Death and the Merchant (River's End Book 1)

by C. H. Williams

  Teddy’s arm caught the corner of a crate as he turned to move, and before he could fully register the impact amid his daydream, a sting of wood in flesh tore jagged against his arm. Swearing, he dropped the cat’s paw with a loud clank.

  Careless. Careless, careless, careless—

  A nauseating, caustic smell lingered in the musty air as blood welled down his arm.

  He’d been wrung breathless, was suffocating as his eyes stung, fire prickling deep from within the cut, his lungs burning of something sterile, clean, the incense of his own skin in concentration, and he could feel it, deep within his chest.

  The Thread.

  Water hit the steel basin like thunder, the shock of cold like ice in his veins.

  His heart was humming, and eyes pressed closed, his lungs filled once more with the stale stockroom air as he pictured the whirring little machine spitting stitches into bolts in the back of Sam’s workroom.

  The Thread.

  That’d been Sam’s name. The Thread. His grandmother had called it The Touch, but she was from the Basins, and anymore, nobody would’ve dared invoke such a dated superstition.

  He had a knack, that’s what his mother’d said.

  A knack for helping.

  Now go feed the chickens.

  A knack for helping, now go fetch your brother.

  A knack for helping, now go wash the dishes.

  Her own personal form of denial. You’re a loon, she’d snip, when Granma Geanie would croon over him, feeling his palms, murmuring prayers to her ancient gods. Gods, Ma, let the boy be! And she’d turn, muttering under her breath, gods know, there’s nothing divine here, because she hadn’t really wanted any of them but was too afraid to confess she hadn’t been built to mother.

  Billy Townsend had a knack, too, except his was for setting a string of barns alight the summer he’d turned sixteen.

  ‘Course, nobody really got into it.

  But Sam wasn’t nobody.

  Teddy! That’s—you’re—why didn’t you tell me? Sam’s eyes had been wide, his grin one of unmistakable youth, and it’d been a hot afternoon so many years ago on the shaded riverbanks filled with the sound of Elsie tossing rocks into the water with the responding plunk-splash, plunk-splash that awoke in her something destructive and chaotic, and there’d been a little bit of mutiny born in her eyes that day that had yet to fade.

  It’s nothing, Teddy mumbled, and he could still feel his face burning on the banks with his best friend. Sam’s wet hair had been sending cool little beads down the back of his neck, rolling lazily down his tanned chest, an earthy smell, crisp and damp, clinging to them both as they’d sat in undershorts on the baking boulders, soaking in the sun. I’ve just…got a knack for that sort of thing, that’s all.

  That memory had stayed sweet, through the years.

  The youthful memory of the hot summer day by the river.

  Teddy opened his eyes, the tap squealing shut, water sputtering to a halt as he ran a hand across the smooth flesh of his forearm, no sign of injury marking him.

  Just a knack for it.

  ELSIE

  “I will fight for you. Fight to the death for your unequivocal right to not be afraid anymore.

  This, I swear to you.”

  ~Sam Alderton

  Hissing grass, prickly and brittle, bristled against Elsie’s thighs, her eyes darting down every so often to follow the game trail that circled back, surpassing the sprawl of the Valley as it opened up to the western farmlands.

  Fletcher’s fingers were tangled up with hers as they wound their way through the fields, Butterfly Ridge reluctantly poking up in the distance.

  One, two, three chimneys to the left. Even from this distance, it looked dreary.

  But fortunately, that distance—for the moment—was quite far.

  Shortcut, indeed.

  With coy smile, Elsie twirled around, catching Fletcher in her arms as he nearly walked into her, pressing a quick kiss against his soft lips. He went up almost imperceptibly onto his toes, just a fraction taller than she was for that one moment, catching his balance and another kiss before sinking back down to meet her eye line.

  “Love you, Elsie,” he breathed, lips tugging up, eyes alight.

  He mended the broken promises of the treacherous sun.

  They were loving as-is, in present condition, no questions asked, no heartache sold here, and she was alive, so gods-damned alive.

  Tangled together, she followed the steady rise and fall of his breath with hers, tracing the gentle lilting of his ribcage with her hands—her hands that had already undone his buttoned coat, her hands that slid atop the over-starched tunic, making him laugh quietly, even as he winced against her icy fingers. “Love you, too,” she murmured, squeezing him tightly, never letting go as she nuzzled into his neck.

  The bitter wind was roaring around them, and there was a quiet voice inside her, pulsing next to the beating of her heart.

  Safe.

  Safe.

  Safe.

  Safe.

  Safe.

  Safe.

  Safe.

  She left him in the field, the taste of his lips still lingering sweet on her own.

  It didn’t do to cross lines like this, to bring him to this place where she was someone else. Not just yet. Not while they were still shiny and new and beautiful and clean and everything that she needed them to be right now.

  The ragged pastures bathed in ghostly light were shifting, warm windows of creaking cottages speckling the countryside. Butterfly Ridge was a pathetic outcropping at the edge of the Valley, a hub for the farmers to drink and trade amongst themselves whilst the world moved beyond them.

  “Hey!”

  A familiar voice staggered through the air, and she didn’t turn. That fucker wasn’t worth the mud on her boots. Not anymore. Speaking of crossing one too many lines—

  “Hey, Elsie!”

  “The fuck you want, Percy,” she snarled, whirling.

  His greasy hair and stubbled cheeks were set into relief by the light from the bar, alcohol oozing from his flushed face, making her nose crinkle. “Hadn’t seen you around too much. Can’t I just tell m’girl hello?”

  “You can try,” she hissed, snapping a switchblade from her coat pocket, taking a step forward, “but I don’t think it’s a conversation you’re going to like.”

  “Easy, now. Don’t want no trouble—”

  “Then walk away.”

  His jaw clenched at the command, a sneer she knew so well tugging at his face. “I heard,” he began softly, frozen ground crunching under foot as he started a slow retreat, “that you found yourself a little tart to play with. An’ that was you, wassinit, last night? All dolled up, a sweet little pastry?”

  She moved on him, carving a warning into the cold night air. “Leave. Now.”

  “You think you’re really so much better, now,” he snickered, shaking his head. “You got all up on your high horse, just ‘cause you got a tarty, now. He know that Princess Pastry’s got sticky fingers? And it ain’t from no sugar—”

  “Run home, Percy Wilson.” Her voice was low, and he was cornered, her blade poking dangerously into his gut. “Run along home to whatever you scraped up of the tavern floor and leave me alone.”

  “Or what,” he whispered, a malicious smile on his lips.

  Her heart was racing, and the night was sharpening with a renewed rush of adrenaline.

  Percy just clicked his tongue, rolling his shoulders as he took a step back. “Feisty. Missed that about you, Elsie-bells.” And with a derisive laugh, he left, muttering to himself. “Jus’ like I said. Same as ever.”

  The blade clicked shut, fury roaring inside her.

  Princess Pastry.

  It was hard not to go back, to grab his shoulders, to shake him violently, to scream until he had no choice but to hear her words.

  But boys like that never listened.

  Fletcher did, though.

  A tart, she thought bitter
ly, resentful. Fletcher was anything but.

  Warm blueberry pie with a dollop of vanilla cream. That’s what he was.

  Sweet stains of purple and bitter blues buried inside an egg-washed crust, because really, wasn’t that all any of them were, a mashed up filling of what was right and wrong and good and bad and secrets and lies and truth and justice, all stuffed inside a crumbling shell, a dessert of anarchical justice delivered in the cool nights of autumn when the sun had faded and still, they hoped.

  And such an intoxicating hope it was.

  That things could be different.

  That they could be more.

  There was a fire in her chest, and her fast breaths were curling on the night air, eyes never leaving the lights that flickered out before her, and she wondered if this was what it really felt like, being in love.

  They would be more.

  Marlene was waiting, plopped on the thread-bare sofa darning socks. In her ill-fitting cotton shift and stained, pink apron, she seemed to be trying—and failing—to evoke the cheery affect of the farmer’s wife. She might’ve been the classically jolly matron, had it not been for the bitter expression carved on her face, her lips twisted into a permanent frown.

  There was something sadistically dignified in those gray eyes, a look of righteous vindication in the puckered corners of her wrinkled lips.

  And the locket suddenly didn’t sit so heavy on Elsie’s chest.

  Did he know.

  Did he know, when he’d sent his crony crawling through her window, that he’d sent not a locket but freedom.

  I don’t belong to you.

  It didn’t really matter if it was real or not, because she’d been left, and lockets didn’t change that, but all the same, it was a strange sort of defiant reminder that she didn’t belong to them.

  She didn’t belong to anyone.

  Kicking off her boots, Elsie turned for the hallway, Marlene’s voice lemon in milk behind her, curdling any warmth put off by the crumbling fireplace, an insistent pudgy sausage of a finger thrust towards the back door.

  Then again, she supposed it didn’t matter.

  None of it mattered.

  Because defiant rebellion or no, tonight’s ending didn’t belong to Elsie.

  It belonged to the page-rippers.

  SAM

  “They peddled war, proclaiming it was peace. They sold famine, saying it was gluttony. They dealt in darkness, gambled with greed, and in their wake, whispers filled the street.

  Beware the Merchants of Death.”

  ~from ‘Merchants of Death’

  Pale satin dresses turned brilliant shades of burnt orange and lilac in the shadow of the sinking sun, and Mulligan’s finery looked a sunset for the taking.

  Sam paused, on his way out the door, sewing kit tucked neatly in his leather satchel, shoulders aching from an afternoon hunched over hemming gowns, paused to look himself over in the tri-paneled mirror, gilded and shining at the center of the shop.

  The brown was a bit summery—perhaps his own reluctance to bid farewell to the warm weather that had long-since departed.

  But it was perfection with the ivory tunic, the accompanying vest, the caramel-colored cravat, dotted expertly with a golden tie pin.

  A favorite combination.

  And it screamed tart.

  It was supposed to be a slur.

  He’d never been called a tart, at least not directly, not until he’d met them. Elsie and Teddy.

  ‘Course, she’d been shorter, then. He’d still been able to look down on the top of her head when she’d been ten and viciously precocious. He’d been fifteen, and she’d walked straight up to him, tome in hand—a tome hopelessly expensive, that she’d never afford, but the shopkeep let her read, anyway, when she’d come into the bookstore after school—she’d walked straight up to him and demanded to know the meaning of the word ‘ameliorate.’

  Like her right to knowledge had been unequivocal and inalienable.

  He told her, and she went right back to the armchair in the corner, reading away, and he went back to perusing back-shelf novels while his sisters waited in line, and really, he hadn’t thought much more of it, until he’d gone to leave, parcels in hand, and she’d been waiting at the front window, book bag clutched to her chest, staring with worried eyes out into the dark. Waiting.

  Oh, lovely. A tart, Teddy had muttered, lifting Elsie up onto the counter of the general store while Sam had lingered at the door. He’d realized what he’d said immediately, of course, face turning bright red, eyes going wide, and there’d been apologies, and a thank you for walking her over and more apologies, but it didn’t matter, because even if only for a moment, he’d spoken his truth.

  Sam’s thoughts drifted down the street, to the now-dark general store.

  Teddy’s eyes, usually bright blue like the deep Southern oceans, had been muted and dull. They’d been out late last night, and Teddy didn’t relish the crowds or the noise or the beautiful chaos beckoned in on the velvet night. But tangled up on the sofa, lost in idle talk and mulled wine with nothing but the sound of the roaring fire to serenade them…

  Those blue eyes had filled up page after page of his sketchbook for years beyond count.

  The first time he’d drawn them, his hand had been shaking so badly it’d been nothing more than a wash of deep blues and blacks set across the paper. Love unreciprocated was terrifying.

  But each time he drew them, there was a little more clarity. He’d find the starbursts of gray buried so far beneath the waves of azure. Would realize how the light left little bright pinpricks across the glassy surface. And finally, finally, he’d at last seen himself reflected back in them. Had at last been able to find some clarity.

  Had been able to see who he was, more or less.

  There was an indelible smile dancing on his lips as Sam settled the leather satchel draped across his body, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

  And of late, he could see their future, too, in those eyes.

  Hell.

  Those eyes were his future.

  Soon. He’d ask soon, when the moment was right.

  The world was starting to take on a sort of brownish hue as the sun began to disappear. Shining mares with angry breath curling on the evening air had been plunged into shadow, their darkened carriage widows blindly reflecting the ostentatiously gilded shop windows alight with commerce. Women bathed in silks and satins of the most brilliant plumage began to litter the street, men in deliciously regal tails and ties sporting looks of lust at their little birds.

  “…dues unpaid,” a voice carried through the street, and Sam felt his blood run cold.

  If they were pretty little birds, dancing in the street, he was caracara, picking them to pieces.

  “Given the acclaim of your establishment, it’s simply unacceptable.”

  “Please, you don’t understand,” a shopkeeper was pleading, “I paid them, I swear—”

  Clark Carson stood, arms crossed, a look of derisive pleasure behind his cold eyes, his black hair slicked back for the kill. “Your pathetic whimpering might have swayed my actuary, but I care not for this charade.” He gestured to one of his lackeys, who yanked the shopkeeper’s arm and began dragging him towards the forebodingly unremarkable carriage in the street.

  Sam side-stepped the display with an air of casual inconvenience.

  Like it wasn’t odd, running into the Commissioner himself exacting penance for the unforgivable sin of unpaid dues.

  The shopkeeper struggled against the lackey’s strength as he was forced into the windowless carriage, futilely arguing all the while. “My family—”

  “—is not my concern,” Clark shrugged, brushing an invisible speck of dust from the plumage. “Acquisition, Distinction, Protection—is this not the motto we live by, in the Guild? Pray tell, how might I execute the latter if the former two are neglected?”

  “My children, they did nothing—”

  Clark’s eyes flickered up to the shopkeepe
r. “Children are such fickle things, aren’t they?” There was a sickeningly sweet tone to his quiet voice. “One moment, they adore you, the next, they ignore you as they pass by on the street.”

  Sam rolled his eyes, scoffing as he shifted the satchel strap on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Alderton?” Clark’s voice cut through the night air. “That’s what you go by now, isn’t it, Sam?”

  Turning smoothly on his heel, he met the scene with a sardonic stare. “It is. And after six years, Clark, I’m glad word finally reached the manor. I was starting to worry.”

  Clark gave a dramatic gesture to the shopkeep, the sidewalk a theater as the caracara declaimed. “You see what I mean. We raise them, love them, nurture them, give them the world on a silver platter, and they toss it in the gutter like refuse.”

  “Oh, gods below—”

  “That’s it.” A sharp clap through the air sent the carriage rattling away, one of Clark’s lackeys waiting dumbly a few paces away, eyes darting between the two of them standing there in exasperated silence.

  “Well, go on,” Clark snipped, waving the lackey away. “Shoo.

  “Commissioner, I don’t think—”

  “You are superfluous, you intolerable clod. It’s just Sam. He’s my son, not a flagrant shop-keep with a temper,” Clark muttered. “Go.”

  “I’m not your son,” Sam remarked, trying to mask the air of irritation with a look of vague boredom. As if familial disownment were casual conversation. Of course, it’d only been said a thousand times, for all the difference that made—

  Clark only sighed, eyes meeting Sam’s as he gestured to the street ahead. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

  “Teddy’s waiting for me.”

  “Well, let’s grab this fellow and make a date of it, I admit, I’m rather peckish—”

  “No.”