‘Fine,’ Lilain snorted. ‘Castor Serped’s little railroad empire is built on the backs of dead men, men who are worked too hard, and bought too cheap. But Castor doesn’t care. All he cares about is a cheap workforce and more miles of track to bray about back in Kaspar. And he’s not short of money. Not in the slightest. Workers get to see none of it. No extra guards to ward off the wraiths. No proper camps nor housing. Serped thinks towns can run off saloons and whorehouses. He doesn’t think to build schools or apothecaries or more general stores. Why? Because they won’t make him money. That’s the sort of lord Castor Serped is, Merion, and that’s the sort of father that girl has grown up under. You think she’s any different? You want her to help you? Serpeds never do anything for free. You mark my words. If they want to help you, it’s because they want something from you. You’re different now, the game is different. Don’t you trust this girl, Merion, don’t you dare.’
Now that her tirade was over, Merion did not quite know what to say. It was his father that answered for him. ‘That’s how business works.’
Lilain worked her mouth. ‘You have too much of Karrigan in you.’
Merion lifted his chin. ‘Judging by this morning, I would say that was a good thing, wouldn’t you?’
‘You may have his blood but you also have his tongue. And it was never a kind tongue, Merion, so don’t live your life by your father’s words. Look where it got him,’ Lilain said, trying to sound as kind as she could manage.
‘His tongue didn’t put a bullet in his chest,’ Merion snapped, and Lilain bowed her head. ‘Aren’t you going to open that? Merion pointed at the letter.
‘Let’s see what Lord Serped has to say for himself,’ she muttered as she ripped off the seal and untucked the paper from its folds. She read quietly as Merion looked on. As her lips twitched with silent words, her brow began to furrow, deeper and deeper.
‘There you have it!’ Lilain cried, flinging the letter at her nephew and storming out of the kitchen. ‘Read it and see what kind of a lord you’re trying to petition. We’ve just been fired.’
Merion scanned it quickly:
It is with regret that I must inform you that the Serped Railroad Company is no longer in need of your services. From this moment forth, any poor souls that are unfortunate enough to lose their lives in service to the Company will be tended to and buried by Company men, and Company men only. I thank you for your service, and I wish you good fortune in your future endeavours.
Kindly,
Lord Castor Serped of Slickharbour Spit.
‘You worked for the Company?’ Merion hollered after her, confused.
Lilain hovered in the doorway to the basement. ‘I’m the town undertaker, Merion. If a body falls in the dust, it ends up on my table. If it fell on the streets, the town paid me. If it fell on the tracks, the Serped Railroad Company paid me. Paid us,’ Lilain tersely explained. ‘Looks like it’ll just be town corpses from now on. A third of the wage,’ she added before she slammed the door.
Merion shouted to her, hoping she could hear. ‘When …
if
I go to meet with Lord Serped, I will ask him to change his mind!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ came the angry shout.
Merion was left standing alone in the kitchen. He sighed, and wandered back to his room.
Rhin had not moved and Merion was not surprised. He had not moved, nor spoken, in days. He knelt down to take a peek at his friend. ‘What are you so afraid of?’
Merion half-expected Rhin to spit and deny his fear, but instead he just blinked and said: ‘Rats.’
‘I thought you said rats were no trouble for a faerie like you.’
‘These rats are bigger than usual. Sharper teeth.’
‘Desert rats?’
‘Something like that,’ said Rhin, staring past the boy, at the door. His lavender eyes were dull and tired.
Apparently the faerie did not want to be bothered. Merion got to his feet and sat on the bed. It was then that he realised he was still clutching Lord Serped’s letter. He scanned at it once more before throwing it on the bedside table.
Aunt Lilain’s words had been fierce and heartfelt, but there was something in them that Merion simply could not trust. Calidae had been kind enough to him so far. Perhaps there was an old grudge Lilain had forgotten to mention. Perhaps it was something to do with her being a letter. Perhaps it was just Merion’s ache for escape that stirred the disbelief, the doubt. She had blamed Castor for building an empire on the backs of dead men, but what exactly was Lilain’s empire built on, if not the same? Lord Castor would help him, he was sure of it. He was the new Lord Hark, after all, heir to a grand estate.
Lilain was right about one thing, however. Nobody, not even Calidae, could know he was a rusher, never mind a leech. He was wise enough to listen to that. Another secret for the pile.
OF RED IN THE BELLY
‘I’ve been caught. It shames me to say it. Karrigan was on me in a flash. He’s got some sort of magick in him, that’s for sure. Pinned me right against the wall, pistol in his hand. Didn’t help that I was wearing my armour. It took a long while for him to calm down. I had to tell him the truth. Any other story didn’t make sense …
He’s bloody taken it: the Hoard. He demanded it in return for letting me stay. He almost made it sound like a job. Sift’s Hoard in return for letting me stay, for being Merion’s guardian. Although I’d do it gladly. The boy has grown on me. I never thought I would say that…
You should have seen the look on Karrigan’s face: the greed, the possibilities. I didn’t have a choice, and now it’s all gone. I’m down a Hoard. But I’m up a home, and a friend. I can’t decide whether I’m up or down. It hurts.’
1st June, 1867
‘A
re you quite serious?’
‘Deadly, boy. Get some red in your belly, Merion, and be done with it,’ Lurker ordered him.
Merion stared at the little thimble’s worth of blood in the metal cup and willed his stomach to be quiet. The young Hark cursed himself silently. He had wasted most of the week being cross-examined by Lilain’s
tests
, constantly aching to get some real rushing done. Now that he finally had the real stuff in his hands his constitution was failing him. Miserably so.
Lurker was getting impatient. ‘Boy, if you can’t drink blood you can’t rush, can you?’
‘I know that,’ Merion snapped back at the prospector.
Lurker was not giving in. ‘Ignore what happened last time, and
drink
.’
Merion bit his lip and looked around, hoping for a distraction or a passer-by. He was sorely disappointed; the patch of land Lurker had walked him to was far enough out of town to be remote, and silent. The only eyes watching were those of vultures, and mice. No desert rats.
By the Almighty.
Merion rattled off a quick prayer before throwing the dark scarlet down his throat. Lurker clapped sarcastically. ‘Only took you an hour,’ he mocked.
Merion was too busy swallowing to pay him any notice. With a grimace, he shoved the blood down into the pit of his stomach and took a long, deep breath.
‘Now remember, it’ll come on fast, but that means you gotta catch it fast. Tense, when it comes, as Lilain’s taught you. In here,’ Lurker thumped a hand against his leathered chest. ‘Then let it out, slowly, ‘til you can bundle it all up and hold it. It’ll find its way to your head. You’ve only had a drop, so it should only last a moment,’ he lectured. If Merion didn’t know better, he would have said the man was enjoying this tutoring lark.
Merion felt the fire stirring in his belly. It was part hunger, part indigestion, and part fear. He tried to force it all together, and the knotting, twisting of his stomach forced the fire into his veins. Soon enough he could feel the itching spreading to his brain, where it could evolve into magick. Or so Lilain had said. The boy’s heart thundered.
Merion tensed as he felt the world increase in volume. Even out in the wild, the world could be deafening. For a moment, he grimaced, fighting the noise, until he remembered to tense, and to push. The volume flickered for just a moment. He strained a little harder, and the noise just died a little. He couldn’t help but laugh.
‘I can do it,’ he shouted. ‘I can bloody do it.’
‘Now see if you can stand releasin’ it, but slowly! Don’t want to spend another week in bed, boy.’
‘It wasn’t a week,’ Merion grunted. He relaxed his hold on the magick and let it spread, like sand escaping through knitted fingers. His ears opened wider and the hubbub of the waste poured in, clearer now. Merion winced for a moment, but held tight, trying to ride the pain for as long as possible. Gradually it subsided, and as he turned around, he picked up individual sounds above the cacophony of crickets and rustling, clear as gunshots. A mouse snoring. A vulture’s wings purring. The crunching of teeth around a tiny skull in a burrow, not too far from where he stood. Merion’s head snapped in that direction. He concentrated on that spot and felt the other sounds ebb away, until all he could hear was the crunching of teeth on bone, of chunks being gulped down into a wet throat. Merion tried to hold onto it as long as possible, but already the blood was fading, trickling away.
The world seemed half-deaf to him now. Lurker’s voice was just a low whisper.
‘Well, you’ve conquered bat blood.’
‘She’s picked these out for me?’
‘These are your primary shades, she says, the ones that will burn less but burn brighter. The others may hurt, at first. Or, they will hurt you eventually, if you mistreat them.’
‘Addiction?’ asked Merion.
Lurker nodded. ‘Right.’
‘Aunt Lilain’s been telling me stories of famous rushers and leeches and what happened to them. If she’s trying to teach me how dangerous rushing is, she really shouldn’t make their exploits sound so exciting,’ said Merion. He was dizzy after the rushing.
His first real rushing after the horse-blood. He had done it!
Lurker snorted. ‘Let me guess: Harolk the Fork.’
‘Is it true?’
‘I heard that one a dozen times. One of Lil’s favourites. And it’s true alright. Butchered, cooked, and ate his entire family, all because he drank too much mantis blood. It’s a darker shade, and rots your mind if you use it too much. Makes you a monster. Had two wives and six children, did you know that? And an uncle, too.’
‘I’ll count myself lucky that I can’t stomach insect shades then.’
‘You do that.’
‘And you, can you stomach any other shades?’
‘No, just magpie.’
‘And Jake doesn’t mind?’
‘It’s what drew him to me in the first place.’
‘And have you ever felt it? Addiction, I mean?’ Merion’s question sounded cold, even though he hadn’t meant it to.
Lurker took a moment to stretch his back and grunt. ‘No,’ he replied flatly. ‘I’m not addicted.’
‘Is it easy?’ Merion asked. He was curious about the entire idea. His father had said addiction was the same as affliction. Some men loved beer a little too much, some men tobacco, some men gold and the women that came with it.
Lurker nodded deeply. ‘Very, boy. Got to keep a hold on yourself. It all just gets so easy, with blood.’
Merion rubbed his nose. ‘You mean the gold?’
‘I do,’ Lurker replied. ‘It’s gotten me gold by the barrows, my skill. But that don’t mean I can abuse it. Got to be careful. Now, time for a new shade. Whole vial this time.’
Merion rubbed his hands together. ‘Alright. What is it?’
Lurker squinted at the label on the vial. ‘Springbok. Slightly diluted.’
Merion took the vial from the man and tried to think of anything except thick, oozing blood. The cork came loose with a squeak and he put the vial straight to his lips. The blood was quaffed in seconds. Merion felt the cold liquid settle in his stomach and began to gag.
‘Hold it in, boy, and ready yourself,’ Lurker told him. Merion tried and tried but the urge to vomit was proving rather stubborn. He felt that familiar fire, and he had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from spewing.
‘Tense…!’
Merion gritted his teeth and pushed on his stomach, clenching all of his insides. There: he felt the magick flatten. After taking several slow, deep breaths, he let it trickle out, bit by bit into his veins and up into his head with the subtle flexing of muscles he had never known existed. He began to feel his legs twitching. They were eager to move, like that day in the desert, only this time they wanted to run and prance instead of walk. Merion began to shuffle forward.
‘You’re feeling it,’ Lurker muttered encouragingly. ‘Let it go and see what happens.’
A simple crouch and hop turned rather suddenly into a lurching bound across the scrub and sand. He must have cleared ten feet and jumped seven foot in the air before nose-diving into a bush. Even as he lay, mangled in a heap, his legs quivered and pulled at him. Merion was too pained to let them escape again. Thankfully, the magick soon died, and the boy was left drained.
Lurker walked over to help him up. ‘Human bodies aren’t the same as the ones we drink blood from. You drink from a springbok, you act like a springbok. Your muscles ain’t much used to that. Drink too much, and your muscles will think that’s how they’re supposed to work. I can’t smell much now if I ain’t on the red.’
Merion had a sudden idea. ‘Can I try it?’
Lurker looked through the bottles and vials to see if magpie, or anything similar was there. From his frown, it didn’t look as though there was. Lurker then checked the list Lilain had written him. No magpie. Not even a crow.
‘What’s your aunt said about birds?’
‘That it’s a vein that I can stomach.’
Lurker narrowed his eyes. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Absolutely,’ Merion nodded.
‘Well then,’ Lurker said, reaching inside his coat for something. He brought out a small silver flask, like the sort a man would keep whiskey or brandy in, and handed it to Merion.
There was something about drinking from the flask that was easier for Merion. Perhaps it was because he couldn’t see the blood, and instead could pretend it was something softer, less foreign. Something that didn’t taste like bitter copper.