Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) (58 page)

‘I promised them they could go home alive,’ Rhin growled, shrugging him off.

Finrig gripped him by the collar and threw him forward. Two of the Fingers were on him before he could protest. ‘Well, you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Rhin. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?’

Rhin did not reward him with an answer. He did not like the way this evening was turning out.

Finrig waved to the two limp bodies. ‘Grab ‘em by the legs and drag them out. Let’s put them in the barn with the other guests.’

Rhin’s stomach churned. ‘Others?’

Finrig flashed him a wink. ‘Oh, you’ll like this, Rhin, you really will.’

While the Fingers set to work manoeuvring the men onto the ground and into the barn, Rhin watched the Hoarder go to work on the spoils. The Fingers split the bundles and let the coins pour on the ground. Gold and silver poured onto the dust like the sloughed scales of some dragon. It may have looked insane, to those who have never seen a Hoarder’s magick in action, but there was plenty of method in this madness.

Baelh knelt down, the coins still pouring from the car like a metallic waterfall. His hands spread over the coins at his feet, making them jiggle and twitch. He pointed at one particularly fat gold coin, and flipped it on to another without touching it. The two stuck together, melded in some way, and became one, no bigger nor smaller than either had been before.

Thieves’ magick, it is called; the ability to hide away loot by shrinking it down and folding it into itself. It is a dirty magick, but it has its uses—such as now.

Baehl’s quivering hands set off a chain reaction. They waved over the pile and let the coins rattle and conjoin, chiming and rattling musically.

‘Stay close now, Rhin. Wouldn’t want you wandering off and missing the best bit, now would we?’ Finrig smirked, pointing the way towards the barn door. Rhin saw only darkness inside.

As they walked, the Wit leant close to whisper in his ear. ‘Remind me, Rhin, where’s that boy of yours tonight?’

‘At home, with his aunt,’ Rhin lied, quick as a flash.

They got to the door, and Finrig slammed his arm against the wood to block Rhin’s path. He stared him right in the eye, noses almost touching, that infernal smirk still plastered across his lips. ‘Now if there’s one thing I dislike more than witnesses, it’s lying, Rhin. Don’t come this close just to blow it. My knife will be tickling your lights before you know it.’

Rhin said nothing.

Finrig narrowed his eyes. ‘A dinner is it? At the Serped abode?’ he inquired.

Rhin had to force himself to nod.

‘Right,’ Finrig mused. ‘Strange people, don’t you think? The Serpeds? Wouldn’t trust them with Merion. Not with a hair on his precious head,’ he chuckled.

‘If you know something …’ Rhin growled.

Finrig stepped back and gestured towards the darkness. ‘See for yourself, Rehn’ar. You’ve got eyes, haven’t you?’

Rhin scowled as he stepped into the darkness. His faerie eyes adjusted immediately, turning the world a palette of grey and maroon. He instantly wished they hadn’t.

*

‘You want me to sign over my father’s … my estate to you, for safekeeping?’

Castor nodded for a third time. ‘Yes I do,’ he said. He reached into his pocket and produced a pen. It was placed on the table, atop the dotted line of the very long and very incomprehensible contract.

Merion stared at the pen and tried to decide whether it held all the salvation in the world, or whether it was a knife for the slitting of his own wrists. Something about this made him itch intensely. He scratched his head, and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of Calidae’s sideways glance. There was something in her eyes that urged him on, willing him to pick up that pen and scrawl his name. Something that said she owed him.

Merion stammered. ‘I can’t just … I can’t sign the whole …’

Castor leant even further forward. Merion half-expected him to fall off his chair at any moment. ‘My daughter tells me you are eager to go home, Merion,’ Castor said, and Merion had to nod. ‘If you sign this, I will have to return to the capital to assess your father’s estate. There will be new business for me there. You could return with me.’

Merion’s heart soared. There they were: the magical words he had been praying to hear ever since his shoes had first met the cursed dust of this hellish town.

But what price had he been willing to pay for them? His whole awaited empire, with the flick of a pen? The weight of the decision was a heavy one, and it pushed Merion deeper into the armchair.

‘Calidae will come, of course. Gile could even train you, should you have the time. I will need an assistant of course.’

Castor was laying it on thick. The pile of prizes was mounting, getting more tempting by the minute. Merion would have bitten his lip if it had not looked so childish.

‘Perhaps I should speak to my aunt. Or even have the estate handed to her. That way…’

‘Merion, the Crown won’t respect a woman like your aunt.’

Merion raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’

Castor’s stern face broke for the first time. A little curl of his lip, that was all, but it might as well have been fireworks exploding from his eyes for all the expression that he had ever offered. ‘Come now, Merion. Your aunt is not a lady of the courts. Far from it.’

Ferida began to titter by her husband’s side. She was on her third glass of brandy. Merion narrowed his eyes at the two of them.

‘She is still a Hark,’ he asserted.

Castor waved a hand. ‘By name only. I am a lord of the Empire. Your aunt is a struggling undertaker, Merion, a loner and a self-made exile, playing with bodies all day long.’

‘Not to mention divorced,’ added Ferida.

‘She …’ Words failed Merion, much to his own disgust.

Castor leant forward. ‘Do you know why she left Chicago? Has she ever told you that story? I did not think so. It’s not one for a nephew to hear.’

‘Tell me,’ Merion shot back, rigid in his chair now. Any pleasantry was well and truly evaporating. All sense of business etiquette and protocol crumbled. Castor had just sharpened this into something very personal.

‘She tried to open a clinic for the poor of the city. I imagine she thought she would try her hand at a little charity, apply her skills and scalpels to some live bodies, instead of corpses. It was an unmitigated disaster, Master Hark. In three weeks, her clinic had a higher death toll than a battlefield. The police finally closed her business, and threw her out of the city. That is why she has come here,’ Castor’s finger pressed into the arm of his chair, ‘to Fell Falls, to eke out a living burying the dead of the desert and the rail. Is that a life you want, to be a disgrace, like your aunt?’

The penny dropped, and with it Merion’s hopes, dashed to splinters on Serped rocks.

Merion got to his feet. ‘I think, Lord Serped, that I’ve outstayed my welcome,’ he said, voice cracking ever-so-slightly.

‘You will sit,’ Castor demanded, the sharpness of his tone almost bending Merion’s knees by force alone. ‘We are not finished here.’

Merion took a breath. ‘I cannot sign my father’s empire away, even to you, sir. If there is another way that will get me home, of you representing my estate without signing it over, then I would be happy to discuss that,’ offered Merion.
Hell, he would rush in circuses if he had to, if it paid for a ticket home. Whatever it took.

Merion stared at the pen and shook his head. This legacy was all—besides his magick—that he had left of his father. How could he be expected to give it away to a man who kept a leech in his employ, who worked men to death on the rail, and sought the genocide of any Shohari within a hundred miles? Perhaps his aunt was right, he thought, and it stung him.
No
, this man was not worthy of what his father had built.

‘That will not work, Master Hark. Ownership must be clear cut!’ Castor was becoming angry now. His carefully laid plan had collapsed, and he knew it. He had cut too deep and now he was left covered in blood. ‘The Crown wants your estate, Merion, and where there is a will, there is a way, to be ever so blunt.’

All his words did was make Merion walk quicker, even though every step meant a little more crushing disappointment. His heart slumped painfully in his chest as he turned and walked to the door. He was dizzy from wine and insult.

‘I will see myself out,’ Merion grunted, fighting back the waves of emotion now churning within him.

‘Tonmerion Hark, I
demand
you sign these documents. For your own sanity, boy! For your father!’ Castor yelled. His white face had turned a beetroot red. His finger was a rigid spike, waving furiously at the contract on the table.

Merion laid a hand on the door-handle and paused to think of some witty reply that would cut the Lord to the bone, and show him exactly how far over the line he had stepped. But nothing came. He chanced one last glance at Calidae before he made his exit. She had a disdainful grimace on her face. Even she was in on it, he realised, and that crushed his heart just a little bit more.

‘I have never like being called “boy”,’ he said, before slipping through the door. ‘I bid you all a good night, and a farewell, no doubt.’

‘Hark! You leave now and this deal is off. The Crown will find a way around this, and Victorious will feast on your father’s empire like a vulture feeds on a corpse!’ Castor was still yelling.

The Lord Serped’s only answer was the firm click of the velvet-clad door. Merion had gone.

Gile stepped forwards. ‘Want me to go fetch him, your lordship?’ he asked.

Castor sat back down and drummed his nails on the armchair. ‘No,’ he hummed, and then thought for a while. When his eyebrows raised, so did his finger, and he wagged it Gile. ‘The aunt. Pay her a visit and bring her here, to me,’ he whispered.

‘As you wish,’ Gile replied. He sketched a quick bow and hurried out of the other door, already cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders.

‘We’ll see where that boy’s allegiances lie,’ Castor thought aloud. Nobody dared answer him.

*

Rhin had walked over his fair share of broken battlefields in his long years, and seen more than enough of gore and slaughter than he liked to admit—bones broken through skin, soldiers howling, insides splayed across a rock or a patch of grass. He truly believed he had seen every disgusting thing the world of bloody murder could offer him. He was wrong. Rhin let his mouth hang open as he took in every last grisly detail. The Serpeds had been busy.

The insectile machines hiding under dust covers had been put to use since Rhin had last visited. Their covers now lay on the floor, and their spider-like limbs were left bare for him to gawp at. Rhin was gawping, sure enough. His eyes wandered over the bodies in their clutches, over the tubes and syringes, and the way the ribs had been peeled back on the bodies, so that the heart could be drilled and tapped. There were seven of them, some Shohari, some human, each in their own machine, cradled within its claws and held aloft like meat left to cure. Tube after tube punctured their skin as their blood was slowly drained away, at a horribly precise rate. It was not enough to kill these poor souls, just enough to turn their skin grey and puckered like old leather, to make their eyes hollow and milky. They were still very much alive.

Rhin counted two women, one girl, and two men, one young, one old. The other two were Shohari scouts. One of the men wore the blood-smeared uniform of a sheriffsman. The women and the girl had the remains of servant attire wrapped around their bony ankles. Their nakedness was stark, and harsh on the eyes.

‘Haven’t the Serpeds been busy? Blood suckers, the lot of them,’ Finrig sighed, staring up at the naked, open bodies, and the sleek curves of metal that held them.

‘Monsters, more like it,’ grunted Rhin. He could not tear his eyes away. Something cold and prickly unfurled within him, something that made him shiver.

Finrig spoke his fears aloud. ‘Just think: your boy is having dinner with those monsters at this very moment. His throat may have already been cut, Rehn’ar.’

Rhin made to leave, but Finrig caught him by the arm. ‘And where exactly do you think you’re going?’