Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3)

by Manners, Harry

  “What if she’s right? What if we never come back because we didn’t take her?”

  “It’s still the right choice.”

  “Even if it means the End?”

  “Even that,” she said. “Because I’m not taking a little girl to die, even if it means saving everything. That’s not who I want to be.”

  Norman drew her close, not holding or caressing, but holding on for dear life. “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “So have you. Funny, isn’t it: becoming who you always wanted to be, right at the end?”

  They held one another until the two dozen horses had been retrieved from the glade, and Lucian and Richard had returned. By the time they were ready to go, time seemed to have congealed, running through Norman’s fingers like water. They saddled up fast, not leaving time to think. Norman took his place at the head. There would be no hiding behind Robert this time—even if he had wanted to. Robert wasn’t leading anybody now.

  So this is it, Norman thought as he climbed up onto his saddle. This is the last goodbye.

  “Oh, great Chosen One,” Richard said, appearing at his side. “You lost something.” Between his fingers he held something small; half-black, half-white. John DeGray’s king chess piece, charred but unmistakable. “You dropped it down there.”

  “You stopped to pick up that thing?”

  “It’s all I have left to remind me of who I am,” Richard said. “But it still doesn’t belong to me.” He held it out to Norman. “Look after it, until it’s time.”

  “If it’s not time now, it might not ever be.”

  Richard shook his head and pressed it into his hands. “Give it back when it’s over.”

  Norman forced himself not to say any of the thousand things racing through his head. He placed the charred king in his pocket. “When it’s over.”

  Richard made to leave, then hesitated. “I don’t believe in what I can’t measure or quantify, and I never will. This End thing, the Frost, I don’t care. But I believe in you.”

  “You have any idea how corny that sounds?”

  Richard smiled glibly. “Take it or leave it, Chosen One.”

  Norman looked over his shoulder at them mounting up around him. He felt he should say something rousing, proclaim assured victory, give some great inspirational speech.

  A beat passed.

  “Well, let’s go then,” he said.

  They rode down the hillside in pursuit of the army and the thickening storm clouds as the first peels of thunder rolled across the land.

  FIFTH INTERLUDE

  1

  Snick. Snick.

  Blood pattered onto creaking floorboards in the candlelit gloom.

  “I’m not an unlikeable man, you know. I’m a good man. A fair man. It’s these people.”

  Snick. Snick.

  “They’re evil. Greedy and spoiled. When I think about it, it’s my own fault. Things have been good for so long under my hand that they forget what it means to live in this world. Managerial oversight, you might say.”

  Snick. A pause. Then a longer, measured snick.

  Beth flinched as the blade cut deeper. The pain was everywhere now, a burning ache all over her body, threading every square inch of exposed skin. It was only these longer, deeper cuts she felt individually. The world revolved as she sagged against her restraints, forever turning and undulating, as though the walls and floor were but painted upon a canvas flapping in the wind. Cogent thoughts formed fleetingly as she coasted on the edge of consciousness, undulating back and forth along a long dark tunnel. The deep cuts brought glimpses of a dark room and a pair of piggy eyes, and fear dribbled through the unfeeling veil.

  In those moments she wanted nothing more than to cry, not beg or scream or spite, just weep. There wasn’t enough of her left for anything else.

  Just let me lie down on the cold ground and be, let me fade away, let me rest.

  She never let one mote of the overbearing urge show on her face. That was all she had left to hold on to: not letting him win. Through a head full of throbbing cotton wool, she refused to respond to his cutting.

  Malverston resumed his steady pacing around her, his expression as academic and detached as a gallery patron observing an oil canvas. Slowly he bent forwards and made the tiniest incision below her right earlobe, leaned back on the ball of his foot, and nodded. “Don’t worry, there’s time to fix this. A few more hours and we’ll be rid of those meddlers, and then we can get back to establishing order. A fairer, newer world, where people know their place and show their betters proper respect.”

  Another dainty cut, longer this time, crosswise over her breastbone. Snick.

  Darkness drew in frighteningly fast, receding just as quickly when Malverston’s hand came whistling up to strike her chin, snapping her head sideways.

  “Now, my dear,” he whispered, “you mustn’t drift off like that. It’s rude.” He cupped her cheek, stroking the shredded skin.

  Beth tried to spit in his eyes but managed only a pathetic whistle between her lips.

  “Such fire,” he muttered and pinched her face between his mitt, scrunching a hundred lacerations and spilling fresh tears over his fingers.

  The pain cleared some of the fog. Beth coughed, shook her head with as much vigour as she could muster, and glared at him anew. “If you’re going to kill me, do it. You’re running out of time, George.”

  He shook his head solemnly. Without the fog to cloud her vision, she saw just how changed he had become. His eyes had sunken and his lips had turned down and grown pale, his cheeks blotchy and loose, hanging in pendulous jowls. He wilted like a flower in a cold snap, stuck in here with nothing but her and his knife. Somewhere under her pain and misery, Beth felt her own slither of pleasure. “You’re afraid,” she said.

  He blinked and straightened with a jerk. “Afraid? Of what? Those peasants? They’re beaten. You saw that old bitch bled like a stuck pig yourself.”

  Beth pushed away the memory of McKinley’s throat splitting open. “You’ll never be sure, not ever again. There’s blood in the water.” She took a breath, ignoring the whistle in her throat, and slurred at length, “It could come from anywhere. From out there, from in here; from those peasants, or from your own men. How does it feel to know that every heart that beats wants you dead?”

  What little colour remained in his face drained away, leaving a puerile, green countenance of childish fear. He raised the knife to her nose, eyes bulging, held it trembling against her for a moment, then let out a scowl and whirled away. Staggering across the room, he collapsed against the trolley of wicked instruments and growled like a caged dog. “They do not. They love me. They love their mayor!”

  “They’ll have your head on a spit before sunrise,” she sang softly.

  “No!” Malverston cringed. “I could leave. Precautionary, of course, but perhaps I should seek shelter until—” His head jerked, and in an altogether more savage voice he cried, “No! I’ll stay until every last fucking peasant who’d say boo to a goose is dead and buried.”

  Beth was watching him jerk back and forth when something close to the stairs drew her gaze: a huddle of shadows creeping forth so slowly as to seem utterly still. For a moment an unreasoning part of her thought McKinley had survived. The old woman had come for her!

  No. It wasn’t McKinley.

  It was Renner, and two of the other men Malverston had sent to James’s homestead. Abreast one another, crouched with eerily still, predatory expressions, they emerged into the light.

  Excitement sizzled over her entire body like the electric shocks travelling magicians used to give her when they came through the Moon. Even her hair seemed to crackle.

  Malverston kept jerking on the balls of his feet, oblivious. Close by, Renner’s yellow livid eyes seemed to pop an inch from his face as he licked his lips.

  The bastard was finally going to get what he deserved. He wouldn’t even see it coming.

  Finally Beth could get out of this place. Wher
e was Mel now? Mum? She would beat that stupid little girl for trying to save her when she got out of here—beat her then kiss her and never let her go.

  When they let her go…

  She shuddered as her excitement came to a stuttering halt.

  Once they’re done with Malverston… You really think they’re going to let you go? Untie you and shoo you out the door: see ya later?

  Not with the way Renner had looked at her. She didn’t doubt that his own fun with her would begin—she was willing to bet it would be all the worse than Malverston’s.

  Renner and his companions were feet away now, hungry and quickening.

  I can’t save him. I won’t save him!

  But she had to. If she wanted to live.

  Closer. A single creaking floorboard. Malverston stirred but didn’t turn. Renner’s knife rose to his shoulder.

  Clenching her eyes shut, Beth screamed, “Look out!”

  Malverston leaped back just as Renner’s knife came sailing down, slicing through his sleeve and opening his forearm. Howling, he wheeled away as one of the others jabbed down.

  Malverston sidestepped with the deftness of a man half his size and caught the man around the midriff, crushing his arms against his sides. Before a beat could pass, Malverston smashed his forehead into the man’s nose with a sickly crunch. A moment later he dropped the man to the ground like a sack of rocks and punched Renner’s elbow hard enough to send his knife spinning to the ground.

  He snarled as the third man slashed low along his thigh. But the man had left himself open from above, and Malverston’s elbow came whistling down to hit him between the shoulder blades, sending him to the floorboards with a muted oof!

  The rest was a blur of scrabbling from all parties: three men racing to their feet, and one hulk of a mayor reaching into his belt.

  Renner and his companions only made it to their knees by the time Malverston retrieved his gun. Three short bursts of light accompanied by as many reverberating cracks that sent Beth’s head spinning anew.

  By the time the attic settled, Malverston stood on the nearest man’s coat, one foot resting on a gaping chest wound. “Where are the others?”

  “Please,” the man gasped.

  The mayor’s weight pressed down on his chest, and blood spurted from ragged holes in his flesh as he squealed. “Away!”

  Malverston lessened the pressure. “Beg pardon?”

  “They ran.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Cain… Cain’s lot. They’re here.”

  Malverston nodded pensively. “I see. Thank you for bringing me this information, Johnson.” Without a moment’s pause, he stamped down upon the man’s chest.

  A muffled crunch filled the room. Then a long, slow sigh escaped Johnson, and his eyes faded to lifeless buttons.

  Malverston turned to Renner’s other fellow, found him already still and sightless, and shrugged. He then approached Renner himself, who was attempting, without success, to crawl back towards the stairs.

  “The fool uses a knife to stage his coup? How romantic.” Malverston looked down upon Renner, shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong, friend. I have a proclivity for knife-play myself.” He winked in Beth’s direction. “But a man needs to know how to use a gun when the time calls for it. Like now.”

  He trained the gun point blank at Renner’s chest and pulled the trigger. And again, and again.

  Renner jerked with each round, his jacket showering into confetti and his face twisting into a grotesque grimace that remained forever fixed on his yellow cheeks.

  Silence reigned as Malverston assessed each man in turn, nudging them with the tip of his boot. His lip curled as he turned them over, taking their knives and throwing them onto the trolley. “Surrounded by fools,” he muttered. “Whole world’s gone crazy… Crazy.”

  He paused as a scream rang out into the distance, not a woman’s or a child’s, but a man’s. His eyes grew wide, searching the rafters as though expecting attackers to pounce.

  “They’re here,” Beth said. Her heart was in sudden fervour, stirring limbs and digits gnarled by numbness and blood loss. The pain suddenly increased tenfold as the last of the fog receded and she strained against her bindings—

  God, every part of me is going to split open if I move an inch!

  —but she didn’t let it show, powering through the tears. She laughed as loud as she could, laughed right into his face. “They’re here for you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them! Because you just put down the only dogs you had left.”

  Malverston’s eyes swivelled down to the bodies at his feet, then back to her. He seemed to be two people in that moment: a blubbering confused baby, horrified to find itself alone in a strange and hostile place; and a fat, mean little man who has just realised his end is upon him.

  “No. No, I’m only safer. Safer! A few less vermin to exterminate.”

  “But who will protect you now? The other guards? They’re hired hands, or their families are held to ransom just like the rest of us.” She played at a momentary musing. “Oh! That means you’re… alone. You’re alone. You’ve got nothing.”

  He rounded on her. “On the contrary, my dear,” he hissed, tearing the back from the chair with his bare hands and lifting her into the air, “I still have you. You’ll be my guardian angel. My darling.”

  Beth struggled, but each time she wriggled he pressed a hand against the deeper cuts in her side, and she howled. By the minute’s end she stood before him at the back of the attic, facing the stairs, waiting.

  Somewhere out in the Moon, gunfire warbled, for what Beth knew was the last time. They were coming.

  Hurry, James.

  2

  The Moon had grown quiet. Families had retreated to their hearths or beds for the night, mourning those they had lost. Crickets sang where usually there was chatter and laughter of smiths and cobblers in the tavern.

  Among the side streets, silver shadows flickered. James watched a dozen men and women hurtle down alleys and through azalea bushes, converging on the guards out on patrol. Waiting was torture—he was so close to Beth, to tearing the mayor’s heart out through his nose.

  He stayed put beside Mel and Lucian with great effort, watching as the first guard was yanked back by shadows, his yelp of surprise cut short. He didn’t rise again. A few moments passed before the next man was taken down, more roughly this time. The third was rougher still, resulting in a scuffle that resulted in a baker taking a bullet to the belly. The noise alerted the remaining guards more each time, until by the fourth, the game was up.

  “That’s it, it’s time to move,” James whispered. “You ready?”

  Lucian’s eyes twinkled in the twilight. “Let’s get your girl.”

  Mel’s tiny hand squeezed his arm fretfully. “What if she—?”

  “We’ll get her, I promise.”

  “You can’t promise.” Her eyes were enormous and sorrowful in the gloom.

  “I won’t let it happen. Stay close.”

  They left their hiding place behind the forge and ran for the square, bent double. Around them the sound of struggle was building. With their element of surprise gone, the attack’s success rate diminished fast. Seconds before things could have passed for peaceful. Now everywhere people died in the dark, screaming and tearing at one another. The three of them were out in the open; if anybody so much as shined a light on them, there would be nothing to do.

  Keep your eyes on the carrot, James thought, willing the armed men on the town-hall roof to remain distracted long enough. A few seconds, that was all he needed.

  From the other side of the square, a second party approached, led by Alex, with the Creeks bringing up the rear. If one group was gunned down, at least some of them would make it.

  “We’re going to get there ahead,” Lucian uttered. “We ought to wait up.”

  “No!” James hissed as they skirted a rickety fence. “If they see us…”

  “But inside—�
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  “I know.”

  They skittered across the square and James fought the urge to close his eyes, feeling utterly naked. It was so dark now that he couldn’t even make out the outlines of the guards on the roof. They would have no idea whether they had been spotted until the bullets started flying.

  Elsewhere in the Moon, the screaming had intensified tenfold. It seemed everybody in the town had emerged to join the fight.

  “They’re hurting,” Mel moaned. “We have to help them.”

  “Shh!”

  James leaped up onto the porch and landed upon his haunches, rolling with his momentum to dispel the thump of his boots. Reaching down, he pulled Mel up behind him. Lucian landed beside them with the stealth of a ghost. They were under the porch now, safe. Pressing themselves against the wall, they turned to watch the others as they approached.

  Alex stepped foot onto the square, paused, and waved for the others to follow. Then horribly, sickeningly, the crack of a snapping twig rang out. It seemed louder than any gunshot in the strained silence. James just had time to close his eyes and utter a curse.

  The gunfire began explosively. Ribbons of white-hot metal sprayed into the night from overhead, sending Alex and the others diving to the ground for cover.

  “Alex!” Lucian barked, starting forwards.

  James threw himself over him, smothering him against the ground. The two of them scuffled in the dark, but James held fast; Lucian wouldn’t hesitate to throw himself out there, and there was no sense in losing more people. The three of them were safe, and they needed everyone they could get.

  “Get off me!” Lucian snarled.

  “Shh! Stay down.”

  The others had scattered into the murk, and James couldn’t make out a single figure.

  That’s good. If I can’t see, that means the shooters can’t either.

  Yet the guards had a solution: spraying spare bursts of fire methodically into each quadrant of the square.

  Battleships. They’re playing Battleships with my friends’ lives.

  “We have to stop them. There’s no cover out there,” Lucian said.