What was that step? Prosper asked, trying to crane his neck around. The ogres had thrust the boy into the back of a cagelike cart and chained his hands to its roof.
The Boneyard – the markets. You may buy all manner of things there, from clothing, to poison, to shades. The stands are built inside the bones of the many enemies who tried to launch assaults against the Horned Palace. Not one has made it past the Blood Gates, which separate this street from the next, the Scales, and their skeletons remain where they fell.
At least the Blood Gates were as deadly and gleaming as he remembered. Black metal joints reinforced the rocks and bone fragments that formed the wall itself. Sitting atop it were rows of teeth that had once belonged to his great-grandsire’s favourite pet dragon, Squiggle. Alastor was comforted by the fact that they were still stained red with the blood of countless nemeses. At least he could rely on some things not to change.
Every time the cart swayed, Prosper’s arm sockets stretched painfully. Alastor eagerly lapped up the magic the hurt created. It would not be long now. Being in his kingdom, with all the magic its inhabitants mined from the land and air, would give the last push he needed to manifest a physical form.
The boy did not yet know to be afraid of that swiftly approaching moment. He was too caught up in his uneasiness at his surroundings, and could not stop looking over his shoulder at the two stone lizards hauling the cart. They were low to the ground and crawled forward at a steady clip, their bodies twisting and wriggling as they made the near-vertical climb with ease.
Are those dragons?
Alastor decided to humour the boy’s curiosity. They are little more than distant cousins to the dragons that once ruled the sky. The last two great dragons killed each other in a fight to the death.
The boy tested his restraints again, his gaze sliding over to the ogres huffing and puffing to keep up with the cart. Alastor found himself irritated by the boy’s lack of awe. He began again, Ah, now see, to your right are the Black Dagger Mountains, renowned for their glowering beauty.
The boy turned to stare out through the thick haze.
Alastor waited for the desolate peaks to reveal themselves through the thinning vapour.
And waited.
Not to be rude, Prosper began, but is it supposed to look like that?
All that the boy’s inferior eyes could make out was a wall of darkness that stretched from the sky to where the ground beyond the Flats ought to have been. It ringed around the city, and it was impossible to see through or past it. Rather than reflect the light of the realm back at them, it seemed to devour it.
It must be … That must be a new fortification.
The wagon’s metal wheels creaked to a stop at the entrance to the Scales.
This level of the kingdom had always been for fiends who were neither noble nor lesser. It was made up almost entirely of minor vampyres, businessfiends who were flush with coins and magic, but could not claim nobility.
Many thought the name of the step referred to the scalelike roof tiles of the homes. Rather, it was a nod to the act of fiends attempting to scale – climb – the hierarchy of society like invading vines.
But the fiends emerging from the homes weren’t vampyres. They were lycans, ogres, hobs, grims, squelchers, goblins and even gutterboos. Gutterboos, who were meant to do nothing but eat whatever garbage fell into the streets.
Alastor watched in growing horror as these fiends retrieved brooms and buckets. A ghoul stretched up, lighting the street lamps of the step with matches and kindling. All things that a proper fiend would have used magic for. Others began scrubbing down the sides of the homes and set out platters of misshapen, charred food they had clearly prepared themselves … to … share.
The announcement banners hanging from the street lamps rattled as one hour turned to the next. They unfurled with a snap, all revealing the first message. THE FLATS REMAIN CLOSED. They curled back up again, then unrolled with a new one: MAGIC RATIONING IN EFFECT UNTIL OTHERWISE STATED. WE SHALL RISE TOGETHER!
‘Whoa,’ the boy murmured, watching as the banners curled once more. This time, when they unfurled, it was to display an etching. Alastor’s sister, in her dark natural form, stood over the prone figure of a copper-haired child, the girl’s neck beneath Pyra’s blade-studded boot. YOUR QUEEN IS VICTORIOUS!
Each new reveal brought another image: the human brat strangled, strung up by her toes, stretched out across spikes. Boring, really. But the boy’s silent fury coiled around Alastor, tighter and tighter, until the boy was shaking with the need to strike something.
She only means to distress you, Alastor said, taking pity on him. Do not rise to her baiting.
You fiends are really something, the boy said, the words brittle and laced with what tasted suspiciously like hatred. Alastor baulked at the strength of it. The last etching revealed the boy’s face – the nose too much like a knob and the ears looking more like wings – alongside the words IF YOU SEE THIS SNIVELLING MORTAL, REPORT IT TO THE QUEEN’S GUARD!
Beside the wagon, the door of the Poisonmaker’s Inn exploded open. The boy jumped as two thin fiends, roughly human-like, were thrown out into the swampy gutter. They spun around, crawling away on their hands and feet as two more ogres strode out after them. One of the ogres tossed a silver coin in the direction of a lycan wearing a tattered apron.
‘No, pleassssse, you have the wrong fiendssss,’ one of them said, his voice wispy and faint. ‘Have merccccyyy.’
These fiends had taken care to coat themselves with something that looked like mottled grey paint. What was left of it on their faces had been smeared away, revealing the bone-white skin that lay beneath it. Everything about their features was pointed, from the sharp tip of their chins to the cut of their mouths and their long bladelike ears. Their eyes were red beads glinting beneath their lids.
Vampyres.
Meantongue! Rotlash! Alastor sputtered, unable to help himself. Do not let them treat you in such a manner! You are fiends of noble houses!
‘I am sssssssorry,’ the other said. ‘Ssssso sssssorry!’
The boy raised a crusty brow. You know them?
We attended school together. Their families own the finest spidersilk mills and oversee the treasury. Yet they dress like peasants? Why, they’ve painted themselves – goblin silver!
It was exactly what the ogres had accused the boy of.
‘H-have mercccccy,’ the ogre imitated, pretending to cower. The fiends walking around them did not stop to so much as dump their buckets of waste and soured beetled juice on the humiliated vampyres. They simply moved on to their next tasks.
Inside of Prosperity Redding, Alastor felt as if he were a feather blowing in the wind, never to find solid ground again.
One of the ogres stomped a foot down on Meantongue, ripping the black bonnet off his head. ‘As you’ve shown my kind mercy, spitting on us for centuries from your tower? Take a look around, milord. This may be the last glimpse you’ll have of the kingdom.’
He yanked the vampyre up, ignoring the fiend as it bared its needlelike teeth and hissed. Prosper turned to face straight ahead and tried not to flinch as the wagon rocked.
Look at them, Alastor fumed, cowering like fleas beneath a thumb!
The ogres clamped metal collars around the vampyres’ necks, hooking them to the bars that made up the sides of the wagon.
Rotlash sniffled pitifully, chewing on his lower lip with a fang. ‘I’ll have your hidessssss.’
The ogres only laughed. One jabbed a meaty finger at Meantongue, who had gone all but boneless with terror. At the touch, the fiend jerked against his restraints, trying to turn. ‘Take him and sssssspare me! I will help you find the otherssss who hide!’
‘Meantongue!’ the other cried, kicking weakly at him. ‘You gorbellied, crook-plated measle!’
With one last look at the vampyres, the ogre breathed in deep, smiling as he said, ‘How delicious. I can already smell the smoke.’
‘Beast!’ Rotl
ash was the one dressed in the puffy-sleeved shirt and billowy trousers, not the dress and bonnet. He snarled beneath his breath, ‘This was your brilliant plan to begin with. What do we do now, Meanie?’
‘We should have escaped with the others while we had the chance,’ the other moaned quietly.
‘But we might already be dead. No one knowssss where the fiendssss go when the Void clossssesss over them,’ Rotlash said miserably. ‘What sssssay you, fiend?’
The boy straightened, realizing Rotlash was speaking to him. But an unwelcome dread had moved through Alastor at the vampyre’s words. Ask what the Void is, Maggot.
I can’t. Then they’ll know I don’t belong here.
Well, Alastor thought begrudgingly, he couldn’t say that the boy was not learning.
‘Well?’ Meantongue prompted, his ruby-red eyes narrowing.
Alastor was about to feed him a line when the boy opened his mouth and said, in a rush of panic and inspiration, ‘Meeep boop bedoop. Badadoom.’
What in the four realms was that?! Al sputtered.
Part of my disguise, the boy said proudly, so they don’t recognize I’m human.
Alastor did not know which group was more foolish, vampyres or humans.
Meantongue flicked a dismissive tongue at the boy and turned to Rotlash with a shudder. ‘The lassssst inssssult. We travel with a wretched ssssludgesssslug.’
Alastor had his answer. Vampyres. Vampyres were the bigger nitwits.
‘If only the Void had not come for the king,’ Meantongue continued. ‘He sssshould have ssssent a minion to collect the magic tax out in the ssssswamps. Then we would not be in thisssss possssition.’
The boy froze, and, within him, Alastor did the same.
Interesting. So Pyra hadn’t killed their father to steal his magic, as Alastor had assumed.
‘The queen knowssss what caussssesss it, but ssssshe is too late to ssssstop it, methinkssss,’ Rotlash said, sounding almost comforted by his next statement. ‘They sssshall all die with ussss.’
A big green fist slammed into the wagon’s bars. ‘Oy! Shut your flapping maws!’
All of the wagon’s occupants fell silent, save for the hissing breaths of the vampyres and the faint clank of the boy’s chains as he tried to tug at them again. They seemed to notice it in the same moment – the small, pale flecks that appeared in the clouds of vapour drifting by them.
Ashes. The last traces of the vampyres who’d come before.
The street widened to accommodate Midnight Square and the quiet, almost disinterested-looking fiends who had gathered there. At the centre of it, where there should have been a statue of Alastor’s father, resided something far more fearful: a long, wooden pillar. Several metal chains and cuffs had been hammered into it, and now swayed, waiting for their next victims.
The boy’s eyes drifted down over the platform that had been built around it. There seemed to be … It almost looked like …
The flat platform was formerly a white fence, the sort Alastor had seen in Salem. Beneath that was a mass of more wood: old doors, chairs, small tables, toys, even spoons. Hay poked out from the cracks between them, ready to serve as fuel for the fire. Rings of thorny branches had been placed around it like barbed wire.
Alastor had assumed the ogres meant magic fire, which incinerated those caught in it instantly. But no. They were to be executed not by magic or poison or blade, but with mortal fire. The sort that kept one alive long enough to feel the agonizing heat devouring them.
The very way the Reddings had killed the innocent servant girl. That night, the memory of it, crawled over Alastor, lancing him.
The flames.
The endless, bottomless black of the Inbetween, the space between the realms, which became his home for three centuries as he slept.
Honor Redding’s face.
The wagon groaned to a stop. Meantongue groaned, drawing his fingers across his face.
What’s the plan, Al? the boy thought at him, his body giving a small tremor of fear.
I am thinking! Hush!
As the crowd around them grew, another ogre wearing the Queen’s Guard uniform approached them. The female pounded the others on the back before leaning down to peer into the cart. ‘You know what you must do, leeches. Apologize for your abuse of magic, or face the fires.’
What! The boy sucked in a sharp breath as Alastor all but screeched, APOLOGIZE?!
Are you telling me that all we have to do is apologize to avoid being burned to death? the boy asked. And there are fiends that don’t take that option?
A true fiend never apologizes! Alastor sweltered in his hate.
‘We ssssshall never apologizzzze to the likesss of you!’ Rotlash hissed back.
Yes! Indeed, my friends, indeed! Never apologize, never surrender!
‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ the boy muttered. ‘Seriously?’
‘Fine,’ the ogre said. ‘Then I’ll make sure the fire burns slow, so our queen hears your pitiful cries from the heart of the city.’
‘Long may she rage,’ the other ogres answered solemnly.
Who gives a fig about their imposter queen! Alastor let his voice boom through the boy. Can they not sense the magnificent being who is before them? I’ll strangle them with their own intestines! The insolence of it all. Let me out, Maggot. Prosperity, heed me!
Absolutely not.
The wagon’s lock was removed, falling to the ground as heavily as an unconscious body. The ogres reached in through the bars to unlatch the cuffs and collars.
A sharp bark punctured the bored murmurings of the crowd. Prosper turned back just in time to see the ghoul and the howlers from the Flats shove their way up through the square.
The ghoul went right for the nearest ogre, pointing directly at the boy. Prosper’s body locked with panic. The howlers snapped their fangs and flung drops of their poisonous saliva, barely restrained by the presence of the other ogres.
‘No, Sinstar,’ the ogre said. ‘It’s a leech—’
One of the ogres marched the boy forward toward the pyre. Prosper struggled against that crushing grip, trying to see what was happening with the ghoul. His heart slammed harder against the prison of his rib cage.
And all the while Alastor fumed. At his sister. At these ogres. At every fiend surrounding them. The boy’s mind was a hurricane of fear and half-formed plans as Rotlash was dragged up on to the pyre first, hissing and wailing. The sight was met with silence by the watching fiends.
Not even an excited chant from the spectators? Not even a murmur of pleasure at the sight? This would not stand!
‘I apolo—’ Prosper began, but Alastor could not stand it a moment longer. His voice exploded out of the boy. ‘Hear me, ungrateful, folly-fallen, ratsbane subjects!’
Satisfaction curled through him as Midnight Square went utterly silent. The ogres, the ghoul, the howlers – all turned toward the boy.
‘It is I, Alastor, First Prince of the Realm, Master Collector of Souls, Commander of the First Battalion of Fiends, your Eternal Prince of Nightmares that Lurk in Every Dark Sleep.’
The boy struggled against Alastor’s grip. It was well worth the power it took to hold on just that small bit longer.
‘You serve a pretender queen, one who has betrayed your kind by elevating you above your natural-born stations. Have no fear. I will restore the proper order to our realm.’
Stop it! the boy begged. They already want to kill us enough!
The fiends began to shift, their gazes narrowing. Meantongue’s mouth fell open, and his actual tongue unrolled with shock.
‘Despite your most unjust treatment of your royal heir, I strive to look on your repugnant faces with affection, my dear, rump-fed subjects. If you bow to me now and grovel to my liking, I shall consider sparing you when I reclaim the Black Throne. Those who attend to me and return to their duties will lose no claws as I seek retribution. Well, certainly no more than one. After all, every crime demands a punishment.’
&nb
sp; Alastor waited for the rapturous cheers, the shrieks of joy at the prospect of being freed from whatever mundane and magic-barren existence Pyra had forced them into.
Instead, the ghoul, Sinstar, pointed at Prosper and snarled into the silence, ‘I told you that was the human boy! Take him in the name of the queen!’
Well. That was certainly … This was … Alastor’s thoughts seemed to dissolve like sand, just as the ogre banded his meaty arms around Prosper’s chest.
You idiot! Prosper snarled. You said you weren’t going to do this! We were supposed to work together!
The boy’s feet kicked in the air as the ogre carried him forward.
Alastor, it seemed, had gotten his wish. The crowd hissed and chattered their teeth at him – not in excitement, or even relief at the arrival of their savior. In hatred. It churned around them like the thunderclouds of the human world, dark and seething.
They … the malefactor thought, stunned. They do not want me … ? Me?
Prosper managed to pivot and jab the ogre directly in the eyes. They popped like ooze-filled balloons, splattering against his face.
‘Gross!’ Prosper cried, trying to fling the goop off his fingers. ‘Holy crap, I’m so sorry—’
The ogre howled in fury, dropping him. ‘It’ll take me weeks to regrow those!’
Prosper slammed against the ground, crawling between legs and grabbing hands until he was under the nest of logs and broken wood that formed the pyre.
‘I’ll smoke you out, you mortal rat!’ Sinstar said, snatching a lit torch from a stunned hob. ‘You won’t get away this time!’
Prosper twisted around, his breath steaming in and out of him. The ghoul’s arm stretched forward, the lengthening limb threading through the fiends between him and the pyre, holding the torch aloft like a burning needle.
Think, Alastor thought, trying to cobble together an escape for them. Use your power, just this once –
He felt it gathering in his centre, ready to unleash itself on his ungrateful subjects. But in that trembling second before he could unleash its might, a wave of pure, crackling green magic exploded through the square, robbing the boy’s sight of the others, and stealing that last bit of sense from both of them.
Prosper Redding: The Last Life of Prince Alastor Page 4
