by Ben Galley
Dizali began his ritual again, moving the glass in ever-shifting circles. He took a sip to even the balance, and once more let his eyes lose themselves in the swirl of colour.
‘It is not a curse,’ he remarked to himself, in a whisper. ‘There is no such nonsense.’
Saying it aloud made his thoughts bark louder; random and chaotic. Dizali took another gulp of brandy and tried again to reorder them, one by one. He felt as though his guts were unravelling. It was time to scoop them all up and knit them back together.
Avalin was clearly traumatised by Calidae’s snooping. Imagine waking up to find that face gawking at you from above, after three years of silence.
And yet she had seemed lucid enough to scream abuse; spitting words that had cut him to shreds. It was as though a tidal wave had washed Clovenhall from beneath him, and dashed him on the estate’s foundations. All he had built for her—all he had strived for—was because of her whispers in his ear. She must still be suffering from her malady if she saw him as a monster.
Another gulp.
He had not imprisoned her, as she had so vocally proclaimed this morning when he had gone to visit her again. The disgust in her face had been appalling, as had her terror when he had tried to touch her. He had shouted his reasons: he’d been protecting her, keeping her alive and cared for until a doctor could produce a cure. Or until she awoke on her own. But she had screamed something incomprehensible—something about blood—and he had left hurriedly. The maids had come later to say she had tried to escape the tower. He’d posted a guard or two at the door.
Clearly, Lady Dizali’s behaviour could not be expected to improve in just one day. He would have the doctors see her after tomorrow, once Victorious was dead and buried. ‘She will come around,’ he told himself, as if speaking the words could seal them in stone.
And there it was: a cheerful thought amongst all the angst. The Queen herself, doomed to hang on the morrow. Midday was already far too long a wait. Dizali clung to that minuscule shiver of excitement. If there was a curse punishing him, it would surely die with her.
All else was going to plan. He counted the elements like bullets in a chamber: the Order was putting up no fight he couldn’t win; Calidae Serped had been proven a traitor and would be dangling from her own rope soon enough; the Emerald Benches where finally learning to hold their tongues; the Royalist riots had been coerced or pummelled into submission; and the faeries would soon be delivering the boy and his companions. Even Pontis had been found; or what was left of him. Calidae hadn’t batted an eyelid when she had confessed the details. Stuffed in a cupboard in the depths of Clovenhall, rotting and bloodied. She almost seemed proud.
Dizali chuckled to himself and took a victory sip. ‘It is all in your mind, Bremar,’ he reassured himself. ‘All in your mind. Just the next step looking longer than it is.’
Another gulp of the brandy sealed the deal and once again he found himself lingering near the bottom of his glass. He licked his lips, savouring the tingle of the blood in the liquor, and slapped his hand on the table.
After topping up the glass one more time, Dizali strode out of his study and out into the hallway. The two lordsguards stationed outside the door instantly came to heel, following him down to the grand doors of his grander wine cellars.
‘Stay here.’ Dizali motioned with the glass. A door was already ajar. The toe of his boot thrust it wider. He wound his way through oak canyons crammed with bottles. Necks and labels jutted out into the cool air. Scrapes of rubber and disturbed motes patterned the stone floor. If he hadn’t been present at the time of their making, they would have told him a struggle took place here; perhaps a young girl being dragged, kicking and screaming, into a cell.
The cellar was a simple construction, curling in spirals down three levels. At the bottom he found his most stubborn enemy—the Orange Seed—sitting quietly in a lone shaft of gaslight, glittering smugly as usual. Behind it, deeper into the shadows, was his newest adversary, Calidae Serped. The Brothers Eighth stood around her cell. She had been given nothing more than a square hole chiselled into the brick and bedrock. It had once stored wine, now it hosted traitors.
‘Gentlemen, have you learnt anything useful?’
‘Nothing, my Lord,’ said Hanister.
Heck was in the midst of adjusting his bow-tie. ‘She’s barely turned around except to spit at us.’
‘Quiet as a clam,’ added Honorford.
Dizali scowled. ‘Get her out and tie her to a chair! Gag her as well.’
All wild creatures have a bite. You either tame them or get used to the pain. Dizali subscribed to the former ideology.
Calidae was vocal now. ‘Get your filthy hands off me!’ The Brothers yanked back the bars and hauled her out into the open.
Dizali had already found a chair of his own. He sat with a leg crossed, nurturing his crimson, while the girl was manhandled into place. Honorford had to keep hold of the gag like a pair of reins to stop her from thrashing.
When Calidae was still, Dizali rose from his seat and stood over her. He stared into those furious blue eyes, the right one wrapped in scarred tissue. ‘Thirsty?’ He swilled the glass under her nose. ‘Missing the perks of fine living?’
Dizali motioned for the gag to be slipped. She was breathing deeply, almost snarling. Wild, indeed. Traitors often are, when they have been wrenched from their holes. A ferocity of two parents: part failure, part desperation.
‘Here,’ he chuckled, ‘take a sip. You may be my prisoner, but you’re still a lamprey after all. Still one of the Order, until they renounce you.’
Calidae bared her teeth but let Dizali move the glass closer. It pressed against her bottom lip and as it tilted, she sucked at it. She took back a gulp or two before he swung the glass to the side, and promptly threw the rest in her face. The alcohol must have burnt her eyes, needling her bruises and cuts, still raw in places. She hissed through her teeth like a gale through slats in a fence.
‘You are no lamprey! You are a disgrace!’ Dizali roared, an inch from her nose. ‘Lampreys are true to their kind. True to their history! True to their Order! Not whoring traitors who scheme and plot with bastard orphan leeches!’ He began to circle her. ‘Do you know what they used to do to lamprey traitors during the Age of Enlightenment, Calidae?’
Calidae sneered at him.
‘I know this story,’ Hanister chimed in, arms crossed, face a mask of pleasure.
Dizali waved his glass as though he were conveying a speech. ‘It is a fascinating one, and though I am not usually one for digressing with stories, I shall tell it to you now.’
Calidae looked positively thrilled.
*
The dark night was full of drizzle and wind. The trees sighed and moaned as the weather tugged at them, snatching leaves from their branches and throwing them to the sky.
The long gravel road to Clovenhall was empty and cast in shadow, but the glow of the mighty mansion lit a path of puddles and gravel.
A hunched figure walked that path alone, cloak glistening with rain. Its hood was up and its pace determined. It walked in the centre of the road, caring not for any carriage that may have wanted past. Its course was set.
*
Dizali licked a fire-gold drip from the edge of the glass before launching into his story.
‘When the Orders first came into being, Europe was in the grip of war and reinvention. While the borders of empires and kingdoms ebbed and flowed, redefining the maps as we know them today, the cities flaunted their debauchery. Science and libertarianism became the fashions of the day. Magick and charm-work grew almost commonplace, thrust into the public eye. For the first time since the Bastard King took this island for himself, leeches and rushers began to thrive. They flaunted their talents, infecting the populations of the world. The superstitions we had worked so hard to maintain after the fall of the First Empire were ignored, cast aside. Bloodrushing became a sport once more. Something to be applauded and envied. The royalty of Euro
pe could not stand for it.
‘Turned the Church against them, they did,’ interrupted Honorford, receiving the iciest of glares from Dizali.
‘Indeed. At their behest, the Church of Roma redoubled its efforts to brand magick as evil. Witch-hunts ensued. We burnt countless dozens at the stake as heretics and pagans. We turned their friends to human blood and had them betray one another. Country by country, bloodrushers were cast aside and obliterated. A war ensued, of course, raging quietly beneath society for years. We won, in the end, but along the way some of the lesser Orders became weak. Some of them pitied the rushers. Called them brothers under Cain. Some went as far as to join them, or helped them to escape. Unforgivable. Disgusting!’
Dizali paused to grab a handful of Calidae’s brandy-soaked hair and pulled her head sharply to the side. The Brothers sniggered quietly.
‘If you were caught, they would put your head in a vice, and clamp it just so. Then they would melt a pound of lead in a steel pot and slowly, ever so slowly, pour it into your ears, to blot out all the lies and drivelling yarns the rushers had fed you.’ He released his grip. ‘It would take a long time to die as the hot metal worked its way in.’
Calidae sat straight and silent, wondering whether the story had been an introduction to the next hour or just a simple anecdote to break the awkward ice. Her face had paled, and yet her eyes were still sharp and narrow.
‘Fear not, Lady Serped, I will spare you such a barbaric method. For now, I need you in one piece.’
‘What for?’ she spat.
Dizali grinned wolfishly.
‘And when you’re done with me?’ said Calidae.
Dizali entwined his fingers. ‘I know a man who is always looking to practice his art on willing subjects.’ He held out a hand, hovering it about four feet from the dusty floor. ‘He stands about this high.’
‘Merion will come for me, you know,’ said Calidae, holding her head high.
‘Oh, I expect he shall try,’ said Dizali. ‘And if for some reason he has decided against such bravery, then he shall soon be delivered to me against his will.
Calidae stared at him.
‘Now, Lady Serped, you will tell me of your little plot? To see me in tatters, was it? See me in a pool of blood on my own carpets? Clovenhall razed to the ground?’ Dizali mused, twirling his goatee.
She sneered. ‘You have no idea.’
*
The lordsguards charged forward at the sight of the figure, wading boldly through the wet murk into their lantern-light. Rifles were raised, shouts blared into the night, spears levelled. They were twitchy, considering recent events. Fingers hovered on triggers, hands gripped blade-handles, already slick with drizzle.
‘State your business!’ a captain shouted, shoving his way forward through his guards. He levelled a pistol at the lonely shape, standing hunched in the rain with its hands up.
‘I said, state your business!’
‘I’m here to see Lord Protector Dizali,’ said a small voice; a boy’s tone and no doubt about it. The pistol was lowered slightly. ‘I have a message for him.’
‘What is it about, damn it? Speak up!’ ordered the captain. ‘ ‘Afore I get bored of asking questions!’
It took a moment for the boy to reply and when he did his voice cracked. ‘It’s about Tonmerion Harlequin Hark!’ He raised his hands; up, out, and empty.
‘Almighty’s balls,’ whispered the captain, instantly beckoning his men forward to seize the figure. Once he was roughly patted down, the hood was thrown back, and they stared upon a young boy, possibly thirteen at the most, with shaggy blonde hair. He was expressionless, but for a grimace at the cold rain on his face.
‘It’s bloody ‘im!’ the captain roared, clearly delighted. He shoved the boy forward and up against the gates. ‘Fan out and see if he’s brought any friends. You and you, with me. You, run ahead and tell his Lordship we’ve got a present for him. Open the gate!’
*
‘The problem with you, Calidae,’ said Dizali, ‘is you believe yourself to be smarter than I.’
‘Doesn’t take much believing,’ she replied, receiving the back of Heck’s hand. Dizali could see it in those mismatched eyes: the man and his Brothers were enjoying this. A misplaced sense of accomplishment.
‘And yet you are the one tied to the chair, in my cellar, refusing to answer my questions. I want to know what it was that you and Hark were plotting for me.’
Calidae pursed her lips.
Dizali clutched his empty glass with rigid fingers. ‘You will tell me what I want to know, Calidae.’ He stood over her once more, holding the glass high, threatening to bring it crashing down at any moment and cut her a new set of scars.
‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?’ he hissed, grabbing her shoulder in a vicious grasp. She winced. ‘Lincoln was working with Karrigan Hark. After the shambles of the circus, you thrust yourself into his employ, and he sends you and Hark back to London aboard his own ship. Not Lilain Rennevie, as some believed…’
Here he eyed the Brothers. Their mismatched gaze fell to the floor. Useless poltroons.
‘Upon your arrival, Hark disappears and you come to stand outside the Emerald House to attract my attention. I take you in, treat you as a house-guest, during which time you worm your way into the Order and my good graces in order to glean my secrets. Hark then breaks in to steal away his family friend Witchazel and you use the distraction to sneak into my most private of quarters, and terrify my wife half to death, if she were not already halfway there already! Do tell me if I have missed anything!’
Dizali could feel the others in the room flinch at the information, but he didn’t care. His eyes were fixed on Calidae’s, burning hot and furious.
Calidae slowly inclined her head to offer him her scars. ‘I think it was you who terrified her, Dizali, not I. And who could blame her, after being imprisoned against her will for three years, left as a ghost of her former self? She was such a sweet soul, was she not?’ There was a detestable honey in her voice. ‘I remember her from parties. I was merely a lifeline that she grasped for. No maid would ever cross you. But I could, and she saw that. A way to lift her curse.’ Calidae let the word linger.
Dizali’s lip quivered in fury. His arm shook as the glass was raised higher, as far as it could go, ready to be smashed into that impudent face.
Calidae was saved by the slam of a door and footsteps thumping on floorboards above them. A lordsguard came running down the stairs.
Dizali, all thoughts of murder quashed by the intrusion, whirled on his heel to demand an explanation. The lordsguard was breathless, but before the Lord Protector could speak, he blurted out his excuse.
‘My Lord,’ he wheezed. ‘Rolick has found Tonmerion Hark at the gates. They’re bringing him in as we speak.’
‘Alone?’
‘Seems that way, my Lord.’
So much for the promises of faeries, foiled by the impetuousness of young men.
Dizali jabbed a finger at each of his Brothers. ‘My study. Now!’ They bounded up the stairs without a word, following the wheezing lordsguard.
Lord Dizali looked back to Calidae and grinned. ‘Your partner in crime has arrived.’
Calidae sneered.
Dizali left her alone, to ponder her choices in the gloom.
*
The lordsguards shoved the hooded figure up the stairs and into the grand atrium. They gave him no time to look up at the marble or the arching stairs. He was hauled and harried with all haste. Dizali did not like to be kept waiting.
The boy kept silent the entire way, as he was told; eyes down and feet moving. The captain swaggered behind them, sword out and swinging, just in case.
He was led deeper and deeper into Clovenhall. The corridors narrowed as they marched between the patches of gloom and puddles of lantern-light.
When at last they came to a stout set of doors attended by two more lordsguards, their captive was offered a moment of rest, as the handc
uffs were yanked from a pouch and secured tightly, pinching at his skin. He winced, hands trembling slightly.
The captain strode forward to knock. The door opened immediately, and the light of Dizali’s study spilled out. The boy was hauled out of the shadow and thrust before the Lord Protector’s huge desk; head hung, hood low, shoulders hunched. The captain shut the door and flashed the Brothers a smug look before he bowed.
‘Lord Protector.’
‘Captain Rolick,’ said Dizali, looking down hungrily at the young boy kneeling before him. He was shaking more than Dizali expected.
‘My Lord, it gives me great pleasure to introduce…’ He threw back the hood. ‘…Ton—’
‘That is not Tonmerion Hark!’ spat the Lord Protector, decorating the lad with spittle.
‘What?’ Rolick’s face fell. ‘But he said—’
Dizali snarled, wrenching the boy’s head back by his hair and staring closely at his face. ‘This is not Merion Harlequin Hark! This is some boy off the streets. Explain yourself, Captain!’
‘I—’
Dizali slammed his hand on the desk. ‘It’s a ruse!’ he yelled.
‘I have a message, Lord Protector,’ explained the boy, in a voice garbled by fear.
‘And what is that?’ Dizali wrenched the lad’s chin up with a finger.
It took a second for the boy to find his words. ‘He t… t… told me to tell you, “Knock, knock”. That’s it. I swear, Milord. I didn’t know!’
The boy spun twice before he hit the floor.
‘Get this wretch out of my sight. Throw him back into the rain! I want the mansion searched, top to bottom! I want guards filling every square foot of the grounds. I want him caught!’ he roared.
It was then that more knuckles met the wood of Dizali’s door.
Knock, knock.
*
The shade was a slippery one, that was for sure. Even though it had held strong while creeping through the gates, in the middle of the lordsguards, he did not trust it an inch. Even when he was pelting ahead across the slippery gravel, even tiptoeing through Clovenhall, wrapped in a sheet of invisibility; he couldn’t grasp it like other shades. It settled into his bones and lurked there, fizzling away whenever he tried to grab at it. It hardly filled the young Hark with confidence, which was precisely what he needed right now, in the depths of Clovenhall, alone and unarmed. In the mouth of the beast.
