Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3)

by Manners, Harry

  We’re all killers.

  His fingers twisted through his hair, and he bent over in the grass, clawing at his scalp.

  Suddenly the screaming seemed real, actually there. Somebody was crying out to the darkness, a living breathing person. He ran the rest of the way, reaching a clearing in the grass. A fire just large enough to throw off a few slivers of light crackled to one side. Charlie stopped at the sight of Jason crouched over a tiny pale figure.

  The girl couldn’t have been more than fourteen. A dress that looked as though it had been made from old floral sheets lay torn under her. She writhed under Jason as he held her to the grass, the long knife in his hand finishing its work and cutting away her underwear.

  She yelped as the blade nicked her pelvis.

  Jason tensed as Charlie took another step forwards and turned the blade towards him. His face creased into a wide, aggressive grin. “Charlie, boy,” he hissed, snaking his tongue out into the night as though tasting it. His eyes glittered with starlight, but there was nothing in them to lend them any semblance of life. Black, snake eyes. “Want a piece of this one?” He grunted, wrapping his hand around the girl’s throat until her scream faded to a dry wheeze. “You can have her when I’m done. If she quiets up.” He shucked his pants down around his ankles, a bare lithe arse glowing in the moonlight. He leaned down upon her, and while his hand around her throat kept any sound from escaping her mouth, Charlie saw the scream perfectly captured in her round bulbous eyes.

  She implored Charlie with her gaze, jerking with each of Jason’s thrusts, tears trickling down her face into the grass.

  Charlie stepped forwards, his hand held out towards Jason, but he paused.

  He’ll tear me apart in seconds.

  Jason was James’s lapdog for a reason. He had cut down more people than the rest of them put together. This one had never been recruited. There was no question in Charlie’s mind that James had never had to convince Jason of anything. He only unleashed him.

  Charlie’s fingers wavered for a moment and then, shaking his head, mouth ajar, he let his hand fall back to his side. A strangled whimper escaped the girl’s mouth as he stumbled away into the night.

  SECOND INTERLUDE

  1

  Beth tasted blood. To keep from crying out, she had bit down on her lip so hard that she had cut deep. She let loose the tiniest groan. It was all she could do to hold in the panic whorling in her chest.

  Malverston loomed close by. She sensed him through the haze swirling around in her head.

  When the blade first touched her skin, she had been sure she would pass out. It hadn’t been the instrument itself, a scalpel fit to bore through leather hide without a mote of resistance, but the look in Malverston’s eye.

  Why me? she wanted to scream. Why not one of the others?

  But she knew why. She had always been his favourite. There had been no shortage of passing temptresses over the years, born of the same vein as Malverston himself, happy to lie with him if it meant a life away from the wilds.

  Yet he had never taken so much as a second glance. He had eyes only for Beth.

  She knew it stemmed from her hatred of him. She would lie with him, but all the while she’d picture stabbing him through the heart, tearing his eyes out with her bare hands, peeling his manhood with a paring knife. Even if she could never do it, the thoughts were always there, and she was always ready, a single breath away from murder.

  And he knew it. That was why it was her: she was something to conquer, something to whip and beat down and break—even if it meant slicing pieces off it with a scalpel.

  The cuts burned, arcs of liquid fire traced in her skin. Her dress stuck to her skin where blood had run down her elbows, her shins, her shoulders. Nodding with satisfaction, Malverston stepped daintily around her and studied her with the precision of an artist and made nicks and incisions with passion and flair.

  God, he’s killing me. Don’t let it end like this.

  She had no idea how long she had been tied to the chair, but nothing had stirred nearby, not even a single distant footstep. They were truly alone, and she had a feeling he was just getting started.

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being beaten by a sack of lard, even if he took everything away from her.

  “Curious, that I might have been wrong,” Malverston whispered in her ear. “Beauty is more resilient than I thought.” He giggled. “That’s my girl.”

  He stepped away, the scalpel held up to the light, showing beads of scarlet blood upon the blade. His eyes roamed her body as he smacked his great flabby lips and nodded with approval.

  The same look he’d given her since she had been no older than Melanie. Twelve years old, taken into that den of sweat-stained sheets and stuffed with the fruits of the Moon’s labour, candlelit and luxurious and suffocating, while her mother and sister starved at home. Not that her mother had ever lifted a finger. Being family of the mayor’s favourite girl had its perks, after all; they had had food when the rest of the town starved, and they had got medicine when plague struck.

  Gotta keep my princess plump and delicious, Malverston had whispered. Can’t have you slopping around with diseased ingrates. The things I do for you, my darling. The sacrifices I make… The same words, every time she fought tooth and nail for those favours, gyrating over him, wishing she could choke the life from his wobbling form.

  Presently, Malverston retreated farther towards the cart and set the scalpel down.

  Everything inside Beth threatened to break in that moment. The pain amplified, the sheer horror of it all washing over her anew. She had worked so hard to blank it all out, to crawl into the furthest recesses of her mind and into her few memories with James in the peach fields—when, just once, she hadn’t had to think of Melanie and her mother.

  But the pain—she bled from dozens of cuts. How deep did they go? She could barely move, didn’t dare turn her head lest those on her shoulders and neck widen further.

  No! I won’t give in to him. I won’t!

  She did the only thing she could think of: she bit down into the bloody groove in her lip, bringing back fresh pain. There was no thought in the pain. The most horrible thing was that the pain was better; it was easier to hurt.

  Malverston pursed his lips. “Now, now, don’t look so glum. I thought we were having such fun!”

  She glowered, biting down harder to bring out the fire in her eyes. She hoped he felt at least some of the hatred; all the brimstone and rivers of lava of the underworld gushed out from inside her head, beamed at his liquor-soaked beard and wicked, boyish face.

  For a moment she thought that maybe his expression flickered, something akin to anger and frustration peeking out from behind his mask of superiority. Then he returned to the cart and picked up a mirror, turning it around to face her. “Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see for yourself,” he said, the flicker replaced by a victorious smirk.

  Beth’s reflection rotated into view, and she released her hold on her lip. Her breath whooshed out of her mouth as though he had sank his fist into her gut. The cuts weren’t nearly as bad as she had thought, nor as bad as they felt, but they were everywhere: dozens of crescent moons cut into her face and neck, arms and shoulders, belly and thighs, even the delicate skin of her feet; brilliant dripping crimson against the marble pallor of her skin.

  She knew they would scar. If she got out of this, she would be forever marked.

  I’ll remember this every time I look down at myself. Every time I see my reflection in a pane of glass or pool of water. I’ll remember being here, in this chair, with him.

  In that moment, Beth wished for death. It would be better than living trapped in this place, replaying the here and now over and over until she grew feeble and the world had moved on.

  She muttered, “If all you want is them, why are you doing this?”

  There was no mirth in Malverston’s eyes, nor mocking glee; just cold stones set in a rounded, immobile face. “Be
cause nobody embarrasses me. You betrayed me, slut. You showed me up in front of that little shit—not for yourself or mummy or your little brat sister, but because you wanted him. That slick of nothing, that nobody—one wave of my hand and he’d be slime on the sole of my boot.” He blinked. “You betrayed me.”

  She leaned into his face. “You’re pathetic.”

  A plastic smile pulled his lips to one side. “We’ll see, when I stop cutting and start carving.”

  Beth’s pulse raced, for she saw no bluff in his eyes, but she squashed the panic with everything she had. If she was going to die, it would be on her terms. “You can’t lie to me, George. I see you. You need something to hurt for you, something to play with, because if you stopped now all you’d have is fear.”

  His lips tightened and he returned to the tray. She steeled herself for fresh pain, taking note of her toes and fingers, her ears and nose, and wondered which of them she was about to lose. While his back was turned, she sobbed silently.

  Then, footsteps. Malverston, a few paces away, froze midstride. They listened as the steps grew louder, echoing through the empty hall, rising the stairs.

  Renner, chief slimeball—one Beth also planned to gut like a fish when the time came—appeared before them. His beetle-like eyes flitted from Beth, to Malverston, to the tray, and back to Beth. “We need to talk,” he said, a sigh charged with thinly veiled delight.

  If it were him in Malverston’s shoes, I’d be dead by now. He wouldn’t have just cut. Not this one.

  “I’m not to be interrupted! What part of that didn’t you understand?” Malverston bellowed.

  Renner gave a sarcastic bow. A little while ago that bow would have been deferential, but now it was openly derisory, bordering on condescension. Before her, yellow-skinned and weasel-faced, with a greasy cap of black hair and fingernails that could have peeled potatoes, was a true tyrant in the making.

  Malverston, underneath his gluttony and pride and callousness, was just a scared and jealous little boy who never grew up, turned rotten by too many sneers and jibes. He would never match the cruelty that poured from Renner’s every pore. His lips pulled into a grin twice too large for his angular face. “The town is restless. Nobody went to the fields this morning. The women refuse to get water from the river. The mayoral stipend has vanished: most of the food, the tributes from the past month, the alcohol… most of the weapons.”

  Malverston turned slowly on his heel. “What?”

  The smile remained unmoved on Renner’s face. “As I said, mayor, you have a problem.”

  “We.” Malverston strode towards him, towering a foot taller than Renner, outweighing him by at least a hundred and fifty pounds. “We have a problem.”

  A renewed twinkle bolstered Renner’s implacable grin. “The town is gathering in the yard. They demand to see you.”

  “Tell those good-for-nothing slackers to get back to work, or I’ll have their heads on spikes by the end of the day.”

  He was halfway turned back to Beth when Renner said, “We’re having a bit of trouble getting them to leave. Some of them are armed.”

  Malverston stilled. “Shoot the ones who dare carry a weapon outside my home. Scatter the rest.”

  “I may have understated when I said they were adamant.”

  Malverston rounded on him, the mirror raised threateningly. In it, Beth saw his bulging—but unmistakably terrified—eyes twice over, real and reflected. “Spit it out, you blasted weasel!”

  “It’s McFadden. She’s riled them into a mob. They sprang your bitch’s mother and sister from the lock-up. They’ll overrun us if you don’t talk to them.” That grin stretched yet again, almost reaching the bottom of Renner’s ears. “The people demand it. My men and I will protect you, of course.”

  Malverston didn’t move, his mouth working impotently. He let the mirror fall to the floor where it shattered and sent jagged shards skittering over the floorboards. “Fine,” he said. “If my loving people are so desperate to lay eyes on their devoted mayor, then I shall deliver.”

  He whirled and strode to a cupboard beside the tray, pulling out something long and looping, his body blocking her view as he stuffed it into his jacket. When he turned around, he held a canvas bag and a cloak in his hands. “Come, dear, it’s time to face the people.”

  Beth tried to spit blood in his face, but before she could purse her lips, the canvas bag had been thrust over her head. Her bindings fell away and she stumbled in darkness, half-dragged over the floorboards and down the stairs. As they walked, Malverston’s heavy breathing in her ear, she became aware of another sound, rising from the ringing silence: the combined rumble of dozens, maybe a hundred, voices.

  Fresh air filtered in through the cloak Malverston had wrapped around her, then she was positioned by beefy hands. She sensed they stood on the porch from which Malverston was wont to give his speeches. Even without the power of sight, she sensed something amiss. The noise of the crowd was unmistakable, threaded with anger and turbulence.

  “My people!” Malverston boomed, summoning his usual tone of doting magnanimity.

  In response, the crowd roared, a poisonous sound that washed over Beth and pressed her backwards.

  “Friends, this is unnecessary. Please, go back to your homes and chores. If we do not keep up our precious work ethic, our great and fair town will grow weak, and if we grow weak, I cannot protect you.”

  The crowd gave another roar, no different to the first. Beth felt a surge of elation. Maybe they would rush the porch, cut him down where he stood.

  Malverston’s voice came again, stentorian and livid. “I have spoken, you great load of ingrates! Get back to work before I have you all put in stocks. I’d sooner use you all as fertiliser than have you question me. I have made this town great. Me, I, myself. Without me, you’re nothing. You hear me? Without me, YOU’RE NOTHING!”

  A lone, ancient voice cut through the crowd’s racket. “We’re not standing for your bile anymore, mayor. Too long have you starved us. We demand our daughter back.”

  Old Alice McKinley. Once upon a time, this town had been fair under her hand, before Malverston had moved onto the scene. For years she had lived in shame, cowering in her home. No longer, it seemed.

  “My property is not of your concern,” Malverston hissed.

  “Your property is a young woman, one of us, our daughter and sister. Release her to us.”

  Hands seized Beth roughly by the arms. Gritting her teeth against the pain as Malverston thrust his nails into the cuts on her shoulders, she stumbled over the porch. She sensed the crowd’s outrage close by; she could not have been more than a few feet away from them—from freedom. How she wanted to jerk free of his grip and dive. Would they get away in time before the shooting started?

  No.

  “You want your daughter, your precious sister? Here she is.”

  Darkness gave way to blinding light, and Beth cowered as the sun bored into her eyes. Newquay’s Moon slowly resolved into view, a sprawling mass of cottages perched upon a hilltop by the sea, overlooking the peach fields. The bare-mud square before the hall heaved with farmhands, sons and daughters, smithies and tradesmen, milkmaids and cobblers. Their faces were etched with outrage, perched on the tips of their toes, ready to surge forth.

  Malverston’s few dozen armed guards lining the porch and stationed atop the roof held them at bay, wielding guns that could have cut down every single one of them.

  But they have guns too. Some of them are big. Maybe they can win this.

  No. The guns amongst the crowd were far too few. The crowd’s mass was its strength; what would happen if they rushed the porch, Beth didn’t dare guess.

  Alice McKinley, bent almost double by arthritis, stood a mere four feet below Beth. Beth’s sister Melanie stood beside her, marble-eyed and filthy, yelling along with the rest.

  McKinley sprang her from Malverston. That’s all that matters. Even if he cuts off everything I have, at least Mel’s safe.

&n
bsp; No sign of her mother. She would never have expected it—her mother had been a limp fish, silent and yielding, since the day Beth had been born. But still, not to see her now sent a tiny stake through her heart. Where had she gone? Probably retreated silently back home to bake bread and knit as she had always done with all the emotional and intellect of a goat.

  “See your daughter, good people!” George boomed and whipped the cloak off Beth’s shoulders, leaving her half-naked upon the porch, her wounds exposed to the open air.

  Horrified gasps rippled through the square, and suddenly the great writhing mass seemed dimmer, weakened by the sight of her.

  “George… what have you done?” McKinley gasped.

  “This is what happens when people fail to appreciate all the things I do for them. Know that the very same awaits any of you if you carry on with this nonsense.”

  Beth cast a desperate look around, looking for some avenue of escape. The guards had their guns trained and ready, waiting for the word. Whether they still followed Malverston or not, they would be cut down along with him if the crowd surged. For now, they were bound to him; that meant he was still as dangerous as ever.

  Renner stood close by, his expression stranded somewhere between puerile anger and intrigue. Out here in public, he was just another of Malverston’s men. He couldn’t make a move.

  “Give her to us now!” McKinley cawed, banging her walking stick into the mud. “You give her to us now, or so help me God, we will tear the ragged lot of you limb from limb.”

  Malverston laughed, an exaggerated, jeering roar. He pushed Beth a step away from him and opened his coat, pulling out a leather handle, from which a trail of whipcord snaked down onto the porch. “You want this one so bad? Good, that means you’ll understand what it means to defy me when you watch her get her just desserts.”

  “Don’t you dare!” McKinley croaked. “I’ll kill you myself, George. I swear it.”