by Ben Galley
He sat down at some point, he knew that much. Or did he lie down? In any case he remembered Calidae’s hand resting on his arm. He had not dared to move it. Not for anything. At the window, Gile had spoken to him of all the facets of his past: ship-wrecker, smuggler, prisoner, manservant, master of affairs. Merion remembered swaying through the man’s whispered stories, squint-eyed and silent, wondering how to get away. Calidae had rescued him. Or had it been Castor? Wine flowed in any case. Merion’s lips were smeared red and sticky.
In the morning he would remember nothing of the dancing, nor the singing, nor even the long and hushed conversation with Castor. Merion would remember none of the words that passed, for wine is a double-edged blade. It loves to play the merry prince, but it also delights to play the thief, creeping in when the lights have been turned down, when the mind is drenched. It cheats you of sense and memory, leaving a slice of darkness in their place. The thief was already picking the locks, as far as Merion was concerned. Long into the night, and deep into the morning, two things kept flowing. That damned wine, and Castor’s hushed words.
Chapter XXIV
A LONG DROP AND A SHORT STOP
‘Karrigan caught me again. Wanted to know why I was spending so much time with Merion. Rumours had started spreading. The boy had been heard talking to himself on many an occasion. Told him I was teaching him the ways of the world. Karrigan slapped me. Told me I was a guard, not a tutor. I bowed and scraped, but I won’t be beaten. I’ve never been beaten. I’ll just be smarter.’
2nd June, 1867
Merion wasn’t sure what he abhorred the most: the cold water on his clammy skin or the hot fingers of daylight prying open his skull by the sockets.
‘Almighty …!’ Merion managed to choke out some blasphemy before his aunt threw another cup of water on him.
‘Your Almighty’s got nothing to do with it, Tonmerion Hark. Get out of bed this instant!’
This was worse than the bat blood, he swore. Merion felt as though he had a dozen stomachs, and each of them was trying to crawl out of him through a different exit. And his head, oh his head. He didn’t even want to admit it was attached to his body. His swollen brain knocked against the inside of his skull with every twitch and jolt. They say you never forget your first hangover. They are absolutely right.
Merion shuddered as he got to his feet. The confusion hit him almost as hard as the dizziness, along with the very tempting urge to vomit all over his aunt and her bucket of cold water. The wine had made a dark, fuzzy hole of last night. All he could remember was muttered words, scraps of song, and sickly sweet alcohol. Merion tried to piece together their tendrils while his aunt ranted.
‘… to open the door for the coachman. Poor man, having to drag you to the doorstep in your state … And this room! What have you done with my books? Why are they here? And what is that in the corner?’ Lilain wrinkled her lip, and thought better of investigating. It was all Merion could do to shrug.
‘The nerve of those bastard Serpeds! Getting a thirteen-year-old boy into such a state. It’s disgusting! What exactly where they plying you with?’
‘Wine.’
‘Wine indeed.’
‘And brandy, I think,’ added Merion. ‘Calidae was drinking too …’
Lilain turned a slightly darker shade of red. Veins had appeared at her hairline. Her eyes were blazing with anger. She said nothing.
‘Ouch,’ Merion sighed, rubbing a tender forehead.
‘Ouch indeed,’ Lilain curled her lip. ‘You’re an embarrassment and a disgrace, Merion. What would your father have said, if he were here?’
Merion flashed her a look that warned of dangerous territory, but Lilain was having none of it. She was too angry for that. ‘He would have given you the rod, no doubt. But I have other methods of punishment.’
‘Punishment? It isn’t as if I wanted this to …’ Merion spluttered.
Lilain whirled on him. ‘Did Calidae Serped pour the wine in your mouth, as well as your glass, Nephew, hmm? Did they force it down your throat? Tie you to a chair and empty flagons down your throat?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not. Which means you’re just as in the wrong as they are, aren’t you?’
Merion nodded in reply. All he wanted was to be left alone so he could die quietly under his blanket. There was to be no such luck.
‘What if you had said something in your addled state, have you thought about that? Told them all about your bloodrushing, or Lurker for that matter, or of your time with the Shohari? Did you ever stop drinking to think about where you were and the ears that were listening? I don’t think you did. Merion, you are too important and too naive to be getting fast and loose with the truth around people of such power, and connection. Do you understand me?’
Merion did. Shame was piled onto confusion and worry. He bowed his head.
‘First, you’re going to clean this room. Then you’re going to wash yourself. You reek of alcohol and other things I don’t want to mention. Then you’re going to help me with the two Shohari bodies I’ve got on the table downstairs. Any questions?’
Merion was too sick to argue. ‘No, Aunt Lilain.’
His aunt stormed from the room and slammed the door. Pain erupted behind his eyes.
*
Merion turned around to stare at his mess. The young Hark scratched his head. Books? Why would he, even in his drunken state, pilfer a score of books from his aunt only to throw them about, as if they had displeased him. What could he want with books?
A telltale rustling came from under the bed. Merion bent down slowly to find Rhin sitting lord-like atop a pile of books, twitching back and forth between flea-bitten pages and folded corners.
‘What,’ Merion sighed, ‘are you doing?’
‘Reading,’ Rhin replied curtly. The faerie was still in his odd mood, albeit a little more frantic than before. Rhin looked nervous and worried, yet driven by something. Merion had never seen him like this before.
‘You never read.’
‘No, you never see me read.’
‘Well, what are you reading?’
‘Locomotive schematics.’
‘Locomotive what?’
Rhin growled. ‘Don’t you have cleaning to do?’
Merion scowled at him. ‘I’m not in the mood, Rhin. What on earth is this all about?’
Rhin looked up sharply, and it was a look that told the boy that arguing was not on the cards. ‘You’re not the only one with problems, Merion,’ came the sharp reply.
Merion abandoned his line of questioning and began to tackle his mess. While he cleaned, he stewed over what had happened to his faerie, trying to figure the little beast out. But his mind was drenched in treacle and busy tripping over itself.
‘Ugh,’ Merion gulped as he trod in the puddle of dark red liquid in the corner.
This hangover lark was despicable.
*
Simply put, the Shohari stank. By the look of their ripped and ravaged shoulders, and the frayed rope still tied around their bony ankles, they had been dragged back in to town by horses. Merion’s eyes roved over their colours, and not just the bruises and bloody gashes. Their metallic war-paint accentuated the contours of their lithe arms and long legs, made their skin shine blue, purple, and shimmering green.
Merion regarded the two Shohari males with a heavy heart. His time in the desert with them had shown him their humanity. He knew they were not the savages the Serpeds and the townspeople thought them. The boy looked at the filed teeth poking out through the broken lip of the taller Shohari. There had been some anger, some feral, human outrage, behind the blows that rained down.
‘First, railwraiths. Now Shohari war parties,’ his aunt was muttering as her scalpel flicked back and forth.
‘Are they getting closer?’
‘Bolder and angrier,’ his aunt corrected him. ‘They believe this is their land. We believe it is ours. This is how wars begin.’
Merion raised an eyebrow.
‘It isn’t our land, then?’
‘Through toil and iron, perhaps. But the Shohari have lived here far longer than us.’
Merion looked again at the broken lips. ‘Lord Serped believes they should all be wiped out. Or enslaved.’
‘Lord Serped is an idiot.’
Merion pouted at that. ‘He is not. He is kind, and generous.’
Lilain laid down her scalpel and fixed him with a glare. ‘So it was kindness and generosity that had me fired, was it? Pah!’ she snorted. ‘He is an idiot, and a cruel one at that. He should stick to his railways, instead of dabbling in genocide.’
But Merion would not hear a bad word spoken of Castor. ‘He was kind to me last night,’ he asserted.
Lilain snorted again. ‘If by kind you mean pouring wine down your throat, then I would agree.’
‘By sending a wiregram to London for me.’
His aunt smirked as she went back to her disembowelling. ‘So that’s why you’re so defensive. They threw you a few treats and now you bark to their tune.’
Merion flushed with anger. ‘How dare you …!’
‘Don’t be a fool, young nephew. There are no favours in high society that come without debt. What did he ask you for in return? What’s he making you do?’
‘Nothing at all,’ Merion replied, hesitantly. He picked desperately at the shadows in his memories. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Maker’s balls, boy,’ his aunt cursed. ‘I’ve never met a person so full of poor judgement. It’s mistake after mistake with you, Merion.’
Merion scowled. ‘My first was coming here.’
Lilain sniffed. ‘Have it your way. I’ve shown you nothing but kindness, put a roof over your head, given you a job, agreed to teach—’
‘Alright, alright.’
Lilain rambled on. ‘If you weren’t blood, you’d have been thrown in the gutter by n—’
‘I said alright!’ snapped Merion. ‘No more talk of the Serpeds.’
‘Suits me just fine. Now do me a favour and lift our good friend’s arm up onto his chest so I can get at his other side, would you?’
Merion shuddered, as he always did, but he had learnt to suppress it. He pushed the disgust down hard, and reached for the mangled hand. Drinking blood ten times a day tends to whip the squeamish out of you pretty fast. The Shohari’s skin was cold and sticky with paint and dried blood. The muscles were loose, as though they had already liquefied. Merion took a firm grip of the wrist and heard a few bones crunch underneath his fingers. As he lifted the arm up and over the Shohari’s flayed chest, dark blood dribbled from a wound on his palm. It painted Merion’s fingers a dark, reddish purple, and the boy was left staring at it in the lantern light.
Ideas are dangerous things. They sneak up like thieves and take you by the throat. Some spring from the dark unannounced, a crime of chance. Others take their time, following you home in the shadows, waiting for their chance to pounce. An idea had been lurking in Merion’s mind for many a day now. Staring at the blood, the thief pounced and the penny dropped, rolling and clattering down to his tongue, where it fell out as a question. His words were slow, ponderous, and as he spoke, his finger inched closer to his face. Closer to his mouth.
‘Shohari are mammals, are they not? And humans too?’
Lilain caught the tone in his question and looked up. She froze when she saw the blood, and how close it hovered to her nephew’s tongue. ‘Don’t you even think of it, Tonmerion Hark,’ she hissed. She had used his full name, the stamp of gravity. Merion froze.
‘What does it do?’
‘Nothing,’ Lilain replied sharply. ‘Nothing at all.’
Merion slowly lowered his hand. ‘That’s the sort of nothing that is full of something. I know you that well by now.’
‘You don’t deserve any answers today,’ Lilain huffed. ‘But then again I don’t trust you not to try it as soon as my back is turned …’
Merion shook his head. ‘I promised you, and Harks keep their promises. Just tell me what it is, and why it’s so abhorrent to you.’
Lilain scowled darkly. ‘Is cannibalism not abhorrent to you then, Nephew?’
‘Er … Of course, but …’
‘But nothing. Consuming your own shade is cannibalistic, and the Shohari are close enough to us in blood to count. It’s forbidden to rushers.’
‘And leeches?’
‘Especially leeches,’ Lilain raised her voice. Her scalpel work became harsher. ‘There’s a name for those who drink human blood: lampreys. And they’re not to be trusted one inch. The human shade is poisonous to us, in a way.’
‘Poisonous?’ Merion’s voice came out a little higher than he had intended.
‘Your own isn’t. Your own is useless to you. It’s the blood of others that’s dangerous.’
‘How so?’
Lilain sighed, as if she knew her next words would erode her others. ‘It prolongs your life.’
Merion almost laughed out loud. ‘And how on earth can that be poisonous?’
‘Because the life you steal slowly replaces your own life, your own soul, your own skin even. It might take centuries, but in the end all lampreys end up as shells of their former self, twisted and cruel. Lampreys cheat the art of rushing. They cheat life, abusing their own shade as if it’s a pinch of sniffspice, or a vintage wine to be gulped down with dinner …’
Lilain paused then, to fix her nephew with a stare. Her eyes glistened with suspicion. ‘In fact, wine is often used to disguise blood’s taste and colour. Red wine. Red blood.’
And red brandy. No, surely not.
The pieces of whatever his aunt was hinting were beginning to knit together. Merion raised his chin. ‘I hardly think that Lord Serped would serve human blood to his guests,’ he said. ‘The whole idea is preposterous.’
‘Bark, bark,’ muttered Lilain. The suspicious scowl on her face only deepened. ‘Barely a month ago, you thought the idea of drinking any blood was preposterous.’
‘But you cannot seriously believe that Castor is one of these, these lamprey monsters, can you? Or Calidae?’
‘I’m beginning to,’ Lilain shot back.
Merion, despite his own little itching of doubt, shook his head. ‘I won’t have it,’ he said. ‘You’re just prejudiced. Blinded by hatred.’
‘And you’re blinded by hope,’ came his aunt’s retort.
Grinding his teeth did not help the pounding of his head one bit. Finally, he had been given a taste of salvation. Now his aunt was telling him that taste was poison.
‘I think I will leave you to your dead Shohari, Aunt,’ Merion sneered, walking backwards. Lilain was turning that familiar beetroot colour once again.
‘You wipe your hands first, Nephew,’ Lilain ordered him.
Merion held his aunt’s eyes firmly as he reached for a cloth and wiped his bloody right hand. When he was done, he threw the cloth on the table. Only then did he break the gaze, leaving his aunt to bow her head, and do some teeth-grinding of her own. The scalpel was seized, and dead flesh attacked.
Merion hovered on the very top step of the basement stairs, staring down at the hand that grasped the doorknob, at the little drop of blood that he had missed with the cloth, nestled between his first two fingers. The boy bit his lip as he lifted his hand. Curiosity pulled at him. He winced, and closed his lips around his knuckle.
*
The blood had grown bitter in the short time since leaving the house. Thank the Almighty he had only tasted the tiniest of drops. But it was not the taste that was bothering him. It was the fact that his aunt may have been right, and the guilt of what he had done. It had come slowly at first, the tingling. For half an hour, Merion paced about his uncomfortable room, wondering if he would feel anything at all, snorting to himself at how mistaken Lilain was, how much of a fool she had sounded. Then he felt that telltale numbness in his fingertips. The faint burn in his lower stomach. The treacle at the edges of his eyes. It was rushing, but not as he knew it. There was a h
eadier weight to it, a sweeter tang, the tendrils of something altogether different yet vaguely familiar.
And so it was that the early afternoon found Merion huffing as he strode down the dusty road into town, a sole and stubborn purpose in mind. He would find Calidae, or Castor, or even that butler, Suffrous, if he had to, and clear this whole damned nonsense up. He was sure there would be a perfectly rational explanation.
The air was thicker in Fell Falls that day. The town’s stubborn resolve had ground itself to a sharper edge. The Shohari were the talk of day. Guns had found more hips to rub against. Swords even made an appearance here and there, and daggers for the children. At every corner and crossing, every other roof paid host to lordsguards and sheriffsmen. Fists were tighter. Brows were furrowed. Every other glance was towards the west. If Merion had not known better, he would have guessed a war had just broken out.
A bell rang out from somewhere between the worker’s camp and the town boundaries, where the rail slanted across the main street and out into the rough desert. Merion saw the shift in the throngs of people. Like a tide they swept towards the ringing. Merion followed like a piece of flotsam, listening to the buzz of conversations around him.
Like any young boy, he had a strange and natural ability to slip through crowds with ease. It took him less than twenty minutes to duck and weave his way to the front of the huge crowd that had now amassed on the edge of town. A scaffold had been erected out of poles, rope and rusted lengths of spare rail. Something that could be roughly referred to as a stage had been hammered and nailed together beneath the scaffold’s tallest point, some twenty feet above the sand. Men dressed in black stood upon it, standing silently with their arms crossed.
Just as Merion was pondering why a travelling theatre company would dare to travel all the way out to the very brink of civilisation, a grim hush fell over the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw those around him squeezing their faces into half-smiles. Some nodded to themselves, their teeth clenched. It was then that the crowd began to boo, and hiss and curse. Merion spied the object of their hatred meandering through two lines of sheriffsmen, a figure wrapped in a black cloak and hood, standing a full head and shoulders above their dark brown hats. Purple paint smeared the hood: Shohari purple.
