Bloodfeud (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Galley

  Several of the other crew members saw what he was doing. Pushing their panic aside, they drew what knives they had and began to slash at every rope they could find. They were thick bastards, but fervour bested them, and with sharp cracks they snapped one by one, their frayed ends ricocheting off the metal ceiling.

  There was a horrific moment as the Belle lurched free, tipping them all to the back of the hold before it lurched up into the stormy sky. Every soul aboard was tossed head over heels. There were shouts as skulls and limbs were introduced to sharp corners and bulkheads.

  It was then that the whole airship seemed to exhale, as the waves receded beneath them and were lost in grey cloud. At last, they headed to open sky, cargo-less, but alive.

  Lilain patted Lurker’s cheek as she pushed herself up from the floor. The old injuries of Fell Falls were still as sore as ever, but now she had new ones to worry about. She winced as she rubbed the angry lump on the side of her head. Lurker had fared no better, but he’d kept hold of the axe; it was currently embedded in the metal deck. One of the crew hadn’t been so lucky. In the fall he had driven a knife through his thigh, and was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Lurker rolled over and hoisted himself up, using the axe as a crutch. He growled, fiercer than any bear Lilain had ever heard; and a letter sees her fair share of the live ones before they end up on tables, entertaining scalpels.

  A few of the crew came to help, patting him heartily on the back, despite his injury, and murmuring gratitude. The doors were closed, and relative silence fell, save for the screaming of the poor lad with the knife in his femur. Everyone present took a moment to stare at a wall, shake their heads, or run their hands through their hair; whatever a man or woman must do to distill the glimpse of death’s jaws into something more manageable.

  The sound of Higgis’ boots on the metal stairs shattered the silence.

  ‘Who’s missing?’ she asked.

  ‘Carlt. Fell out the door,’ said Scamp, standing at Lilain’s shoulder.

  Higgis took a moment to work her gums before slapping her hand on the railing and heading back up the stairs. Her orders floated down after her. ‘Get us ship-shape. And get that man to Nibs.’

  Lilain and Lurker shared a look before following Higgis to the upper deck. Gunderton met them outside their cabin door. Despite all the lurching, the screaming, and the thunder of engines and storms, he looked sleepy eyed, half-asleep even.

  ‘What’s all the ruckus?’ he asked, around a yawn.

  Part of Lilain wanted to slap him, mostly to see what he’d do, but she refrained.

  ‘Are you serious?! The Belle nearly just sank in the sea, and you were sleeping? We could have used the darned help!’

  ‘Sank, eh?’ Gunderton shrugged, blinking his dark eyes. ‘I’ve slept through worse,’ he replied as he walked away. ‘Besides, I knew you could handle it.’

  Now Lilain did want to slap him, but this time Lurker held her back. They watched him shut his door with a thud, and shook their heads. ‘You know, sleep does sound like a good idea.’

  Lilain flicked him in his sore rib. ‘Maker, do I miss Merion.’

  Chapter V

  SECRETS

  30th July, 1867

  The morning was sharp and cold, with no promise of the warm day to come. Merion could see it in the thin shard of crystalline sky he could see between the soaring buildings.

  He shifted against the stone, pulling his cloak around him for the tenth time in the last hour. He had barely slept, curled up in a hollow between a pub and a hat shop; one of which had a plumbing problem. He had collapsed there in the early hours and promptly dozed off, putting trust in the defence of plain sight. Sure enough, he had survived the night, mostly because he had camped in a well-to-do part of the city. No thuggish fishmongers or thieving butchers in sight.

  He found himself chuckling privately as he watched the early risers come and go. A few spared him filthy looks, and somehow he enjoyed them, revelling in the character he played; the hooded boy, the forgotten wastrel. Anonymity at its best. He had swapped sweltering prairie for the cold cobbles of home, and he was still a stranger. Alone is a strange thing to be, in the heart of a city.

  At the very least, the fun of it managed to distract him from the dull ache in his frozen backside, the pang in his empty gut, and the woozy liquor of exhaustion. He had barely snatched three hours sleep, and yet dawn had already come and gone. He had to shift himself, but his muscles weren’t answering him.

  A man is not moving if he isn’t moving forwards. His father’s words, still keeping him company after all this time. Merion had wondered whether his unprompted gems of wisdom would ever die away, or whether they were too deeply embedded, and there to stay. Deny them as he might, they always seemed to be right on the coin. Maybe when it was all over, his father’s ghost would leave him be; its job of guiding him done. Merion snorted to himself, and looked down to his side, mouth open and ready to speak. He stopped as he realised. There was no faerie sitting there. Just blank stone, water-stained and weathered. Merion grimaced, and pushed himself into the day. His back clicked in several places before he felt human again. He hoisted up his bag and set off, continuing on his journey.

  Soon, he was striding down a busy thoroughfare. It may have been early, but as always the paperboys were out, rousing London from its slumber with their bellowing. The latest headlines had always been the alarm clock of the city.

  Merion sauntered past their skinny ranks, eyeing their grubby hands and the papers they held, his ears well and truly pricked.

  ‘Queen arrested!’

  ‘Traitorous Queen ousted from palace!’

  ‘Imprisonment or death for Victorious?’

  The young Hark shook his head beneath his hood. Each step Dizali took was bolder than the last. To kill a royal? An ancient Queen? That bordered on madness. He wondered what his father would have done, upon hearing such news. Break Dizali in two with his bare hands, no doubt, and save them all the trouble. He smiled to himself; a little thing, made of pride. It lingered on his lips for just a while, until reality set in. The Bulldog was gone. It was all down to him now.

  London was a blur as he trod the streets. He let his feet guide him, half-closing his eyes and almost sleepwalking his way through the city. He spent the morning like this, only stopping once to eat. He strode northwards on a course he hadn’t taken in months. Towards home. Or what was left of it.

  When the sun was slipping from its zenith, he finally found the griffin and broadsword statue by a fork in the road. Merion followed the wheelruts left, in the direction of the mighty monster’s gaze. Trees lined the edge of the winding road, and with little difficulty, cut him off neatly from the bustle of the city. Within a hundred yards, Merion would have thought himself deep in the country if he hadn’t known better. He felt a stirring in his heart; smelling those old trees, watching their pollen float on the warm breeze.

  After another half an hour, he found the gates. Behind them, across the vast grounds, soared Harker Sheer. His insides soared at the sight of its rooftops and chimneys. He had waited so long.

  Merion tucked himself behind a tree. There were three lordsguards wandering idly in circles in front of the gates. Their uniforms and armour bore no sigils, no coats of arms. Their guns rested on their shoulders, but he could tell they were poised like mousetraps, ready to spring. Merion ducked into the bushes and crept deeper into the trees, aiming for the western gardens. He walked along the tall iron fence, treading as silently as he could among the loam and leaves.

  It was fortunate that he had spent his entire life roaming those iron bars, making music from them with sticks, climbing trees with a faerie and seeing which branches might offer the prospect of escape; just in case he ever needed to, of course. Merion smiled wryly to himself as his fingers flicked over the cold bars. He had found more than enough of these branches, and memorised them all.

  He soon found one of his favourites: an old oak, too heavy for its a
ge, starting to sag and splinter. It was rooted directly opposite the steps where his father had died. Even though it was behind the fence, one of its branches rested against the iron spikes, reaching almost to the ground. Merion laid hands on the old wood, and patted it. He should have taken this route the morning he had seen his father on a porcelain slab, and been told of Wyoming. He jumped up to straddle it, and began to shuffle along until the fence could help him upright. With a simple swing and a jump he was in Harker’s grounds, creeping onwards through the trees, towards the steps.

  There was a guard between him and the house; a grey-haired captain strutting about and hovering around the marble fountain, now greenish with moss and pining for attention. The sweeping steps were no better tended. Merion squinted through the rhododendron leaves, looking for the dark stain of blood. He saw only a hole. It was as if the marble had been hacked away. As he looked harder, he saw it was a doorway. Merion felt a brief flush of excitement before it was quashed by a twinge of anger and concern. What unknown trove had they pilfered? What relic had they stolen? He ground his teeth. He had underestimated how hard this would be; he hadn’t expected secret hideouts in his father’s garden.

  So began the process of creeping and listening. Rhin couldn’t have done better. Merion edged his way around to the other side of the steps and lingered in the shrubbery a stone’s throw from the lordsguard. He had brought a stone for the occasion; a small rock, balanced in his hand. With the other hand, he reached into his bag and produced the small vial of tuna blood He held it close, thumb tucked under the cork and ready to push.

  He put all he had into the throw, sending the rock flying over the captain’s head and into the bushes on the far side of the vast patio. The lordsguard was good; he flew like a cat after a sparrow, sword drawn.

  Merion moved quickly, darting across the patio and down into the darkness of the hole. He’d simply come to look at the state of his home, nothing more. Yet here he was, delving into yet another of his father’s secrets. He was shaking so much he almost popped the cork right there.

  His feet made quick work of the stairs, and a short walk led him down a dark corridor; one that stretched like the drumroll before the reveal of a trick. A domed room greeted him; a cavern lined with shelves and bookcases, draped in shadows. A single lantern sat on the desk at the far end, but even in its dim light, Merion could see that all the shelves were empty. Barer than a dead man’s table.

  He moved to the nearest shelf and wiped a finger through the dust, tracing the hollows where items had once sat. He could see the scrapes where they had been snatched away; they weren’t books, that was for sure, not by the shape of them. These were the footprints of vials, bottles, and decanters. Merion noticed a discarded label on the stone floor and snatched it up. Bloodglyphs. His finger followed the sharp edges of the lettering trying to remember Lilain’s lessons. Cat.

  As he bent down to replace the label, a glimmer from under a bookcase caught his eye. It was a forgotten vial, barely bigger than his thumb. He had to lie on the floor to reach it, coating himself in dust. He eyed its label in the candlelight. No bloodglyphs this time, just straight common tongue. Kelpie. It looked brown in the light.

  There was a rustle from outside, echoing through the corridor. Merion flicked the cork of the tuna blood and drank it down, tensing to force it into his veins.

  Boots on the stairs now. He leapt up and tucked himself to the right of the doorway. The magick pounced fast; shades of the fish vein always did. Something about the salt, or so Shan Dolmer had once told him. It was already pounding in his skull by the time the grey-haired captain came rushing through the door, gun whirling from side to side.

  He was fast, but Merion was faster. The tuna blood jolted him with energy, flinging him forward, quick as a blink. A swift kick was all it took to sweep the legs from under the captain. His face collided with the floor with an awful thud. Merion was quick to follow up; he had learnt that lesson many times over in the Endless Land. He dropped to the lordsguard’s side and rammed his forehead into the marble one more time for good measure. The shade’s speed and strength saw the job done. The captain was out cold.

  ‘And you never even saw my face,’ Merion whispered, as he clapped the dust from his hands.

  He spared a fleeting moment to take one last look up at the ceiling and the countless yards of shelves, before ducking back into the corridor and sprinting out into the daylight. He was back in the woods in a flash.

  Just like the mole shade, the tuna blood burned up quickly, petering out by the time he had scurried back along the tree branch and out of the estate. It was high time he found himself a professional.

  *

  Breaking west and south, Merion headed for where the mighty stone press of the city gave way to grass and bushes. Jekyll Park was a vast patch of greenery embedded deep in the heart of London’s white and grey landscape. It was so enormous you could stand at its centre, on the shore of the Long Water, and barely see the spires of Knightsbridge, or Bucking Tower and the Palace of Ravens. Only the Bellspire was visible, on the banks of the river. The city—mankind’s grandest and greatest—could be forgotten for just a moment.

  Merion couldn’t remember the exact way, but he managed to find a path through the meandering streets that led him to the park’s northeast corner. From there it was at least an hour’s walk across the rolling hillocks and through the twisting gardens to the distant southwest corner. As he walked, the evening’s darkness slowly fell, and the first stars began to pierce the greying sky. Lamplighters bore their wicks from gaslight to gaslight and, soon enough, the city began to sparkle, even though the sun was still clinging to the horizon.

  Just as his legs were growing sore, Merion found himself in the long shadow of the buildings on Jekyll’s edge. He took a moment to stand atop a small mound and stare about, eyes wandering between the benches and saplings.

  ‘A copse. Oak and elm. Oak and elm…’

  Merion muttered to himself, wishing he knew more about trees; although it was impressive enough that he remembered their names, and Rhin’s old rhymes.

  He spotted a copse nestled in a hollow just short of the park’s boundary. The trees were packed so tightly that half of them were nearly fused together. Merion aimed himself at the hollow, walking slow and careful, as if the presence of his footsteps could betray him.

  Just outside the copse he found a small plaque set into a rock. Merion scanned its weathered surface, shining grey where it had been rubbed of its brass. It told the story of a young child, lost to the well inside these trees. But Merion was not in the mood for stories, and he knew better than to listen to its warnings. He walked on, eyes narrow.

  It took several minutes to find a gap where he could sneak through into the deeper darkness between the trees. It was silent there; the rattle and clatter of carriage wheels and footsteps muffled by the density. He found himself a little short of breath. Perhaps it was a sort of magick; Fae spells to keep intruders at bay.

  Merion found the well almost immediately. It was the only thing standing amid the loam and gnarled roots; impossibly old, made of bone-grey brick, the mortar long chipped away. A warped wooden structure stood over it, dangling a thin, silvery rope into the mouth of the well. The boy forced himself forward to look down, even though his heart hammered in his chest. All he wanted to do was run, yet he knew he had to look, to push himself on. It was inspiration in its darkest form.

  His thoughts turned to the night of the Bloodmoon, of Rhin snarling in the lightning flashes, of the sight of the empty dock receding into the night as the Black Rosa dragged him and Calidae away.

  Merion shook his head. Rhin was done running. He would have fought the banshees tooth and claw until they took him. He was here, in London, there was no doubt. Merion shuddered as he thought of what his friend might endure while his plan unfolded. What scored him deeply was that he was no use to the faerie yet; that Rhin had to wait to be saved.

  Merion put his hands to the c
old brick and stared down into the hole. It was as if the light—what little there was of it—was not welcome in the well. It shied away from the darkness, barely penetrating a yard or two at the most. From there on, it was velvet blackness. Impenetrable. Merion shuddered and let his legs lead him away, squeezing back through the trees, and out into the evening. He had never felt magick quite like it.

  He let the fear vacate him, embodied in several giant sighs of relief. A passer-by walking a herd of small tufted dogs threw him a concerned look. Merion mumbled an apology—more to Rhin than to the stranger—and began to walk away, catching his breath on the move.

  By the time he was back in London’s core, his feet didn’t want to see another mile of the city. That’s what you got, pretending to be a waif and stray in the biggest city in the world. He had the coin for carriages and horse-traps, but carriage-jockeys and whip-crackers like to swap tales, or so his father had once told him. And they remember faces like you would not believe. Better to put his feet to work instead of ruining Dizali’s surprise.

  Finding himself back on the Kingsroad, Merion followed it south until the pungent smell of the docks tickled his nostrils. His eyes roved every nook, every cranny, gutter, shadow, and wall; as they had all day. He was on the hunt for two things. First, a Scarlet Star, then a place he could stow himself away for a night or two. The latter was taking precedence at this moment in time. A chill was already settling into the cloudless evening.

  He stuck to the older streets, where the dock-houses had sat before the sway of industry and commerce moved further down the river. The stench of grimy wood and overused gutters drifted on the air. To most high-born, it would have been intolerable to walk these streets, never mind sleep on them, but Merion’s spectrum of tribulations was too broad for a boy his age. He thought of the day spent handling the dead in Fell Falls, after the Shohari attacked. He had seen the world’s true face and it was an ugly one. But there was no time for naivety, nor regretting missed chances for change. As that traitorous Big Jud had said, far back in Nebraskar: