by Ben Galley
As they walked, the Wit leant close to whisper in his ear. ‘Remind me, Rhin, where’s that boy of yours tonight?’
‘At home, with his aunt,’ Rhin lied, quick as a flash.
They got to the door, and Finrig slammed his arm against the wood to block Rhin’s path. He stared him right in the eye, noses almost touching, that infernal smirk still plastered across his lips. ‘Now if there’s one thing I dislike more than witnesses, it’s lying, Rhin. Don’t come this close just to blow it. My knife will be tickling your lights before you know it.’
Rhin said nothing.
Finrig narrowed his eyes. ‘A dinner is it? At the Serped abode?’ he inquired.
Rhin had to force himself to nod.
‘Right,’ Finrig mused. ‘Strange people, don’t you think? The Serpeds? Wouldn’t trust them with Merion. Not with a hair on his precious head,’ he chuckled.
‘If you know something …’ Rhin growled.
Finrig stepped back and gestured towards the darkness. ‘See for yourself, Rehn’ar. You’ve got eyes, haven’t you?’
Rhin scowled as he stepped into the darkness. His faerie eyes adjusted immediately, turning the world a palette of grey and maroon. He instantly wished they hadn’t.
*
‘You want me to sign over my father’s … my estate to you, for safekeeping?’
Castor nodded for a third time. ‘Yes I do,’ he said. He reached into his pocket and produced a pen. It was placed on the table, atop the dotted line of the very long and very incomprehensible contract.
Merion stared at the pen and tried to decide whether it held all the salvation in the world, or whether it was a knife for the slitting of his own wrists. Something about this made him itch intensely. He scratched his head, and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of Calidae’s sideways glance. There was something in her eyes that urged him on, willing him to pick up that pen and scrawl his name. Something that said she owed him.
Merion stammered. ‘I can’t just … I can’t sign the whole …’
Castor leant even further forward. Merion half-expected him to fall off his chair at any moment. ‘My daughter tells me you are eager to go home, Merion,’ Castor said, and Merion had to nod. ‘If you sign this, I will have to return to the capital to assess your father’s estate. There will be new business for me there. You could return with me.’
Merion’s heart soared. There they were: the magical words he had been praying to hear ever since his shoes had first met the cursed dust of this hellish town.
But what price had he been willing to pay for them? His whole awaited empire, with the flick of a pen? The weight of the decision was a heavy one, and it pushed Merion deeper into the armchair.
‘Calidae will come, of course. Gile could even train you, should you have the time. I will need an assistant of course.’
Castor was laying it on thick. The pile of prizes was mounting, getting more tempting by the minute. Merion would have bitten his lip if it had not looked so childish.
‘Perhaps I should speak to my aunt. Or even have the estate handed to her. That way…’
‘Merion, the Crown won’t respect a woman like your aunt.’
Merion raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’
Castor’s stern face broke for the first time. A little curl of his lip, that was all, but it might as well have been fireworks exploding from his eyes for all the expression that he had ever offered. ‘Come now, Merion. Your aunt is not a lady of the courts. Far from it.’
Ferida began to titter by her husband’s side. She was on her third glass of brandy. Merion narrowed his eyes at the two of them.
‘She is still a Hark,’ he asserted.
Castor waved a hand. ‘By name only. I am a lord of the Empire. Your aunt is a struggling undertaker, Merion, a loner and a self-made exile, playing with bodies all day long.’
‘Not to mention divorced,’ added Ferida.
‘She …’ Words failed Merion, much to his own disgust.
Castor leant forward. ‘Do you know why she left Chicago? Has she ever told you that story? I did not think so. It’s not one for a nephew to hear.’
‘Tell me,’ Merion shot back, rigid in his chair now. Any pleasantry was well and truly evaporating. All sense of business etiquette and protocol crumbled. Castor had just sharpened this into something very personal.
‘She tried to open a clinic for the poor of the city. I imagine she thought she would try her hand at a little charity, apply her skills and scalpels to some live bodies, instead of corpses. It was an unmitigated disaster, Master Hark. In three weeks, her clinic had a higher death toll than a battlefield. The police finally closed her business, and threw her out of the city. That is why she has come here,’ Castor’s finger pressed into the arm of his chair, ‘to Fell Falls, to eke out a living burying the dead of the desert and the rail. Is that a life you want, to be a disgrace, like your aunt?’
The penny dropped, and with it Merion’s hopes, dashed to splinters on Serped rocks.
Merion got to his feet. ‘I think, Lord Serped, that I’ve outstayed my welcome,’ he said, voice cracking ever-so-slightly.
‘You will sit,’ Castor demanded, the sharpness of his tone almost bending Merion’s knees by force alone. ‘We are not finished here.’
Merion took a breath. ‘I cannot sign my father’s empire away, even to you, sir. If there is another way that will get me home, of you representing my estate without signing it over, then I would be happy to discuss that,’ offered Merion. Hell, he would rush in circuses if he had to, if it paid for a ticket home. Whatever it took.
Merion stared at the pen and shook his head. This legacy was all—besides his magick—that he had left of his father. How could he be expected to give it away to a man who kept a leech in his employ, who worked men to death on the rail, and sought the genocide of any Shohari within a hundred miles? Perhaps his aunt was right, he thought, and it stung him. No, this man was not worthy of what his father had built.
‘That will not work, Master Hark. Ownership must be clear cut!’ Castor was becoming angry now. His carefully laid plan had collapsed, and he knew it. He had cut too deep and now he was left covered in blood. ‘The Crown wants your estate, Merion, and where there is a will, there is a way, to be ever so blunt.’
All his words did was make Merion walk quicker, even though every step meant a little more crushing disappointment. His heart slumped painfully in his chest as he turned and walked to the door. He was dizzy from wine and insult.
‘I will see myself out,’ Merion grunted, fighting back the waves of emotion now churning within him.
‘Tonmerion Hark, I demand you sign these documents. For your own sanity, boy! For your father!’ Castor yelled. His white face had turned a beetroot red. His finger was a rigid spike, waving furiously at the contract on the table.
Merion laid a hand on the door-handle and paused to think of some witty reply that would cut the Lord to the bone, and show him exactly how far over the line he had stepped. But nothing came. He chanced one last glance at Calidae before he made his exit. She had a disdainful grimace on her face. Even she was in on it, he realised, and that crushed his heart just a little bit more.
‘I have never like being called “boy”,’ he said, before slipping through the door. ‘I bid you all a good night, and a farewell, no doubt.’
‘Hark! You leave now and this deal is off. The Crown will find a way around this, and Victorious will feast on your father’s empire like a vulture feeds on a corpse!’ Castor was still yelling.
The Lord Serped’s only answer was the firm click of the velvet-clad door. Merion had gone.
Gile stepped forwards. ‘Want me to go fetch him, your lordship?’ he asked.
Castor sat back down and drummed his nails on the armchair. ‘No,’ he hummed, and then thought for a while. When his eyebrows raised, so did his finger, and he wagged it Gile. ‘The aunt. Pay her a visit and bring her here, to me,’ he whispered.
‘As y
ou wish,’ Gile replied. He sketched a quick bow and hurried out of the other door, already cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders.
‘We’ll see where that boy’s allegiances lie,’ Castor thought aloud. Nobody dared answer him.
*
Rhin had walked over his fair share of broken battlefields in his long years, and seen more than enough of gore and slaughter than he liked to admit—bones broken through skin, soldiers howling, insides splayed across a rock or a patch of grass. He truly believed he had seen every disgusting thing the world of bloody murder could offer him. He was wrong. Rhin let his mouth hang open as he took in every last grisly detail. The Serpeds had been busy.
The insectile machines hiding under dust covers had been put to use since Rhin had last visited. Their covers now lay on the floor, and their spider-like limbs were left bare for him to gawp at. Rhin was gawping, sure enough. His eyes wandered over the bodies in their clutches, over the tubes and syringes, and the way the ribs had been peeled back on the bodies, so that the heart could be drilled and tapped. There were seven of them, some Shohari, some human, each in their own machine, cradled within its claws and held aloft like meat left to cure. Tube after tube punctured their skin as their blood was slowly drained away, at a horribly precise rate. It was not enough to kill these poor souls, just enough to turn their skin grey and puckered like old leather, to make their eyes hollow and milky. They were still very much alive.
Rhin counted two women, one girl, and two men, one young, one old. The other two were Shohari scouts. One of the men wore the blood-smeared uniform of a sheriffsman. The women and the girl had the remains of servant attire wrapped around their bony ankles. Their nakedness was stark, and harsh on the eyes.
‘Haven’t the Serpeds been busy? Blood suckers, the lot of them,’ Finrig sighed, staring up at the naked, open bodies, and the sleek curves of metal that held them.
‘Monsters, more like it,’ grunted Rhin. He could not tear his eyes away. Something cold and prickly unfurled within him, something that made him shiver.
Finrig spoke his fears aloud. ‘Just think: your boy is having dinner with those monsters at this very moment. His throat may have already been cut, Rehn’ar.’
Rhin made to leave, but Finrig caught him by the arm. ‘And where exactly do you think you’re going?’
‘You’ve got your gold. We had a deal and it’s done. I need to find Merion,’ Rhin spluttered.
Finrig tutted. Rhin felt the Fingers closing in around him. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Finrig said with a shrug.
Rhin struggled against the strong grip of two black-clad faeries. ‘You swore you’d leave Merion alone!’
‘And I will. It’s you I want. As a prize for Queen Sift.’
‘You backstabbing fuck!’ Rhin yelled, showering spittle on Finrig’s face. The Wit took a moment to grimace and wipe the mess from his face, leaving Rhin to struggle and strain.
‘A hoard like that won’t satisfy our good Queen, but your head might, and that means I get to keep mine where it is.’
Rhin was turning blue. ‘I’ll cut it off myself if you don’t let me go!’
Finrig waved a hand dismissively. ‘You are in no place to be giving orders, Rhin. We leave tonight, once Baelh is finished.’
‘Half-done, Wit!’ came a shout from the door.
‘There, see?’ Finrig patted Rhin on the cheek. ‘We’ll be leaving very soon. Want to get an early start. It’s a long journey back to London.’
Rhin panted like a racehorse. His blood veritably boiled with outrage and panic. He could not leave Merion to those monsters. Not now. Not after all he had done to the boy already. Something inside of him, he did not know what or where, snapped. And it snapped hard. Rhin rammed his forehead into the nose of the nearest faerie, and used his crumpling weight to throw the other over his shoulder. The Wit already had his blade free, but Rhin was closer, and faster. He whipped his sword up so that the flat rested underneath Finrig’s chin.
‘I honour my bargains,’ Rhin spat in his face. ‘You honour yours. You leave alright, but you leave without me. On that condition I spare you.’
The Wit held up his hands and dropped the knife he had been spinning between his fingers. ‘Alright, Rehn’ar,’ he said, ‘you win. See him out, boys.’
The Fingers cleared a path to the door and beyond. Rhin tasted freedom in the hot, muggy breeze. He used his sword to steer Finrig out of the barn, away from its terrible machines and out into the night. Baelh was almost done; the pile of gold was shrinking down, coin by coin.
‘Off you go, Rhin, before it’s too late,’ the Wit spat.
Rhin drew a bloody line under his chin. He didn’t flinch. ‘If I see you again, I’ll kill you,’ he threatened.
The Wit just smiled. ‘We’ll see.’
And then Rhin ran. He ran as if hounds were chasing him. His wings powered his long, loping strides. His sword flashed in the lights of the town as it swung by his side. He had to get back to the house before it was too late, whatever in hell it was. Rhin only knew one thing. He had to get to Lilain.
Chapter XXXI
OF CLEVER BEASTS
‘That damn boy, leaving the door unlocked. Maid almost walked in while I was showing him how to use a sword. Damn it if he hasn’t got a tongue though. He convinced the old woman he was practising his waltz. Gods love him. I never thought I would count a human as a close friend. Roots, as my only friend.’
6th June, 1867
Breathless, the faerie sprinted. He could run for hours. He could run for days. He could probably run for weeks, and yet this handful of miles between the barn and the Runnels dragged and stretched and crawled past no matter how hard his wiry legs pounded the sand, no matter how hard his wings heaved and thrust him forward, no matter how many boulders he bounded or corners he whittled down. He kept his eyes on the house and its cheap yellow lights. Each glowing pinprick wore a sleepy aura in the rising mist. Rhin hung onto their paltry glow as if they were ropes to haul himself forwards on. The back yard was quiet and dark.
Words were nowhere to be found, neither on his tongue nor in his throat. He had hoped a few might have materialised by now, but all he tasted was dust instead, and the constant, cold vanguard of the storm. He could hear its rumbling in the distance, testing its voice for the evening’s performance. Rhin rumbled also, clearing his throat of the sand and dry spit, and tested his own voice on the shadows.
‘Lilain …’ he whispered with a wince. ‘It’s about Merion.’
‘Merion’s in trouble.’
‘I’m a friend of …’ Rhin wondered whether that was too much of a lie.
‘This is going to sound strange, but … shit,’ Rhin wrung his hands. ‘It’s all gone to shit!’
With that cry, a chill of fear and failure swept through him like a winter river bursting its banks. It nearly floored him, driving his hands to his stomach and his chin into his chest. He felt sick, and yet all he had to vomit was a strangled sob. Rhin spat his frustration on the floor and forced himself forwards towards the doorstep. This night was not over yet.
The kitchen was dark at its edges, the candle in the window, old and withered. Battered pans sat like battlements along the countertops, stubborn suds still clinging to their lips. The table was strewn with old paper and cloths. Spotless vials hung upside-down to dry on little spikes. Worried hands always find tasks to busy themselves with. There was no sign of Merion’s aunt at the table, nor in the hallway. Merion’s door was dark and no lantern hung outside in the road. Only a dim sliver of orange light crept out from under the basement door. Rhin took a breath. Why was he so scared? He had just robbed a human locomotive, for Roots’ sake.
‘And look how well that went …’ he muttered to himself.
The door inched open with a loud creak, and Rhin had to fight to hold back his invisibility, second-nature to him as it was. This all felt tospy-turvy, to be prowling in full and open view. Even in the hallways of Harker Sheer, Rhin had always crept un
seen. But now here he was, on his way to break another promise, to reveal himself to Lilain, a letter no less, with his blood on her brain. He would have to be quick with his words instead of his magick for once. And still his tongue felt like sandpaper.
Perhaps it was the faerie’s fear that distracted him, or his task, or just the simple fact he was not used to throwing a shadow. Fae magick wrapped light around itself. Shadows become obsolete with practise. As Rhin strode deeper into the room, and past a little candle sitting on the bottom step, his shadow crept with him, splayed on the wall, all haggard and monstrous. Had his eyes not been glued to the empty shadows at the end of the wall, he might have noticed. He also might have noticed the heavy blanket, the sandbags, the ropes, maybe even the huddled figure hiding between two bodies, waiting for just such a shadow to come creeping down her stairs.
*
The first thing Rhin noticed was the pain in his head. If felt as though a swarm of wasps churned between his ears. He could feel their wings and jaws scraping the meat from the inside of his skull. The second thing he noticed was his inability to move. Something cold and tough was wrapped around his wrists and ankles, even his waist. His muscles flared but he could not feel them move. The third thing was the fingers probing his bare stomach and pinching his legs. These were the coldest of all, and with every prod came a little mutter.
‘And to think, you’ve been here all along,’ somebody said.
Was he in Sift’s dungeons? Was he in the corner of a rail car, with the Wit standing over him? Was he still in that rhododendron, half-dead and bleeding, dreaming this whole life up? Something sharp tested the back of his hand, and his eyes snapped open. He saw a wooden roof painted orange by a dozen candles. A shadow that was not his, jagged and bony, danced across it. Somebody was tinkering with something down by his waist. He tried to lift his head but found a strap of wire across his forehead, pressing deep into his skin.
