It was a movement so simple, and yet so impossibly hard. Inch by crucifying inch he shifted, head pounding, teeth screaming in their sockets, until he reached out for Yara. She stood poised to throw, choosing her moment amidst the screaming, hidden behind the flash and crackle. Merion clawed at her, willing his magick to skip along his forearm and burn her to ash.
It was then that a shot rang out, strangely clear against the tumult and bellowing. Every soul there flinched: Yara, the audience, even Merion, momentarily released. He threw a look behind him, and saw the man clutching his shoulder, a dark grimace plastered across his face.
‘Tonmerion!’ a voice screeched over the tumult. His heart could have ruptured with joy. It was his aunt, standing at the edge of the blackened benches, one eye closed and the Mistress held out straight. Lurker was by her side, brandishing an axe, and so was Rhin, his blades at the ready.
Merion threw his hand out madly, reaching for the circus master as the knife slipped from her fingers. Lightning slammed into her midriff, sending her spinning from the stage. The boy watched the blade in horror as it spun through the smoke-choked air, aiming straight for the tall pillar of authority standing in the centre of the frenzied audience. There was nothing to do but clench his teeth and wait for a deeper breed of scream.
Thunk! Merion’s magick had done its work. The black blade found no flesh or skin, just the wooden bench a whisker from Lincoln’s heart.
Before the boy threw himself from the stage, he caught the Red King’s gaze, staring back at him through the dying light. His face was an impassive mask of realisation. Merion tried to offer some sort of apologetic glance before he met the dust with a groan.
Lilain was busy firing through the stage struts at anything that moved. She had a fearsome look on her. Lurker was hacking a path through the upturned benches with his axe. The audience streamed like a violent river through the gaps he cut, out into the crimson-painted night. Smoke blinded them. Fires raged. And in amongst it all, Merion, his eyes furious and his fists clenched white, strode backstage.
*
‘Where’s Merion?’ Rhin yelled. He was half-visible, guarding their back as they shepherded the choking, hollering audience clear of the tent. A faerie in amongst them was the least of the wonders they’d seen that night. Cries of ‘Assassin!’ spilled from more than a few lips.
‘He was …’ Lurker turned and spat. ‘He’s gone!’
Lilain reloaded the Mistress, sliding bullet after bullet into her nine chambers. ‘He has business to take care of, as we all do. I trust him,’ she hissed, turning to point into the shadows behind the stage. Sheen Dolmer was creeping from the main tent. Lurker started forward, growling, almost running his tongue along the axe in anticipation, but Lilain put a hand against his chest. ‘Together.’
‘Mhm,’ rumbled the prospector, a fraction disappointed.
With Rhin chasing at their heels, they strode after the scarpering circus folk. The assassination attempt had crumbled like a besieged castle, and now their choice was to flee or to find irons around their wrists, and guns in their faces.
‘All this time, they were after Lincoln!’ Rhin yelled.
Lurker might have cursed, though it sounded more like a wild growl. He strangled the axe-haft.
‘Somebody wants a war!’ replied Lilain.
The circus folk were scattering in all directions. Some fought on, unleashing their shades on the guards and braver men in Lincoln’s entourage. Devan waded through them as if they were wheat, snapping necks and breaking guns. Bullet after bullet punctured him, and yet he still kept coming. Jackabo was raining fire on the big tent, hoping to catch the stragglers in the blaze. Rasfel cartwheeled between the shadows, strangling any her fingers found, her painted face snarling in the firelight. They went about their work with devilish intention, as if a bloodlust drove them. Cabele was there too, full of wild fury, kneeling beside the fallen, her lips daubed red. Lurker put a stop to that immediately, bringing the blunt edge of the axe down on her skull. The acrobat did not get up again.
‘There!’ Lilain cried, spying Sheen grappling with a portly man who was wrapped up in a suit, ruby-faced and far out of his depth. Before she could squeeze off a shot, Sheen drove a knife into the man’s ribs. He was running before his victim hit the dust.
‘Sheen!’ she bellowed over the roar of fighting. She held the Mistress straight and level, its muzzle still smoking. ‘I will shoot!’
The shout stopped him in his tracks. He turned slowly, hands already creeping high. He smiled through his black hair, his eyes dark with bruises, forehead swollen, and his teeth glinting in the light of the moon and the fire. He had the same bloodlust in his gaze as the others.
‘You won’t do it, Lil,’ he sneered. His feet began to creep backward. ‘I know you better than that.’
Lilain bared her teeth. ‘Call me that again,’ she warned him.
Sheen shook his head. ‘You won’t do it. You’re not a killer, Lil.’
The Mistress spoke, quick and harsh, a crack that sent Sheen staggering. His smile was turned upside down, and he stared in amazement at the blood that now oozed from the new hole in his chest. ‘You bitch,’ he snarled. ‘You fu—’
An axe put an end to that sentence, spinning out of the darkness and delving deep into his sternum. Sheen whined and then slumped into a heap.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that since I first met him,’ Lurker muttered, extending a hand to Lilain ‘Together,’ he said.
‘Together indeed,’ Lilain nodded as she grasped his rough hand.
*
‘Stop!’ Merion hollered again. The man was slipperier than a trout, weaving through the circus like a needle through fabric. Merion’s legs screamed at him, but he ignored them. Through a narrow gap between two tents he hurtled, nipping at the man’s heels until Yara’s tent loomed out of the darknes
s. The man darted inwards. Merion paused at the entrance, fists crackling with electricity. He had learnt that lesson another day. Slowly, and carefully, he stepped inside. The man was simply standing there, adjusting his scarlet tie. He flashed a smile, a gold tooth pinching the lantern-light.
‘Master Tonmerion Hark, I presume,’ he uttered, painfully calm.
Merion worked to catch his breath as he looked the man up and down. He certainly looked like Suffrous—because of the eyes, of course, blue and green, and odd. He wore a long dark coat, a bowler hat, a red tie, and he even owned similar boots, thick with the dust of several hundred miles. He had the same confident, smug air. Merion was facing a ghost or a twin. He didn’t particularly favour either.
‘And who might you be? I haven’t had the displeasure,’ spat the boy, venomously. His anger was still raw; the images of lightning coursing through the audience still fresh as wounds.
‘Arrid Gavisham.’ The man bowed. ‘You knew my brother, I believe.’
‘And here was I thinking he was one of a kind.’
‘Unfortunately for you, he wasn’t.’
Merion felt his face flush red. ‘I take it you’re here to finish the work he started then.’
Gavisham picked his nails. ‘Dizali was wrong about you. You aren’t as dull as he painted you to be.’
‘I seem to make a habit out of surprising people.’
‘Hmm, well,’ Gavisham sighed. He reached into his coat. Merion flinched, sparks crackling. Gavisham held up a cautionary hand. ‘Tell you what. Let’s make this fun, shall we? You choose three. I choose three. Best man or boy wins. Winner gets to live. Like old times.’
Merion was suspicious. ‘And why would you do that?’
There was a smile painted on the man’s thin lips. ‘Even though I’m quite keen on rippin’ your spine from your back and wearing it as a belt, I’ve never been one for unfair fights. We leeches are gentlemen, to a fashion. And it’s a fine night for a duel.’
Merion scrunched up his face, trying to unravel the trick. Merion was firmly on the back foot, but he had never been one for backing down, even when it concerned his life. He knew the risks, but he spat in their faces.
Gavisham opened his coat and bared his vials. There must have been forty of them gathered there, in little pockets. Merion narrowed his hard eyes. There were no bloodglyphs, no labels. Just colours. Suppressing the furious quiver in his hands, the boy jabbed a finger at three crimson shades. Gavisham made a mean show of tutting before tossing them over. Merion caught them deftly and held them close.
Arrid took his time picking his. One ochre-brown. One dark red. The other a sickly yellow. Merion racked his brains for what they might be.
Gavisham smiled and carefully folded his coat over a chair. He clicked his neck from side to side and held his vials by his sides, mismatched eyes wintry and unflinching. ‘After you,’ he hissed.
Merion took the same stance, ten feet away at the most. His fingers itched, sweaty against the glass of the shades. ‘I insist.’
For a painful moment they stared at each other as the seconds slid past, full of the sounds of fighting. They watched for a flinch, a twitch, a blink, anything that might mean it was time to rush.
Merion had never though highly of fighting dirty. It wasn’t in a gentleman’s nature, but then again, neither was swilling blood or spinning magick. His rage burnt all etiquette to dust.
As Gavisham threw his hand up to his mouth, so fast it seemed he would punch himself in the face, Merion clawed at the air. The eel blood still clung on within him, and he hurled all he had left. Gavisham was thrown to his back, chest smoking. He too was still rushing eel, and only that had saved him.
Down the warm blood went. Merion gulped it as fast as he could, trying to force it into his skull. Gavisham was getting to his feet. The red tie was now black, his shirt charred and ripped. The expression on his face was one of absolute murder.
The blood sprang from his gut, and Merion began to wind up his power. He prayed it was a shade he could stomach. But he wasn’t dead or dying, not yet at least. The magick thrust itself into his brain as Gavisham began to march towards him, a rhino on the charge, his face like Armageddon.
Merion backed away, grappling for space as the magick went to work in his mouth. His teeth were tingling, his throat tightening. His bubbling anger surged with the magick.
Gavisham paused to bare his teeth in a wicked snarl. His knuckles white, he clenched his muscles. Spines, black and needle-like, sprang from his arms and shoulders. His shirt was shredded in an instant, revealing puckered skin and traumatised tattoos of mermaids and ships long-faded. There might have been a laugh in his grunting.
It was all Merion could do not to freeze. There was only one thing for it: to see what luck had bestowed upon him. He took a sharp breath as Gavisham swung at him. He could feel it now; the call of the shade, a powerful urge to spit at the man. Not breathe fire, not fling electricity, not swing a handful of claws, but spit. The boy knew better than to fight it.
Black ink spewed from his lips, dark as a winter’s midnight. It caught Gavisham in the face, splashing into his eyes. He roared as he thrashed his arms, desperately trying to wipe the ink from his face without skewering himself.
Merion poured insult onto inconvenience. He danced around the loathsome man, knocking over furniture and spitting ink through the whirlwind of spines. He felt the savagery deep inside him, and the Bloodmoon’s thirst, and he did not dare quench either. Boiling his blood had saved him in Fell Falls, and it would save him …
Whump!
Gavisham lashed out and cuffed him with an open hand. A couple of spines did a dance of their own, raking across Merion’s cheek as he spun to the ground. Arrogance stung him as he frantically crawled to his knees, fighting away the sparks in his eyes. He spat another black fountain over his shoulder, eliciting a cry. A boot found him and made him stagger as he fought to get to his feet. He skipped away, letting the anger burn away the pain.
‘Plucky one, ain’t you?’ Gavisham snarled, his face a mask of ink-blotches. ‘Think you’ve got it all mastered.’
‘Suffrous taught me a lot,’ Merion panted, spitting the last of his ink at the man. Despite the Bloodmoon’s power, they were rushing hard, burning through blood at incredible speed. Merion sneered through obsidian teeth. ‘In the short time I spent with him, that is.’
Gavisham wiped the ink from his face, shaking madly. The tendons in his neck stood out like cords. The spines retreated into his skin. Merion could see the blood boiling in him too, and despite the boy’s dangerous grin, beneath it he could not help but feel that the ball was very firmly in Gavisham’s court. The man knew the boy’s shades as well as his own. Merion did not know any of them.
Gavisham’s words ground between his teeth. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’m going to enjoy ripping out your spine,’ he promised, before throwing another vial to his lips, the ochre shade. Merion reached for another of his, praying it would be a match for whatever red Gavisham was putting in his belly.
Merion held strong, squeezing the power into his veins. The Bloodmoon was there, pushing it along, and in seconds he felt his limbs shiver as the magick gripped them, making him gasp. He felt himself swelling up, as if the tent was shrinking around him. He felt the pressure build, his muscles harden, and his legs creak as he stretched.
And what a match it was. Gavisham grew with him, arms widening, shoulders bulging, inch for inch. Though when Merion halted, his shirt bursting around his arms and legs, the man continued on, until his head pushed against the tent’s roof. He must have been almost nine feet tall. Perhaps it’s not a match after all.
‘Goliath spider,’ Gavisham chuckled with the deep rumbling of a storm. ‘Beats bear every time.’
Merion wasted no time gawping. He swung his arms like a windmill, making up for lack of finesse with wild ferocity. Gavisham took a slower approach, fists low, shoulders hunched like a boxer’s. He ducked a wild swing and hammered a s
wollen fist into Merion’s ribs. The boy wheezed, staggering backwards. Gavisham kept coming. Punch after punch rained down, and it was all Merion could do to bat them away. Some he fended off, others he took hard: one to the chest, another to the neck, one to the stomach. Lightning criss-crossed his eyes with every strike that touched him. Gavisham might as well have been a railwraith, Merion was that outmatched.
The young Hark grunted as another swipe sent him sprawling through a desk. Merion felt it shatter beneath his spine. Gavisham was toying with him, and it filled the boy with a fiercer sort of flame, one of desperation. With a cry, Merion drove the magick into his legs and pushed against the earth, throwing himself upwards under Gavisham’s whirling arms. Merion rammed his shoulder into the man’s midriff, arms pummelling his ribs as hard as he could manage.
Gavisham threw him aside as if he were a bag of straw. Merion ripped through the wall of the tent and out into the warmth of the chaotic evening.
As Merion fought for breath and Gavisham battled to free himself from the collapsing tent, he spared a brief moment to glare up at the moon and listen to the sounds of gunfire and screaming. The puckered face of the Bloodmoon glared right back, and through Merion’s blurred, shivering eyes, it looked like a disapproving face had been etched there. And rightfully so, he snarled at himself, anger rising through the pounding pain. His blood flared wildly in the light of the moon. He let his muscles burn with the magick.
Merion forced himself onto his side. He grasped for something, anything, to help him up. His hands found the warm metal head of a tent spike and he grasped it like a drowning man grabs a line. Dragging himself to his knees, he hauled it from the ground, veins popping up through his skin and a roar scraping from his lungs. Gavisham was almost free, ripping the tent fabric apart with his bare hands. Merion did not dawdle. He raised the tent spike high and brought it down like an axe on a stump, hoping to catch a skull or break a hand. There was a thud and a muffled bellow as the tent-spike found its mark. The collapsed tent bucked like something possessed, but Merion clung on, snarling even when Gavisham began to lash out from underneath. The boy felt one of his ribs crack, but he hefted the spike and slammed it down again, and again, and again. With every blow the roars died a little more; the punches lessened slightly. Until finally, Gavisham grew still.