The Scarlet Star Trilogy

by Ben Galley

  Big Jud was already sprawled on his cushions, busy nibbling grapes. Hoarse Hannifer sat in his booth with his fingers templed, waiting to be tested. Rhin had half a mind to warm him up, to see what his greatest fear was, but he already had a pretty good idea.

  Shan was there too, sitting on a chair and surrounded by mirrors, practising her wild grins. So was Devan Ford, together with his other bulging strongmen. Though he was lucky; he was also going to be performing in the big tent, with Yara the Lightning herself.

  The sky was of a more natural beauty, burnt orange and streaked with high cloud, which was gilded at the edges by the moribund rays of the summer sun. It sat like a squashed lemon on the horizon. Buildings were etched black against it, a spire here, a dome there—all so grand.

  By the time Rhin reached the tent it was already time to leave again. He decided to change on the fly, and when he made it back to Neams, who was busy seeing to one of his mopish bears, the faerie was still trying to shrug a tunic on over his armour and wings.

  ‘Just in time,’ Neams rasped. The bear snuffled at the faerie, whispering something in a language Rhin had never heard. And he had heard most in his two-hundred and thirty-six years. He shrugged at the poor beast.

  ‘I think I just heard a bell ringing at the Ivory House,’ he said.

  ‘With those ears of yours, no doubt,’ croaked Neams. ‘Looks like it’s time. Take your place.’

  ‘Aye,’ Rhin replied, hopping inside his cage and shimmering into nothing. He waited patiently for Neams to leave, drawing the last few curtains from the tall cages in his wake, before he slipped out between the bars. Just as he and Merion had agreed.

  Rhin stuck an arm through the cage and his breastplate clanged against the iron. The faerie smirked. Neams had switched his cage for one with narrower bars, just as expected. So the games had begun already then. Thank the Roots for being prepared. Rhin felt for the hidden blade at his hip.

  The black knife whispered as it slid from its sheath. With a buzz of his wings, he was up at the lock, hacking the teeth from the mechanism with a fistful of Fae steel. It made iron look like old wood. It took barely a matter of moments for the lock to spring open, gutted like a fish.

  Rhin hopped to the dust, shut the door behind him, and crept after Neams. The faerie followed the shadows, walking the perimeters of the cages, ears pricking with the snuffling, padding, and slithering of the fellow inmates of this gaudy prison. Rhin had half a mind to slash all the locks and see which one could sink a tooth into Neams first. Then he wondered what Lincoln would think of that. Or Merion.

  The beast-keeper had taken a spot just outside the entrance. There were grinning lanterns at his feet, and he was busy hanging them from a line above his head. Rhin could hear him humming, warming up his throat, ready to entice the crowd. But he was having some trouble. His voice cracked like parched earth every time he spoke above a whisper. Rhin grinned, and thanked whatever boot, fist, or club it was that had been so kind as to teach him a lesson.

  Rhin chose his own spot, just behind and to the left of Neams, where he could easily disappear into a low bush. He took a breath, keeping his spells strong, and leant against a guy rope, waiting.

  Sure enough, the bells of the Ivory House rang again, and before long the sound of excited, brandy-fuelled chatter reached their ears. Neams rubbed his greasy paws.

  They gathered respectfully at the entrance, washing up on the shores of Cirque Kadabra like an eager tide. Two-hundred of the New Kingdom’s finest, waiting for the best of them to arrive. And arrive he did, to the tune of hearty applause and a smattering of cheers. Even with his powerful eyes, Rhin struggled to see anything but a tall man in a tall hat through the blaze of lights.

  People are fascinating things to watch. The faerie had discovered this just days after escaping Shanarh and Undering. Though none are more fascinating than the pompous ones, and this sort, the sort who were busy flooding the paths between the booths and tents, were an entirely new breed of pompous.

  The men were dressed up like penguins, wrapped in black suits, sporting white gloves and low hats, brandies in hand. The women seemed to be waging silent wars against one another, despite the smiles lingering behind lace fans. Their corsets battled and their dresses fought to be the thinnest, the frilliest, or the most flamboyant. It was a vicious struggle.

  Politicians, secretaries of state, judges, generals, celebrities, and lords and ladies from across the sea, they all fell in like a long shadow behind Lincoln. Watching the Red King lead them was like watching a long knife dragging a tablecloth free of its table, hauling everything in its wake. Lincoln alone led the charge, striding forth with his shoulders back and his pace confident. Even though it was a tall stovepipe hat sitting on his head instead of a crown, he wore a powerful air of royalty about him. His face, decorated with a beard so precise it hurt to look at, was calm and friendly, weathered by age, wisdom, and the field of battle. He towered over his peers, a giant to Rhin even from a hundred yards away. The crowd did not dare to outpace him, clamouring at his back along with his many guards, their tall hats on firmly, balancing rifles on their shoulders.

  Only one person walked beside him, and that was his wife, dressed in a long pale gown and wearing a garland of flowers in her dark hair. Every king must have a queen, so they say, and Mary was Lincoln’s. Queen Mary, as she had been affectionately dubbed.

  It did not take long for Cirque Kadabra to steal the crowd’s attention, and it began to fragment. People were drawn to the attractions like iron filings around a magnet. Rhin waited patiently for them to notice the zoo. He wanted to see the look on Neams’ face when he realised he had lost the faerie. His star attraction, or so the painted board to Rhin’s left proclaimed.

  As the beast-keeper’s rasping was proving utterly useless, he had resorted to waving his arms and grinning like an idiot. Neams nodded and smiled as a few dignitaries broke from watching Devan lift ridiculously heavy things, and wandered closer.

  Once the trickle became a steady stream, Rhin snuck back to his cage, darting between the legs and coattails of the gathering crowds. With a squeak and a clang, he was in place, utterly invisible. That was a good thing, considering the size of his grin.

  One by one, the crowd gathered. They chuckled and they peered, craning their necks and squinting for all their worth to spot the faerie. When Lincoln finally appeared, his head still brushing the cloth ceiling even though his hat loitered in his hands, the crowd parted like warm butter to let him and Mary through. Neams followed like a loyal hound.

  ‘Witness our star attraction, Sir. A faerie from beyond the Iron Ocean. A wild beast, ain’t no hiding the truth, Sir,’ Neams was rasping at them, excitedly. He gestured towards the cage, and as one, the crowd leant forward.

  Silence: it never lasts long when the jig is up. This one lasted barely ten seconds before the muttering began. The word ‘hoax’ filtered between the cramped shoulders and brandy glasses. Rhin’s keen ears heard all.

  Neams was sweating. His eyes flicked from the cage to King Lincoln and back again. He laughed nervously and whacked the cage bars with his switch, but Rhin did not move. He was too busy trying to suppress a snigger.

  ‘Just shy, Sir, that’s all,’ Neams whispered. A few titters from the crowd now. More sweating from the beast-keeper.

  Rhin chose his moment perfectly. He reached forward, pushed the door open, and strode out, tensing his spell of invisibility as hard as he dared without popping an eye out of its socket. There were a few naive gasps, and then a wave of laughter from the crowd. They thought Neams a charlatan, the so-called faerie just a cheap trick of the hinges.

  Lincoln just rubbed his dark beard and chuckled. ‘Shy, or perhaps he believes in better living conditions, Sir,’ he said, in a rumbling earthquake of a voice. More laughter followed, and Neams swallowed something hard and painful. ‘Shall we?’ Lincoln added with a smile, before escorting Mary from the zoo.

  ‘Rhin!’ Neams hissed, when the last of them ha
d filtered away. ‘Rhin, you yella’ bastard, get out here!’

  But there came no answer. Just a cackle from a hyena several cages down. Rhin was already long gone, striding across the sun-scorched grass between the wagons and tents, where the shadows were long and the paths quiet. Darkness was descending. The clouds had become bolder, streaking across the bruised sky. It would not be long before the Bloodmoon chose to rise. Time to get into position.

  His tent was in sight when a frigid wind blew across him, making the skin of his arms pimple, something which faeries are far from accustomed to. It was enough to stop him dead in his tracks, to make him look down in confusion at his arms. A hand strayed to the knife at his belt.

  The wind blew again, keener still, and Rhin found himself shivering. Something throbbed in his left hand. Something ominous. His fingers slipped from the steel blade to the pine-knife, thrust through his belt.

  ‘Not now,’ Rhin breathed, his throat quivering. ‘Please, not now.’ With a schnick, he pulled the knife free and held it low, pointing backwards. He forced himself to move. Legs leaden, he had to jolt them into life with a thrust of his wings. Sword. Merion. The words went round and round his head until he was pushing through the tent-flap and scrabbling under the pillow for his blade.

  It was then that he heard it. The wailing of his nightmares, a piercing whine that hunted the very core of his ears. Bone-chilling and hollow it was, like the dying cry of a starving child. It clutched Rhin’s heart and strangled its chambers. The faerie gasped as he fought off the terror, the bean sidhe’s poison. ‘Not now!’ he snarled. Not this night.

  The tent around him began to flutter, its walls rippling like a wind-chased sea. The poles groaned and the pegs creaked. Rhin took a knee, buckling the rat-leather scabbard to his belt. When he was done, he pushed his knuckles to the dirt, and burst into a sprint. His wings thrummed as they propelled him. He would have given a greyhound a run for its coin.

  Rhin burst into the night, breath escaping as steam. There was an eerie glow eroding the shadows, death-pale and the green of mould. The faerie winced as his hand spasmed again, the sword nearly flying out of his grasp as he pumped his arms like pistons.

  A shape loomed, dripping shadow and mist, its face a skeletal grin. Rhin spun as he ran, raking the pine-knife hard against the apparition’s face. A lost voice within its bones howled and it melted back to the earth, to whatever hell it had crawled from.

  Rhin sprinted on, his lungs aflame in the cold air. ‘Not now!’ he yelled, verging on a scream. Not since the tunnels of Carn’Erfjan had he felt such throbbing, twisting fear. He had seen the pink insides of a troll that day, before he’d cut himself free. Now, given the choice, he would have taken that over this. A troll, he could kill.

  Another shape loomed, a ghoul etched with green light. No more than a skull with a body of rags and vapour, and yet it was enough to set the faerie’s legs trembling, like a rookie in his first battle. Rhin cursed himself as he dodged its lunging claws, its rags crackling, and its face agape in a piercing wail.

  ‘By the Roots and all that’s buried!’ he panted to himself as he fled headlong for the bright lights of the circus. The bean sidhe did not like bright lights, or so the olden lore proclaimed, but would dare them when given no choice. Rhin desperately hoped they had another choice. He certainly did not.

  Yet another banshee arose from the shadows to scream at him, standing between him and his escape route: a small gap between the attractions. How the crowds of Cirque Kadabra had not heard this terrifying ruckus, he did not know. Rhin just knew he had to duck, and fast.

  The claws stole a single strand of hair from his head as they swiped overhead. Rhin’s face was a tight mask of hope and daring. As he skidded under the swing, dust flying from his heels, his wings barely holding him up, he swung both his blades. Fae steel and pine, cutting through the shadow to where bone could be notched, maybe even broken. Rhin threw his all into those swings, arms outstretched and knuckles whiter than snow.

  The sword hit first, the Fae steel cutting through the darkness and rags, and biting into something hard and ancient beneath. Not deep, but enough to elicit a high pitched wail from the terrifying thing as it reared up. It towered over Rhin. But the sword’s wooden brother fared better—much better.

  The pine-knife found flesh. How, Rhin did not know, but he knew the feel of flesh under a blade. Knew it far too well. The bean sidhe shrank back, screaming like iron dragged over slate. The pine-knife was almost taken with it, but Rhin yanked hard as he scrambled to his feet.

  He burst into the blinding light of the circus, instantly tensing himself. He felt the spell wrap him, stealing him from sight. Rhin dove behind a barrel and crouched there, watching the dark gap with saucer-eyes. Mist trailed after him, groping like fingers. Rhin fought to temper the thudding of his heart, his blades atremble and ready. But nothing came. He heard the wailing grow faint, as if cheated. The faerie sagged to the dust and let himself exhale.

  Rhin stared at the tip of the pine-knife. It was frozen solid. He touched it gingerly before examining his sword. The blade was notched, ever so slightly. Rhin ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair and let out a strangled cough: Fae steel does not notch.

  Chapter XXII

  A BLOODMOON RISES

  16th July, 1867

  Merion was beside himself with excitement. He couldn’t help it. It was infectious. The atmosphere was a wriggling, electric eel, swimming between legs and wrapping stomachs up tight, forcing a grin onto faces with its tickling.

  It was the applause, more than anything. The rising roar as an act finished. The short, rapturous moments between the amazement and the shock. It stirred his belly into a gurgling mess of nerves and thrill. In equal measures.

  The show was barely halfway through, and already Merion was struggling to keep his mind fixed on what he was there to do. He felt washed-away by the excitement, distracted, just a child again, on that first tour of a circus.

  Spetzig had juggled practically the entire circus—all its sharp and dangerous bits, at least: a dozen glowing brands, fresh from Hemzi’s forge; a score of knives, spinning in a wheel; axes, spades, even a lit cigar—all whilst capering about the stage to the furious screeching of a violo.

  Cabele the Cat stunned them breathless as she took to the ropes and hoops. She was forever a hairsbreadth away from plummeting to her death. Cabele did not believe in safety nets. And yet she audaciously flung herself from swinging bars, cart-wheeling through the air at nausea-inducing speeds. There was always that awful pause between sailing through empty space and the whump! of chalked hands on something safe.

  Devan Ford had spent his half-hour defeating gravity, over and over again. Rushing hard, he lifted a small wagon clean over his head, then a wheelbarrow of rocks. He ripped a shelf of books to shreds, bent an iron bar to spell out his name, and then proceeded to use two women from the front row as dumbbells, one in each hand. He flexed and he growled, making more than a few of the ladies blush.

  Miss Mien of Cathay soon drove the colour from their cheeks, as she shattered their preconceptions of the flexibility of the human body. Mien rushed octopus, and it turned her bones into rubber. One man actually had to make a swift exit as she wrapped her leg around her neck whilst bending her fingertips over to touch the top of her forearm.

  And Itch Magrey, rushing dragon-blood, turned their stomachs a little tighter by holding his limbs in fire, or running some of Yara’s knives along his arms. Not a single blade managed to break the skin, and the fire left nothing but soot. He even let a few of the audience come up and try it, urging them to poke and prod at his warped and scarred skin.

  Merion bit the inside of his lip hard and forced himself to concentrate. He stood at the bottom of the stage-steps, stuck halfway between the main tent and the backstage marquee. If he jumped, he could see the top rows of the audience, crammed into their tall benches. If he jumped higher, he could see Lincoln himself, square in the centre of the audience, lea
ning forward, his fingers tented, enraptured like the rest.

  ‘You ready?’ coughed a voice behind him. Rahan stood with a leopard at his heel, no leash in sight. Merion would have cowered had he not known the man’s way with felines. Beside them stood his younger assistant, Hashna, who had one milky eye with a dubious scratch across it. A practice mark, so Rahan had told him. The young man wore his usual awkward smile. Common was not a tongue he spoke well. Rahan spoke for the both of them.

  Merion shook his head. ‘I’m not on until the finale.’

  ‘Not for that, Harlequin. The rising.’ Rahan pointed out to the south-east, where the dark sky was taking on a peculiar ruby glow behind the black spines of buildings.

  Of course! Merion recognised the stirring in his stomach for what it really was. ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Isn’t nothing to it.’ The man grinned, his teeth telling of a fondness for chewing tobacco. As if to further prove the point, he spat at a nearby jug with a ping. Before Merion could find out more, Rahan whispered to his leopard and they took to the stairs. Hashna bobbed his head and muttered something unintelligible, following at his elder’s heels.

  Behind him, Merion felt the air of bustle turn softer, quieter. Eyes and heads flicked up to the city spires. Elbows nudged ribs. The young Hark walked out of the marquee and stood in the night, watching the horizon, where the clouds were singed crimson at their feathered edges. Merion lifted a hand to feel the air, as if he could touch the glow. He wasn’t surprised to find his fingers trembling. One by one, others began to join him, whispering reverently. The roar of the show continued unabated and unaware.