Bloodmoon (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  ‘I could have done it,’ Calidae muttered to herself. More than that, she had wanted to. Practice, was how she saw it, as callous as that was. A rehearsal for when the knife would truly be needed, sliding between Merion’s ribs. Soon enough, she told herself, secretly hoping for more bandits. Soon enough.

  A sweaty strand of hair pestered her eyes, and as she moved to wipe it away, she noticed the smear of blood on her wrist, from where Gavisham’s hand had stayed hers. Calidae slowly lifted it to her mouth, keeping her movements slow and steady. Her heart thrummed. Her mouth salivated. She clamped her wrist to her mouth and sucked hard, tasting the tang of the warm blood in her mouth. She felt the shiver in her mouth as it seeped into her gums and tongue. She felt the warmth begin to spread. Calidae wanted to stop in her tracks and savour it. But she heard footsteps behind her. She licked the rest of the blood away and contented herself with swirling it around her mouth.

  ‘Look what I found,’ Gavisham said when he had caught her up. He waved a folded piece of paper in his hands.

  Calidae snatched it from him and picked at the folds. It was a leaflet. ‘Cirque Kadabra,’ she read aloud.

  ‘One of them had it in his pocket. It’s heading east, like we are.’

  ‘Surely we don’t have time for circuses,’ Calidae replied, though she could not deny a little curiosity. She was only fourteen, after all. An envenomed, vengeful fourteen-year-old, of course, but that was all the more reason for it: to remind herself she was still a girl, to hold onto a little of the innocence.

  Gavisham tapped his nose again. ‘I have a feeling they might be able to help,’ he said.

  ‘And if your feeling is wrong?’ Calidae challenged.

  There came a chuckle. ‘I’m never wrong, my dear Asha.’

  *

  That night the infrequent rain came to break the monotony of the heat. They cowered in a shallow cave, deep in one of the wind-cut canyons the cliffs had to offer.

  Calidae watched the rain patter on the dust, churning it to mud, and let the drumming distract her from her rambling thoughts. There was something calming about rain, something about the way it frantically hurled itself to the earth with neither a care nor a trouble, which did wonders for distraction.

  No matter how she tried, she could not keep Merion out of her head. Every single encounter, every moment sitting in the lounge, or at the dinner table, everything her father had ever told her to do or say to him—she played it all over in her head, like an ever-changing book without an ending.

  Even though she had nurtured her hatred for weeks now, tonight she was bored of it, tired of being consumed by it. She wanted to let it rest for a moment. Merion was still out of her reach, and it would do no good burning her mind to ashes with anger while she had no choice about the matter. His time would come. For the moment, she could afford to rest.

  Gavisham was cooking up the last of their food—a meagre stew of bacon and pickled things that Calidae had no hope of recognising. The smell was barely appetising, but her stomach strongly disagreed. When a steaming bowl was finally passed to her, she wolfed it down.

  ‘Got quite the appetite tonight, girl,’ Gavisham commented.

  ‘Busy day, killing bandits,’ she smirked wryly.

  Gavisham had to nod at that. He sipped his stew slowly watched the rain.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ she asked, after a while.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  The man took a moment to chew. ‘We’re on the border of Nebraskar, a day’s walk from Orling. We’ll stop there.’ Gavisham held up a cup out in the rain to collect some rain water. ‘There’ll be a wiregram waiting for me,’ he said.

  There was a pause as Calidae thought. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of doing what you’re told?’

  Gavisham took a minute to pick something out of his teeth. ‘It’s all I’ve ever done.’

  ‘The masters?’

  Gavisham nodded. ‘Got a sharp memory, Asha,’ he said. ‘Masters, generals, majors, warlords, lords, an emperor here and there if you believe it—all my life I’ve been ordered about.’

  ‘And you like it?’

  Grinning, he replied. ‘Not that I ever had a choice, but yes, there are perks to being the right hand to the mighty of Europe. And of course, every now and again I get a job that means a little extra to me. Like this one. Oh, the secrets I could tell you, yarns I could weave!’ He winked.

  Calidae shrugged. ‘Then tell me. Who am I going to blab to?’

  ‘I know what they say about campfires and stories, girl, but you know my rules.’

  ‘Tell me anything then. Tell me something about Suffrous.’

  Gavisham poked the fire for a bit, trying to dig up something he was comfortable repeating. ‘Suffrous,’ he mused. ‘He and I used to work alongside each other, long ago. Did you know that?’

  ‘He never spoke much about his past.’

  ‘It’s rare for brothers to work together, almost unheard of. We were working for some Emerald Lord or another. A man with some interest in trade routes, as it happened. We were barely a year out of our training, still green as spring wood, but eager to please. This lord, one of the Cardinal party, if I remember rightly, wanted to put a stop to the Dutch using the ports in Kernow. They were embarrassing him, you see, sailing in before dawn and beating his ships to the mark. By the time his ships arrived, the prices had either flattened out or gone too high, and he was shedding coin faster than a rich man in a back alley.’

  Calidae was not sure she understood the metaphor, but she nodded anyway. The story was like the rain, distracting, and she liked it.

  ‘So this lord had us down on the sea-battered cliffs, watching for ships. The plan was to lure them in and break them up on the rocks, pretending we were just simple wreckers. It was our job to see that the captain and officers never made it to shore alive.’

  ‘Why? Surely wrecking the ship was enough.’

  ‘Trade wars are vicious. The quietest war ever to rage on this good earth, I’ll tell you that. The only thing more important on a ship than its cargo is its captain. They know the routes, know the seas, and it takes years to train it all into them. Losing a ship is one thing, but losing the expertise of a captain hurts more than you’d think.’

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gavisham said, as though it had been his idea. ‘We were just fresh from a war in Prussia, eager for some simple pickings after working with those land-grabbing underlings of the Bitter Prince. We got paid per ship and captain, and got to keep whatever we found, so the coin was good and guaranteed. Now, it’s hard work to wreck a ship. For most, that is. When you’ve got glow-worm or cardinal blood, it’s a little easier. No big fires. No mirrored lanterns. Just stand on a beach and rush hard. Suffrous had that job. He would find a high place along the cliffs and start flashing away, the brightest white you’ve ever seen. I would stay in the shallows a cove away, or on the rocks, rushing whatever I fancied to get the job done.’

  ‘One dark morning it was blowing a gale, and we spotted a fat Dutch clipper out in the bay. The sea was savage that day and she was running her sails hard to get closer in to shore. I had to rush some of the bear shade just to stay upright on the rocks. Suffrous was glowing hard, leading the ship closer and closer with every passing moment. It was working perfectly. We had missed the last one as it slipped by in the night, but this one had fallen for it, and she was right on course for the rocks. She was a big bitch, that clipper. With her cargo piled high on the decks and the waves running high up her hull. A perfect catch for our employer—or so I thought.’

  ‘What was it?’ Calidae asked.

  Gavisham chuckled to himself. ‘So there I was, knee-seep in saltwater, half-blind in the pouring rain and half-deaf in the wind. As she comes close, barely a hundred yards from the submerged rocks, a fork of lightning gives me a better look at her. She’s no clipper, I think to myself, she’s a Dutch warship, no less. Iron-hulled. A kruiser
out of Zeeland, running guns and powder to the West Indies. Now Suffrous hasn’t realised of course, and there’s no going back now. I start waving my hands for him to stop and take cover, but he can’t see a thing through the rain. Suddenly there’s this huge screech of iron bow plates on rock, and a bang that nearly shook the marrow out my bones. I go flying into the sea and start paddling for my life. Suffrous has realised now, of course, after hearing the noise, and is running across the clifftop by the time I haul myself out of the shallows, soaking wet. We share a look, nothing more, before the whole thing explodes on us. Boom, boom, boom, one magazine after the other. Practically turned the ship inside out. Wood and metal torn as easy as paper. Never seen an explosion so big, nor a column of fire so tall. Lit up the whole county.’

  Gavisham gazed into the fire as he recalled the heat and the screaming of metal. He seemed to be done, and Calidae frowned.

  ‘Well, what happened after that?’

  ‘Suffice it to say, nobody was very happy with us. The Dutch wanted blood, and the lord was the one who had to give it to them. Prime Lord’s orders.’

  ‘And you and Suffrous?’

  ‘Spent a year in a Francian prison, wading through shit and piss. Worked in our favour though. The war was coming to a head. They started to recruit gun-crews from prisons in their desperation. Suffrous and I were put on a Spaniard ship-of-the-line. Found ourselves in the battle of Rafalgar, facing the Empire of Britannia. Of course, we sabotaged it from the inside out, sank the bitch right when they needed her most. Helping to win a battle goes a long way towards earning your pardons, I’ll tell you that.’

  Calidae wore a confused look. ‘That was over sixty years ago, if my history is right.’

  Gavisham levelled his colourful eyes at her. He knew he had slipped, somewhere along the way. ‘And you’re pretty educated, for a maid,’ he countered.

  ‘My mother saw fit to teach me all about the Empire, actually. But you can’t be a day over forty. Neither was Suffrous.’

  Gavisham tried to put her off the scent with a wink. ‘Look good for my age, don’t I?’

  A lamprey, he was a damn lamprey—him and Suffrous both. It was a blasphemy of sorts. Those who rushed did not taste the human shade and vice versa. Each saw it as beneath them, in their own unique way. Her kind, lampreys, deemed it impure to put animal blood into their veins. Rushers saw drinking human blood as a defilement. Never did the two knowingly mix, and yet here was one such defiler, right before her eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ Calidae said, straining not to dig deeper at the risk of exposing herself. ‘Yes you do.’

  Gavisham took his chance to rein in his tongue. ‘Time to catch some sleep, before we wag our tongues into the morning.’

  For a second night in less than a week, Calidae rolled over onto her side and stared out at the night, pondering what it all meant. Suffrous. Arrid. Merion. They all clamoured for her attention as she drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  *

  Gavisham awoke early and stiff. The rain had left behind a cold morning, and the fire had withered not soon after his eyelids had closed. He clutched his long coat around him and shivered as he blinked the sleep from his eyes. After donning his bowler hat, he sat up and looked out on the world. The sun was just teetering on the edge of the horizon. Up high, between the rocks, he could see the very first fingers of dawn reaching across the sky, now rid of clouds. It was gearing up to be a fine scorcher of a day. Just as well they didn’t need to go far.

  Gavisham looked over at the girl, Asha, as she still insisted on being called. He wondered whether they both knew the truth of it, and were simply keeping up this ruse to be polite. But the girl had shown no signs of cracking. He doubted she was aware that he knew. And that was why he’d keep playing along—until the situation changed. And any situation is like a wild beast, changeable, unpredictable, no matter how hard you train it.

  If the truth were to be told, he doubted himself, just a fraction, even though he had already put it in a wiregram to Dizali in the last town. She was either a good little actress or … Well, she was indeed who she said she was.

  Asha had turned over in the night, and now faced the black pothole that was the remnants of the fire. Her eyes were clamped shut, and she breathed heavily. Gavisham’s eyes scrutinised her blonde hair, where it tangled around her neck, and glanced down at her hands, wrapped around her. There. Subtle pale bands around her fingers, shadows where rings once sat, already being eroded by the sunshine. Plenty of rings too, judging by their number and frequency. Maids don’t wear that many rings. Only little ladies do.

  After trying, and failing to strangle a yawn, Gavisham got to his feet and moved his head from side to side. His neck gave two resounding cracks, and he sighed contentedly. He stepped out into the morning, and stood in the deep shadows of the canyon walls. Red sandstone streaked with white limestone, worn smooth by the dusty wind and whatever river had packed its bags and dried up long ago. Gavisham ran his hands over it. He rubbed his fingers together to feel the grit, still wet from the rain.

  With the girl asleep, it was the perfect time to perform the necessary morning rituals. After quite a long time spent relieving himself against a rock, he wandered on until he found a knobbly tree branch clinging to life between the whorls of stone. First the right arm, then the left, he slid the coat from his back and hung it carefully on a spur of tree bark that was as dry and as tough as brick.

  Gavisham blew on his cold hands and rubbed them vigorously together until he could feel the heat in his palms. Then, with great attentiveness and utmost care, he began to check his vials. His fingers wandered over them like spider’s legs, checking each stopper and cork, tugging at each tie and seam to make sure it was secure. From left to right, he worked, even flicking the odd vial here and there to test for cracks or leaks. Once he was satisfied, he gently lifted the coat off the tree. After a final tug of the collar and a shrug, he was done. Ready to rush at a moment’s notice.

  Asha was now awake. She sat upright and sleep-eyed, and her voice had a shiver and a rattle when she spoke. ‘How far to Orling?’ Straight to the point as always.

  Gavisham sniffed the air, gazing down the meandering canyon. ‘Half a day’s walk, if we strike out soon.’

  Asha nodded. A pause, and then: ‘There any food?’

  ‘No, we ate the last of it last night,’ he told her, crouching down to poke at the fire with an unburnt stick.

  ‘Hmph,’ was the only reply he got. After rubbing her eyes vigorously, gingerly scratching at a new patch of skin on her forehead, and yawning more than once, she got to her feet and wandered out into the canyon.

  Gavisham called after her. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Never you mind!’ she hollered back.

  ‘Oh,’ Gavisham muttered at himself. Every morning …

  She was back momentarily, her face like thunder. ‘What’s wrong now?’ he sighed.

  ‘There’s a snake.’

  Gavisham got to his feet and twirled the hunting knife. ‘Whereabouts?’ he asked, with a intrigued smirk.

  Asha pointed back the way she had come. ‘Over there. I think it’s an adder,’ she said, wriggling with disgust. ‘Almost bit me.’

  ‘Don’t get adders out here, Miss Maid,’ Gavisham tutted, wandering through the canyon. ‘Probably an ironhead, or a … Aha!’ he exclaimed, spotting the snake, coiled up by a rock. ‘A rattlesnake. Listen to it.’

  Asha dared to creep a little closer, curling her lip in revulsion. Gavisham hovered just out of its reach. He had heard how these slithering bastards could jump, and he was not about to put his journey to an abrupt and premature end. He held his knife with the blade down, ready to stab.

  ‘You going to kill it?’ Asha asked.

  Gavisham turned around to wink. ‘You wanted some food, didn’t you?’

  The girl went pale. ‘That?’ she whined.

  Gavisham just chuckled. ‘Good meat on a snake,’ he said. He also wanted to get his hands on some w
hisperskin blood too, but that was another matter.

  ‘That’s abhorrent.’

  ‘Big word for a maid,’ he muttered.

  Asha snorted irritably. Somebody had woken up on the wrong side of the dust. ‘Lady Serped used to use it all the time,’ she asserted.

  ‘Good for her,’ Gavisham replied, barely more than a whisper. The snake was rattling something fierce now. It was an olive-coloured thing, with dark brown blotches all the way down its back, right up to its vibrating tail. The snake bared its curved fangs at him. It began to slither forward, head reared up and ready to strike.

  ‘Why don’t you use your magick on it? Rush or something,’ Asha hissed.

  Gavisham did not take his eyes off the snake for a second. ‘That’d just take the fun out of it.’

  In a blink, both the snake and Gavisham moved to strike. The snake lunged forward, turning sideways as it flew through the air, aiming for a leg or a juicy thigh, or something entirely more precious. Gavisham shifted right, pivoting on his left foot and sliding the other behind him. Down came the knife, both hands driving it. As the snake sunk its fangs into nothing but empty air, the blade fell like a fork of lightning, catching it in the air and driving it to the sand. There was a crunch as the sharp blade punctured its skull and hit the sand underneath.

  ‘Phew!’ Gavisham blew a sigh of relief, then sniggered quietly as he wrenched the knife free.

  ‘You’re clearly impressed with yourself,’ Asha muttered.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be? Didn’t you see that?’ he retorted smugly. He lifted the snake up by its bloody neck and waggled it like a trophy.

  Asha gave him a cold look. ‘I’m not eating that,’ she told him.

  ‘Then there’ll be more for me,’ Gavisham replied with a grin, before brushing past her and heading back to the cave to kick up a fire.

  Half an hour later, a dozen fillets of lean, white snake meat were sizzling in the pan. Asha looked at them as if they were colonies of mould. Gavisham could not help but laugh at her. She scowled at him, crossing and uncrossing her arms. Like a spoilt brat. Like a Serped. It was the first time she had truly slipped, and he was enjoying it immensely. Stamping out doubt will always lighten a mood. He knew now he had been right.