Rhin had the bird in a clever hold, using his body and strong left arm to pin Jake’s wings behind his back. For all intents and purposes, the magpie might as well have been bound with iron. The faerie’s black blade glittered like coal in the firelight.
Lurker was having none of it. In a flash of leather and steel, his gun was drawn, levelled barely three feet from Rhin’s head.
‘Let that bird go, or lose your fuckin’ head. Your choice,’ growled the prospector.
Rhin bared his sharp teeth. ‘Not a chance. Lower that cannon of yours or I’ll slit this
klasch
’s throat like butter.’
Merion was frozen with a paralysing mixture of shock, awe, and terror. He had to physically force the words out of his throat. It was like shoving boulders up a pipe. ‘Stop it! Lurker, John, put that thing down. And Rhin, let that feathered bastard go and step back. Please, just do it.’
Rhin threw him a glance, fierce and defiant, but Merion stared him down. Rhin flickered purple with anger, and then shoved Jake away from him, recoiling into a crouch, blade up and ready.
‘Lurker … Lower your weapon!’ Merion hissed, and Lurker did as he was told. The gaping barrels of the monstrous Big Betsy slowly fell away, dropping to nuzzle the lip of Lurker’s right boot moodily.
‘Fine,’ Lurker grunted. He was furious, Merion could tell. His gloves creaked as he clenched his fists, tight as could be. ‘You stay there Jake,’ he barked. ‘Keep your eyes on that reptile ‘til I’ve had my words. Unnerstand?’
Jake squawked, sharing his master’s fury He veritably shook with anger, feathers puffed to ridiculous degrees.
‘Now see here, Lurker…’ Merion began.
Lurker took one giant step over the crackling fire and cuffed the young Hark around the ear. Merion yelped, falling to the sand. Rhin was by his side in a blur of black faerie steel. Jake was aiming to pounce, hopping around behind him.
‘Enough!’ Lurker shouted, and the chaotic scene stopped dead. ‘Get up,’ Lurker pulled Merion upright, keeping his eyes on the faerie. Merion sullenly came level. His ear stung like nobody’s business, and his body refused to stop shivering.
Lurker prodded him in the chest with a damning finger. ‘I think it’s you that owes some answers. And I intend to get ‘em.’
Merion shook his head free of his dizzy spell and motioned for Rhin to back down. The faerie did as he was told, but his eyes still burned all the same.
Merion crouched down in the sand, and Rhin followed suit. ‘What do you want from me? How dare you and your diseased bird—’
‘Oh we dare alright. A man has a right to know who or what he’s sharing a campfire with. I don’t know you one bit, but I took a chance seeing as you’re Lil’s nephew, and you’re in a fuckin’ sorry situation. Now that you’ve decided to return my kindness with lyin’, I know you even less, and a care about as much.’
Merion flushed red. ‘I didn’t lie!’
‘Hiding is the same as lyin’, in my book! You should have told me you were smuggling this dangerous little shit around.’
‘Why?! It’s my secret, not yours.’
Rhin snapped his teeth together. ‘And I am a faerie, you ignorant fuck. One of the Fae, so mind your tongue when you’re talking to me.’
Lurker squatted down on his heels and rested the gun on his knees, pointing away into the night. He titled his hat back so that Merion could get a good, close look at the stone-hard certainty in his eyes. If Merion had not been so full of rage and indignity, he would have had to fight to meet that gaze. ‘Look, boy,’ Lurker said in a low voice, ‘the secret’s out. I ain’t going just to ignore the fact you got a faerie ridin’ ’round in your rucksack. That don’t sit well with me. That ain’t exactly a regular everyday occurrence, you hear me? It ain’t normal, and that, boy, demands answers.’ Lurker paused to hawk some spit into the sand. ‘Shit, until ten seconds ago, I always thought Lil was joking when she said faeries. I knew I smelled something on you, from that first moment on the porch.’
The boy spoke slowly, fighting to keep his voice level. ‘And that’s exactly why she cannot know. I do not want my best friend bled and dissected in some basement.’
Lurker thought about that for a second. He chewed his lip, and then nodded. ‘I can unnerstand that.’
Merion narrowed his eyes as he stuck out his hand. ‘Then do we have an accord?’
Lurker shook firmly. The leather of his gloves was painfully rough. ‘We do,’ he said, ‘and now you need to tell me what the hell is going on here.’
Merion sighed. By his knee, Rhin rolled his eyes and waved a hand. He dug his blade into the sand and levelled his gaze at Jake, who was more than delighted to return it. Merion spoke slowly, but firmly. ‘Rhin is an outcast. His people, the Fae, exiled him as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit,’ Merion began.
‘What crime?’
Rhin spoke, his voice like stones clacking together. ‘Stealing the Hoard.’
‘The what?’
‘The Hoard,’ Merion answered. ‘An entire kingdom’s fortune in gold, held in whatever shape you want it to be. A room. A trunk. A cave. Queen Sift chose a small purple and gold purse, right?’
Rhin nodded solemnly. ‘Always one for irony, that maniacal bitch.’
It was marvellously evident in Lurker’s face that he was struggling to believe this story, even despite the obvious fact that he was actually sharing a campfire with a faerie. Merion went on.
‘Rhin managed to escape the Fae and ran for his life. Three weeks, he spent dodging hansom cabs and Rottweilers and the soldiers that had hunted him. He finally found his way to Harker Sheer, my home.’ Merion’s eyes glazed over as the scenes replayed themselves in his mind. ‘The best hiding spot was always the rhododendron.’
‘What’s one of those?’
Merion sniffed. Perhaps rhododendrons were not all that common in the desert. ‘A big plant, with big, waxy-green leaves. Gunderton could never find me there. One of the under-butlers. Fat as a pig and as dumb as one too.’
‘I always hid opposite the kitchens, so I could run in if he got too close. Never did though. One October day, I was lying on my stomach, peeking out behind two fat leaves, watching Gunderton run in circles around the grounds, when I heard a choking sound from behind me. There was this little grey thing, Rhin, crawling out of the bushes towards me, half-dead and with a hole through his side. He managed to say “arrow” before he passed out against my leg. He was white like parchment, and covered in his own vomit. His eyes were just two pools of black blood, and he was shaking like a leaf.’ Merion looked at Rhin, who was drumming his lithe fingers against the crossbar of his sword.
‘Took him two weeks to speak again. I hid him in a suitcase under my bed and fed him anything I could steal from dinner or pinch from the kitchen. Father almost found him once, whilst I was dragging the suitcase into the attic of the northeast tower. That’s where I put him, so he didn’t have to live in a suitcase for months on end.’
‘There was a long rope to the trees on the northeast corner. Always one step from the woods.’ Rhin almost managed to sound wistful.
‘Not a soul went up there,’ Merion continued. ‘That was four years ago, just before my father began his campaign for the seat of the Prime Lord. I’ve been hiding you ever since.’
‘And I’ve been keeping you safe ever since.’ This was directed more at Lurker than anybody else.
Lurker sniffed several times before he answered. ‘Your own guardian faerie, Merion.’
Rhin nodded. ‘You could say that.’
‘An’ you came all the way to the Endless Land to protect this boy?’
Rhin shrugged, as if it was simply nothing. ‘He is my friend. Somebody’s got to look out for him. Besides,’ and here he scowled, ‘I doubt the Fae have ever forgotten me.
Merion wore a quizzical expression. ‘I thought you said they had stopped looking for you? That you were safe.’
Rhin shook his head. ‘The Fae never forget a wrong. Especially Sift. They can hold a grudge for centuries. That’s the downside to having enemies that think middle age is about three hundred years old.’
Lurker whistled at that. ‘Forty-two years have been plenty enough for me.’
Merion smelled out a chance to turn the conversation around. ‘Oh really? How so?’
Lurker narrowed his eyes. ‘Now just because you told your story don’t mean I forgot you lied to me.’
‘So you get to know my secrets, but I don’t get to know yours? Outrageous,’ Merion groused.
‘I’m done with talking,’ Lurker asserted with a wave of his hand. He laid his gun by his side and sought out his pack for a makeshift pillow. ‘Our tongues have wagged enough for one night. I’m bidding you a goodnight now, so I have the energy to walk tomorrow.’
‘Fine,’ Merion replied, bubbling with irritation at the stubborn prospector. He vowed to try again in the morning.
Merion reached out for the trusty, though now rather battered, rucksack and shoved it under his stinging ear so he could put his back to the faerie and the fire—and to Lurker. Rhin sat back against the boy’s spine and watched Jake retreat to a similar position. ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ the faerie whispered to himself.
It was only as Merion teetered on the precipice of deep, dream-chased darkness that Lurker chose to have the final word. ‘Make sure to sleep sound, boy. Tomorrow you meet the Shohari. And if we’re real lucky, they won’t decide to kill us. Goodnight now,’ he said, as nonchalant as could be.
NEW ARRIVALS
‘I don’t know if this boy is fearless or just plain mad. Then again, I’m not too used to nine-year-old human young. I told him what I was and he just nodded as if I had told him the day of the week. He hasn’t stopped asking questions since I croaked a few days ago. Most humans just scream or faint. This one seems utterly delighted to have a faerie under his bed.
Maybe he is mad. Who cares? I think I’m finally safe.’
15th May, 1867
‘A
lmighty’s balls, boy. Not in the bloody toolbox! Spew somewhere else, you idiot! Bloody hell! It’s on the spanners and everything,’ yelled Master Bowder, the flushed and balding man screaming from the floor, body half-swallowed under a piece of machinery that looked so complex, it gave Juspin a headache just looking at it.
‘Sorry,’ he said, half-mumbling as he wiped his mouth. Now that the ship had come to a halt, the pitching and yawing was even worse. It was playing havoc with his stomach.
‘I’m starting to wonder why I listened to your grandmother, and apprenticed you. If she hadn’t helped raise my ma, then…’ The end of Master Bowder’s sentence was a violent shaking of his fists, greasy knuckles and all.
The engineer shimmied out from under the machine and sighed at his soiled tools. ‘Bloody hell!’ he spat.
Juspin had decided the Iron Ocean did not like him. Ever since he had been manhandled on board the
Amitie
in Plymouth, the waves had rolled and the wind had howled. The angry sky hadn’t spared a scrap of sunlight, and the sea had battered the prow and flanks of the steamship day and night.
It must have despised him almost as much as his master at that very moment. Juspin shuffled awkwardly and made a show of squinting at the cogs and tubes and greasy cogs. ‘So … what’s wrong with it?’ he asked, quietly.
‘Needs a whole new set of gears is what’s wrong with it, lad,’ huffed Bowder. The man was interminably irritable. ‘Got spares, luck has it, but not the bolts. They’re in the for’ard hold, right in the bow. Square-headed, ‘bout yay long.’
Juspin nodded, but his legs didn’t move. Bowder looked him up and down as he would one of his great steam engines, as if to check to see if he was still functional. ‘Well, lad, get to it!’ he bellowed, panicking Juspin into flight.
The boy skidded through the doorway of the engine room and trotted down the hallway, trying desperately to dig out his internal map of the ship. Four days, and already he was expected to know where everything was on this lurching, dripping ship. A wave of nausea rose and fell, and Juspin swallowed hard as he pressed on, mumbling directions to himself and worrying his carrot-hue hair with nervous fingers. He was desperate not to mess this task up. Just one would be nice.
After another few anxious minutes of jogging through dark corridors, sparsely lit by twitching lanterns, he finally came to a heavy door secured by a wheel. Juspin almost winded himself trying to loosen it, but finally, with a horrendous screech, it came free and spun for him.
The hold was darker than the corridors. In a stroke of brilliance, Juspin fetched a lantern from its hook and thrust it into the shadows. A dozen boxes wrapped in brown sheets greeted him, nothing more. The floor was thick with grime and crusted salt. Juspin held his breath as he wandered deeper into the hold, though he knew not exactly why. More crates, more boxes, more brown sheets. Juspin was starting to wonder whether he had made a wrong turn when he saw the curve of the bulkhead in front of him, and heard the dull crashing of the waves over the drone of the powerful engines.
Those confusing bloody engines.
Where the deck met the bulkhead, he saw a little tower of small boxes stacked against crates bursting with cogs and sprockets and all manner of spare parts. Juspin punched the air and ran to the boxes.
The lantern was put on the deck while Juspin delved into the first few boxes. The first was full of washers, the second screws. The third, to his delight, were the bolts Master Bowder had described: square-headed and the length of his hand.
He did not notice the pain at first, only a cold pinch in the back of his legs, just above his ankle. Then he felt the blood seeping into his borrowed, oversized boots, and the pain began to surge. Fae steel cuts deep. With a squeal, Juspin collapsed to the floor and clutched at his leg. His foot flapped uselessly in the air. Blood dripped down his trousers.
‘What in—?’ Juspin gasped.
A cold needle of black steel rested on his forehead, and he fell instantly still. The lad blinked furiously. To his tear-stung eyes, it looked as though a strange white creature with black armour and crystal wings stood by his head, staring down at him with a terrifyingly confident smirk.