by Ben Galley
Dizali raised an eyebrow. ‘Shall we indeed?’
Honorford avoided the question, gesturing to the syringes. ‘In any case, you have five samples of fine leech-blood, just as you asked for. Taken almost immediately after death.’
‘I remember asking for six.’
Honorford took off his hat. ‘There was unfortunately a lot of travelling involved, Lord Protector…’
‘… and leeches aren’t as numerous as they used to be,’ Heck finished.
Dizali spent a moment switching between them with a sharp gaze. Even Hanister, lurking in the background, didn’t escape it. He snapped his fingers.
‘Tell me who we have here.’
The Brothers’ hands darted over the vials. They spoke alternately.
‘Tork Knorsson, fisherman.’
‘Esther Unbridge, nurse.’
‘Bargen Bain, Swist banker.’
‘Raif and Carnby Redshire, soldiers in the Ottoman Empire lines.’
Dizali ran his fingers through his sharp goatee, eyeing the dark red blood. He reached out to grasp a vial, and held it up to the gaslight. It was pure enough.
‘It is time to put this damnable Orange Seed of Karrigan’s to the test, and find out whether Mr Witchazel has been lying to us.’ Dizali was convinced that he was; that the Orange Seed would open for any leech, and not just the Bulldog’s boy.
‘A fine plan,’ Heck smiled. Dizali rolled his eyes.
‘Hanister, fetch the lawyer.’
‘Yes, Milord.’
Dizali ran his finger along the long glass cylinders, examining the blood. It was a shame to waste it. Leech blood was the secret to making the finest scarlet brandy.
He called for a butler, who called for Rolick. Within two minutes, the lordsguard captain was standing in front of him, acting sheepish. There was still a hint of a bruise on his pockmarked cheeks.
‘Yes, Milord?’
Dizali beckoned him closer. ‘It struck me today how dangerous some of the roads are in this city, and how many of the carriages are not maintained as they should be.’
Rolick knew the game and nodded. The hangdog expression soon lifted. ‘Yes, Milord. Bloody disgrace.’
‘Even some of the Emerald Lords are guilty of it. I have seen plenty of cracked wheels and creaking joints at the kerb of the House. Any one of them could have an accident at any time.’
‘I expect so, Milord.’
‘In fact, do you know of a Lord Felcher?’
‘I have had the pleasure of drinking with his personal guard more than once, Milord.’
‘Is that so? You may have heard the same rumours as I have then. That the axle of his carriage is near-broken and his horses are a skittish breed.’
Rolick thumbed his nose, and pondered. ‘I had not, Milord. Would you like me to see that Lord Felcher is informed of it, Milord?’
Dizali nodded solemnly. ‘I would indeed, Captain Rolick. ‘I would indeed.’
*
Wine cellars are wonderful places. Not only are they crammed with bountiful amounts of alcohol, they are also warrens, winding and burrowing into cold and dark places.
The Brothers had the intelligence to at least recognise the need for lanterns. Four stood around the Orange Seed, one knelt. Three Brothers, a Lord Protector, and an emaciated lawyer. Witchazel’s gaze was nailed to the floor.
‘The case?’ Dizali hissed.
Heck walked forward, showing off the vials.
Dizali gestured to the golden cradle and orb. ‘Then let us begin, and see if we cannot fool this contraption. Start with the fisherman.’
‘Yes Milord.’ Heck bobbed his head. He set the case down and plucked the first of the bloods from its velvet hollow. He tipped it into the funnel in one swift movement and the fisherman’s crimson flowed.
Silence reigned. The men hardly breathed.
Dizali frowned. Disappointment was not something he enjoyed. Success was his delicacy.
‘Next!’
The nurse went second, and once again they waited and watched, hoping for a click, a whir, anything to indicate they were close. Dizali clenched his fists, dreaming up all sorts of fun things to do to Witchazel, just for being the one who had introduced him to this infernal device. He gave the lawyer a kick for good measure. That brought his eyes up, staring at the Seed. There was the faintest shadow of a smile on the lawyer’s face.
‘Next!’ Dizali barked, his voice echoing off the stone walls. The banker came and went with no results. Dizali bared his teeth.
‘Soldiers!’
The Redshires’ gore wrapped the debacle up nicely. For a blessed moment there came a purr of some unseen cog. Dizali was halfway through celebration when a resounding click followed and the Seed fell still again. Blood began to trickle from beneath it, staining the grey stone floor.
For a long time, Dizali didn’t speak. He just stared at the golden globe, letting its glowing, intricate face mock him for as long as he could bear. He knew there was only one option left.
‘I want Tonmerion Hark,’ he growled.
‘The boy that killed two of the Seventh?’ Hanister asked.
‘The very same. The Bulldog’s boy.’
‘It would be our pleasure, Milord.’
‘It will be your duty. I want him found. I don’t care how, but I want him. Alive, so I can spill his blood right here. He won’t be able to keep away. I want you to patrol the dockyards. Ask in the taverns, talk to your letters, to your acolytes! Find that rusher who attacked my carriage! ANYTHING!’ Dizali’s voice rose to a strangled shout.
‘Yes, Milord!’ said Hanister.
Heck and Honorford tugged at the brims of their hats and filed up the stairs. Hanister remained, a hand on the lawyer’s shoulder.
‘You promised you would spare us both,’ Witchazel croaked. His eyes were fierce in that hollow face, his long, thin hair a smear of black across his knobbled skull.
‘Promises are like pottery, Mr Witchazel. They shatter with time and use. Take him away!’
Hanister hauled Witchazel across the floor and out.
Dizali was left alone to stare at the Orange Seed, grinding his teeth until the lanterns began to die, one by one, until he was plunged into darkness.
In the shadows he saw the face of a thirteen year-old boy, sandy of hair and face, laughing at him.
Chapter X
“MAGICK IS A STUBBORN BEAST”
5th August, 1867
The park was a blur to Merion’s unfocused eyes. The scent of rain on grass and tree bark went unnoticed. The tapping of the drizzle on his hood was just a drone. He was a statue to contemplation and quiet meditation.
For over an hour he had kept that quiet bench company. The world had moved on around him. The occasional passerby would toss him a quick glance. A lost ball had nudged his foot once, but he barely flinched. Even the ducks and sparrows didn’t pester him; they had quickly realised he had no bread or tidbits.
A voice broke his reverie.
‘They should put you in a circus. The Amazing Frozen Boy.’
‘They tried that. It didn’t work out too well,’ said Merion, dragging his glazed eyes from the river and up to his aunt.
Lilain shrugged and set herself down beside him without bothering to wipe the seat. She seemed to enjoy the rain.
‘What’ve you learnt?’ she asked, staring out at the riverbank and the passing ships, spewing smog from their funnels.
‘Pardon?’
‘One of my tutors, Lerbersson, a Nord gentlemen with the softest voice you’ve ever heard. He always used to ask me that when he caught me staring off into nothin’. He would slam his ruler down on the desk.’ She slapped her britches for good measure. ‘Then he’d say to me, “Lady Hark, what have you learnt? You must have been thinking about something more important than this lesson. Tell me what you’ve learnt!” Crotchety ole mule, but a fine letter. So, what have you learnt?’
‘That it’s hard being a traitor,’ said Merion. At first he spoke
slowly and quietly, but then his words ran away with him. ‘This is the first moment in weeks where I’ve been able to sit and just… be. To truly put my thoughts in order. I keep forgetting I’m in London, for Almighty’s sake. I am home, as I promised myself, and yet all I can think about is Dizali swinging from a rope. That moment grows more golden every day. The moment I end this and go back to simply living. Back to a life where I can sit here and watch the ships and feed a duck, and not worry about being strangled to death by Calidae Serped or a Brother.’
She must have seen his hand rise to his throat. ‘Is that what happened with Gavisham?’
Merion nodded. ‘I would have died had it not been for her. It still bothers me.’
‘Well, it would.’ Aunt Lilain ruminated for a while, nodding slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I used to go out on the east road out of Fell Falls, remember it? I used to get up an hour before dawn, and go sit up on the ridge so I could watch the sun rise out the earth. Put my back to the town and pretend I was the last soul on a scorched Earth. I never took any water, or supplies. Not even a gun. Just my mind and thoughts for company. Makes you want to sort through them, weigh everything up, put it all in perspective. Solitude. It’s as good for our thoughts as sleep is for bodies. And by the looks of you, I’d say you needed this. That’s why we left you alone. I understand time’s an evil mistress and we’re not on her good side, but you don’t have to fight the world all at once, Merion.’
‘It’s not the whole world. Just Dizali.’
Lilain chuckled. ‘I know you, Nephew. If you wanted revenge on just one man, you’d have fried him the first day you set foot in London. But no, you develop this grand scheme to bring him to his knees in the most public of ways. Otherwise you wouldn’t be making your list of lords and ladies, now would you? You’re far from a fool, Merion, and that’s the truth. I’d wager that you know full well that anythin’ you do here, in this city, will echo around the world. And you want that. You want the whole world to see him fall, right?’
It was Merion’s turn to shrug. ‘You may have a point,’ he said, a smile sneaking over his face. He could always trust Aunt Lilain on matters of the mind.
‘I get it,’ said Lilain. ‘You’re following in your father’s footsteps. I saw the glint in your eye when Dower spilled the beans. You want to finish the work he started and see the whole Order down in the dust with Dizali. Lampreys against leeches. It’s the oldest battle there is. I don’t doubt you and your plan, Merion, and I have faith you can do this, but I have to say this, otherwise I wouldn’t be fit to call myself an aunt. If you stretch yourself too far, you’ll get yourself killed. Or one of us, for that matter. That ain’t high on my list of plans.’
Merion thumbed a rebel raindrop from his chin. ‘How did you get so wise, Aunt?’
‘I do my best.’ She nodded, and they fell into silence. She had spoken, and Merion would listen.
‘Have you missed it?’ asked Merion, once an iron-plated Queen’s cruiser had drifted past, its brass clockwork cannons glistening. Off to the Obsidian Sea, most likely. It reminded him of a similar ship he had felt beneath his feet, not so long ago.
Lilain snorted. ‘Not one bit. Give me the wide open nothing any day. It’s too close and crowded here. Far too vertical for my liking. I appreciate it, but I don’t enjoy it.’
‘So you won’t be staying when all of this is done?’
Lilain shook her head. ‘I ain’t a clue, but something tells me wherever I’ll be, it’ll be with Lurker.’
‘With Lurker?’ Merion echoed, watching her from the corner of his eye. He had seen their sly looks at each other, the brief touching of hands.
‘Yes, Lurker.’
‘Then I was right, that night in Yara’s tent.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I learnt something else, too.’ Merion nudged her with an elbow.
‘What’s that?’
‘That if I am to fight the whole world, there isn’t another strange gaggle of people I would rather fight it with. I’m glad you came looking for me.’
‘Oh,’ said Lilain, ‘I know.’
*
‘You’re telling me whenever my father said he was overseeing the grounds, he was in his cavern, cooking up shades?’ said Merion. He was tense in the jaw. The perfection of his father’s secret still niggled at him.
‘Or practising,’ said Gunderton. Together, they negotiated a deep puddle and hopped back onto the pavement. The rain was a fine thing indeed; the sky above them a murky black, delivering a fresh torrent upon London. Anyone still mad enough to be out in the downpour was running for their lives. Nobody spared the men a glance. Just another couple of poor souls, weathering the storm.
‘So that’s why you always kept me inside.’
‘And I remember you screaming about it.’
Merion blew rainwater from his lips. ‘Well, perhaps if there had been a bit more honesty in the Hark household, I might have understood.’
Gunderton chuckled, disarming Merion’s jab. The boy was making a habit of exercising his wit; fair repayment for all the secrets he had been refused. At first, the jibes had a sharp edge to them. Now they were blunt as a hammer, just jokes to keep the conversation rolling.
Gunderton had crawled further out of his shell with each passing day. He and Lurker had grown some sort of rapport, no doubt based on a mutual love of whisky and tobacco, guns and magick. Hardship too, perhaps. They had both seen war. Old soldiers always talked the lowest and the longest.
Merion had warmed to him as well, despite who and what he was, and the lingering ghost of Gavisham. When Gunderton could get away from Lilain’s eager letter-chat, he had shown Merion some bloodcraft, sharpening the boy’s rudimentary skills. They had even squeezed in a little training, when the gaslights were low and the city slumbered. He still thought the old butler strange, but that was nothing more than a product of his years. Merion wondered what it meant to be a Brother, and how he would have turned out had he been born to a different bloodline of leeches. It was a disturbing thought; how the ingredients of time and circumstance can forge a man and how powerless a soul can be against them.
‘Are we close?’ Merion asked again.
‘A mile or so.’
‘You said that a mile ago.’
‘It’s been a while since I’ve been here.’
Merion nodded, looking around at a part of London he had never seen before. The streets were narrower than ever here, winding in all directions like a dilapidated maze.
After a dozen more bends, they came to a corner where a red-fronted shop squatted, shiny in the wet. The paint around its doorway and porthole windows was flaking away, revealing a previous life when it had once been green. Judging by the wrought-iron symbol of an open book hanging over the doorway, and the piles of spines and loose pages that pressed up against the windows, it looked to be a bookshop. A dim light shone from inside.
Gunderton rubbed his hands. ‘This is it.’
A bell sang as they opened the skinny door. Merion wiggled a wet finger in his ear as he wiped his boots on the mat.
A man strode out of a doorway behind the counter and bowed. He was in his later years, with shorn salt and pepper hair. He had a square jaw, and his nose was crooked. By the shape of him under his yellow cloth shirt, Merion guessed the man might have been a boxer in his younger days, or at least one for heavy labour.
The interior of the shop looked as though it had been consumed by some unstoppable fungus made of books. The blasted things were everywhere: the counter-top balanced on neat pillars of them; the chairs and tables were swamped; shelves bent with their weight; every gap and nook on offer had been filled with paper and spine. Merion wondered how on earth the man ever found anything.
‘A rainy afternoon to you,’ greeted the man, voice cracking at the edges, fond of the pipe.
‘And to you, Mr Spirn,’ said Gunderton, approaching the counter. He fished the dark scales from his eyes and blinked the sting away.
&nb
sp; The man clicked a finger. ‘Ah! Errant. One of the Fifth, right?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘In that case, welcome back! And a new acolyte, I see?’
‘Merion Harlequin.’
Spirn wrinkled his nose. ‘Sounds high-born.’
Merion was about to tell him he was mistaken, but Gunderton answered for him. ‘Fear not, Spirn. Bastard son of some minor lord, he is.’
Spirn reached over the countertop to thwack Gunderton on the arm. ‘Still going strong, I see!’
Gunderton nodded and flashed a smile. ‘Indeed I am, though running low on crimson.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Spirn sighed as he tossed a key to Merion and waggled his finger at the door. Merion locked it.
Spirn spread his hands over the counter. ‘Want to know what I got? Or just want to name ‘em and see?’
Gunderton made a show of pondering, even though they had discussed Merion’s needs at length. ‘Here’s one right off the top of the list. Fae.’
Spirn guffawed at that. ‘I should be so lucky.’
Merion tried not to look too disappointed. The bulk of his plan rested on that shade. ‘Nimerigar then?’ he asked with hope in his voice.
‘I don’t know if I have that…’ Spirn’s voice trailed off as he browsed his shelves, humming. His fingers went to work over the weathered spines, as if each dog-ear and rumple was a tiny signpost to where he was headed.
Spirn took his merry time searching. Merion held his breath.
‘You know what? You’re in luck!’ The letter plucked a small, fat book from the squeeze of its neighbours and placed it on the counter. ‘Last one in the city, I’d wager.’
‘What about electric eel?’ the boy asked.
‘That I have!’ Spirn fetched a small stepladder from an alcove and propped it against a nearby shelf. Up and up his hands spidered, until they came to rest on a tome with a burgundy cover. He slid it from its pile with care and laid it next to the other book. Merion stepped forward, curious as any young man would be.
The vials sat in expertly carved grooves in the pages of the books. Spirn slid the eel shade free and admired its clarity in the light. ‘It’s been steeped as well, like all my shades.’