The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

  Six o’clock, and there he is: Mr Witchazel, bouncing down the steps, his polished shoes slapping the stone. He was headed south, and briskly too.

  Leaving the stand-owner to his badmouthing, Gunderton began to shadow the man, slipping along the street behind him and doing his best to avoid the smears and reeking puddles amidst the cobbles. The street cleaners had done what they could, but it never hurt a little to remind the upper classes why they were needed.

  Gunderton did not care one bit. A month or two of living in the London docks could soon alter your perception about where shit should and could end up. His sturdy boots clomped across the cobbles, keeping pace.

  Where are you going, Witchazel? Gunderton mused. The lawyer was headed south down the arrow-straight path of the Queensgate, leading away from Jekyll Park. He should have been heading east, to Convent and his townhouse, which was guarded and safe. It would be dark soon, and darkness hides all manner of things.

  Gunderton looked back along the street, eyeing the growing sea of people. His gaze hopped about through the crowds, gauging expressions and intentions. There. A few men huddled together, walking close, their eyes collectively fixed on something ahead of them. Their hats were tilted low, suits and coats grey and nondescript. Gunderton caught a glimpse of the marks on the hands that swung purposefully by their sides: symbols tattooed in greying ink. Even from across the street, he knew what they meant.

  In his pockets, his fingers caressed the fraying leather handle of his favourite knife. His hand felt right at home with the cold steel wrapping around his knuckles.

  ‘This is why I told you to leave, you silly bastard,’ Gunderton grumbled, stepping off the kerb and waiting for a carriage to rattle by. Some coat of arms or another was painted on its door, but Gunderton paid it no heed. ‘What have you gotten yourself into?’ he whispered to himself between gritted teeth.

  He slipped in between the three men and Witchazel. The lawyer was still utterly oblivious to the malice bearing down on him, Gunderton cast a glance over his shoulder. The men walked three abreast, making others step aside instead of folding. Women tutted and gentlemen grumbled, but they marched on without a word. Gunderton stayed a dozen paces ahead, looking for all the world like a vagrant who had stumbled onto the wrong side of the city.

  Half an hour passed, filled with nothing but crafty looks and the clomping of boots. Four stalkers, one prey. Witchazel was still adamantly walking south. Wherever he was headed, it seemed important. Gunderton wished he knew. The sun was now hiding behind the mighty buildings, painting them black and the sky a burnt orange. The gaslights were just beginning to burn. It would have been beautiful on any other night. Gunderton slyly slipped the knife from his pocket.

  Witchazel took a right down the Kingsroad, into quieter streets. The lawyer was aiming for the river. He took a left, then a right, leading them a merry path through the narrower streets, where the stench was at its foulest. Gunderton took longer strides to imperceptibly close the gap between himself and Witchazel. As the lawyer made yet another turn, Gunderton ducked into the shadows of a doorway on the edge of the corner.

  With the blade held flat and behind his fist, he slashed the neck of the nearest man, driving on in the same swing to introduce the steel knuckles of its handle into the second man’s face. The first went down with a gurgling howl. The other fell silently, like a corpse into a grave. The third man put up a fight, furiously windmilling left and right with bloodless fists, driven by surprise and a little pinch of something else.

  Gunderton recognised it immediately. He moved quickly while he still had the chance. He ducked another mad swing and sliced the blade along the inside of the man’s arm, enough to slow him. Enough for Gunderton to drive a blow into the man’s ribs with his free hand, and then head-butt him to the ground, where a boot put him out of his whimpering.

  With his blade out and bloody, he ran, boots silent on the cobbles. He took a left, then a right, like a ferret through pipework, praying at every turn to catch sight of a coattail or a top hat in the gaslights glow.

  He found the lawyer around the next corner, walking briskly away from him, but in plain sight, a good fifty yards away. Before Gunderton could close the distance, a carriage skidded to a whinnying halt between them. There was a shout, a scuffle, and then a slam of a door. With a crack of the whip, the horses burst into life and the carriage hurtled into the night.

  No matter how fast Gunderton ran, he could not catch it. No matter how many shortcuts he took, buildings he climbed, roofs he slid down, pipes he shimmied, it always remained a street ahead. It lost him somewhere on the riverbank, in amongst the other carriages and the crowds come to gawp at the Bellspire, glowing like fire with all its lights. Gunderton slipped back into the dark shadows between the pines of the Admiralty grounds, hood up and eyes fierce.

  He waited for them to come. For them to come looking for him. To bring the dogs and the lanterns. Bring the guns. For he had seen the coat of arms moulded in gold on the carriage’s backside, undisguised by the black paint that smeared its sides. He knew it well.

  Gunderton waited for almost an hour, barely moving, just staring and quietly panicking, like a hooded statue to keep the trees company for a while. When nothing came for him, no dogs, no guns, he sighed, and bowed his head. Only then did he shrug off his paranoia. ‘Damn the blood,’ he cursed at the night, before entwining himself in the crowds once more.

  *

  ‘Take the hood off his head,’ said a voice, making Witchazel flinch. He bared his teeth as they yanked the rough sack off his head and threw it to the ground.

  The gaslight stung his eyes something rotten. Then the smell hit him. The same reek he had been snorting all day in the streets. And there was the tang of blood too. That, he admitted silently, he had not smelled in the streets.

  It took a while for his eyes to adjust, to show him the room they had brought him to. After all the stairs and winding corridors, all the elbows and manhandling, he felt he had a right to know.

  It was a stone box, nothing more, nothing less; a perfect example of a cell if ever he saw one. Grey granite walls and a few gas-flames behind cages to give them a little light.

  Three men shared the room with him, two standing on either side, and one sitting in front of him on a high chair. Perhaps it was the sheer bulging musculature of the two men who stood to either side, or Witchazel’s dizzy eyes, but in any case, the third man looked like a dwarf. He had the face of a man, the grimace of years, even a little stubble here and there, but he couldn’t have been more than four foot, and skinnier than a rake. He was clearly the runt of whatever litter he came from. If the man’s stature wasn’t proof enough to Witchazel, then his cocky little sneer could have also testified. Runts always seem to have something to prove, and cruelly so. Witchazel’s brother had been exactly the same.

  The lawyer glowered. Witchazel did not take kindly to being dragged off the street, tied to chairs, or having a sack thrust over his head, and it had put him in the foulest of moods. A ferocity simmered inside him, and all it needed was a snide little idiot to make it bubble over.

  ‘Who are you?’ Witchazel demanded, eyes roving over the man, over the formal, ash-grey suit and black bow-tie somebody had dressed him in. With his black gloves and his hair slicked back behind his ears, he looked like a funeral director. The little man leant forward.

  ‘And here was I thinking I’d be asking the questions,’ he replied, tittering. His voice was clear-cut and polished, almost jovial. A high-born runt, then. ‘My name is Fever, Fever Rowanstone. A pleasure.’ Fever extended a hand as if forgetting Witchazel was tied up, and then laughed again.

  ‘It’s all yours,’ Witchazel said, biting off his words. ‘What is the meaning of this? I am a free man, a servant of the law. I won’t be treated in this manner!’

  Fever wiped his nose on the back of his glove and sat back in his chair, folding a leg. ‘Yes I know exactly who you are, Mr Witchazel. We’ve been watching you for a while
now.’

  ‘Who are you, damn it?’

  Fever shrugged nonchalantly. ‘In our current employ, we are servants of the Empire. Looking after its best interests.’

  Witchazel wanted to spit, but his mouth was too dry. ‘I doubt that very much.’

  ‘Oh, trust me, I’m not one for lying. It pays to avoid it, in my business.’

  Witchazel sneered as best as he could. He had never been one for it. ‘Yes, and what sordid business is that?’

  Fever’s hazel eyes turned hard and stony. ‘The business of truth, Mr Witchazel.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  The hardness faded, and Fever smiled broadly, as if he were about to perform a trick. ‘It is indeed. Now, Sven, would you mind untying our good friend here for a moment?’ One of the twins saw to the order whilst Fever kept talking.

  ‘People hire me and my two associates when they want truth. Our services are simple. We deliver it, plucking the secrets out of the people that keep them,’ Fever said enthusiastically. It was unnerving to say the least. Nobody should have that much cheer when they worked in a room like this. ‘You’re here because somebody wants to know what secrets you have locked up in that head of yours.’ He rubbed his knuckles painfully across Witchazel’s skull.

  Witchazel felt a stab of cold amongst the heat of his indignation. ‘I’m a lawyer. I deal with some of the most powerful men and women in this city. I handle their legal affairs. I solve their problems. Of course there are secrets! But if you think I’m going to tell you any of them, then your employer did not pay you enough for your time! This is outrageous! I demand to be let go!’

  ‘I think we’re going to have fun,’ Fever replied, clapping his hands as he got to his feet. It barely made any difference to his height. ‘Gentlemen? Which of you would like to go first?’ he asked of the two men either side of him, the veritable trolls tucked into matching brown shirts, britches, and boots. They were absolutely identical, even down to the way they wore their blindingly blonde hair. Nords, by his guess, and neither of them seemed to speak.

  ‘Sval? Sven?’

  One of them lifted a hand, and Witchazel flinched as Fever nodded for him to go ahead.

  ‘How dare you! I dema—’

  A fist lit up blinding sparks behind his eyes. Pain came like a downpour, drowning him. His body went limp, and he sagged in the chair.’

  ‘How dare you!’ he wheezed, as he fought to break out of the dizziness. ‘How dare—’

  Another fist, this time to the chest.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Fever held up a hand and the two men retreated. ‘We don’t want to rush Mr Witchazel, now do we? He’ll spill his secrets in good time.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Witchazel managed, once the breath had found his lungs.

  Fever bent close to the lawyer’s face and smiled that horrid smile of his. ‘We’ll start with everything you know about Lord Karrigan Hark: which closets he keeps his skeletons in, so to speak. And we want it all written down, and signed.’

  ‘You can go right to hell,’ Witchazel laughed.

  ‘Sval?’

  The twin on Witchazel’s right grabbed his arm and lifted it into the air while at the same time twisting and pressing down on the shoulder joint with his thumb. Witchazel had never felt such pain. He roared, kicking out at the little bastard who stood sneering in front of him. Sven grabbed his legs and pinned his feet to the floor.

  ‘Straight to hell, I tell you!’ Witchazel screamed.

  ‘That’s enough for now,’ Fever clapped his hands, and once again the Nords retreated.

  ‘I will tell you nothing,’ Witchazel panted, nursing his arm and shoulder, glaring daggers at the three of them. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘You’ll find us very persuasive,’ Fever replied, moving towards the locked door. ‘We shall see each other again very soon, Mr Witchazel. Gentlemen? Get the lights before you come out, would you?’

  The box of a room was plunged into darkness, and Witchazel was left panting and aching, sprawling in the chair. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, feeling the grease of wax under his fingers. He sank to his knees and put a shaking fist to the floor.

  ‘Not going to let you down, Hark, nor the boy. They will not break me,’ he swore to the cold granite and the memory of his old friend. All he had to do was last long enough.

  *

  Outside the room, once the door was firmly locked, Fever clasped his hands and bowed to his new employer. ‘Well, my Lord, I have some bad news.’

  Prime Lord Bremar Dizali looked down, lip already curling. Freelancers were always keen for more coins. ‘What is it, Rowanstone? I was promised quick results,’ he said, sternly. This man may have dealt with other lords and ladies of the Benches, but he had never dealt with the Prime Lord. Dizali could see it plainly, and it rattled him ever so slightly.

  Fever smiled. ‘And they will be quick, my Lord. But what we have here is anger, outrage. These are very difficult to break through pain alone. With fear, that’s easier. Fear overcomes the man, and in time it kills anger. Always has, always will.’

  Dizali sighed. ‘You talk too much for somebody I pay to conduct torture, Rowanstone. I expect the people I hire to do, not talk about doing it. Will he give me what I need, or not?’ he demanded brusquely.

  Fever nodded, still playing at the fawning servant with his hands clasped tightly against his waistcoat. ‘He will, in time, my Lord. A week, maybe more.’

  ‘And I suppose that means your fee also increases?’

  Fever bowed again. ‘We are paid by the day, Prime Lord Dizali. Some men cannot be broken that quickly.’

  ‘Oh, stand up straight, fool,’ Dizali snapped.

  My Lord,’ interrupted a voice.

  ‘What?’

  A soldier, armoured beneath his black cloak, stood in the doorway. ‘A letter, my Lord, delivered by a courier.’

  Dizali growled, stalking up and down the corridor. ‘Can it wait?’

  ‘It is for your eyes only, my Lord,’ replied the soldier, ‘delivered just now. He’s waiting downstairs. He said you’d recognise the seal.’

  ‘Give it here,’ Dizali said, snatching the package away from the man. ‘Give me a moment, all of you!’ he ordered, and the corridor was swiftly emptied for him. What the Prime Lord wants, the Prime Lord gets. Being the Master of the Empire comes with some perks.

  Dizali held the package up to the gaslight to read the seal. He recognised it indeed. It was the seal of a very secretive company, recently hired to peruse Witchazel’s office. Just a triangle stabbed in red wax, nothing else. He ripped open the packet and delved inside. He found a thick wedge of folded paper, frayed at the edges. Dizali dragged it out into the light.

  ‘The last will and testament of Lord Karrigan Bastion Hark, Master of the Emerald Benches, Lord of the Empire of Britannia.’ Dizali smiled. ‘I have you now.’

  His eyes flicked quickly over the curving letters, written with a quill, such as all lawyers love to employ. The old pages crackled impatiently. There were numerous updates, alterations and appendices, but Dizali did not need to scour the whole damn thing, just one particular section, to confirm a suspicion—or a hope, dare he say. A hope that he was right. All he needed was a handful of words, and he would have his glory. He would have what he needed to pull the rug from beneath the Benches, and the Queen along with them. He would have his prize.

  There.

  Dizali’s fingers stabbed the paper, under Article Fourteen, the declaration of the law:

  … and it is with great honour that I defer to the Clean Slate Statute should history review me as a betrayer of this Empire and found guilty of treasonous tendencies …

  Like a rat in a trap, Hark. I have my death at last. ‘I may not have murdered the body, but I will murder your reputation, and build my empire on its ashes,’ Dizali hissed at the will, as if it were the embodiment of Karrigan Hark himself. He strangled the papers before stuffing them back into the packet. He held the seal up to the gaslight
until it turned soft again and then pressed his ring down hard, until it set. Dizali shouted down the corridor for them all to return. They shuffled in, one by one, soldiers and torturers all.

  He turned to the soldier first. ‘Take this and give it back to the courier. See that he is paid as well,’ Dizali pressed some coins into the soldier’s palm with a look that dared him to try stealing any, and then sent him on his way.

  Dizali rounded on the torturer next. ‘You, Fever.’

  The short man clicked his heels together and bowed yet again. Dizali let him have this one. ‘You have one week, and no more. And you’ll see your coin purse at the end of this, when he’s broken, and not a moment sooner. Do we have an accord?’

  ‘We do, your Lordship.’ Fever shook the Prime Lord’s gloved hand and tried not to wince at the strength in it.

  ‘Then do what you must, Mr Rowanstone. But remember, I need him alive. I do not like to be disappointed. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Perfectly, my Lord.’

  ‘Wise man,’ Dizali replied, before disappearing down the corridor. He was done skulking in the shadows. A Prime Lord cannot be seen to be skulking too much. The occasional skulking is necessary, acceptable even, but making a habit of it had dire consequences.

  Dizali skipped down the steps to the street, quick and nimble. His carriage was waiting outside the door. The coat of arms and some of the gold trim too had been painted black. He spent a moment tutting at the mud and muck sprayed across its exterior. He was so disgusted by it, he did not notice the hooded figure lingering in a doorway further down the street, leaning out to stare at him.

  ‘I want this cleaned off!’ Dizali shouted at the driver before clambering into the carriage and shutting the door, abruptly cutting off the driver’s reply.

  ‘Of course, my L—’

  Inside Dizali breathed a sigh of relief as he reclined into the plush velvet. It was all so tiring, trying to rule most of the known world, trying to get ahead in life. Dizali rubbed his eyes and felt the sleepiness creep up on him. After a while, he gave in, and his head lolled as the carriage bounced and rattled around him.