by Ben Galley
The Order had realised they had been shepherded into a pen. Only Longweather and Caven nodded enthusiastically. There was further murmuring of agreement; some eager, some not so. Both faded to silence. Darbish felt a fresh sweat break out under his arms. It’s not every day you imprison a queen.
‘It is settled, then. I will deliver the sentence this very afternoon.’ Dizali thumped a fist on the tabletop. ‘Until we meet again.’ The attendants filed out in dutiful silence, as if they had been dismissed from a throne room rather than dispersing from a council.
Darbish waited for the room to empty before he too jumped to his feet. ‘My Lord? If you would like a full report, I—’
Dizali shook his head, busying himself with some papers. ‘That won’t be necessary, Darbish.’
‘But—’
‘That will be all.’
Darbish frowned but bowed all the same, and quietly shuffled towards the mahogany door. Before he could grasp the handle, it opened for him, almost bashing him in the face. He spluttered as Captain Rolick entered. ‘You again!’
‘Milord!’ Rolick swept past the red-faced Darbish to stand at Dizali’s side.
‘Outrageous!’ Darbish hissed. ‘I demand this man be—’
Dizali sliced off the end of his sentence with a glare. ‘Allowed to speak? As do I. Rolick?’
‘Lord Protector. I think you’ll be wanting your carriage.’ Rolick’s voice was low and careful.
‘And why is that, Captain?’
‘We’ve just had word of a new arrival in town. She happens to be standing on the steps of the Emerald House as we speak, asking for you.’
‘Who?’
‘One Calidae Serped, Milord.’
The smile that spread across Dizali’s face was positively wolfish, even for a lamprey. Darbish felt the sweat trickle once more.
Chapter II
BLOOD AND PROMISES
29th July, 1867
Merion let the cacophony of the prison wash over him. The slamming gates and rattling of bars. The hollering of the drunk and detained. The barking of the officers and jailers and the thudding of their truncheons against the walls (or skin and bone, in some cases). He let it all flood into his ears to drown the boredom of waiting, eyes clamped shut and fingers interlocked, feigning sleep.
He was not alone in his cell; a few other miscreants shared the stark space. One was so drunk he could barely move, and lay slumped against the bars. Another paced incessantly like an old bear in a zoo, bunching the muscles of his jaw and cracking his big knuckles over and over. The last man was a skinny pole with shifty eyes which wandered over every inch of the cell. He tapped his fingers rhythmically on the lone bench—their only furniture—and whispered to himself. Out of his three cellmates, the skinny man bothered Merion the most. The quiet ones are always the dangerous ones; or so his father had told him. But after the wilds of the Endless Land, his definition of danger had been recalibrated.
So this is the first day back in London. Stuck behind the bars of a stinking prison, deep below the cobbles of the glittering city. Merion resisted the urge to snort and settled for a smirk instead.
He was right where he wanted to be.
Through the barrage of background noise, Merion heard the sound he had been waiting to hear: footsteps drawing close, the jangling of heavy keys.
A constable appeared at the bars of the cell and surveyed its inhabitants with a grimace, moustache twitching with disdain. The big prisoner postured for a moment before being poked with a truncheon. ‘Get back, you! You’ll get your turn… Boy! Step up to the bars.’
‘Yes, sir!’ said Merion, eyes snapping open. He felt shifty eyes on his back, heard the snorts of his cellmates; a comment on his manners.
‘You try anything…’
‘I won’t.’
‘Yeah, as if I haven’t heard that before.’
‘I’m thirteen, sir.’
‘Yeah, and I’ve seen younger than you slit a throat.’
‘Charming.’
Merion waited as the constable found the right key from the mass of metal hanging from his belt. He slid the barred door back just wide enough for Merion to be hauled through.
‘Hands behind your back!’
Part of Merion wanted to protest; it was the Hark in him. But he bit his tongue and did as he was told. The handcuffs were cold and tight.
‘Forward!’ The order was punctuated with a sharp prod in his spine. Merion moved.
The brief tour of the prison was delightful. One cell contained a boxing match in full swing; thugs lined the walls, cheering at two men busy beating several shades of shit out of each other with their bare knuckles. The constable barely seemed to notice. Another cell held a man twice the size of Lurker, who was hard at work trying to bend the bars with sheer strength. The constable clearly cared more about the architecture than its contents. He rapped the man’s knuckles with his truncheon, there was a muffled curse in some garbled language, and the man receded into the shadows. Yet another cell contained a character so inebriated he was in the midst of redecorating the walls with his own vomit.
Merion ignored it all, consenting to be poked and prodded down hallways and up long flights of stairs. Gawping at prisoners was not the purpose of his visit.
The young Hark was shown to a room of bare brick and broken plaster, home to a single table with stools at either side.
Merion was shackled to an iron loop set into the tabletop and left alone to wait. It took almost half an hour for his company to arrive; a wizened sergeant, stocky, and with eyes and time-bleached hair that spoke of decades spent in rooms just like this one, speaking to miscreants just like him. The officer hardly spared the prisoner a glance as he walked into the room. Merion sat straight and silent, waiting for him to shuffle his dog-eared papers and sigh in a way that said, ‘Here we go again.’
‘Name.’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘Harlequin,’ Merion lied, using that same old name he had used in Cirque Kadabra. The truth was for later.
‘Says ‘ere you were caught lifting jewellery from a stall on the Marble Mile. Not that smart, thievin’ on our doorstep.’
Merion ignored the jibe. ‘I want to speak to Constable Pagget.’
The sergeant flicked him a look with tired eyes. ‘The only thing you’ll be speakin’ is a confession.’
‘Constable Pagget. I want to speak to him.’
The man knuckled his forehead. ‘If you confess, this will go much quicker. If not, you’ll be lookin’ at transportation. Know what that means, lad?’
‘Absolutely, but I want to speak to Pagget.’
‘And just why would you want that?’
‘It’s a private matter.’
The man gripped his quill so hard it almost snapped. ‘Criminals don’t get privacy.’
‘Is Pagget in the building?’
The silence confirmed that yes, he was.
‘Then I want to speak to him,’ Merion said.
‘You ain’t speakin’ to nobody ‘less you confess.’ A sheet of paper was slid across the table. A quill, too, dripping ink. Merion kept his hands where they were.
‘Pagget. If you want your confession, you’ll fetch him for me.’
The sergeant narrowed his eyes so tightly they almost closed. ‘You some sort of high-born? You talk like one.’
‘Pagget,’ Merion insisted, calm as could be. He wore a confident smirk which he could feel irritated this man to the core.
‘If you think—’
‘Pagget.’
‘I swear—’
‘Pagget. Constable Pagget. Tell him Tonmerion asks for him.’
The sergeant slammed his hand down on the table and spat on the floor. ‘You high-born are all the same,’ he muttered, and marched out of the room.
Another half an hour passed, most likely designed to make him sweat. The man was probably busying himself with a cup of tea, stewing two things as once. Merion endured it, still wearing his confid
ent smile, despite being alone. The groundwork could be so pleasurable; tantalising glimpses of what was to come.
At last, there came another jangling of belt-metal. Merion sat still. The same sergeant entered, though this time he had a small silver key ready in his hand. Without a word, he unlocked the handcuffs, then grabbed the boy by the collar and led him out of the room. Merion was dragged up some stairs, down a corridor, and then finally to another room with an iron door, vaguely familiar.
He was bundled inside, and then prodded over to a leather chair. Merion didn’t protest; he sat and held his tongue, staring around at the varnished bookshelves. He remembered them so effortlessly. Pagget had distracted himself with the spines of those books as Witchazel delivered his sentence. The day that started it all.
Merion busied himself with awkward reminiscing while he waited for Constable Pagget to arrive. It took a few more minutes. When he appeared in the doorway, he was huffing, as though he’d been disturbed from slumber, or some other case.
‘A Master Harlequin for you,’ said the sergeant.
‘That’ll be all, Constable.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Sir?
Constable Jimothy Pagget strode into the room, letting his colleague shut the door behind him. His eyes avoided Merion as he lowered himself into his chair. His backside met the leather with a creak, followed by a worrying squeal of wheels. It wasn’t surprising. While Merion had been away, it looked as though Pagget had seen little of the cobbles and far too much of the desk. His bright blue jacket was even more strained than Merion remembered; the gleaming buttons clung desperately to their holes. Still, judging by the new bars on his collar, he had been busy. He was a lieutenant now.
‘Master Harlequin, is it?’ Pagget shuffled his papers before finally looking up. The shuffling froze instantly; Merion saw the realisation yank back his eyelids. The boy did look rather different, after all. He was a darker, wilder creature than the one who had sat at Pagget’s desk several months ago. He was now a wiry lad with a mop of sandy blonde hair, tangled and frayed at the edges. His eyes were no doubt brighter, sharper in a way. And his calm smile was a world away from the haughty grimace of disdain Pagget would likely have remembered. Merion couldn’t help but enjoy his reaction.
‘Master Hark—’ Pagget stammered.
‘Lord Hark. Well remembered, Constable. Or Lieutenant, should I say. My congratulations.’
Pagget’s mouth flapped open and shut. ‘What are—’
‘What am I doing here? Good question. I need your help.’
Pagget stared down at the boy’s papers as if the explanation for this unexpected situation were hidden there. ‘No, I mean… You were arrested for thievery. You’re supposed to be in the Endless Land.’
‘I grew a little bored of it.’
The lieutenant’s face was blanker than a sheet of fresh parchment. ‘And now you’re a thief?’
Merion shrugged. ‘How else was I going to get your attention?’
Pagget stared, open-mouthed. ‘By asking for it? You could have left a note for me at the desk? A formal request for a meeting?’
‘I didn’t have the time, nor the desire to advertise the fact I’m in London.’
Pagget sat back in his chair, thumbing his chin in thought. There was a suspicious glint in his eye. No doubt he knew of Merion’s branding as a traitor; it had been all over the newspapers. Perhaps at that moment he was considering how much weight the capture of an infamous traitor would add to his salary. Then again, Pagget was smart enough not to take things at face value. He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to lie, Mast… Lord Hark. I’m beyond confused. Last I heard of you, you’d betrayed the Empire. Much like your father.’
Merion leaned forward. ‘And you believe everything you read in those newspapers?’
Pagget furrowed his brow, as if his entire day had been turned upside down and shaken out. He sighed. ‘Talk, then. Convince me otherwise, if you say you need my help. Though Almighty knows what I can do for you. Or what I will do with you.’
Merion laid out as much as he dared. ‘Innocent until proven guilty, isn’t that what they say? Well, Mr Pagget, like my father, I have been wrongfully accused. Karrigan Hark loved this Empire. He would have died before he betrayed it. I want to see his name cleared, and mine too. I won’t bore you with the details of why and how these lies came about, but let’s just say I learnt a good many truths in the Endless Land. About myself, about this Empire. It’s time the record was set straight.’
It was a simple ploy; one that tugged at the constable’s sense of truth and justice. Pagget may not have been the smartest or the toughest official in the city, but he was a true man of the law. Merion had seen that in the man’s eyes all those weeks ago, while he was slumped in the same chair, listening to Witchazel prattle on about deserts and railroad and undertakers.
Pagget set his elbows on the leather-topped table and hummed. ‘So where do I come in? How could I possibly help you? Besides throwing you back in a cell and keeping you out of harm’s way while I dig into it.’
Merion cocked his head. ‘I’d really rather you didn’t. This goes higher than you think.’
‘Spit it out, Master Hark. I’m a busy man.’
Merion reclined and crossed his arms. ‘Tell me, how is the investigation into my father’s murder going?’
The silence could have been shattered with the flick of a finger. Merion waited for his answer while Pagget worked his tongue around his gums. ‘It was, erm, put on hold.’
‘By whom, might I ask?’
‘Orders of the Prime Lord… I mean, the Lord Protector. Straight from the Queen, he said.’
Merion raised an eyebrow. ‘And you saw the Queen’s signature?’
Pagget was squirming now, finding any excuse to avoid the boy’s stare. ‘No. Just Lord Dizali’s. He, er, felt we had done our best… Ordered us to cease the investigation. He’d already donated so many of his lordsguards to the effort…’ The excuses trailed off.
‘As far as I see it,’ said Merion, ‘your “best” would actually be the capture of the murderer.’ He was enjoying this immensely, though he had to be careful not to push the constable too far.
‘It wasn’t that simple. I’ll have you know a lot has happened since—’
‘I’m sure it’s not, and I’m sure the world has been turned upside-down since I left,’ Merion answered. ‘And that’s why I’m here to fix it. I have another question.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Would you come to the Emerald House, if there was suspicion of treason among the Benches?’
‘What?’
‘Yes or no, Jimothy, it’s very simple. If you were told of a snake in the grass, a true traitor, not a scapegoat. You would bring your men and your ears to hear it?’
‘Yes, fine! I suppose I would.’ Sweat had begun to gather at the roots of Pagget’s hair.
‘Good. Last question…’
‘Merion! What is this all about?’
‘Mr Witchazel. I need to know his whereabouts.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need to talk to him. I need the deeds to my estate.’
Pagget’s voice was a frustrated scrape. ‘Mr Witchazel, last I heard of him, was living at Clovenhall. The Lord Protector rescued him, you see. From kidnap and torture. Lord Umbright took him, tried to coerce him into signing over Harker Sheer, if I remember rightly. Don’t know about no deeds except that Dizali hasn’t yet retrieved them from Umbright’s estate. Read the papers, Hark.’
Merion drummed his nails on the arm of the chair. It was looking more and more like betrayal to him. ‘Well, it looks as though I’ll be on my way.’
Pagget kneaded his frown. ‘You committed a crime just to get my help, and now you want me to turn you loose? To keep my mouth shut about it? Fudge the records?’
Merion shrugged. ‘Hopefully, yes.’
Pagget blew an exasperated sigh. ‘You’re a strange one, Hark, anybody ever
tell you that?!’
‘Many times. But attention is not something I want.’
‘I can bloody imagine.’ Pagget took a moment to digest before sighing and propping himself on his elbows. ‘You’ve got some nerve, asking me to stick my neck out for you.’
‘I figured you owed me.’
Pagget raised an eyebrow. ‘And how’d you figure that?’
‘Like I said before, seen my father’s killer lately?’ Merion raised his eyebrow again and Pagget quailed. ‘I won’t tell a soul. Your secret will be safe with me.’
‘If you get caught again, I’ll have you transported.’ The threat came with a wag of a finger.
Merion kept his smile. ‘I won’t, I promise. Next time you see me, you’ll understand what this is all about.’
Pagget took his time getting to his feet. He held up Merion’s papers, ripped them in two, and dropped them into the bin.
‘Get up.’
Merion did as he was told, and let Pagget tightly clasp his wrists. He was led to the door and prodded along the corridor. Now that his hand had been played, Merion stayed silent. He held his tongue and kept his eyes on the worn stone floor.
Pagget marched him straight out onto the street. Before he turned him loose, the lieutenant took a moment to stare at the bustle, as though he was looking for a reason not to let Merion join it. He sighed.
Merion reached out to shake the man’s hand. ‘Thank you, Constable Pagget, for your help. And believe me when I say you’ll thank me when I’m done.’
Judging by his expression, Pagget didn’t quite believe him.
‘You’re a good man, Pagget. Don’t let anybody tell you different.’
‘Your father told me that once.’ He shook the boy’s hand and retreated back inside the station without a further word.
Merion took a moment to rub his hands and arms, working the grime off them. He wondered what dealings his father may have had with Pagget in the past, and shook his head, dismissing it as a mystery for another day. Ignoring the jostling of the busy bodies around him, he pulled his hood down over his face and headed north.
