The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

  Merion moved like lightning. He knocked the gun aside and brought his own down on the side of her head, just above the jaw. She was out cold in the space of a blink. Almighty, if this mongoose blood wasn’t fast.

  ‘Gile!’ screeched Castor, somehow still clinging on, even though blood now oozed from his stomach as well as his chest. Merion had aimed true. Fate seemed to want Castor dead as much as he did.

  Suffrous Gile emerged from behind a crate with murder in his two-tone eyes. He held his hands out flat and upturned so his fingers could curl like claws. Electricity jumped between them, crackling, sparking and making Merion take a step back. He needed something to attack with.

  ‘Blue whale!’ hissed a voice from behind him. Merion delved into his pocket and fumbled for his vials. Gile was entering the circle.

  As Merion knocked back the whale blood, Gile pounced. He put his hands together and reached out for Merion. Lightning shot from his fingers. Merion dove for cover, the mongoose blood still working its magick. Gile swung the lightning after him. Lilain cried out as a finger of it caught her across the chest, searing its mark on her skin. Merion kept scrambling. He could feel the heat snapping at his heels, but the mongoose blood kept him just out of reach.

  ‘It’s always a shame, killing another leech,’ Gile said, as he let his magick die away for a moment. ‘Aren’t many of us left.’

  ‘And there’ll be one less after this,’ Merion spat. He was panting. His blood may have boiled but his body was still that of a very tired, and very burnt-out boy. His muscles screamed.

  But the magick was swirling again, pounding in his chest and surging into his skull to dizzy his eyes. Merion crouched low, a smaller target for what it was worth. Gile stood his ground on the other side of the circle, smiling his golden smile as always.

  ‘Come on. Let’s see what you’ve got,’ he coaxed the boy, taunting him.

  ‘With pleasure,’ Merion snarled, as the whale blood reached its apex.

  Clap your hands, his aunt had said, and the young Hark did so with a will. He slammed his hands together and let the blood pour into them. A wave of magick burst forth with an ear-splitting boom of thunder, rippling the air as it rushed towards Gile. He tensed himself, but it was no use. The wave hit him hard, throwing him through the row of crates behind him.

  Merion was instantly on his feet and striding forward. He held his hands poised, but it was his tongue that stole the moment. It felt itchy, eager to move. Merion opened his mouth as he felt the magick surge up his throat, as if he were about to be sick. Merion’s tongue curled against the roof his mouth and then hammered down against the back of his teeth. Ordinarily he would have been rewarded with a satisfying click, but the whip-crack that ripped from his mouth instead was a lot more interesting. Merion watched as the crate next to Gile’s heard burst into a thousand vicious fragments. Gile cried out as splinters punctured his skin. He lashed out with a fork of lightning, sending Merion reeling back and clutching his arm, where the skin was suddenly ripped and raw.

  ‘Nice try, Hark,’ chuckled Gile. The man was terrifyingly casual. Merion backed away again, wincing at the pain. He clapped again, taking Gile’s legs from under him. He aimed a kick but the man grabbed his foot and twisted, sending Merion spinning to the floor with a cry. Gile was instantly upon him, raining blows down on his shoulders and ribs. Merion tried to scramble away, but Gile had him pinned.

  Merion’s tongue came crashing down once more. The sound wave rebounded from the floor, snapping several of the boards, and threw them both into the air. Gile landed on his back, while Merion spun into a nearby crate, a sharp splinter of wood cutting a neat line across his temple. He reeled, blinking furiously as the blood came pouring down.

  Gile was putting a vial to his lips. ‘No,’ Merion coughed as he struggled to stand.

  ‘Have you ever heard of the archer fish?’ Gile queried, as he tensed his muscles for the rushing.

  Merion wiped the blood from his eye with the back of his hand. ‘No,’ he sighed, trying to stop his head from spinning. He raised his hands to clap again, but he was having trouble focusing the rushing magick. It was too slippery.

  ‘A fish from Indus,’ Gile intoned. He kicked open a nearby crate with a heavy boot, and several bottles wrapped in twine rolled onto the floor. Something clear sloshed around inside.

  ‘Merion …’ Lilain croaked.

  ‘It’s known for its mighty clever ability to spit water like an arrow. Knocks insects down from branches and so forth.’

  ‘How interesting,’ Merion replied.

  ‘Turtle, Merion!’

  Merion reached into his pocket and felt around. Only four left. He flicked the cork away with his thumb and shook the vial into his mouth. This blood was sourer than the rest. It stung his aching mouth like acid.

  Gile was already swigging the water down, gulps and gulps of it, until the bottle was completely drained. When he was finished he hurled it at Merion, catching the boy off guard as he concentrated on controlling yet another burst of magick in his chest. Merion fell to the floor, the bottle glancing off his thigh and making his leg go numb. Merion crumpled to the floor.

  Gile took a breath and a step forwards. He pursed his lips together, as if he were going to whistle, and then heaved. Merion rolled onto his back just as a sharp jet of water shot across the circle. It struck him in the dead centre of his back.

  Merion took a breath, ready to wail at the feeling of his spine breaking in two. This was it, he surmised. He had been bested.

  But all he felt was a heavy pounding on his back. No pain, just a violent jolt that pushed him onto his knees. Merion clapped a hand to his neck and felt the ridges of a shell instead of skin through his ripped shirt. He panicked for the briefest of moments, and then grinned.

  Gile fired and missed again. The bolt of water left a dripping hole in the floor, barely an inch behind Merion’s foot.

  Bolt after bolt sprang from Gile’s pouted mouth, ripping holes in boxes and turning crates to wet splinters. Merion crawled for all he was worth.

  A lucky shot caught his leg, ripping the sole from his shoe and sending the boy spinning to the floor. Another splinter caught him, carving a bloody trail across his cheek. Another bolt pounded into his back. The shove reverberated around his skull. His knee throbbed. Waves of pain shot up his leg. Something was broken, but he had no time to worry. Gile was taking a deep breath, fists clenched and thrown backwards, belly swollen with air and water. Merion scrambled, digging for magick inside his veins. Panic had ripped the edge from his shades. His beating heart had pounded it to dust. The mongoose was petering out, the whale was also dying, and Gile was savvy to it now anyway.

  Merion fumbled for his next vial, but his hands were too busy shaking. His body felt like molten lead, slowing him, chipping away at that vicious resolve.

  They say the Almighty works in mysterious ways, that there are no coincidences in life, only design, that the sharpest minds are oblivious to whatever architecture lurks behind the scenes of this world. But mysterious was not the word the nearest lordsguard would have used, as he stepped forwards to try and seize the boy from behind the crates. It would not have been a word, but a gurgled scream.

  A blur of grey and glinting black steel had appeared on his shoulder. Before Merion could blink, blood was spraying from his neck in a fine crimson jet. Pain and horror came in a wailing, bubbling cry. The guard dropped his rifle, squeezing off a round off in his panic. With the blood draining quickly from his skin, he looked at the small figure hanging from the sword embedded in his neck, at the blood spurting from the artery it had sliced.

  ‘Rhin!’ yelled Merion, scrambling to his knees. Gile had been momentarily frozen by shock. It wasn’t every day something invisible came to slice your throat. His mouth hung agape as he watched the blood spray a knotted pattern on the wooden floor.

  ‘Don’t just sit there!’ Rhin shouted in reply. ‘Fight!’

  A clatter of explosions deafened the hold. The
other two lordsguards had opened fire on the vicious, shimmering attacker. Their panic was their downfall. Their bullets ripped straight into the lordsguard’s stomach, putting a swift end to his howling. Rhin wrenched the sword free and disappeared between the crates.

  ‘Kill it! Whatever it is!’ Gile bellowed at his two men. He took a sharp breath and turned to smite the boy, once and for all. But Merion was not where he had left him. A wave of thunder punched him in the ribs and sent him spinning into a box. The sharp edge caught him in the kidney and he roared in pain.

  Merion dug the next vial from his pocket with frantic hands. The whale blood was exhausted now. It was time to kick this up a notch. Electric eel, said the label. The blood rushed down his throat and straight into his veins. His body veritably hummed. Merion could already feel his fingers tingling, his bones swelling.

  Gile had found his feet, but not for long. Merion threw his hands out like the talons of a diving falcon. Lightning poured from his fingertips in a twirling, blinding stream. Gile dived for cover, but the magick caught his legs and clung on. Gile fell to the floor writhing, grimacing in pain. Merion strode forward.

  More shots rang out from the guards. More cries. Light flashed as Rhin cast his own spells. He darted between the cargo as if he had been born here in the hold, flitting in and out of invisibility. Here and there he would jab, or pounce. More cries, more shots.

  ‘If you would like to offer a word to whatever god it is you pray to, the time is now,’ Merion spat, as he stood over Gile, fingers clawed and crackling.

  ‘Mercy,’ begged Gile, still shuddering. ‘Mercy, I beg of you. I’m just a servant, a lackey.’

  ‘You’re a torturer and a bully,’ Merion spat again, this time almost in Gile’s face.

  ‘Castor made me do it …’ Gile whimpered, holding his hands over his face.

  Merion furrowed his brow, making his lightning flare for a moment or so. Although the blood urged him on, he couldn’t help but spare a glance at Castor, still slumped against the doorframe, blood trickling from his mouth. His eyes were glazed, fixated on the floor between his knees. It was not the moment to spare a glance.

  Gile pounced like a leopard, slipping a vial between his lips and then striking Merion in the gut. He hit him again in the face as he doubled over, right in the nose. As the blood began to trickle, the lightning burst from his hands. But Gile weathered it, growling as he got to his feet. The boy was reeling from the blows. Gile rained down several more before reaching inside his coat with shaking hands and retrieving a long vial full to the brim with dark, almost purple blood. As Gile gulped it down, Merion spat some of his own on the wood, wheezing.

  As Gile reached down to seize the boy, the skin on the back of his hand convulsed and rippled. Merion heard the snapping of cloth as Gile’s body swelled and grew, bursting at the very seams of his clothes and skin. His teeth grinned like fangs, gold and bloody. Then he was towering over the boy, heaving and swollen with muscle. His aunt was already screeching at him.

  ‘Get away from him, Merion! Get away!’ she warned, but Merion was too dazed and too weak. Gile grabbed at him, fingers spring-loaded and iron-clad, and lifted him into the air.

  The young Hark waved his hands frantically as he felt the air being squeezed from him. Sparks shot in all directions, but Gile had taken him by the throat and under his armpit, holding him impossibly tight. His legs flailed like those of a hanged man. Some of the broken crates caught light and began to crackle with fire.

  In a stolen breath, Merion briefly thanked the Almighty; the turtle shell was holding Gile’s bulging, vein-ridden muscles at bay—even if just for the moment. He could feel it creaking under the strain. Gile roared in his ear as he pressed even harder, driving the boy against his bulging chest. Spit streamed from both their mouths. Their eyes were wild, locked as were their bodies in an even battle of willpower and magick.

  But Gile had no intention of playing nice. He whirled around to shout to his lordsguards, baring his cowardice for all to see. ‘Over here, you oafs! Shoot him in the chest!’ he yelled.

  ‘Dirty tricks!’ Merion choked. Despite the shell, Gile’s huge arm still pressed against his throat. He could feel the shadows clawing at the edges of his vision, trying to drag him under. His lungs burned.

  ‘This ain’t no fairy tale, boy! This is real life, where men will do whatever they must to stay out of that yawning grave,’ Gile whispered in his ear. ‘You were brave, boy, but a fool. Shoot him, for fuck’s sake!’

  One of the lordsguards turned to take aim, but something slashed at his leg and he fired into the ceiling instead. There was another cry, and the man disappeared behind a box. Merion gasped.

  ‘I won’t let you get away with this!’ Merion wheezed. ‘I … can’t …’

  ‘Accept it, boy. All it takes is one bullet, and then we’ll have two lords to throw in the river tomorrow,’ Gile snapped. Merion could hear the desperation in his gruff roar. ‘Shoot him now!’ he yelled again, squeezing harder than ever.

  A tear rolled down Merion’s cheek, in the middle of all the burning, crackling chaos. It could have been the fact his head was being slowly squeezed to pulp, but Merion knew better. It was his first acceptance of failure, of frailty and the inexorable. He hated himself in that moment.

  But hate can make men, and thirteen-year-old boys, do marvellous things.

  The young Hark closed his eyes and tensed with all he had—until his hair stood on end, until his ears popped, and his eyes strained to escape, until he felt every single molecule in his body shiver and pull to be free. The blood rushed like a storm through his veins, as uncontrollable as the one that was raging in the sky above, and just as savage.

  ‘SHOOT HIM!’ Gile screeched.

  The magick burst from him, pouring out in great, crackling spheres. Merion was sure his bones had snapped, that he had come to pieces. At least he would go down fighting, he thought. But it was not to be. Not today.

  Gile practically melted under the force of the spell. His own magick withered instantly as his bulging flesh erupted and sizzled. His scream was short-lived, but it was ragged and horrified all the same. Merion fell heavily in a heap, just conscious enough to see Gile writhing in a heap of his own, his skin smoking. He clawed at the air like a blind kitten, but it was useless. The hold stank of pork and burnt cloth. Merion retched, sprawling and clawing at the tortured wood.

  ‘Rhin!’ he gasped, when he had found his voice. ‘Where are you?’ His lungs felt as though they were full of gravel. There was no intoxication now. This shade had turned on him; all he knew was pain.

  ‘Get up, Merion!’ came a hoarse cry. Merion blinked, wondering if his eyes were damaged or if the hold was slowly filling with smoke. It was the latter, his nose informed him. He could smell burning wood. A flash of pain across his skin told him it was getting hot.

  ‘You need to get up! Come on, you can do it. Just roll onto your front and push yourself up,’ the voice instructed him.

  Merion did as he was bid, though it felt as though it took him an hour. His muffled, pounding ears heard the crackling of a dozen different fires.

  ‘I’m up,’ he breathed, swaying like a young willow. Panic and urgency were as forgotten things to him. He moved like a ghost across a battlefield, searching for its body.

  ‘Untie me, quickly now!’ his aunt urged. Merion nodded and began to fumble with her ropes. Rhin was soon at his side, grim-faced and drowned in blood, as if he had crawled through a corpse to get there. The fact that he stood there, broad as day in front of his aunt, did not even factor. War and death have a habit of making mockery of the little things.

  ‘The town is rioting. The Shohari are about to attack. We need to leave,’ the faerie mumbled over the hissing of the flames. His black Fae steel made short work of the frayed ropes.

  A numb Merion stared down at his aunt, looking at her bruises and cuts. There was a fresh gunshot wound in her shoulder now, from which blood oozed at a steady pace. There were burns on
her knees from the waves of electricity. Merion felt a pang of guilt. As if she had not already gone through enough.

  Lilain tried a half-broken smile. ‘I don’t think I’ll be running out of here.’

  ‘Merion,’ muttered Rhin. ‘The bobcat blood.’

  ‘Huh?’ Merion swayed again. He felt ruined. He had barely even realised he had won.

  ‘The ferocity. You need it.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Lilain. ‘Drink it.’

  Merion was flabbergasted. ‘I can’t rush any more. Not after …’

  ‘Yes, you can, slowly but surely,’ his aunt encouraged him. ‘We need you. You beat him, Merion. You did that, and you can do this.’

  They were right. The bobcat blood stoked something up inside him, and brought some of the battered pieces together. Within minutes he was dragging his aunt across the blood-stained, splintered floor and past Gile’s burnt and twisted body. He stopped, even though the fire was now raging around them, to stare at his handiwork.

  One side of the man’s face was a molten hole where his cheek used to be, splattered with gold and blackened bone. One eye was milky white and bubbling, the other vacant and dead, staring at the ceiling. His right arm was withered to a burnt claw. Merion could spy blacked stubs of rib poking through his jacket. He sighed, and kept dragging.

  Calidae’s dress was already smoking when they reached her. So were the bodies of Castor and Ferida. Castor seemed to be staring right at him, even in death. Merion scowled and reached down for Calidae’s arm. He may have been a killer, but he wasn’t a murderer.

  ‘Rhin, help me,’ Merion gasped under the weight of the girl. The heat was unbearable in the hold. The fire had broken through the ceiling on the far side, spiralling up into the middle decks of the riverboat. ‘I can’t carry her.’

  Rhin obliged, grudgingly, seizing the girl’s other wrist and helping to pull while Merion carried his aunt over his shoulder. Lilain wanted to scream, he could tell, but she did not. Up the stairs and through the burning atrium they staggered. Pillars came crashing down around them. The heat was searing. Sweat dripped and poured. No sooner had they reached the riverboat’s main exit than an explosion rocked the vessel. The fire had reached the engine room, and its precious flammable oils and lubricants.