I weighed up the pros and cons of the matter whilst sitting on the fop with his face pushed into the snow. Occasionally, I would ruffle his precious hair and prod him in as antagonistic manner as I could. By the time I got off him and turned him over he was red as a beetroot, or as red as an Eternal's pale skin would allow, and had tears streaming down his face.
“Sorry about that, Walter, I was just deciding how best to extract the information I require. I've now decided.”
“Are…are you going to hurt me?”
The poor fellow looked so pathetic that even if I had I might possibly not have.
“No.”
“No!” He sounded shocked.
“No, I am going to ask you nicely.”
“Me!”
“You're the only one here.”
“Oh.”
“Only an oh?”
“I'm just surprised, that's all.” Merryweather wiped at his eyes, brushed the gathered snow from his velvet garments, and smiled. “Thank you,” he said.
And, as if in response to our joint turnarounds in character the snow stopped, the clouds peeled back and a ruby glow broke across every surface. The Earth seemed dipped in a glass of claret and I basked in its momentary calm, whilst my insides churned in violent disapproval at my chosen path. I mulled over where to start with Walter's questioning and decided why not at the beginning. So I did, in as surreptitious manner as I could.
“Merryweather, my friend, I believe we have got off on the wrong foot too many times.” For once, Walter did not interrupt or offer quick wit, but instead walked quietly beside me as we made our way north over the crisp, new-fallen snow. “I think I've been quick to judge you.”
Walter pulled a serious face and said, “Yes, you have.”
“Well, here's your chance to set me straight. It took a great deal of resilience on your behalf to escape Chantelle's clutches, as you did, and it's earned you some leeway. By the way, how did she look?”
“Truly terrible,” he replied pulling a face.
“How did you manage it?”
“I waited until the sun was up, then wriggled and jiggled my way out of there.”
“Where?”
“The machine they drove.”
“I thought you were in the back of a cart.”
“I was.”
“You just admitted you weren't,” I said, already losing my temper.
“I was in the cart that they towed.” He put particular emphasis on the towed. “But, as you should have guessed, they discovered me when I tried to communicate with you. Painfully so,” he added.
“Sorry, Walter, forgive me.”
“I will this once.”
He gave a dramatic arm waving bow at that.
“Do go on.”
“Well, they didn't believe my story at first.”
“What story?” I interjected.
“Give me a chance, I'm getting there.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be. Anyway, I showed them the scars on my chest and stomach, told them they were because of you, and how I would do anything to get my revenge. Chantelle believed me from the start. She really hates you, you know,” he added with undisguised glee.
“Hmm.”
“Anyway, as I was saying, she believed me, but the Marquis most certainly didn't. He asked me all sorts of questions: how I'd found him; how I'd really got the scars; what I knew of the Hierarchy's demise, which I only guessed at, and any manner of other boring trivia. I don't like him, Jean, never have. I'd be rather glad if you disposed of him.”
“I intend to,” I replied.
“Good, good,” he said nodding his head. “I think you and I are finally singing from the same song sheet.”
“I'm sure we are, Walter,” I said giving him an encouraging pat on the back.
“Yes, I agree. Well, to continue, he wasn't having any of it and communicated his thoughts to the others including Raphael, who I was very surprised to see. The rumour was you'd killed him in that fight you'd had?”
“No, but I won't make the same mistake again.”
“I'm sure you won't. By the way, he and his countrymen, and country-whores, mustn't forget the ladies, looked a darker shade of pale than I should have expected.”
“They are tanned,” I replied.
“Tanned. That's impossible, isn't it?”
“It appears the Marquis has been dabbling in genetics.”
Walter, wide-eyed and gawping, just shook his head at that.
“He's trying to make them human,” I said, rather more bluntly.
“Why?”
“So they can go out in the light.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” he screeched. “If only they knew, eh? I was itching to tell them, you know.”
“You didn't though, did you, Walter?”
“Do you think I'd be here if I had?”
“Good point.”
“So, the Marquis wants us Eternals to be human again,” mused Merryweather. “Must have had enough of this world.” He scratched at his head. “He's a stupid bugger, always was. I expect that's why your parents hated him so.”
“Hang on, go back a minute. What do you mean, be human again?”
“Well, we were once,” he said very matter-of-factly.
“And how did you know my parents hated the Marquis?”
“It was common knowledge.”
“How common?”
“As in everyone.”
“Well, I didn't know,” I said, honestly.
“You are still so very young, though, a mere seedling compared to the rest of us.”
“Hm, well, I'm catching up fast.”
“Do you know what, Jean?” Merryweather said coming to a sudden stop.
“What?”
“I feel like I'm tutoring you, and as such, should be getting paid for it.”
“You'd think that,” I snarled.
“There, there, only joking.”
Merryweather held his hands out placatingly.
“Sorry,” I said, sensing my time to strike. “Did you know my parents well?”
“Oh, only in passing. They were really quite moody most of the time…I mean charming,” he quickly corrected.
“It's okay, Walter, I realise they had their moments.”
“Don't we all,” he agreed. “But, like I said, I really didn't know them that well. I knew what they wanted, of course.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“To rule.”
“What?”
“To rule, Jean. Didn't you know?”
Merryweather stood there, his slim frame stiff as a rod, his expression one of genuine bewilderment. If an orca had cracked through the ice and snatched him away, he couldn't have looked more surprised.
“No, no I didn't,” I said.
“I just presumed, what with you committing all those heinous acts on their behalf.”
“Believe me, Walter, I did not know.”
“It didn't go down well with the rest of the Hierarchy. Personally, though, I couldn't have cared less. One overlord's as bad as the next. Unless they're a desiccated and completely unstable half-zombie princess, that is.”
“Queen,” I replied somewhat in a daze.
“Queen?”
“She's a queen now she's wed her since-deceased husband.”
“Have you killed someone else?” he said, shaking his head.
“Don't worry, there's barely anyone left to kill now.”
“True, true,” he replied looking overly serious.
“Why did you say, other Hierarchy?”
“How do you mean, dear boy?”
“My parents were scientists, Lords only, not members of the Hierarchy.”
“What are you talking about?” Merryweather appeared confused.
“What I say, they were not members of the Hierarchy.”
“They most certainly were; they just didn't like it. Old blood, those two, very old blood indeed,” he said, with a solemn nod of the head.
I sat down with a crunch. Merryweather's revelations were too much to take in all at once. My parents had lived as virtual recluses for so long I had just thought them private, dedicated to their work. To be told that they were as aloof as those I hated was yet another kick in the teeth. But it made more sense of their murder.
“Have I shocked you, Jean?” Merryweather asked, disrupting my thoughts.
“Yes,” my blunt response.
“I didn't mean to.”
“It's all right, Walter, really it is. I don't hold it against you. It's all a bit much to comprehend, that's all.”
Much to my surprise, Merryweather brushed away some imaginary crumbs from the snow, grimaced, and then sat down beside me.
“Urgh, I hate the wet.”
“I thought it was just me.”
We looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughter. I quite forgot what I was moping about as we rolled about in the snow. Merryweather beat the ground until tears ran from his eyes and the two of us could laugh no more. We then laid back in the snow like two childish brothers and stared up at the ruby sky.
“Really is beautiful,” Walter said.
“Sort of,” I whispered back.
“All those years wasted. Such a very long time,” he breezed. “If only I'd known this goddamn sun couldn't harm me.” Merryweather let out such a sigh as if the weight of the world was balanced on his shoulders. “I'd have done things so very different, Jean, I really would.”
“Done what different, Walter?”
“Just things,” he said, after a long pause.
“If it's any consolation, I would have too.”
“A little,” he replied. “What would you have changed?”
“I'd have had a bloody good sit down with my damn parents, that's for sure.”
“Anything else?”
“Just Alba, I think. I would have treated her better than I did.”
“She loved you, you know,” Merryweather said as if speaking to a ghost.
“I wronged that poor girl, and I felt, no feel, terrible about it. I even belittled her attempts to tell me she'd seen the sun.”
“I'm sorry, old boy,” Merryweather said after a few moments. He spoke with a degree of sincerity that I'd never heard from him. He then reached down, took a handful of snow and crumpled it over his face. “It would be nice to feel it melt, don't you think?”
“Yes.”
“I think so, too.”
“I've done a lot of bad things, Walter,” I confessed, feeling brutal honesty the only ploy left.
“Some of them to me,” he replied, but not with intent to provoke.
“More so to the women in my life: my mother, misunderstood; Alba, neglected; Linka, deserted. I have not made the best of things.”
“Love will do that to a man,” Walter said in hushed tones. “The things we do for love.”
“Sorry, Walter,” I said, having barely heard him, but sure it was the same words he'd uttered when I'd been on the brink of killing him in the forest.
“All for love,” he replied, in the same quiet tones. Then, in a most un-Merryweather-like fashion, he rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself up onto his feet and made a slow amble away in our original direction.
I got to my own feet, realising our conversation had come to an abrupt end, and watched a man who looked every bit as miserable as I sniffle his way into some unknown future.
I had nothing else to say, so straightened out my clothing and set off in pursuit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
-
Garnet
Merryweather had revealed so much, yet nothing. I wanted more, thirsted for it, but dared not pressure him. Having seen him willing to die over questions he did not wish to answer, I was not about to push him too far. Not until I had to, anyway. What drove a man such as he, a dandy, a good-for-nothing playboy, a man with nothing to protect but secrets, to act as he did? Merryweather proved more enigmatic by the moment. What tales he'd told of my parents' past were so far beyond my comprehension as to be bordering on the absurd, but nobody could've made up such nonsense and made it so believable, could they? If any other man had told it, I would have killed them without hesitation, but not Merryweather. The more complicated the answers, the closer they held to the truth. After all, a man who lived a life of veneer rarely showed what lay beneath, I appreciated that more than most, and recognised a kindred soul. But it wouldn't prevent me taking his secrets. I had to.
* * *
I paced behind my companion's slouched form at a respectful distance. He seemed too disconsolate to speak to. I was not good with such things anyway, and Merryweather would have seen through it with ease. I was hardly the kind of person to lend a sympathetic ear. When all was said and done, I'd tried to eviscerate him once and doubted he'd have forgiven it. Speaking for myself, I knew I wouldn't have. But despite all of Merryweather's revelations, his very real show of emotion, I felt he still held back. It troubled me.
As was my way, it did not trouble me for long. My mind flitted to those affected by that single bite I'd placed upon the accursed Chantelle's neck. Somewhere, hidden away to the light, she laughed at me, her rasping mirth echoing inside her coffin like a saw through wood. I had been an unwilling pawn in her machinations and it had cost me dearly. She'd disrupted my melancholy life, my morbid waltz towards inevitable death and I judged it unforgivable. Yet without Chantelle's demise would Linka have shown herself? Would Aurora and her Nordic brethren ever have revealed themselves? And there they were, the two thoughts I'd tried to subdue risen once more. Always split down the middle. I imagined a tearful Linka at one side hating the man I had hidden from her, and on the other the vanishing form of Aurora leaping into Arctic waters after her brother. For both, the blame lay at my door. Dark thoughts for a dark raven of a man, a bad man. As if on cue, Merryweather broke our self-enforced silence.
“What's that?”
I followed his trembling finger to a view that matched my mood. “That, my dear Walter, is the demarcation of night and day.”
“The what-what?”
“It is the point where light ends and darkness takes over.”
“I don't remember it being like that,” he mumbled. “It was either night or day with a transitional period in between.”
“Pardon.”
“Oh, nothing, Jean, I'm just a tad surprised, that's all.”
“So was I the first time I saw it.”
Merryweather stopped his trudging plight and regarded me. His face held the confusions of a man with something to ask, but unwilling to do so. His mouth twitched, his mind waging war with his gut, as he blurted out the words. “What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Hvit.” He said the word with a passion he normally reserved for antagonising me.
“You know it?” I asked.
“I… I know of the legends.”
“How much do you know, Walter?”
He eyed me before responding. “Only what all those of a certain age have gleaned, that the Nordics left their Scandinavian homelands to move north, ever north. That one day they left the land altogether and moved out over the ocean, then below it, or so the stories told. I think…”
“You think what?” I interrupted.
“If you let me finish, I shall tell you.”
“Please do.”
“Thank you. To continue, I think it would be quite something to see.”
“It was if you like the life sub-aqua.”
“Tell me more?” he asked, as we set off again towards the veil of gloom.
“Not much to tell, really. The city was constructed of ice or an ice-like substance. The whole thing was underwater as you said.”
“And?” Merryweather asked eager for further information.
“And that was it. I thought it drab, to be honest.”
“It doesn't sound drab, it sounds fantastical. How did you find it? Was there an impressive gated entrance guarded b
y polar bears and wolves with towers of ice and battlements watched over by Nordic warriors?”
“Overstatements aren't the Nordic way.”
“You know what I mean,” he said in a most agitated manner.
I took great pleasure in being as annoying to him as he usually was to me, and then remembered I was supposed to be staying on his good side. “I'll try and describe it to you.”
“I wish you would, as I'm on the verge of falling asleep from your boring repartee.” Merryweather feigned a yawn to emphasise his frustrations.
“Well, it was like this, there was a doorway, or really more of a hatch, that opened in the ice.”
“Ooh!” said Merryweather in genuine amazement.
“The hatch lay invisible to all just within the light side of the more permanent darkness. I think that was the Nordics' safeguard against other Eternals trying to get in. Not that I have any idea who'd want to,” I added.
“Could someone find it?” Merryweather asked, with a stare of such intensity he almost burned my eyes out. “Could a stranger stumble upon it and know it for what it is?”
“They could not.”
“Oh,” Merryweather hung his head before remembering himself. With great effort, he tried and finally succeeded in meeting my gaze again.
I decided to put the poor fellow out of his misery. “Walter.”
“Hm.”
“I am not someone.”
“Does that mean you can find it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, goody, I'd so like to see it. I bet it's something to behold. It's been so long since I've seen anything new.” Merryweather blathered out words in such a hurry I had all on to follow him. He then stopped mid-spew and gave me another one of his intense stares. “How is it you can see it when others can't?”
“I can't see it,” I replied.
“You can be most infuriating,” he snapped.
“Look who's talking and stop calling me infuriating.”
“I can't help it, whereas you do it on purpose.”
“I put it down to nerves.”
“Do I make you nervous?” he said with a jolt.
“It's the way you dress.”
Walter scowled, then continued in a lighter vein, “So, do tell, if you cannot see it how in God's name do you intend to find it?”
Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2) Page 23