The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

  ‘Mmm,’ rumbled Victorious.

  Dizali took his leave, heels clicking on the marble as he marched for the gilded door, a smile firmly affixed to his face.

  *

  Witchazel was abruptly and very painfully aware that he reeked. And after all the injustice that had been done to him, that fact stung him in a way he did not expect.

  Sat there, wedged between the two mountains of Sven and Sval, perched on the plush interior of the carriage, with something now to compare his stench to, it bothered him immensely. Every rock and rattle of the carriage brought it wafting up to his blood-encrusted nose. He wore a permanent grimace, though, truth be told, two weeks’ worth of punches and pain will make anybody grimace like he did. The polished windows had shown him nothing but cuts, gashes, and a conquering smear of angry bruises, aubergine to stormy blue, bulging and aching.

  Through the blinds, Witchazel tried to glimpse the city. It was now so close and touchable, and yet so very far. Between the manacles and the constant pressure of muscle on either side, all he could do was watch the buildings and streets rolling past, a tantalising zoetrope.

  Witchazel kept his eyes peeled for landmarks, hoping to gauge where they were headed. Every time he leant forwards to catch a peek at the sky and its spires, Sven or Sval would nudge him backwards and deeper into the seat. He soon gave up, and settled for glowering at Fever Rowanstone instead, who was busy pruning his nails with a pair of tiny, curved scissors. It was troublesome work with all of the potholes and turns, and he wore an irritable frown.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Witchazel asked again.

  ‘To meet a friend,’ came the same old answer.

  For the third time during that journey, Witchazel idly wondered if that friend was death. A set of heavy chains and an abandoned dock. Or some rope, a dark tunnel, and an innocent rumbleground train.

  Witchazel decided to press him. ‘I find it hard to believe a person …’ he refrained from using the word ‘man’. Even ‘person’ sounded a stretch, ‘… such as yourself has friends.’

  Fever just loured at him from beneath his eyebrows.

  Witchazel settled for sitting back and letting exhaustion whisk him off to somewhere meaningless, a blackness that rested him, even if only in brief snatches. The carriage’s suspension was not the softest, and the two Nords seemed to delight in digging their elbows into his cracked ribs.

  The scent of pines in the air came floating through the cracked window. His head lolled on his chest, and through a half-closed eye he saw trees lining the road, swaying in the sunshine. Witchazel escaped to their dappled shade for a moment, before another elbow dragged him back to reality.

  Even now, finally out of his cell, dressed in borrowed and chafing clothes, he was still handcuffed and leashed, the property of another, bent to their will. Powerless. Still the hell rolled on, like an endless plain.

  Witchazel knew he could give it all up. He had built that choice into a bottomless hole in his mind, one he had dallied around the edges of since the hood had been dragged off his head. Constantly he tempted himself. Every stab of pain, every bite of fear, he sidled closer.

  It was a game. The closer he came to tumbling, the smaller he imagined the hole, pushing it a little further. An hour, maybe a day … With each mark he dared himself to last longer, to make Karrigan that fraction prouder. Somehow, Witchazel knew the old Bulldog was watching.

  As he thought of Karrigan, Witchazel flinched forwards towards the window. Before the twins dragged him back, he glimpsed a very familiar statue by the side of the road: a griffin, resting on a mighty broadsword. The Hark coat of arms.

  ‘We are going to Harker Sheer,’ Witchazel croaked.

  Fever did not look the least bit impressed by the guess. ‘Yes indeed, Mr Witchazel. As I told you, we are off to see a friend. A long dead one of yours.’

  Witchazel slouched between the rock-like arms of Sven and Sval. For the next half an hour he stewed in silence, enduring the digs and the nudges like a statue of himself. He left the bruised skin and broken muscle behind and crawled back into his tired mind. And there, he began to cocoon himself, eyeing that dark pit so very, very close.

  For Dizali was running out of time, and Witchazel’s clock was inescapably entwined with his.

  The lawyer winced as the carriage shifted. His meagre bandage had caught the rough, green shirt he had been gifted. There was blood leaking through, looking for all the world like the nipple he was missing. He grimaced and tried to ignore it.

  Once the carriage had finished rattling across the gravel, Witchazel was poked out into the warm sunlight. Pushed and harried, he drank it in, savouring the heat of it, the glow. It was his first glimpse of sun in two weeks. If he had perished right there in that handful of seconds between the carriage and the mighty door, he would have died the happiest man that ever lived.

  The door was smashed and broken. The windows too. Worse waited inside, where the bookcases and display cases had been toppled, mixing leather books in a sea of glass crystals. The tapestries and carpets were slashed, as was any piece of furniture that had dared to poke up its head. Witchazel’s fleeting mood was shattered.

  ‘You pack of monsters! Spineless burglars. Malicious, foul—!’

  Fever flicked him on the cheek, leading them onwards. ‘That’s enough out of you, Mr Witchazel. There’s a good man.’

  ‘How dare you desecrate this home, Karrigan’s home! The boy’s home!’

  ‘I assure you, it wasn’t us,’ Fever replied nonchalantly. ‘We only dabble in information gathering. Torture, at its finest. This? No, it was a greedy Emerald Lord and some heavies from the factories, most likely.’

  Witchazel blinked the sting out of his cheek as he gazed around. Anything of value had been stored away, thank the Almighty. Even so, the thieves had peeled away any scrap of gold leaf or silver trim their grubby hands had found.

  It was a farce, of course. The key pointed the blame right at Dizali. He had come for the deeds, and found just a key. That was just the start of his problems. Witchazel smiled briefly, before letting it wither. Pushing powerful men into corners is never wise.

  It took but a few minutes to reach the lower study, the Crystal Cavern as Karrigan had dubbed it, for its low ceiling and rounded walls, and for the marvellous chandelier that dominated the room.

  ‘Here we are,’ Fever announced at the door. It was slightly ajar.

  ‘You will pay for what you have done. You know it’s inevitable,’ he whispered.

  Fever tutted. ‘I have no doubt of that, Mr Witchazel, but that bill lies with the Almighty, not with you.’

  The lawyer glared. ‘Then may he judge you accordingly.’

  ‘In, Mr Witchazel,’ Fever prodded the door. ‘In.’

  Unlike the rest of the manor, there was not a book out of place here, just a smattering of broken crystal in the centre of the study, sparkling in the noonday light that streamed through the huge wall of glass behind the desk. Witchazel wrinkled his nose at that, but for the most part the room was as he remembered. And he remembered well. Night after night he had spent here, in heated discussion, or wallowing in whisky, welcoming the morning in with murmured chit-chat. Karrigan had always been one for another glass.

  ‘Mr Witchazel,’ said the dark shape of a man standing against the windows. He had been examining their lead patterns, which wove a plethora of skinny diamonds in the glass. Dizali turned and folded his hands behind his back. ‘So glad you could join us.’

  ‘It was an invitation I could not resist,’ Witchazel sneered, flashing a look over his shoulder at his two bear-like escorts.

  ‘I’m tired, Witchazel,’ Dizali sighed mockingly, ‘of all these games. Back and forth, day after day. It’s time to do away with them. Starting now. If you have lied about this key,’ it was flourished in a hand, ‘and I do not find what I want here today, then the boy dies. Simple as that. You have a choice: show me the deeds and save Karrigan’s only remaining heir, or you can remain uncoop
erative and obtuse, and he can die like his father. Then we’ll come back to you, and see what else is surplus to requirements.’ Dizali waved a finger at his bloodstained chest. ‘Do we have an understanding?’

  Witchazel stared flatly back at him. Here’s to hoping. ‘We do.’

  Dizali rolled his eyes. ‘You could have saved yourself a lot of pain.’

  ‘Pain is often the cost of loyalty.’

  ‘So is being loyal to the wrong cause. Or the wrong man, in your case,’ Dizali corrected him. The Prime Lord strode forwards and kicked the crystal from under his black boots. He smoothed his beard in thought as he looked at the key, and the mesh of diamond shapes cut into its base.

  ‘Quite simple, really,’ Witchazel commented, as Dizali stared. ‘A child could have done it.’ And a child had. Merion, when he was young, though he had never realised its meaning. Just a pretty key to hold to the sunlight and match against the diamonds in the glass.

  ‘Indeed,’ Dizali shot him a murderous look before lifting the key up. He shut one eye and swivelled back and forth until he narrowed in. It took a steady hand, and even though Dizali was positively buzzing with energy, he did not shake. His arm was arrow-straight, and he held the key like a sword, its teeth biting into his palm.

  The key and the window had been made by the same craftsmen. The diamonds were ever-so-slightly irregular, so that no square foot was exactly the same. To most it looked like a trick of the light, or a mistake, but it was all designed to pinpoint one particular spot in the Harker Sheer grounds. One spot that only the key could reveal, when you stood beneath the chandelier, where the marble swirled to a point. Witchazel himself had overseen the contracts for it. It was Karrigan’s oldest secret, the Bulldog’s dustiest skeleton. The lawyer felt himself sagging in the grip of the twins. It may have been part of his threadbare plan, but it was still painful to watch.

  ‘There,’ Dizali announced. ‘I see it.’ A finger jabbed the air. ‘Those steps, before the fountain.’

  True enough. Dizali wasted no time. Lordsguards in black masks swarmed from the mansion and flooded the grounds. Their Prime Lord led them while the lawyer was dragged behind him in the grip of the Nords. A huge figure loped at his side, hidden under a dark-grey hood and cloak. Witchazel could feel its footfalls reverberating through the stone.

  All eyes fell upon the faint brown stain splashed across the white marble steps, now gathering moss and dirt in the absence of a master. The rain had washed most of the blood away, but the rest had seeped into the hungry stone and dyed it a dusty pink. Even the dirt refused to hide it.

  ‘And here died the Bulldog of London,’ Dizali mused with one foot on the steps, leaning down to peer at the stain. In his other hand, the key roved back and forth, looking for an entrance.

  ‘A key without a lock is useless. Ah!’

  And there it was: a small brass circle with an intricate mouth, black and thick with dust. Dizali knelt down and spun the key until it matched the uneven keyhole. With a click and a gentle twist, the key did its job.

  Dizali hopped back as the stone beneath his boot began to shudder. They looked on as the steps slipped beneath their siblings, to the muffled clanking of cogs and gears and the slithering of dusty marble.

  It took half a minute for the tunnel to yawn, a black maw reaching down beneath Harker Sheer. Dizali regarded Witchazel with a long and suspicious stare before taking the first step. Witchazel just flashed a polite smile and allowed himself to be led down the rearranged steps. His feet found them easily in the shadows. Practice always makes perfect.

  ‘Light!’ Dizali barked, and two men in bowler hats strode out of the ranks, rubbing their hands together. They flanked their lord as their skin began to glow a bright yellow-green. It bathed the small corridor in a sickly light.

  From the bottom of the steps, a tunnel led barely fifty yards to a small hall that sat under the mansion, buried in darkness and dust. As they filed into it, one by one, the rushers raised their hands. The shadows shrank back, and they were greeted by Karrigan’s lair. There was a domed ceiling, though no chandelier, and neither windows nor skylights. Speckled marble lined every surface. There were bookshelves too, but no books graced them, just row after row of glass vials and tubes.

  Dizali moved like a striking adder, snatching a vial from the nearest shelf and glaring at its label. Witchazel already knew what he would find there. Bloodglyphs. Carefully penned. Karrigan was meticulous. Every vial had been labelled and catalogued, every shelf ordered and militarised.

  Witchazel pasted a hint of a smile on his face and held it there, waiting for Dizali to summon the words. He would hold his tongue, for now.

  It took the Prime Lord quite a while to come to believe it. It was not just the preposterousness of it, but the secrecy that must have twisted the knife. Witchazel could see it. The plain fact that Karrigan had duped him. Eluded him. That he had even gone to the grave with his secret intact. Dizali strode back and forth, his jaw bunching over and over.

  ‘You knew,’ Dizali spat at him.

  ‘Of course.’

  Dizali took another moment to glare about, as if the vials themselves were laughing at him. ‘This is how he built his empire. With blood.’

  Witchazel nodded, trying to keep his tongue civil. He had the feeling his life depended on it, in the current window of circumstances. ‘Not in the same way you’ve built yours, but yes.’

  Rage always has to find some sort of release valve, some way or another. Thankfully, Dizali chose a small stool, propped up against a bookshelf. He seized it by the legs and swung it down like an axe onto a dead stump. It splintered on the first hit and exploded on the second. Dizali kept swinging, down and down again, until all he held was a fistful of splintered wood. He whirled on Witchazel.

  ‘A bloodrusher, at the head of the Empire?’ Dizali yelled, furious. ‘A leech?!’

  Witchazel could not help it. ‘Better than a lamprey.’

  The fist started life at the side of the room and came rushing towards him. Witchazel had plenty of time to ready himself for it, but it still hurt like hell, catching his already swollen eye. Dizali hit him twice more before he was allowed to slump onto the cold floor. Witchazel reeled, but he kept smiling. What were another handful of punches, after the fortnight he’d had?

  His knuckles bloody, Dizali walked a circle of the room, heaving with ragged, raging breaths. It was only then that he noticed the half-moon desk at the far end of the room, set deep into another alcove, complete with a fireplace.

  ‘What is that?’ Dizali demanded.

  ‘See for yourself,’ the lawyer replied, shrugging.

  Dizali did just that. Rushers in tow, he marched into the alcove. It took barely seconds for him to notice the contraption, glowing in the magick light: the great gold contraption on which Karrigan had spent a small fortune. Witchazel could clearly remember frowning the day the invoice had fluttered onto his desk. How he wished he could hug the old Bulldog now. Coin well spent.

  ‘Bring him,’ came the order, and Witchazel was swiftly and unceremoniously brought. Dizali stood over it, arms crossed. ‘What is this?’

  There it was. The question Witchazel had been waiting for. ‘Something that was built just for you.’

  A few of the lordsguards began to whisper, surreptitiously shuffling backwards. Witchazel could hear the word ‘bomb’ being passed around. Dizali snapped his fingers for silence.

  ‘Is it a bomb?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Something else entirely.’

  Dizali looked at it closely. It looked like one of those ornate globes found in libraries, a fiery-gold orb almost three foot in diameter, held at the heart of an ornate cage that always hovered an inch from its pitted and swirling surface. Though it did not depict the earth and her contours, but rather something else, such as the currents of the ocean perhaps, or knots and whorls of old wood, fused together at each meeting of its hemispheres. Atop its cage there was an intricate mechanism, almost funnel-like, made up of th
in plates of gold stacked together.

  Dizali grabbed the lawyer by the throat. ‘Spit it out, Witchazel! I have not got all day. Remember what I said about the boy!’

  ‘And that,’ Witchazel wheezed, ‘is the exact reason why you will regret killing Tonmerion Hark.’

  Dizali released him abruptly. He turned back to the odd globe, fixing it with squinting eyes. They jumped back and forth, picking it apart and piecing it back together, as if he were building its manual in his head whilst wondering what on earth the boy had to do with it.

  In a blur, his hand flew to the inside pocket of his jacket, fumbling frantically for the letter he had so resoundingly forgotten. Out into the light it came, and his eager fingers ripped it open. ‘Outside, all of you!’ he shouted, and the lordsguards scrambled out of the hall. ‘You repeat what you see here and I’ll have your heads on a pike. You too, Fever. Take your pets and leave me with the lawyer. You, rushers, you stay.’

  ‘As you wish, my Lord,’ Fever said, quickly bowing and making a hasty retreat with the others.

  With a snap the letter came free. The rushers leant forwards to offer more light. To Witchazel, the Prime Lord looked pale, though it could have been the sickly glow. The paper was powder-blue, and in the light, Witchazel could see the lines of flowing script.

  ‘The boy is a leech …’ Dizali muttered words awkward and irksome. Two revelations in as many minutes. He must have felt sick. ‘…like his father.’

  ‘Like I said, you will regret killing him,’ Witchazel repeated, as nonchalantly as though he had just informed the Prime Lord he had missed a button.

  ‘And why is that?’ Dizali’s words were forced out between bared teeth.

  ‘Because of that.’ Witchazel nodded a head towards the globe.

  Dizali did not look the least bit happy in the face of these revelations. ‘SPIT IT OUT, MAN!’

  Witchazel smiled once again. He let it spill, struggling to hold back the quiver in his throat. ‘What you have there, Lord Dizali, is the finest strongbox ever made by human hands. The Orange Seed, designed and built for Lord Hark over two decades ago by Nupalese monk-smiths. It is made of gold and steel so tough that even fire can’t melt it. It has no key except one, and it’s a key you can’t hold or hang from your belt. Without it, you can always try and force it open, but doing so would destroy the contents, which, seeing as the Orange Seed is where Karrigan chose to keep the deeds to his estate, I would not recommend.’