Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3)

by Manners, Harry

  “Shut up, you stupid old bitch.” He turned to Beth. “Turn around, darling. Unless you want to lose an eye.”

  Gritting her teeth, meeting Melanie’s gaze, Beth turned to face away from him, leaning against one of the balustrade posts.

  Don’t move, she tried to say with her gaze. Do not move. No matter what happens to me, don’t risk yourself.

  Melanie wasn’t like their mother. She was like Beth—maybe tougher. She hadn’t shed a single tear in all her nine years. But right now, her eyes were red and bloodshot, her mouth ajar. Her slingshot was gripped tight in her hand.

  Whoom-psh!

  Beth was sure the first strike cut to her spine. The pain was that bad, dwarfing the fire of the scalpel’s incisions. She managed not to scream, just.

  The crowd gasped, straining against the porch. The line of guards tensed, their fingers trailing towards triggers.

  The second strike was worse. This time Beth screamed. Then the third came, the fourth, the fifth. Each one seemed to carve entire chunks off her back, crossing over previous wounds. Each time she screamed. By the sixth, she fell to her hands and knees and wept. She cowered, but no more strikes came.

  Malverston rounded on the square. “You think you can take us? Well come on, then! Either come up and do your worst, or crawl back to your holes and rot.”

  For a moment it seemed the crowd really would charge, their bloodlust blinding them to their own imminent doom.

  Then Beth was screaming. “NO! STAY BACK!” She shook her head. “He’ll kill you all.”

  No movement, only bulging eyes. Just like that, she knew they were beaten. She had sealed her own fate.

  Better that than we all die. Because that’s what would happen. Nobody would get out alive.

  The crowd fractured, and people backed away. Rage crashed over the town hall like a maelstrom against a sea wall. But they retreated.

  “Go,” Beth muttered to Melanie. “Stay out of this. Run.”

  Mel didn’t seem to hear her, backing away, her hand shaking around her slingshot. She was lethal with that thing, could pick birds out of the sky from thirty feet. If she used it now, she could probably kill Malverston where he stood. But by then she would be shot to ribbons.

  “I said run!” Beth screeched. “Get out of here.”

  Mel finally glanced at her, and a tear dropped from her eye. She turned and ran after the crowd.

  “Be strong, darling,” McKinley cried. “This isn’t over.”

  “This is over,” Malverston growled. Then the bag was back on Beth’s head, and she was being dragged back inside.

  2

  Just north of Oxford, James burst into tears. Without warning a well of crushing sadness washed over him. He was resting the horse yet again, feeding a few of his pigeons in a fit of frustration. Presently he leaned on the saddle, breathing hard. A coldness had stolen into his chest since leaving Radden Moor, spreading from the secret place inside him that had driven him from home on feet that had moved of their own accord. The cold defied the summer air; a fizzing chill that didn’t belong.

  It whispered things. Black things.

  Right now, it transmitted something he knew was real: a scream. The sound of rushing air and something being struck. With each echoing slap, fresh pain shot through him. His eyes swam with tears. James grunted against the chill, forcing it away. After a moment it grew quiet, and he breathed heavily. Time slipped through his fingers.

  He grunted when a figure slid into view; quite simply popped into being from nothing. A few days ago he would have thought himself crazy, that he had cracked under the strain. Now he knew the world he saw was just the tip of something much larger and stranger.

  The figure was dressed in a black coat, pale-faced and tall. The man from the tunnels, back in Radden: the man with dark marks under his eyes. “Please, stop. You must come back. Come back now,” he said.

  “You again.” James wiped his eyes, sniffing furiously. “Go away.”

  Fol had abandoned the aloof and facetious air he’d flaunted when James had found him, deep underground in that strange place up north. Now he reached out to James, restless and maybe a little afraid. “I can’t stay long. I’m breaking the rules just by being here. You have to listen to me: you can’t do this.”

  “Beth’s taken because of you! Stay away; go back to whatever faerie land you came from.”

  “You don’t understand,” Fol uttered. “More rides on this than you can imagine. You have to come with me. If you don’t, all this is in danger. Everything that’s left, and so much more.”

  James tightened his steed’s saddle, scattering his pigeons into the sky. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving her.”

  “You can’t do this. You can’t.”

  “Try to stop me. I know you can’t.”

  He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. Just like he had known how to find Radden, and just like he knew he was special.

  Whatever it was, he didn’t want it. It had only taken him away from Beth.

  “You have such power,” Fol said as James swung into the saddle. Already he seemed a vague apparition, there and also not. “I can’t just let you go. You can save this world and so much more. But you also have the power to end it. We can’t risk it. You… you could bring it all crashing down if you don’t follow the path.”

  James shook his head. He didn’t have time for mystical nonsense, no matter what hung in the balance. Not if this was the consequence.

  “I don’t want to see you again,” he said.

  Fol looked crestfallen. “Please, James. Please. I can’t do this again. If you go, we’ll lose everything.”

  James paused for a moment, reins poised in his grip, and he met the eyes of the man… or whatever he was. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Fol rushed forwards. He was barely there at all now, diaphanous as netted curtains. “You feel it, don’t you? The Frost, inside you? James, if you let it, it’ll work through you. It lives on pain. You have to turn back. You can’t save her.”

  James jerked on the saddle. “Watch me, you son of a bitch.”

  He gave a roar and slapped the reins, starting the horse off across the meadow, leaving Fol to vanish from the land in his wake. All the while, his voice echoed down to nothing inside James’s skull: “You’ll kill them all.”

  He didn’t stop. He kept riding. All the while, that strange cold grew in his chest, hardening and twisting.

  X

  The cavern slammed down into place, replacing the darkness. Billy wobbled on her feet, disoriented from being bent through impossible angles yet again.

  The others hit the floor, crumpling and wheeling as though they had spun in a circle for minutes on end. They tried to get up, then keeled sideways, breathing hard. The younger man called Richard was sick on the stone floor.

  Billy looked at the Panda Man, who stood beside her, watching them all with patient detachment. He winked at her. “Amazing what you can get used to eventually, isn’t it? Even this crap.”

  Billy said nothing and crouched beside Norm. Looking into his face, a green but still holding together, a little knife dug into her belly.

  He’s like Daddy, she thought. Daddy who had gotten so sick and gone away. Just like Ma and Grandpa left her all alone, to face the magic inside her.

  “It goes away,” she said quietly. “The sick feeling.”

  He gave her a weak smile. “You’re a tough kid.”

  She tried to smile, but her face didn’t want to. Maybe people couldn’t smile anymore after they had hurt too much.

  She held out her hand, and he took it after his smile widened a fraction. She helped him up and they turned to the others, staggering to their feet in the cavern. The big man, Robert, picked Richard up off the floor like Gulliver plucking up the little people in Lilliput—Billy loved that book. Ma read it to her some nights, before she got sick. Before they had left home behind, so far away across the sea.

  Both men still looked green, but their faces
were determined. Billy liked Richard, the young one; he looked nice. Nice but weak. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near this place.

  Like I should be here. I’m just a baby.

  No, another voice answered from the same place as the itch inside her. The Light inside that made her special. Not anymore, you’re not.

  It was a funny feeling, to stand at the waists of all the grown-ups and feel as though she was older than them all. Because none of them had seen what she had, knew what she knew. They had seen the dark place just now, but to them it had been just a nightmare. For her, it would never go away. Every time the coldness touched her, she brought a little of it along with her. She could still feel all those people even now, screaming, begging.

  The little grey-haired man, the mean one, was baring his teeth like a snarling dog. “What are we doing back here?”

  “The Conduits are set,” the Panda Man said blithely. “We can’t just move wherever we want, willy-nilly.”

  “You’re such a freaking headcase,” Richard sighed. “We just teleported to another dimension that I’m pretty sure was hell without the lava, and now you’re telling us you can’t just do whatever you want. Well it bloody looks like you have a trick or two!”

  “You better not be lying about getting us home. All the card tricks and mystic shit in all the world won’t save you,” Lucian said.

  Norm cleared his throat, and they grew grudgingly silent. “We’ve seen what we needed to see. What now?”

  Fol nodded curtly. “Now I keep my word. We get you home.”

  The others sagged in relief.

  “All right, that’s more like it,” Lucian said, looking around at the walls. “Beam us up.”

  Fol remained motionless. His eyes had fixed on Billy. “Well?” he said.

  Billy took a step back. She felt as though he had reached out and slapped her. “What?”

  “Where to, captain?”

  She blinked, frowning. “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do.” A small smile had appeared on his face, knowing and wolfish, just like the looks he’d given her way back in the cabin by the sea—when Daddy had still been alive. “The Light knows the way.”

  Lucian pointed at her, his eyes furious and fixed on Fol. “The kid? You’re betting on her having something to pull out of her hat? You lying son of a bitch.” He made to step forwards, reaching for his gun.

  “Lucian.” Norm was looking down at Billy. There was no expectation in that look, no demand, not even confusion. He just watched her, waiting. “Billy, do you know how to get us back?”

  Billy wanted to shake her head. But the truth was she didn’t know what she knew. She hadn’t known that for a while. It wasn’t a matter of knowing or thinking; that wasn’t what had got her here or to any of the places on her long journey north.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  She expected Norm to shake his head, maybe get mad like Lucian. All their friends were in trouble and now they needed her, and she said Maybe. But his face didn’t change; he looked into her, and she let him. He had a piece of the Light too—just a flicker, but enough, she hoped.

  He nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said.

  She looked to Fol. “What do I do?”

  The Panda Man shrugged. “This is your show. I’m not allowed to meddle. Rules are rules.”

  “You’ve meddled plenty,” Lucian growled.

  Billy thought so too. All the times he had appeared to her since she had come to Enger Land flashed before her eyes. He was a meddler if there ever was one.

  Fol seemed to know her thoughts exactly. A little smile hitched in the corner of his mouth. In her head he said: All rules have a little bend in them. But this one’s on you, Billy. It’s all there. Just let it come.

  She stepped into the middle of them and looked around at the cavern walls. They were smoother than the tunnel’s, worn and ancient. This place had seen many faces, known many feet upon its floors; every surface echoed with voices. In places there were deep gouges, as though a mad animal had clawed at the rock trying to escape. In others, complicated squiggles and pictures had been painted on or carved, not letters but something similar, and much older.

  Nothing else. She sighed, sensing the others ready to deflate. But she also sensed Norm’s gaze shooting out at them, keeping them silent. He believed in her. Like Daddy had believed in her.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at the cavern afresh. She let her eyes roam, landing where they may, and found that they had a will of their own, flitting rapidly back and forth as though searching for something. All she saw was black rock, etched or scratched or bare.

  “Is she… okay?” Richard’s voice suddenly sounded distant and fuzzy.

  “Billy?” Norm, even from right beside her, sounded just as far away.

  The itch in her feet: walk forwards.

  She went, watching her body do what it wanted. It felt almost like being under the awning in the rowboat, when she, Daddy, and Grandpa had come across the sea. She had just watched then while they had rowed themselves to exhaustion. They hadn’t known what waited for them ahead then, either.

  There was something inside the walls. Lights sparkling out like rays of sun through a forest canopy.

  She stepped forwards, her hands held out before her. The others parted to let her pass, their faces fuzzy, as though they weren’t quite there—or was it her that was no longer quite in the world?

  “This is mental,” Richard said slowly, throwing each word as though coughing up balls of phlegm.

  “Shh!” Norm said.

  The twinkling grew stronger, and she stepped up to the wall and placed her hands upon it. “Cold,” she whispered. “Too cold.”

  “Sounds like a winner,” said Norm. He was already walking over to her side. “Come on,” he said to the others.

  They crowded around, Fol included.

  “What do we do?” Norm said, crouching beside her. She saw the way he looked at her in the corner of her eye: the trust still there. It made her feel strong.

  “Touch me,” she said.

  A beat passed, then Norman laid a hand on her back. A long pause followed that seemed to last forever, because something was pulling her now, sucking her into the rock, and it took effort to stay in the cavern to wait for them.

  Then she felt more hands on her: two big rough paws, a thinner fainter touch, then the cold dead feeling of the Panda Man’s delicate digits.

  “Well?” Lucian’s gruff voice, mad and impatient.

  “Don’t look down,” she said.

  “Wha—” Lucian began, but he never got to finish, because suddenly the world had dropped away like stage scenery.

  Billy gasped, looking around at empty space—yet not the empty, crushing darkness of where the Vanished suffered. This place was different, infinitely larger and more complex and alive. Everywhere she looked hung great balls of shining orange, red, white, and blue. Some were far away and static, others close and hurtling past like speeding bullets; great tendrils of light spitting from them and splashing back down into their turbulent surfaces, so large that her mind gave up trying to appreciate their scale.

  Before her lay a bridge. Translucent, faintly purple, with an almost imperceptible arch, it glittered and winked amid the blackness, cold underfoot.

  Frost, she thought. It’s made of the Frost.

  “Stars,” Richard hissed. “We’re… in outer space.”

  “Uh huh,” Lucian said. “Outer space have many bridges, Richard?”

  “I… forget it.”

  “Where are we?” Norm said, beside her.

  Billy shook her head, frowning. Everything had gone foggy in her head. This place wouldn’t remain for long. It was here just for them. “Somewhere in between,” she said quietly. “We have to be quick.”

  “Let’s go then,” Robert said. He didn’t say much, but the big man didn’t seem to care about all the crazy things. It seemed he just wanted to get home. Billy liked him too.

/>   “We follow the path?” Norm said, still crouched down beside Billy.

  She nodded.

  He gave an unsteady smile and stood awkwardly as though he was terrified of falling over the edge. Billy had no idea what would happen if they fell.

  Nothing good, said the Light inside her.

  They set off in single file, Robert in the lead. Behind him Richard shook and cursed, his shoulders gripped by Lucian, who pushed him along from behind, snarling. Norman followed, his arms held out to the side like a ballerina. Billy and Fol brought up the rear.

  For a stupid while that seemed to defy all sense, the group walked across the bridge in something akin to companionable silence, glad for a direction, and All Where moved overhead. Billy wondered how many people would have gone crazy at this sight.

  I’m probably crazy by now, myself. Maybe Daddy died and I’m still back in the cabin with him, gone cuckoo.

  Would that be so bad? At least then she would go away with him to be with Ma and Grandpa again.

  Sorry, Billy, but it’s all here. That same inner voice again. She kept walking, the Panda Man at her back.

  Lucian called up from ahead: “What’s with your head, Mystery Man? You look like a hard-boiled egg with its top broken off.”

  “Lucian,” Norman said. “Really?”

  “I’m about to lose my marbles, Norman. I need a distraction. Mr Mystery?”

  Fol said nothing.

  “It’s where his hat used to be, before they broke it off,” Billy said absently. She blinked, surprised she had spoken.

  “What the bloody hell does that mean?” Lucian spat.

  “His jester’s cap,” Norman said. He sounded spooked.

  “Yes.” Billy kept walking, certain that she would lose her balance and fall if she slowed. “Before they took it away.”

  Fol’s shoulders tensed ahead of her, and she caught her tongue before she could say the rest: Took it away because of what he did.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Still Fol didn’t reply.

  “You could have taken us here, couldn’t you?” she muttered. “You can’t come with us, but you could have showed us the way. Why did you make me?”