A tear rolled down Merion’s cheek, in the middle of all the burning, crackling chaos. It could have been the fact his head was being slowly squeezed to pulp, but Merion knew better. It was his first acceptance of failure, of frailty and the inexorable. He hated himself in that moment.
But hate can make men, and thirteen-year-old boys, do marvellous things.
The young Hark closed his eyes and tensed with all he had—until his hair stood on end, until his ears popped, and his eyes strained to escape, until he felt every single molecule in his body shiver and pull to be free. The blood rushed like a storm through his veins, as uncontrollable as the one that was raging in the sky above, and just as savage.
‘SHOOT HIM!’ Gile screeched.
The magick burst from him, pouring out in great, crackling spheres. Merion was sure his bones had snapped, that he had come to pieces.
At least he would go down fighting
, he thought. But it was not to be. Not today.
Gile practically melted under the force of the spell. His own magick withered instantly as his bulging flesh erupted and sizzled. His scream was short-lived, but it was ragged and horrified all the same. Merion fell heavily in a heap, just conscious enough to see Gile writhing in a heap of his own, his skin smoking. He clawed at the air like a blind kitten, but it was useless. The hold stank of pork and burnt cloth. Merion retched, sprawling and clawing at the tortured wood.
‘Rhin!’ he gasped, when he had found his voice. ‘Where are you?’ His lungs felt as though they were full of gravel. There was no intoxication now. This shade had turned on him; all he knew was pain.
‘Get up, Merion!’ came a hoarse cry. Merion blinked, wondering if his eyes were damaged or if the hold was slowly filling with smoke. It was the latter, his nose informed him. He could smell burning wood. A flash of pain across his skin told him it was getting hot.
‘You need to get up! Come on, you can do it. Just roll onto your front and push yourself up,’ the voice instructed him.
Merion did as he was bid, though it felt as though it took him an hour. His muffled, pounding ears heard the crackling of a dozen different fires.
‘I’m up,’ he breathed, swaying like a young willow. Panic and urgency were as forgotten things to him. He moved like a ghost across a battlefield, searching for its body.
‘Untie me, quickly now!’ his aunt urged. Merion nodded and began to fumble with her ropes. Rhin was soon at his side, grim-faced and drowned in blood, as if he had crawled through a corpse to get there. The fact that he stood there, broad as day in front of his aunt, did not even factor. War and death have a habit of making mockery of the little things.
‘The town is rioting. The Shohari are about to attack. We need to leave,’ the faerie mumbled over the hissing of the flames. His black Fae steel made short work of the frayed ropes.
A numb Merion stared down at his aunt, looking at her bruises and cuts. There was a fresh gunshot wound in her shoulder now, from which blood oozed at a steady pace. There were burns on her knees from the waves of electricity. Merion felt a pang of guilt.
As if she had not already gone through enough.
Lilain tried a half-broken smile. ‘I don’t think I’ll be running out of here.’
‘Merion,’ muttered Rhin. ‘The bobcat blood.’
‘Huh?’ Merion swayed again. He felt ruined. He had barely even realised he had won.
‘The ferocity. You need it.’
‘He’s right,’ said Lilain. ‘Drink it.’
Merion was flabbergasted. ‘I can’t rush any more. Not after …’
‘Yes, you can, slowly but surely,’ his aunt encouraged him. ‘We need you. You beat him, Merion. You did that, and you can do this.’
They were right. The bobcat blood stoked something up inside him, and brought some of the battered pieces together. Within minutes he was dragging his aunt across the blood-stained, splintered floor and past Gile’s burnt and twisted body. He stopped, even though the fire was now raging around them, to stare at his handiwork.
One side of the man’s face was a molten hole where his cheek used to be, splattered with gold and blackened bone. One eye was milky white and bubbling, the other vacant and dead, staring at the ceiling. His right arm was withered to a burnt claw. Merion could spy blacked stubs of rib poking through his jacket. He sighed, and kept dragging.
Calidae’s dress was already smoking when they reached her. So were the bodies of Castor and Ferida. Castor seemed to be staring right at him, even in death. Merion scowled and reached down for Calidae’s arm. He may have been a killer, but he wasn’t a murderer.
‘Rhin, help me,’ Merion gasped under the weight of the girl. The heat was unbearable in the hold. The fire had broken through the ceiling on the far side, spiralling up into the middle decks of the riverboat. ‘I can’t carry her.’
Rhin obliged, grudgingly, seizing the girl’s other wrist and helping to pull while Merion carried his aunt over his shoulder. Lilain wanted to scream, he could tell, but she did not. Up the stairs and through the burning atrium they staggered. Pillars came crashing down around them. The heat was searing. Sweat dripped and poured. No sooner had they reached the riverboat’s main exit than an explosion rocked the vessel. The fire had reached the engine room, and its precious flammable oils and lubricants.
‘What …?’ Calidae moaned as she cracked open her eyes. At the sight of a bloody Merion and a small black creature wrapped around her wrist, she started to scream.
‘You bastard!’ she cried, clawing at his arms and leaving long scratches down her arm. Merion gritted his teeth and snarled. ‘You let me go this instant!’ she screeched.
‘I’m saving your life, you idiot. Or haven’t you noticed the fire?’ Merion shouted.
Calidae had not, but now her gaping mouth and wide, bloodshot eyes said differently.
‘My father? Mother!’
‘Dead,’ spat Lilain.
Calidae seethed as she tottered to her feet. Her hands hung curled as fists at her side. She glared at them, one by one, though her gaze faltered slightly when it came to Rhin, until she could bring herself to speak.
‘Then I will die with them,’ she hissed, backing away. Merion snatched for her, but she darted away. ‘I’d rather die than accept your help.’
Merion growled, baring teeth sharper than normal. ‘Don’t be a fool, Calidae! You don’t need to die for those murderers!’
But Calidae shook her head stubbornly.
Lilain pulled at her nephew’s sleeve. ‘Let her go, Merion. If she wants to die, then let her. The world will be a better place.’
The bobcat blood told him his aunt was right, but the human clinging on inside him said otherwise. ‘I’ve seen that look in your eye, Calidae. I know you doubted what your father was doing. Come with us. Start over.’
Calidae looked up as the stairs began to fall to pieces, crashing in swirling clouds of sparks. ‘You’ve destroyed everything we worked for …’ she muttered. ‘Everything.’
‘Trust me, I know the feeling, now come on! Please!’ Merion urged her.
Calidae simply smiled, waved, and turned to face the inferno. She raised her hands and walked slowly into the centre of the atrium, to feel the world burn down around her.
‘Leave her!’ Rhin snarled, pulling the boy away. Merion bared his teeth, but he knew Rhin was right.
She was as rotten as the rest of them
, he reminded himself, as he trudged towards the smoking hole that was the main door.
THE DIARY OF RHIN REHN’AR
‘I stewed for days, hidden in the tower. I put on a brave face for Merion, but inside I raged. Like old times. Dark times. Karrigan had dismissed me as a fool, and coldly condemned his son to cold Fae steel.
‘Stop dragging Merion into your tiny little world of lies,’ he had said.
That made me boil. I couldn’t allow him to do that to me, or to his son. He is a stubborn fuck, and I knew there was only one way to make him listen to me, to get him to understand how important Merion was, how terrible a father Karrigan was and how much Merion needed me. Like he always bloody has.
It didn’t take much to get into his study …’
7th June, 1867
T
he night that greeted them couldn’t have been further from the blazing havoc they left inside the riverboat. Instead of searing heat and thick smoke, they were met with biting rain and a wind that tugged and pulled at their limbs and clothes, trying to steal them away into the darkness. Merion blinked furiously as the rain lashed his face. His eyes were blind from the fire. The night was black and impenetrable. The boy staggered into the darkness, as each lightning flash painted the edges of the world.
Thunder rolled in the wake of a blue flicker, and he saw the trail leading up to the rise only a few hundred yards away. ‘This way!’ he cried to Rhin, who was already casting around in the shadows, wary and silent. His sword was out and on guard.
Merion sloshed through the mud. He could see his feet now that his eyes were adjusting, now that the fire was breaking out through the windows and doors of the riverboat and giving the desert a faint glow. Oranges, yellows and reds met the bruised black of the night sky. The hot colours played in the puddles around his tattered shoes.
‘You said the town was rioting?’ Merion asked over the drumming of the rain.
‘It is,’ Rhin hissed.
‘Why?’ Lilain whispered. She was getting heavier with every step.
‘They didn’t get paid,’ muttered the faerie.
Merion snarled. ‘I wonder why.’
Another lightning strike turned the night into day, and Merion saw the two lordsguards still sprawled on the ground, ruined faces lying in the muck. He bared his sharp teeth again and battled on.
‘We’ll get to the hill, then we’ll take a look at you,’ Merion told his aunt. She didn’t answer, and Merion shook her, eliciting a groan. He was not about to let anybody else die tonight.
‘We need to get Lurker out of the jail,’ Lilain breathed.
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Rhin replied.
Yet another fork of lightning split the sky. Merion froze. ‘Rhin,’ he snapped. ‘Stay here.’
‘What?’
Merion pointed as the sky flashed again.
Thirteen little figures stood in a line in the mud, a stone’s throw away.
Darkness returned, and despite the hot glow of the fire, they had vanished. No matter how hard Merion peered into the curtains of rain, he couldn’t see them.
‘Friends of yours, Rhin?’ Merion asked, pawing at the empty space at his belt where the Mistress had been. She was now lost to the fire and the flame. All Rhin had to offer was a nod.
When the next flash showed the canyons in the clouds above, Merion squinted. There they were again, somehow closer now, yet unmoving, standing still with their arms crossed across their black breastplates, hooded and pale-faced. Merion slowly bent an aching knee and slid his aunt from his aching shoulder.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, the wet mud jolting her awake.
‘Faeries,’ Merion hissed.
Lilain squinted through blood and puffed-up eyes at Rhin, standing beside her. ‘I only see one,’ she replied. Merion gently put a finger against her swollen cheek and turned her head, just as the lightning came once more.
Thirteen little figures were standing all around them, etched in rainwater and cold light. Lilain pushed herself upright as the tallest of them marched forward. His face and armour glowed orange in the firelight. As if they had not already dealt with enough that evening.
‘Your handiwork, Rehn’ar? Or the boy’s? he asked, bold as brass.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Merion challenged him.
The faerie looked shocked, and batted Rhin a look of disbelief. ‘Haven’t you told him about me, Rehn’ar?’ he said.
Merion raised his chin, eying this intruder up. He had never seen another faerie besides Rhin. Now he was surrounded by thirteen of them. He couldn’t help but stare at them, marvelling at the scars, and the narrowed eyes, and their various sharp implements. ‘I know who you are. You’re the White Wit, aren’t you, and your Black Fingers?’
‘Ah, so word does get around.’
Rhin waggled his sword-point at Finrig. ‘No more, Wit. You’ve got your Hoard, and that was the deal. It’s over. Go back to Sift and tell her it’s done.’
The Wit hummed, making a show of picking at his nails. ‘Like I said before you sprinted off into the darkness earlier tonight, I think she would rather hear it from you, rather than me,’ he sighed, as if the whole situation was a tiresome affair.
‘He’s not going anywhere with you,’ Merion snapped. The faeries around him tensed. One even went as far as to growl. Merion bared his teeth, still sharp from the bobcat blood. He may have exhausted, but seeing as the last hour of his life had consisted purely of gunfire, blood, and death, the prospect of another fight hardly shocked him. Even Rhin cast a glance in surprise.
‘Oh yes?’ Wit replied. ‘Are you going to stop us, rusher? Make a mess of us as you did the Serpeds?’
The Fingers sniggered among themselves. Merion would have taken a step forward, if he had any vials. His pockets were painfully empty.
‘We know all about you,’ grinned the Wit.
‘You told them?’ Merion flashed an accusatory look at Rhin.
‘Oh, we’ve been watching you all,’ smirked the Wit. He looked between each of them from Merion to Lilain, and then to Rhin as he spoke. ‘Watching you go about your training in the desert, or playing with your corpses in your basement, or writing in your diary, under the bed.’
Rhin flinched. His sword tip lowered an inch. Lilain groaned, still slumped in the mud, as if she’d known all along.
‘My what?’ Rhin breathed in sharply.
The Wit grinned from ear to pale ear, and took a moment to wipe the rain from his white face. He reached behind his back and brought forth a battered old tome from under his cloak, dog-eared and wrapped in a cloth to keep it from the incessant rain.
Rhin started forward, but the nearest Finger raised an axe, and Rhin stopped dead, shaking all the same.
‘I’ve only had a chance to thumb through it on the walk, but by the Roots, it’s interesting reading, Rehn’ar. Have you told the boy yet?’