by Ben Galley
‘Well, I’ll try and eat all of them, but I might have to walk a little slower. Probably get to Orling at around nightfall, I suppose.’
‘So?’
‘Just a long day of walking, that’s all.’
‘I can handle it.’
‘Could do it in half, if you eat a little. Stop your stomach rumbling too.’
Asha turned her scowl on her stomach. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Shrugging his shoulders, Gavisham went back to the pan. The fillets were doing nicely, and so he left them be and turned back to the bowl of blood he had collected when gutting the rattler. He reached inside his pack and found an ornate wooden case, no bigger than the spread of his hand, and flat. It was engraved with the Scarlet Star, expertly carved, with all of the bloodglyphs spread around it. Asha piped up, as he had expected she might.
‘What’s that?’
‘Mine, is what it is.’
Asha huffed and watched him quietly as he popped the latch and opened it. The inside was velvet lined, with small compartments holding spare, empty vials and a compact syringe, made of engraved copper and glass.
Gavisham withdrew the syringe and one of the four vials. Holding the vial in his left hand and the syringe in the other, he began to siphon the blood into the vial with the syringe. It was a slow and careful process, but Gavisham did not spill a drop.
‘What does that do?’ Asha asked when the vial was corked and slotted inside his coat.
‘Turns you into a whisperskin. You rattle just like the snake, and it turns your bite sour and poisonous,’ he replied.
‘Sounds delightful,’ Asha replied.
‘Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of bloodrushing,’ he snorted, before turning back to the pan once more.
The fillets were now done, nice and crispy on the bottom. Luckily, there had been a scraping of butter left in his bag. His stomach chorused with Asha’s as he dished them up into two bowls.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ hissed the girl.
‘Suit yourself,’ Gavisham replied, though he pushed the plate around the fire before tucking in, digging at the meat with a fork.
It was delicious. Strangely sour, but soft like fish. Gavisham smacked his lips. ‘Compliments to the chef.’
Asha wrinkled her lip. ‘You’re disgusting.’
‘Starve then, see if I care,’ he coldly replied. He focused on his task of demolishing the plate of snake meat, wolfing the hot butteriness down, and taking big gulps of water from his flask.
It was on his last fillet that she broke. He had seen it coming; the increased fidgeting; the sneaky glances at the plate; the licking of the lips, thinking Gavisham was too busy to notice. He did not miss a thing.
With an angry sigh, she reached out and snatched up the bowl. She shut her eyes as she picked up the meat in her fingers and stuffed it into her mouth. Forcing herself to chew then swallow, she sat with a thousand-yard stare, as if she were stuck on the decision whether to keep going or vomit. It turned out to be the former, and she wiped the grease from her lips. ‘It’s like fish.’
Saluting with his fork and grinning like a fool, Gavisham wallowed in his victory, taking a sip of water and savouring it as if it were red brandy. ‘I knew it. Watch out for bones by the way.’
‘It’s survival, nothing more.’
Gavisham had a twinkle in his blue eye. ‘We’re ten miles from Orling. We’ll be there in three hours.’
Asha fumed. ‘You tricked me,’ she hissed, before chomping down more of the snake. ‘You bastard.’
All mirth had left his face now. He spoke plainly. ‘You can’t walk on an empty stomach and I can’t be bothered to carry you. Not in this summer heat. I’d leave you for the vultures.’
‘How kind of you,’ Asha muttered.
‘Just eat your snake and pipe down,’ Gavisham replied.
*
Orling was a quiet town, deathly still, even in the noonday sun. Gavisham and Asha walked the streets in silence, staring at the dusty, dark windows of the saloons and general stores. Nothing was inviting. Everything looked tired and forgotten, like a beggar in the backstreets. A few sheriffsmen were standing about on decks and corners, rifles cradled in their crossed arms, their narrowed eyes regarding the newcomers warily. Barely a handful of horses stood at the troughs and tie-posts along the main street. They were skinny, their ribs proud against their skin. Like the town, they looked tired and forgotten. Wanted posters sat skewed on walls, a variety of grizzled faces sketched upon them.
Gavisham found himself wondering what recent tragedy had befallen the town, for it to be so silent and still. ‘Where is everybody?’ he asked aloud.
‘Slaughter, maybe?’ the girl answered him.
He shook his head. ‘Straight to the horrific, girl, as always,’
Asha shot him a look. ‘Why would the sheriffsmen look so suspicious then?’
‘War, perhaps. Conscription?’ he suggested. Asha did not answer, and they wandered on, looking for the postal office.
It turned out that the postal office was actually part of Orling’s huge railroad station. Four tracks splayed across the dust, with a sheltered platform paired up to each. The postal office was at the back, near the main building. Gavisham counted them lucky. There were no crowds to push through, no congestion to battle, but it was still another tiresome walk in the hot noonday sun.
Before he pushed through the swinging doors, he paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead and point to a bench to the side of the door. ‘Wait there,’ he instructed the girl.
Asha frowned. ‘I’m not a dog, Gavisham. You can’t just say “sit” or “stay”. Ask me properly.’
He gave her his darkest look. ‘Tell me you’re not going to be a bitch for the rest of the journey. I’ll have to find something to gag you with.’ The darkness was thrown right back at him, and he growled. ‘Fine. Please, may you wait out here whilst I collect my wiregram?’
‘Of course,’ Asha mumbled, staring elsewhere, acting aloof.
‘Prissy madam,’ Gavisham whispered under his breath as he slid through the doors. A withered boy stood behind the counter, puckered with freckles and gaunt as a starving tick. ‘Are you in charge here?’ Gavisham enquired, sketching a short bow.
The boy was a stammerer, and took a while to get into his sentence. ‘Suppose so,’ he said, and then shrugged—a hopeless little gesture, one that had Gavisham intrigued.
‘What happened to the town?’ he asked, putting his fists on the counter.
The boy’s eye glazed over as he spoke, this time clear as a bell. ‘Plague hit us, in the winter.’
Gavisham quickly leant back. He knew what sickness could do to a town. Cholera, lungsnipe, pox—he had seen his fair share in the prisons of Francia, and in the war after. Plagues lived in London too, in the docks and the factory boroughs. Miasmas, they called them, clouds of sickness floating in the fog. Damn filthy living is what it was, if you asked Gavisham.
The boy was still talking. ‘Started on Tilly Sue’s birthday. We was all there, eating cake. Old Reverend came down with a coughing and a spluttering. Somethin’ chronic it was. Left blood all over the table.’
Gavisham raised an eyebrow. ‘He died right there and then?’
‘Not right away. Next mornin? Maybe afternoon. Everybody came to pay their respects and such.’ The boy lowered his head. ‘Everybody. Didn’t know it was plague, see.’
‘Then they all got sick?’
‘One after the other. Till it got near all of us. First the coughing for a day or two. Then the fever, and then that’s it.’ The boy’s voice cracked, and he spent a moment frozen, staring into nothing, eyes welling. And then slowly, he remembered himself, and turned back to the customer standing before him. He tilted his head to the side. ‘Is there anything I can help you with, Sir?’ he asked, almost mechanically.
Gavisham took the opportunity to make this quick. ‘There should be a wiregram for me. The name’s Gavisham. Arrid Gavisham.’
‘Thank you kindly,’ Gavisham said, sliding a silver dollar across the counter.
‘Y—, you don’t have to …’
‘For your troubles, lad,’ Gavisham replied, nodding. He left as quickly as he could, barging the swinging doors aside and striding out into the sunlight. Asha made to follow him, but he held up a finger.
‘Not until I’ve read it,’ he warned her. His eyes skipped frantically over the lines, then again, making sure he had read it right. Then he slid the wiregram into his top pocket and clapped his hands.
‘We’re getting on a train,’ he announced.
Asha hopped down the steps. ‘Say again?’
Gavisham looked around at the tracks and platforms. There was not a locomotive in sight, not even a whiff of steam. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of walking. Let’s get a train, catch up with that circus.’
She followed his eyes. ‘What train?’
‘The next train,’ Gavisham hissed. ‘Right after we pick up some supplies and some alcohol.’
Asha looked confused, and highly judgemental. ‘Bit early to start drinking, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Not to drink, to sterilise.’
‘What are you …?’
Gavisham grabbed her by the shoulder, making sure to grab the left, and not the scars on her right, and marched her towards the nearest general store. ‘There was a plague here. Killed almost everybody. The boy in the office told me. Could have snapped him like a matchstick.’
‘Did you …?’
‘No!’
‘So we’re leaving? No comfortable bed for one night?’
‘It hit this winter just gone. It’s still a plague-ridden town. But be my guest, please. I’ll be waiting on the platform.’
Asha frowned. ‘You’ve got a point.’
‘I know I do, now come on.’
Their visits to the stores were very quick indeed. Asha seemed to hold her breath for the entire duration, breathing only in short gasps until she could gulp down fresh air the moment they got out the door. The first general store had the food, the second the alcohol. The shopkeepers seemed drunk, and Gavisham did not blame them. A plague will eat away at those it does not kill. Grief is its poison, and the truth about grief is that it will always have a friend in alcohol. Like old veterans banging tankards over battles long forgotten. It works—for a short while.
With alacrity, they headed back to the station, where Gavisham dealt with the tickets while Asha moseyed about, kicking at the dust and praying for the sight of steam on the horizon. Gavisham got the impression she liked the idea of plague about as much as he did.
It was with a disgruntled face that he walked out of the ticket office. ‘The next train is tomorrow morning,’ he said, baring his teeth. ‘We’ll sleep on the benches.’
He expected Asha to put up a fight about that, but instead she just nodded. ‘Beats sleeping on the cold, hard ground.’
Gavisham cast a look back at the town, as if the entirety of it was some infectious thing, a tumour hidden in the prairies. ‘And it beats dying of plague in a saloon.’
*
She had him right where she wanted him. Alcohol might have had a friend in grief, but it also had a friend in boredom. And their empty platform was boredom incarnate. The hours had dragged on and on, the sun had taken an age to set, and ‘Asha’ did what she could to win an award for the dullest conversation ever.
To make matters worse, the benches were harder than they looked, and it was hard to find a comfortable spot without finding a bothersome nail sticking into your spine.
All in all, it had been a perfect occasion to reach for the bottle—with a little encouragement. They had used it to wash their hands, and once they were done, Asha had poured a splash in her flask and downed it. She had just shrugged when he looked at her, a stern expression on his face.
If there was one thing Calidae had learnt in her short time on this earth, it was that no man could hold the piercing gaze of a woman forever. Hold a man’s eyes long enough, and he will fold.
The tired Gavisham had folded like a wet newspaper. He had grabbed the bottle and poured himself a healthy measure.
Two hours later, and their bottle of clear spirit, something Gavisham called moonshine, was nearly empty. The man insisted on holding it up every now and again, perhaps to wish more of it into the bottle. He lolled against the arm of the bench, boots kicked off. He was ever so slightly cross-eyed, which made his mismatched colouring even stranger.
Calidae waved her flask in the air drunkenly. ‘To the train that never arrives,’ she cheered.
Gavisham threw her a confused gaze. His face broke into a hysterical grin, and he lifted his flask to clank against hers. ‘To the train.’
Calidae’s trick was very simple indeed. She never took more than a fraction of a sip. Just enough to be seen drinking, but not nearly enough to get her drunk. She had left that to Gavisham. Whenever her flask got too full, she would just dribble a little of it between the wooden boards between her feet. The drunker he got, the easier it was to dupe him.
‘I’m not saying it isn’t hard to bloodrush—it is, very hard. Suffrous just had a knack. But what I mean is …’ Gavisham paused to think and completely dropped his train of thought. ‘Hmph,’ he said, knocking back more moonshine.
It was time to move her scheme along. Calidae bit the inside of her lip, waiting for him to get lost in his own drunken ponderings, staring blearily at the tracks.
‘And to the lost,’ she said, raising her flask once again.
Gavisham gave her another cock-eyed stare before sighing deeply. ‘The lost,’ he croaked. ‘To Suffrous.’
‘Suffrous,’ Calidae echoed him, feigning another gulp. She swayed a little for dramatic effect, but kept the mood sombre. Gradually, she reached out to place a hand on his knee. She leant a little closer to him, fixing him with those eyes of hers again, those piercing blues.
A dozen different expressions were tried on and then cast aside as Gavisham processed what was happening. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head like a wet bulldog. ‘Not that.’
‘I …’ Calidae began to say, quickly retracting her hand.
Gavisham mumbled away to himself. His eyelids were already drooping. ‘Sleep, that’s what we need. No more of this,’ he waved a hand at her. ‘You’re needed,’ he slurred, almost inaudible. Calidae narrowed her eyes.
‘Agreed,’ Calidae said, slurring her words to sound just like him.
Now it was just a waiting game: first, the heavy breathing; then the first snore, then a twitch, almost as if it caught him by surprise; and that was it. He tumbled off the shelf of shallow dozing and descended into a deep, drunken sleep.
Say one thing for Calidae Serped: she was patient. A whole hour passed before she moved, listening to the growling of his snores. Then, moving at a speed one notch above glacial, she reached out. Her fingers were splayed, forefinger and thumb poised to pinch. Calidae winced as the bench creaked underneath her leg as she shifted forward. She was stretched to her limit now, holding onto the arm of the bench with her other hand. With great care, her fingers delved into his breast pocket, feeling for the wiregram, lighter than a shadow. It took a few moments of grimacing, holding her breath, and manoeuvring before she latched on to it, and slid it out, inch by inch. Calidae let herself breath only when she had it firmly in both hands. With Gavisham still snoring away, she read the wiregram, her lips moving silently:
Gavisham, fine work. Two orphans. Two estates. Bring the Serped girl back with you. She will be most useful to us. Another orphan for the pile. See that nothing happens to her. I shall deal with her upon your return. Nothing changes for the Hark. Our friends will have him ready for you. Head to Washingtown. On the night of the Bloodmoon, he will be yours.
BD
Calidae was sha
king so much she almost ripped the paper. She clenched her jaws together as tight as she could, until it hurt. Only then did she dare to speak, once the fire had died down, and once everything had fallen into place in her muddled head.
‘Thank you, Bremar Dizali,’ she whispered. ‘You have just told me exactly what I must do.’
Nobody heard her save for the moths that pestered the lantern behind her, and the mouse that hid beneath her feet, lapping at something wet under the floor.
Chapter XVII
MACHINATIONS
11th July, 1867
The Emerald Benches was a place of two opposing halves. Not merely in the sense of the warring factions that called the Benches their home, but in volume. At one moment, it would be filled with raucous shouting and yelling, as if a mob had broken in. At another, it was a vacuous cavern of seething silence as each party stared at its opposite, gnashing its teeth and scraping its fingernails on its knees, its eyes mere slits of distaste for its opponents.
The Benches were half a thousand years old, and since their inception, nothing had changed. Two parties: the Cardinals and the Cobalts, the Empire’s elite, rightfully, and in some cases unrightfully, elected to represent their respective constituents. But it was a sham, a quarrelling nest of lords and ladies, bickering over old wounds and their own importance. Their contempt was as finely tailored as were their charcoal suits. Their words dripped with formality, and yet were rotten within, like a month-old apple wrapped in velvet.
Prime Lord Dizali idly watched on from the front-most of the Emerald Benches, listening to the cantankerousness of the ministers surrounding him. The Emerald Lord who had been speaking had been overwhelmed, shouted down for his preposterousness: legislation for protecting chimneysweeps and factory children was far from anybody’s mind at the present time. Dizali picked at something under his fingernail, waiting for the uproar to calm down, and for the Voice to call the Benches to some semblance of order once again. He had witnessed brothels with more decorum. All in good time.
