The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

  As he scrabbled to his feet, he caught an odd look from Calidae. They nodded in unison, and she pushed him in front of her. Merion let the magick guide him, bending his head and back so he could charge like a battering ram through the crowds. People parted like wheat before a scythe.

  Dizali was already screaming at the guards, fending off those who had realised they had a Lord Protector in their midst. Cheers filled the air as the rumour spread. Merion could hear Dizali over the thwack of bones and flesh on his thickened skull.

  ‘Arrest those traitors!’ he screeched, as the Crucible guards ushered him inside and hauled the gates closed against the press of fawning subjects.

  Merion felt Calidae’s hands on his back, driving him faster. He grit his teeth as he pushed his legs into the ground. Spears were levelled, but a shot from the Mistress made their owners waver. With a clang and a cry, Merion met an armoured breastplate, utterly shattering it with his hardened bones before driving the man beneath against the bars of the gate. He felt his neck scream in pain, but kept pushing. The gate-bolt snapped under the force. ‘Keep going!’ Calidae yelled as Merion fought off a sickly dizziness.

  If they had thought the crowds outside impressive, the swarm of humanity that clogged the grounds of the Crucible was staggering. Another thunderclap of the Mistress elicited screams and a narrow channel through which to race, as they trailed in the wake of Dizali. He was racing straight for the gallows.

  ‘He’ll have her hanged the moment he reaches the gallows!’ shouted Merion.

  ‘This is no time for loyalty to the crown, Hark!’

  He grabbed Calidae by the arm. ‘If he hangs her, he’s won.’ She seemed to understand that at least, nodding grimly as they barged their way through the tumult and under the prison’s yawning arches.

  Every shade of the Empire had squeezed itself in to the prison’s inner courtyard, filling it to the brim: butchers, soldiers, doctors, factory workers, sailors, tinkers, lamplighters, lords, ladies, maids, and businessmen; all rubbing shoulders and jostling each other. Something seemed to have disturbed them greatly. There was a uneasy air among the shouts and cries. Whatever compassion the city once had for its fallen Queen had all but been abandoned. Cheers of, ‘Hang! Hang! Hang!’ joined the hollering of the guards still giving chase.

  Merion looked up to where the colossal gallows had stood for centuries. Two stories high, built of oak and stained a dark brown, almost black. The noose, made of a pure white rope and freshly knotted for the occasion, hung from a mighty beam. When Merion spied the figure whose neck waited in its grasp, he realised why the crowd were so edgy. Queen Victorious stood there, flanked by four enormous Crucible guards and yet still towering over them by at least a foot. Her shape was uneven under her black cloak, her strange face bared for the first time in several hundred years. She was an ashen grey, with warped features and wattles of barbel-like skin hanging from her chin. Her eyes were far too large for a human face, and glinted even in the daylight.

  Gunderton was right: she was far from human, too long a lamprey. The crowd knew it. The tail of the snake had never seen the head. Now, in the reveal, they found it repulsive. No human will suffer the rule of a monster.

  ‘Almighty…’ Merion breathed as he ran, lungs burning.

  Lord Dizali had almost reached the foot of the gallows tower and the ring of guards that stood around it. The gunshots had reached their ears, and their halberds menaced the onlookers. Merion raised the Mistress high and let her sing again. The whole of the crowd flinched, and amid the screams and confusion, Calidae and Merion slipped between the waving blades and thrust the guards aside. It was a rash move, but it worked, and together they bounded up the wooden steps of the tower, closing the gap.

  ‘Hang her!’ came the shout from above: a hoarse Dizali screeching at the top of his voice. ‘Hang her now!’

  Merion’s legs were pistons, leaving Calidae behind and powering him up the last two flights, careering around their curves like a wild beast. One, two, three more, and he burst into the sunlight.

  ‘DIZALI!’ he roared, levelling the Mistress. ‘Stop him!’ Confused by their mismatched orders, the guards grabbed their lord instead. Dizali thrashed against them. The hangman, hooded and ghoulish, stepped towards the lever. Victorious hissed, baring her filed teeth. She caught the boy in her stare and for a moment he felt as though he was wading through treacle.

  ‘Hang her! Hang her!’ came the roar from below as they spied their Lord Protector. The crowd had come to see a hanging and they would get one, gunshots and madness be damned.

  Dizali extricated himself from the guards, pushing them at the boy instead. As he flung himself wildly at the trapdoor’s lever, Merion flew too.

  There was an audible crack as the lever snapped in two under their weight. Every scrap of air was driven from Merion’s lungs as he landed and rolled, entangled with Dizali.

  Somewhere in the confusion, just before he felt the tarred wood of the gallows disappear beneath him, and empty space reach up to drag him down, he heard the tell-tale creak of a trapdoor, and the snap of a rope coming taut.

  *

  Run. Climb. Dash. Rhin’s muscles had turned to acid. Reopened wounds leaked blood on the stone. Lights hovered at the edges of his vision. And still Sift and her faeries gave chase.

  Fading in and out of visibility, he had led them a frantic path through the legs of the swollen crowds, ducking coat-tails as he rushed headlong for the monstrous building the humans called the Crucible. Its sheer sides may have offered no purchase for its builders, but there was plenty for faerie fingers, no matter how weak and bruised.

  Hand over hand and using his wings to push, he climbed until he found a barred window, then threw himself into the stinking innards of the prison. A half-dead inmate recoiled as Rhin landed on his back and used him as a springboard to fly through the bars of the door. The stench of dung, sweat and centuries of fear was dizzying. He heard a yelp behind him as the prisoner watched a dozen more faeries dash through his cell. Perhaps he thought himself mad.

  A spiral staircase took Rhin upwards; its steps worn by countless boots and stained by dubious splashes. Flashes of Shanarh’s prisons haunted him as he bounded up each step. The memories drove him forwards, even though his wings now burnt with effort.

  He felt a breeze on his sweat-drenched skin, and chased its summer scent and the roars of cheering it carried. Then, another seemingly endless staircase, another corridor of cells, and he was racing through the legs of prison guards gawping over mighty crenellations at the spectacle in the courtyard.

  A gunshot from below interrupted their fun, sparking them into action. A chainmail-clad leg caught Rhin off-guard and he was sent stumbling. Sift was barely a yard behind now, the gap between them a battle between rage and determination. Rhin threw himself upwards with a powerful burst of his wings and ran along the wall, skipping over the heads of the rushing guards as they clamoured to get below.

  Battlements flashed by as he took yet another set of stairs, breaking out into the open air of the Crucible’s highest reaches. With a mighty bound, he was scampering over the weathered slates, thanking the roots it had not rained that day. (London, for once, was intent on staying dry.) He was almost knocked flat as he faced into the breeze. He bared his teeth, running through his improvised plan.

  All roofs must come to an end, and Rhin soon found the edge of the Crucible’s. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the slates and stood at the precipice, gazing down at the mighty gallows and the sea of bellowing humans.

  ‘End of the road, Rehn’ar,’ Sift purred, coming to rest a few feet behind him. ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’

  Caol Cullog and five Coil Guards stood at her back, swords drawn, lungs heaving. Although exhausted and bloodless, he had still given them a run for their coin.

  ‘It would appear so,’ he said without turning, eyes locked on the commotion at the gallows below him. He held his knife low, back-handed.

&nbs
p; Rhin swivelled to face her: the embodiment of all he feared and hated in the world. With the angle of the slate, she towered over him more than usual. There was a pleased glow in her golden eyes. She jabbed her sword at him. ‘This is the last time I will chase you down.’

  Rhin laughed at that; long and hard, until his lungs were empty and the Fae Queen was forced to take a step forward. She set her blade beneath his chin; only then did he let his amusement die. He stared at her along the black metal, etched with silver.

  ‘You know what, Sift?’ he said, as his keen ears caught the twang of tightening rope below. ‘That is the first time a truth has fallen from your lips in a long time.’

  The look on her face was a precious thing to be behold. She watched, mouth slack, as Rhin opened his arms wide and, with a defiant curl to his grey lips, let himself fall backwards.

  ‘Stop him!’ Sift screeched. He closed his eyes, savouring the freedom, and let the wind swallow him.

  It felt as though the rising roar of the crowd was all for him; as though they were watching a trapeze artist cavorting through empty space. His heart now resided somewhere deep in his buttocks, but this was no time for fear. Rhin rolled in mid-air, shaping himself into an arrow of faerie-flesh, eyes fixed on his target.

  With a snap of tendons he spread his wings, driving both sets flat against the rushing air. He felt his shoulder bones scream in protest. The Fae might have lost the power of flight long ago through interbreeding and evolution, but the wings still had their uses. Such as gliding.

  Rhin spread his arms and legs as he dived through the trapdoor of the gallows, wood and nails flashing by in a blur. As his wings began to fail, he twisted them sideways and surged towards the white rope just inches away. It cut a burn against his arm as he grabbed it, and he swore his skin began to smoke as he slowed, spinning around and around until he met the knot with a thud. As the world howled around him, and before his strength died, he dropped to the shoulder of the wriggling creature below him.

  It was a miracle her neck had not broken. Victorious was foaming at the mouth, and her inhuman eyes bulged as her darkening lips spat a stream of strangled curses in a language lost to the dust.

  Rhin hung an inch from her eyes, half-visible. He stared into their speckled depths, willing her to see him as anything other than a mirage brought by death.

  ‘I am Rhin Rehn’ar, and I can save you,’ he said. He showed her the knife to prove it. ‘But there is a price, Queen. One of coin.’

  Victorious garbled something. Her face was a beetroot, wattles of skin shivering. Rhin could feel the magick streaming from her, but no spell could save her now. Only he could, and she knew it.

  ‘Do we have an accord?’ Rhin yelled in her face, raising the knife.

  Victorious’ voice was just a hiss.

  ‘I need to hear you swear, Queen!’

  It took all her fury to utter the words, formed by tongue and lip instead of breath. ‘I swear!’

  Rhin nodded before leaping up to show the pale rope some dark Fae steel.

  Two slashes, and he was plummeting again, though this time he rode a Queen to the ground.

  *

  The rumble of the crowd was a wave crashing on a pebbled shore: thunderous and then silent as the breath drew back. The hangman’s rope had snapped. Through magick or fortune, nobody knew.

  Merion watched it all through shadow, blinking darkness from the corner of his eyes. His head pounded. Something in his side burnt with savage pain. He tried to move but found himself stuck in something soft and sticky. For the most horrendous of moments he thought his spine had smashed; but then sensation returned and the pain told him different.

  The young Hark put fists to fabric and pushed himself up. His surroundings suddenly made sense. Blood was pouring from a deep wound in his head, covering his hands. He and Dizali had fallen into a cart full of large sacks made for corpses. Judging by the trail of blood, Merion must have struck its walls on the way down. The Mistress was gone. So was—

  Dizali!

  Merion sprang upwards like a bear trap, snapping into consciousness. He scrabbled upright, wild eyes searching the masses. ‘Dizali!’ His hoarse cry echoed over the quiet courtyard.

  Dizali betrayed himself by turning, and Merion caught his green gaze as he limped under an archway.

  ‘Guards!’ he cried, but every eye was fixed on the heaving lump of queen lying under the gallows. Superstition and wonder had tied every tongue, weighted every foot. Nobody moved, not even to save their Lord Protector.

  Merion tore from the cart. The pain in his side almost felled him immediately, but he pushed on. Calidae was nowhere to be seen; possibly still above on the gallows, wrestling guards.

  Dizali led him through the cool of the Crucible’s innards, losing him on this corner and that, Merion gaining on him in the straights. It was a race made of wincing and hobbling; far from the climax Merion had thought secure on the riverbank.

  Barely several yards apart, they burst into the sunlight of the Crucible’s outer grounds. The river lay ahead, sparkling in the heat of the afternoon like a greenish carpet scattered with gems. At any other time, it would have been beautiful, but at that moment it was simply a poor choice of escape route. Merion let himself slow as Dizali limped to the water’s edge. He had spied the ugly twist to his ankle, and so swimming would be out of the question.

  Several steamships and sloops wandered the water, a hefty stone’s-throw away in the centre of the current. The heat haze clung to their hulls. Merion watched one turn its prow towards them, waves slapping at its dark iron.

  The boy let himself sag slightly, a hand clamped to his ribs. He could feel something sharp and painful bulging under the skin.

  Dizali turned slowly, eyes darting between the boy’s empty hand and his blood-smeared face.

  ‘How?’ he gasped, breathless with pain. One of his green eyes was dyed bloodshot; it lent him a leer that suited him. ‘How did you do it?’

  Merion took a step forwards. ‘What was it you said? A pitfall of fiction and literature?’ he scoffed, tasting copper on his tongue. ‘I would never give you such satisfaction. I want you to go to your gallows none the wiser, knowing a boy beat you. A leech, no less.’

  Dizali raised his chin. Perhaps it was the pain, perhaps just plain wrath, but Merion thought he saw the man’s lip quiver. ‘Then what are you waiting for?’

  A twitch of his index finger reminded Merion his hand was empty. He reached into his pocket and found only glass. He brought his hand forth to find dark ochre staining his fingers. His last shade had been smashed in the fall. He clasped the vial hanging around his neck but thought better of it.

  ‘What is a leech without their shades?’ Dizali scoffed, stepping forward.

  Click.

  ‘A target,’ said a voice behind them. ‘Just like a lord without an empire.’

  Merion took his time turning. He knew what awaited him.

  Calidae stood half a dozen yards behind them, side on and with her arm outstretched. The Mistress sat straight and unwavering in her hand, despite the exhausted heaving of her chest. The scars were a stark white against the flush of her face, and her hair blew to the side, showing their every wrinkle.

  ‘Calidae,’ Merion began, eying the dark void of steel pointing at him. ‘You’ve come just in time.’

  ‘That I have,’ she said, voice tight. Her cerulean eyes switched between her prizes as if deciding which to shoot first. And yet, if he looked close and blinked back the blood, he saw an unexpected spark in them; one he hadn’t seen since her father had slid a contract across a table towards him.

  Merion shifted his feet back, closer to Dizali. ‘We agreed. It’s not over yet.’

  ‘Things change,’ said Calidae, almost to herself. She stretched her arm and pushed the Mistress forward, as if pressing it against an invisible forehead. ‘They change all the time. Nothing ever stays the same for one cursed moment. Nothing can be trusted. Least of all me.’

  I
t sounded like a confession instead of a death sentence. Merion raised his bloody hands. Inches behind him, he could hear Dizali grinding his polished teeth.

  ‘If you don’t change with it, you die in the wasteland,’ said Calidae. ‘You taught me that.’

  Dizali snarled. ‘Take your shot, Lady Serped, and stop wasting our time!’

  She must have seen the switch in Merion’s eyes. Calidae turned her head but not the gun. Lurker and Lilain had escaped their airship and were currently marching over the flagstones, rifles raised.

  ‘Not today, Calidae!’ Lilain yelled. ‘Not if you want to live past it. Kill Merion and we’ll put you down just as quick!’

  ‘I am sorry, Hark,’ said Calidae, fixing the boy with that trademark stare. Lilain and Lurker were running now, pelting across the flagstones as if chased by a twister. Merion held his arms out, feeling Dizali’s furious yet laboured breath on his neck, closer than before.

  ‘I refuse to be a hollow shell,’ she whispered, perhaps nothing but a trick of the breeze.

  CHOOM!

  Merion felt it before his ears even registered the noise. The slip of Calidae’s finger was imperceptible. Such is the effort of murder when guns are concerned, a life hanging on the twitch of a finger. Never has death been so easy, so removed from the dark business for which it was forged.

  The impact was a hammer-strike. Merion spun as he felt the bullet rip through him; breaking bone, pulverising flesh. The Mistress had always been a cruel one. He felt the bullet escape his shoulder, tugging him in its wake.

  He saw the shapes of his aunt and Lurker surging forward. Then he heard Long Tom speak; a thud against his eardrums. He watched as Lurker threw himself in a wild leap across the stones, tackling Calidae to the ground, her face a frieze of agony.

  A hand grabbed his hair, but before his head was wrenched back, before the sky descended on him, before he and Dizali took their second tumble of the day, Merion heard another gunshot; muffled, damning, and chased by a shriek as cold as he had ever heard.

  ‘LURKER!’