Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) (33 page)

The boy’s path took him through the centre of town. A fresh batch of horses had been driven in from Kaspar in the wake of the Serpeds’ arrival. More horses for the rails and the workers—and for the lordsguards too. As the stableboys led them through streets towards the western stables, Merion stood by to watch them prance and whinny. Their eyes were wide, as if they could smell the blood in the sand.

Merion turned left and came to the postal office. With all the news of magick, he had forgotten about the irksome place and its dolt of a clerk. He put his feet to the steps and his hands to the swinging doors. Lo and behold, the pouting face of the chubby clerk swung up to greet him. Whatever barely courteous look he had pasted on quickly crumbled away, and was replaced with a scowl.

‘Well, look who it is. I thought you dead, or disappeared, Empire. I see I was wrong.’

Merion smirked. Not even this poltroon could drag him down today. ‘Letters. Have there been any for me?’

The clerk sighed. ‘Your name again, Empire?’

‘Tonmerion Hark, son of Karrigan Hark.’

‘Don’t care whose son you are, just your name will do.’ the clerk muttered as he rummaged underneath the counter and in the square pigeon-holes at his back. He did not make much of an effort, tossing letters and small paper-wrapped bundles aside as he searched. ‘No. Nothing for you,’ he said, seeming a little pleased with his news.

Merion shrugged off the disappointment. ‘Please, look again,’ he ordered.

The clerk put his fingers, templed, on the counter. ‘I am not a peasant on one of your farms, Empire, to be ordered around as you please,’ he said, sternly.

Merion put his own fingers down on the counter. ‘No, but I am a customer and you are a clerk, and I am asking that you check again.’

The pudgy clerk spat on the floor. ‘I’ve checked.’

Merion raised a finger and waggled it under the man’s nose. ‘Just you wait,’ he said, feeling the pride of his new power fuel his words. Not that it mattered; his words had ruffled the clerk about as much as a fart. The snotty little man would have his comeuppance, just not today.

Merion stomped back to the rough, dusty street. He sighed as he looked up and down its length: still no Lurker. Just horses carving sickle-moons in the dirt as they stomped around. Just sheriffsmen and lordsguards leaning idly against posts, chatting in low tones. Just working women shuffling about, half-cut and half-caring. Merion sighed once more.

‘Maybe he did wander off,’ Rhin remarked, voice muffled.

Merion began to retrace his steps. ‘No, he has to be here. He has to teach me how to bloodrush. I don’t care what my aunt thinks. I need to learn what I can do.’

‘Pardon the pun,’ Rhin cut in, ‘but don’t you think you’re rushing into this a little quickly?’

Merion shrugged. ‘We don’t have all the time in the world, Rhin. London isn’t frozen, patiently waiting for me to come and thaw it. The quicker I can learn my father’s skills, the quicker I can use them to get out of this place and back to the Empire, and my estate, where we belong,’ Merion said, laying out his new grand plan, the one he had thought up on the walk into town.

‘Where you belong,’ Rhin muttered.

‘Pardon?’ Merion’s head snapped around. He may have been wrong, but it sounded as though Rhin had said…

‘I said it sounds as though you speak of vengeance,’ Rhin hissed.

Before Merion could retort, a harsh cry echoed down the street. A few of the sheriffsmen peeled off from their hushed huddles, and marched towards a saloon with red doors and green windows. Merion began to move, talking as he marched.

‘Why shouldn’t I? It was the murderer that put me here. He was the one who banished me. I will not take that lying down. I’m a Hark, not a cowa—’

It was not a day for finishing sentences.

An almighty crash split the afternoon air as two men burst from the window of the saloon in a cloud of glass and shredded curtain.

‘Lurker!’ Merion cried. There was no mistaking the hat and the gloves. The very same gloves that were now curled into fists, busy pummelling the nose of the unfortunate brawler sprawled on the saloon’s steps. The sheriffsmen moved like lightning. They dragged Lurker up so quickly that his feet left the floor. It was graceful, for a thin whisker of a second, until Lurker’s boots returned to the decking, and the rest of his body followed like a sack of drunken cats.

‘He’s bladdered,’ whispered Rhin. Merion nodded and gawped as Lurker began to, well,
pedal
at the floor. His legs flailed and his boots scraped, but they gained not a scrap of purchase. It was a wonderful impression of a donkey in the grip of a fit.

A crowd of half-drunk workers and whores poured out of the saloon to watch the fight. They brayed and roared with laughter and cheering. Whiskey sprayed. Bottles smashed. Fists jabbed the air fiercely. A good drunken fight can lift even the glummest of spirits.

‘Sirs!’ Merion called, chasing after the sheriffsmen. They spared him not a glance as they fought to keep Lurker still, and more importantly, upright. ‘Sirs! If you please, allow me to take him home.’

One of the men, an officer by the look of his silver braids, threw a quick look at the boy. ‘He your father or summin’?’ he barked.

Merion shook his head. ‘Er, no. A family friend.’

‘Some friend you got.’

‘Jaaaaake!’ Lurker was yowling.

There was a dull smack as one of the sheriffsmen thwacked Lurker across the back with a truncheon.

‘Aaaagh!’

‘Pipe down!’

‘Please!’ pleaded Merion, ‘I’ll see him home. You’ll have no more trouble from him, I swear it.’

‘No can do, boy. Man’s broken a window, so man’s gotta spend a night or two in jail.’

‘And then what?’ asked Merion, suddenly fearing the worst.

‘Then he’s to pay for the window. With gold or work. Either one will do.’

‘I see.’

The sheriffsman quickly tipped his hat. ‘Now, if you could kindly shift your ass, we’ll be on our way.’

Merion hopped to the side to let the men drag the almost unconscious Lurker off to jail. The boy ran a hand through his hair and puffed out his cheeks. He wasn’t quite sure whether Lilain would be pleased or further enraged by this news. Maybe it would be best if he just held his tongue, for now.

‘A friend of yours, then?’ enquired a voice like bells, high and clear. Merion turned and looked upon the speaker, and his tongue turned into a fat lump of lead.

‘Erm…’ Merion said, clawing for words. ‘Family. Friend of the family, that is.’ Merion was painfully aware of how fantastic a first impression he must be making, mumbling like an idiot, with a tongue like sand. The poor young girl was already wincing a little, a half-smile lingering on her blood-red lips. Merion couldn’t help but stare at them. He vaguely noted a blue dress in his peripheral vision, and white gloves, maybe. He felt the sweat creeping across his scalp. This was not your average girl of Fell Falls. They tended to be covered in mud and horse shit, with brown, tangled hair. Merion had seen them in the alleys, and in the Runnels. They had giggled at him, and he had scowled. This particular girl was very different. She was Empire.

‘I see,’ spoke the lips … of the girl … the talking girl.
Oh, Almighty
.

‘Yes,’ Merion smiled like a fool. Then, mercifully, he remembered his manners, and clung to them like a life-raft. He waved a hand in a slicing motion and then bowed low, speaking as loud and as clear as he could manage.

‘Might I, er, introduce myself, miss,’ he said, ‘Tonmerion Harlequin Hark, at your service.’

He wasn’t sure what to expect as he straightened, but to his welcome surprise, the young lady curtseyed in return, making her blue dress rustle. ‘Calidae Ester Serped, at yours, sir,’ she replied with a smile.

Merion beamed.
Serped
, screamed his insides. How had he forgotten? How could he have not guessed? Her dress must have been pure Francian silk. The pearls on her wrist were the second biggest he had ever seen. Her bright flaxen hair was perfectly curled and interwoven with silver lace.

‘Daughter of Lord Serped, I presume,’ he asked, keeping it formal. It seemed to be the only way of keeping his cheeks from betraying his grin, and it kept his eyes from lingering.

Calidae kept her smile, but her eyes took on a different shine. Curious, they roamed over him, giving her the look of a mouse assessing a lump of cheese. ‘Call me Calidae, please,’ she said, staring down at his strange shoes. The smile grew. ‘My father told me the rumours.’

Merion cocked his head. ‘Rumours? Of my shoes?’

Calidae actually began to circle him. It was rather off-putting, to say the least. Merion tried to keep his formal composure as he followed her with his head. It was then that he noted her guards, standing a little further down the street, hands on swords. One wore a black suit and a bowler hat. A pair of darkened glasses covered his eyes.

‘Rumours that a lord of the Empire had come to Fell Falls. Well, the son of a lord that is,’ she said, slowly.

‘A son of a lord without a father
is
a lord, I believe.’

Calidae suddenly grew tired of circling and came to rest barely two feet in front of him, with her hands clasped behind her back. ‘Well then,
Lord
Hark, what brings you to such a place as this?’ she asked.

Merion decided to play the game. Of course she knew about his father. Perhaps this was her way of being polite. ‘I could ask you the same question, my lady,’ he countered. ‘Ladies first.’

Calidae raised her chin. ‘And I would answer that I accompany my father on business. And that the practice of “ladies first” does not apply when the lady has asked the first question.’

‘In that case, Calidae,’ Merion replied, ‘I would answer that in light of my father’s recent murder, I now live with my last remaining relative, who for reasons unknown has chosen Fell Falls as her place of residence. I have been here almost two weeks now.’

‘My condolences,’ Calidae bowed her head. ‘To the lost,’ she added, raising a hand curled around an imaginary glass.

‘The lost,’ repeated Merion as he raised his own, though his reach was a little lower than Calidae’s. Politeness indeed, he thought, and he warmed to her even more.

When she looked at him next, Calidae had yet another glint in her eye. She leant even closer. ‘I will tell my father that the rumours are true,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘He will want you to come to dine with us, on the riverboat. You must be craving real food by now, and real company for that matter.’ Calidae smirked conspiratorially before stepping back to curtsey again. ‘I look forward to it, my Lord Hark.’

‘And I you … I mean too,’ Merion stuttered, kicking himself internally.

Calidae tittered, turned, and walked away, the guards trailing silently behind her. Merion was left standing alone in the street, part of him wanting to bludgeon himself with a stick, and part of him wanting to dance. The former was winning, for the moment.

Inside the rucksack, all Rhin could hear was the odd catch of a word in amongst a stream of self-deprecating grumbles. ‘Stupid … fool …
And I you
 … idiot.’

Rhin nudged him through the fabric. ‘Easy, Merion. It’s girl-magic. Remember Illysa, Junton Korville’s daughter? You could barely say a word then, just stared at her and flapped your mouth like a fish.’

Merion huffed, ducking into an alleyway. ‘That was two years ago,’ he said.

‘It’s a trick they learn young: the knack of reducing a man to a quivering jelly. We grow immune, in time. Well, faeries do. I don’t know about you humans.’

Merion groaned. ‘Thanks. As ever, you’re a rock of support. What would I do without you?’

‘I should start charging you,’ mused Rhin. ‘And just think: dinner with the Serpeds. Dinner with Calidae.’

Merion did not reply, but Rhin could not miss the little kick in his step.

‘I think it may all be coming together, Rhin,’ was all Merion said on the walk home.

*

When they arrived at the house, Merion found a portly man standing outside. He bristled with frazzled red hair. It had obviously been liberally churned by nervous, anxious fingers. The man’s eyes were wide and stained red with tears. He had a hat in his hands, and his fingers kneaded it continuously.

‘Can I help you?’ Merion asked of him.

‘My dog,’ whimpered the man, staring at the door of the house. ‘Ruffian. Big ol’ beast. Dropped down dead just last night gone. Healthy hound as well, there were naught wrong with him. Then all a’ sudden,’ the man paused to whack his hat against his leg, ‘dead as tumble-weed. Two little marks in ’is throat. Little cuts,’ he said, tilting his head back and jabbing two fingers at his sweaty, red throat.

‘My condolences,’ Merion said. He had nothing to offer the man, except for: ‘A rattlesnake, maybe?’

But the man shook his head, adamant. ‘No sir. Too far apart. Little men did this.’

A chill ran through Merion. ‘Pardon me?’

The man looked around at the roots of the house, as if making sure no eyes nor ears lurked there. ‘Faeries, boy. Little people. Little cuts.’ The man jabbed again at his throat.

‘Well, thank you,’ Merion mumbled, and rapidly made his way indoors. The door to the basement was open; a telltale sign.