by Ben Galley
‘Pontis, I’m glad I found you. The carpets are just the tip of the iceberg. The windowsills are dreadful. And have you seen the larders? They are filthy!’
Calidae didn’t pause her barrage until she had poked and prodded and hauled him down into the roots of Clovenhall, past the kitchens, now quiet after supper, and into a corridor lined with old cupboards and spare chairs. It was a nook she had found in her recent wanderings, as she had surreptitiously mapped the house for Merion, along with the names of those who came and went. Only the northeast wing had eluded her scrutiny so far.
‘Lady Serped, I really must insist!’
Pontis’ voice was getting louder by the minute. This was taking far too long, and was far too dangerous. He stopped in his paces and wrenched his arm away from her.
‘I will need to report this to his Lordship!’
‘How dare you shout at me, Butler Pontis! I say, move onwards,’ she ordered, hands on hips for good measure. ‘Or I shall report you!’
Pontis turned slowly, eyes narrowed and clearly beginning to boil. Calidae had to act swiftly. As soon as his back was turned, she pounced.
Calidae jumped high, throwing herself up to his shoulders. As her knees collided with his back, making him lurch forward, she put her palms to the back of his skull and pushed him down with all her weight and might, aiming his forehead for the corner of a sturdy side table.
She missed her mark, but the result was still the same. Pontis’ temple met the sharp oak edge with a wet crack and he sagged to the ground, lashing out wildly with his arms. He was stronger than his pudgy frame suggested, and a thrash of his arm caught the side of her face. The pain only served to make her rage blossom, bringing out the monster she always felt lurking under the surface.
Calidae grabbed him by the roots of his hair and slammed his head repeatedly down onto the tabletop until his limbs grew sluggish. She hit him again—once, twice—until the bone caved inwards to reveal his insides. She slumped with him as crimson pooled on the floor, flooding her vision. The bloodlust, they called it; when a lamprey bares the side where the animal still resides. Lampreys are not called sons and daughters of Cain for no reason.
When Pontis’ lungs had rattled their final wheeze, Calidae rose to her feet. Between the thunderous beats of her heart, she listened for shouts or ringing bells. There was nothing. She let her head sag down onto her chest, wincing at the throbbing in her face. It was then that she saw the blood on her fingers. Slowly, she raised a hand, mouth already inching open. She dabbed the warm blood on her tongue and sucked it clean, savouring the tingle on her lips, the wriggle in her throat. She screwed her eyes shut and revelled in it.
Once the beast had receded, she began to drag Pontis away. Yanking at his arms, she inched him down the narrow hallway, leaving a smear of blood. She would have to be faster than this, she thought, and hauled harder, using the slope of the corridor to aid her. Soon enough, she reached a cupboard; a huge, heavy thing engraved with scenes of forests and mountains in the Prussian style. There was a key sticking out from one of its thick oak doors. With a great deal of difficulty, Calidae stuffed Mr Pontis inside. Her anger helped her along. When she finally managed to get his foot to stop falling out, she locked the doors tightly and slid the key into her pocket.
Within half an hour, and after the theft of a bucket and rag, she had the corridor clean of blood, and her hands the very same. With every wipe and scrub, she thanked all the deities she didn’t believe in for large houses and forgotten corridors.
Soon, she was sat in the library, flicking through a book about a journey to the Galapagods Islands, where it seemed all sorts of strange creatures and theories abounded. Whenever a maid or butler passed her by she nodded and smiled, playing the good little lady.
Dizali paid her a visit as she was walking up the stairs to her room, ready to retire. Or at least that was what she told the Lord Protector.
‘I bid you goodnight then, Lady Serped. You no doubt have a great many things to ponder. It will be good to sleep on them. Tomorrow, we shall talk some more.’ There was a curious glint in Dizali’s eye.
Calidae nodded. ‘That we shall, Lord Protector.’
‘And I trust,’ Dizali added, before she could escape, ‘that I was not too absent this evening. I had some business to attend to.’
‘Not at all, my Lord. I was perfectly happy reading in the library.’
‘Anything of note, Lady Serped?’
Calidae tilted her head to one side, as if recalling the text. ‘Just a book on what a Mr Darwin is calling evolution, and how creatures can change to suit their environment, however harsh.’
Dizali raised an eyebrow. ‘How curious.’
‘Apparently, only the strongest survive,’ she said, fixing him with a bold stare. ‘Personally, I believe it is nothing more than a radical claim.’ She pretended to stifle a yawn. ‘Excuse me, Lord Protector. I believe it is time for me to sleep on it, as you say. Goodnight.’
Calidae could feel Dizali’s eyes following her all the way up the stairs until she had disappeared behind the ornate balustrade. Only then did she exhale, slowly. Her heart played a merry tune all the way back to her chambers.
Once the door was locked, she pressed her back against it and concentrated on prising her teeth from her bottom lip. The ice beneath her feet was already thin enough; a dead body was the last thing she needed. And yet, within a handful of minutes she had quelled her angst and stoppered her nose to the stench of fear. Mr Darwin was a wise fellow, indeed. What is survival, at its basest, if not to kill or be killed? This evening, she had been forced into making that choice.
‘I am a Serped,’ Calidae whispered to herself.
The next half an hour was spent pacing, deciding on her next move. She pondered the odds of getting Dizali to take her back to Slickharbour tomorrow or the next day, but they were slim at best. It took far too long by carriage, and the Lord Protector would not have had his corpse seen on a rumbleground train. This messaging system she and Merion had invented was altogether disappointing.
Tap.
Calidae looked down at her fingernails in confusion, then at the door.
A figment, nothing more.
Perhaps she could convince Dizali of a nostalgic journey into the city, and slip away.
Tap, tap.
She could always use the rumour of a safe under the house, and sneak off while the lordsguards hunted for it. No doubt they would tear the place apart.
Tap, tap, tap.
Something was attacking the window behind her. Was it rain? Calidae whirled around to find a bird—a magpie, no less—pecking the glass. She drifted towards the window, drawn by curiosity. The magpie was a fleabitten thing and missing one eye, but it seemed eager enough to get in.
It was then that she remembered Merion’s words on the journey over the Iron Ocean.
A one-eyed magpie.
Something to do with that old prospector friend of his. A pet, for all intents and purposes.
‘Surely not,’ she mumbled to herself. Almost without her permission, her hand reached for the cord to hoist the window. She yanked it, setting the pulleys to work, and with a scrape of paint on paint, the glass shifted upwards. The magpie wriggled though.
The bird cawed softly, as if it knew it needed to be quiet. It paraded up and down the windowsill as Calidae took to kneeling, her eyes still curious slits. The bird’s feathers caught the candlelight, and greens and shimmering blues danced in its inky feathers.
‘Can you understand me?’ she asked. ‘Did Merion send you?’
The magpie squawked twice. Calidae had no idea what that meant, but she took it as a yes.
‘Can you get a message to Merion?’ She might as well try it, seeing as the bird had sought her out. Maybe it worked like a carrier pigeon.
Two squawks. Calidae moved to her desk and pulled out a fresh sheaf of paper. With the nib of her quill clinking against the inkwell, she had a letter scratched out in no time at all. It was br
ief, and to the point. She read it aloud:
M,
No sign of deeds nor contact with W.
The Spit is being sacrificed. Dizali incessant.
C.
P.S. D hunting leeches for their blood. Why?
At the end, she included a name, one for Merion’s list.
Longweather.
She folded the note twice and brought it back to the bird, who was preening in boredom. ‘I must be going mad,’ she muttered, holding the letter out straight. ‘Don’t you dare eat it.’
The magpie blinked and inspected the letter, tilting its head back and forth until its beady eyes, or in this case, eye, had got the measure of a thing. The magpie snatched up the letter in its beak and escaped back into the night, all in a blink.
Calidae shook her head as she closed the window. She turned around, eyes vacant, as if she couldn’t quite understand what she had just done. ‘I must be mad,’ she told herself. Giving letters to a magpie.
Despite all her anger and hatred for the Hark boy, she couldn’t help but deny a strange glimmer of gratitude. He was the reason she was here, after all. It may have been the mouth of the beast, but it was closer to home.
‘Damn you, Tonmerion…’
She still could not wait to shoot the boy.
Chapter IX
WORMS
4th August, 1867
Worms.
The hole in the earth Sift had chosen for Rhin was not a private residence. He shared it with huge earthworms. Great fat beasts, thicker than his arm, writhing and slithering around in the mud, making a noise that made Rhin shudder.
The faerie huddled in the corner, clutching himself, his wings drooping. But his eyes did not echo his disgusted, dejected posture. They were slits of glowing purple, hard and fierce. They stared out of the bars keeping him confined, watching anything that moved.
The bowels beneath the Coil of Cela’h Dor were vacuous. They were misshapen caverns where cranes and wires fought for space, where prisons lurked at the edges, and barracks oversaw all from above, near the surface and the streets of Shanarh. The sheer walls and arching ceilings were pockmarked with hollows and rooms bristling with machinery; Fae clockwork and waterworks, already centuries old. Glow-worm lanterns shone from every nook and crevice, bathing all in their strange bluish light, painting the hollow world in monochrome.
These were the innards of the city and the fortress above, and Rhin watched it all closely as it ground and clanked away. Shouts echoed through the damp air, keeping time with the incessant dripping. Mighty though Shanarh’s inner workings might have been, plumbing had never been the Fae’s strong suit.
One of the worms brushed Rhin’s elbow with its knobbly tail, and he whacked it, eliciting a wet thud, and a hand smeared in mud. He wrinkled his mouth, even though he was already practically bathing in the stuff. The guards had tossed him around a bit before slamming the door in his snarling face. The cuts and bruises they had carved still ached; no doubt soiled with the fetid mud around him just like his other wounds: marks of Sift’s enjoyment. He would have to keep his spells going strong to keep infection at bay. That meant he would have to eat.
His stomach growled at the thought of food. Sift hadn’t fed him yet; she was trying to chip away at his strength. He knew he would get slop, that much was certain. Probably a mug of spit, too, if he was lucky. But he would eat it all the same. He wasn’t a fool. He knew a prisoner’s best weapon is resolve. That, and patience.
Sift had promised him pain, and pain she had delivered, chuckling and purring throughout. She had taken him to a hall with all sorts of vicious devices and blades. A solitary stone chair had been his throne. He had been shown the edge of his determination within an hour, and the depth of the Queen’s ideas in half of that. That first day had taught him more about himself then several centuries as a soldier, fighting for his life and his so-called Queen. Torture is at least open and honest.
It had worried him deeply how weak he now felt; how the pain ebbed and flowed, inexorable. Rhin consoled himself by dragging up old memories long-banished, in an effort to paint over the horror of current times with the varnish of perspective. Memories of times worse than this.
Rhin thought back to the battlefields of Bodmin, almost a century and a half ago. Dark and steaming from the blood of battle they had been. Bodies impaled upon the stalagmites in their dozens, gaping faces and broken wings left, right, and centre. Rhin had staggered through them, eyes up and straight ahead, refusing to let his gaze wallow in the slaughter. Sift had sent them there to break the rebellion of Ghori Felltongue, an ambitious Earl with a loud mouth. It’s strange, how just a few words can send thousands to their graves.
Then there was the day the trolls broke into Carn’Erfjan. Clever things, trolls. They always work in threes, and they can sniff out a tunnel or a hidden exit no matter how clever the door, or tight the seam. Their claws and teeth do the rest. Then they come for you, wading through the shadows, a wall of muscle and hunger, dripping acidic blood, filling the diameter of all but the largest tunnels. Swords don’t work but lances do, and glass shields keep the blood at bay. He remembered how they painted every inch of the stone purple with the dead before the soldiers brought them down. He could still hear the screams.
Or the Tunnels of Eyri, directly south-east of Carn’Erfjan, where Feghan of the Black Eruption—the last protester of Undering—had made his refuge. And what a refuge it was; a fortress within a mighty oak root, hanging from a cavern’s ceiling. They had ridden moles high along the cavern’s walls, until the roots took them close enough to scale the fortress. They’d climbed to the very top, where Feghan’s family slept alongside his captains, his generals, and of course Feghan himself. It had been a bloody slaughter that night; the work of black knives and no mercy. When every scream and baby’s cry had been silenced, Rhin had let his gaze finally fall and meet the vacant eyes of the dead. That was the last time he had taken an order from Sift. He had stolen the Hoard nine days later.
Rhin snorted. A life of murder working to reach the Queen’s table, only to find the food was poisoned. He had indeed seen worse situations, but deep inside he knew how thin that comfort was. Sift would take her time with him. She would be patient and inventive, slow and painful. Rhin tried stoking determination instead.
Time has the clever knack of suspending hope. The more minutes there are to a problem, there is always a greater chance of mistake; a slip-up like the drop of a key, or the swift pick of an unbuttoned pocket. Merion couldn’t reach him, Rhin knew that much. It was up to him, and he refused to die as Sift’s toy. He just had to wait, and endure.
Hours passed before the clanking of Coil Guard boots could be heard tramping along the walkways above. Rhin roused himself from his shallow slumber and cupped his ears. Unmistakable. Light mail over mole-leather and Fae steel. Oh, it had been a while, but he recognised it alright. He had been a guard himself, for decades.
Wincing with pain, Rhin got to his aching feet and brushed what mud he could from his scant sackcloth. He raised his chin and folded his hands behind his back, affixing an idle smirk onto his swollen face, hiding the desire to curl up into a ball and sleep for a year. He even flexed his wings for show.
A dozen guards, bedecked in their dark grey armour and holding short spears and swords, crowded around his bars. Their eyes were full of the chill reserved just for traitors. One faerie stepped forward, bereft of helmet, a glint in his lavender eyes.
Rhin spoke first. ‘Caol Cullog, what a pleasure.’
‘That’s Captain Cullog, and the feeling’s far from mutual, Rhin Rehn’ar.’
‘You’ve climbed high, indeed. You could barely wield a sword when I first met you. Precarious, at the top, isn’t it?’
‘I imagine it is when you’re a traitor to the Queen,’ said Caol.
‘A mad Queen.’ Rhin countered, and spat to the side. His views on royalty were plain: all royalty is mad, from the concept to the crown. No head is built to bear the burden
of a city, of a people, of an empire. Royalty is one of the greatest cons Fae or man has ever known, but it is ferociously double-edged. Convince the people they need to be ruled, and you delude yourself you can rule them. If you weren’t mad when you ascended to a throne, the weight of it would send you there soon enough.
Caol sneered. ‘Even now he can’t stop his treacherous mouth from spilling fnach,’ he swore in old Fae.
His words echoed around the stern-faced guards behind him. Rhin smirked at them all. He’d had plenty of time to rehearse his words.
‘I imagine the streets above are no cleaner than when I left? No freer of miscreants and lowlifes? No safer? Thought not. And what about the border skirmishes? Have they stopped? Right again! Products of Sift’s merciless quest for power. She does what she pleases and murders whomever she can, just to get what she wants. Who pays the price? You do. Your families do.’
‘She’s a Fae Queen. That’s what they do,’ hissed another of the guards. Caol held up his hand for silence.
Rhin stepped closer to the bars so they could see the anger on his face, between the cuts and bruises.
‘At the expense of our souls, our morals, and countless Fae lives. They are our brothers and sisters, not enemies. Not moles to be caught and slaughtered!’
‘Silence!’ Caol snapped. ‘Treason spills from you like vomit from a drunkard!’
Rhin snorted. ‘It’s always funny, how those in power like to rename truth as treachery.’
There was an uneasy shuffling from the guards. He had ruffled them. Caol pulled a thick key from his pocket and reached for the lock. Spears were lowered, swords drawn.
‘No need for that,’ said Rhin, holding out his open hands. ‘I do hope you’re escorting me to a dinner table. I’m starving.’
Caol laughed sharply, as did a few of the others. ‘Of sorts.’
Shackles were clamped around his wrists, uncomfortably tight against the swollen skin.
Rhin shrugged. ‘A lunch table, then?’
The captain shoved him hard in the back and sent him stumbling.