‘Stop worrying,’ Merion replied, and with that he got to his feet, and forced himself out onto the platform.
Merion was carrying Rhin and the rucksack in his arms now, rather than on his shoulders. After checking that his luggage was being unloaded, he wandered down a short set of steps and onto the dusty earth of the town.
Both boy and faerie peered around. The light was fading fast and not all the street-lamps had been lit. Aside from the station workers, the platform was empty. All the passengers had disappeared, already barging their way into the first tavern they could find.
‘Your aunt should be meeting us, am I right?’ Rhin asked.
‘Yes. Aunt Lilain.’
‘
Aunt Lilain
. Sounds so plain next to “Karrigan”.’
Merion had to admit the faerie was right. ‘Well, she’s a Hark nonetheless.’
Rhin sighed. ‘Hark or not, it looks like she didn’t get the wiregram about picking you up.’
Merion stared back at the sign hanging above the platform. ‘Fell Falls’, it said, in bright blue lettering. Merion found a nearby barrel and perched on top of it. ‘Nice place,’ he muttered.
Rhin shuffled out of the pack so he could see Merion’s face. The boy’s face was expressionless now, deadpan. ‘Could be worse, from what the men were saying.’
All Merion had to do was look left, to the west, where a few rugged hills stood stark against the red of the dying sun. ‘This is the frontier, Rhin. All of those things that the men talked about, they’re just out there. Barely a stone’s throw away.’
Rhin unsheathed his knife and waved it around, slicing at the air. ‘Well, they can come try their luck. They’re not the only ones that are magic,’ he hissed to the darkness. Nothing replied. Nothing moved and, secretly, they were both very glad.
‘See?’ Rhin sheathed his knife.
A moment passed, and Merion huffed sharply. ‘Where on earth is that aunt of mine?’
Rhin looked about. He pointed towards the milling crowds of the town. ‘I don’t suppose it could be that crazy woman sprinting towards us, could it?’
‘I think I’ve had my fill of crazy,’ Merion sighed as he turned.
There was indeed a woman coming towards them, and she was indeed sprinting. If you have ever had a stranger run as fast as they can towards you, with little or no explanation, then you will know how nervous Merion suddenly felt. Rhin even went as far as to unsheathe his knife again, poised inside the rucksack.
‘Thank the Maker!’ cried the woman, as she skidded to a halt barely a foot from Merion. He coughed as her dust cloud enveloped his face.
The woman patted him on the shoulder and smiled broadly. His aunt was all wire and tanned skin, quite obviously as strong as a mule, and not nearly so old as Merion had expected. In fact, there was barely a wrinkle on her face, just a smattering of well-used laughter and frown lines. Her hair, the trademark Hark blonde, was scraped and tied back into a long ponytail that ended somewhere above her hips. She had a brown mole beneath her left eye, almost like a lost teardrop.
It was her clothing that gave Merion the most cause for concern. Instead of the graceful frocks and dresses in which he was used to seeing women, his aunt dressed somewhat like a man. She wore dark jeans held up by a thick buckled belt, and a checked shirt rolled up to the elbows—very informal indeed.
‘Sorry about that. I thought I’d missed you! Don’t want you wandering off on your first day here. Somebody could have shot you!’ she looked about furtively, as if checking for snipers.
The look on Merion’s face told her that he did not get the joke, if it could even be called one. She patted him on the shoulder again and smiled even wider. Merion was just grateful she still had all her teeth.
‘I’m joking, nephew. One good thing about Fell Falls is that we’re too busy shooting other things to be shooting ourselves. In a way, it’s the friendliest place on earth,’ Lilain said.
Merion looked around and decided that his aunt was a liar. In the street ahead, tucked into an alleyway, he could see a man urinating on his own boots. ‘Doesn’t look too friendly to me,’ he muttered.
‘You’ll see,’ Lilain winked. The gesture reminded him of the old woman on the barge, and he wondered if his aunt was just as crazy as she had been. ‘Now, where are my manners?’ she asked herself, and all of a sudden she was transformed into a different person. She stood straighter, taller, and her hands came to rest gently in front of her. She clasped her fingers and curtseyed, looking for all the world as though she had just entered the dining hall of Humming Tower. ‘My nephew,’ she said. ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’
Merion was desperately thankful for the touch of refinement. Perhaps his aunt had been joking all along. ‘Tonmerion Harlequin Hark of Harker Sheer, at your service,’ Merion replied, bowing low.
Always lower for family, no matter how distant.
His aunt curtseyed again, and introduced herself. ‘Lady Lilain Hark of Fell Falls, formerly Lilain Rennevie, socialite, citizen, crack-shot, and town undertak– Oh, hah! I can’t do it! Can’t stand all that pomp and ceremony, dearie me. Left all that behind long ago. Still got it though, eh?’ she snorted, her veneer crumbling to ash in front of Merion’s eyes. As she chuckled away, he began to boil.
‘Anyway, Tonmerion, that reminds me. Before we get you settled in and talk about anything else, I need your help. I’ve got a body that came in just this afternoon. The workers have already gone to the saloons, so it’s just me. And dear me if he isn’t a big fella. You look like a strong young lad—fancy giving your aunt a hand?’ Lilain asked, cheerful as could be, as though she had just asked him to help pick strawberries.
Merion’s voice was flat, but nowhere near calm. ‘You want
me
to help
you
move a dead body.’ It wasn’t even a question, the way he said it. ‘A
dead
body.’
‘Yes, just over to the Runnels, back to the north.’ Lilain jabbed a thumb in the air and smiled again. ‘Fancy it?’
Before he could answer she had already turned and begun to walk away. ‘It’s this way,’ she chimed, in that eroded Brit accent of hers.
It was then that Merion chose to explode, with no warning or apology.
‘Now, just wait one … bloody … SECOND!’ He had not really meant to yell, but he had, and now it was too late to take it back. He dumped his rucksack in the dust and squared up to his aunt. He brandished a finger as if he meant to poke her with it, but he could not quite summon the tenacity. Instead he just vented, as he had wanted to since getting on that blasted locomotive in Boston.
‘In case Mr Witchazel has proven thoroughly incompetent, and you are not aware of what I have been through, the last three weeks of my life have been utter torture. My father—
your
brother—has been murdered. My home has been taken away from me. My life has been torn apart at the seams. I spent two weeks in a tiny cabin on a ship more rust than metal. I have thrown up more times than I can bear to count, and several of those times through my nose, which until then I hadn’t even thought possible. I have seen icebergs decorated with dead soldiers. I was battered senseless by the crowds of Boston and nearly bored to death by a lawyer’s assistant. And to top it all off, I have just spent the last week on a variety of trains travelling across this godforsaken country of yours, only to be made aware that my final destination, my last hope for refuge, is a meagre scratch in the middle of a desert, surrounded by creatures that want to tear me in half, and shamans who want to peel the skin off my bones at a hundred yards. So in summary, Aunt Lilain, please
do
excuse me if I don’t currently have the stomach for carrying dead bodies around in the dark! I would have thought my own aunt, my father’s sister, would be a little more sympathetic to my plight! I half-expected this nightmare to end in Fell Falls, not begin anew!’
Merion suddenly realised he had not taken a breath in quite a while. He decided to remedy that before he passed out. His head swam. Aunt Lilain had crossed her arms about halfway through his tirade, and now she just stood there, staring, a nothing expression on her tanned face. Merion decided to throw caution to the wind and just carry on. ‘Now, if you will point me in the right direction, I would like to find whatever bed you’ve prepared for me, and go to sleep in it. I will be leaving in the morning.’
Lilain answered so quickly she nearly snipped off the end of his sentence. ‘Is that so?’ she retorted.
‘Yes, it is.’
The two stared at each other for a moment, until Merion realised that his aunt was the sort of person who needed to be asked twice. ‘If you could show me which way to go, please, it would be very much appreciated.’
Lilain’s only reply was to brush past him and reach for his abandoned rucksack, which was leaning against the side of the barrel. Merion chased after her, but she had a head start. The sack was on her shoulder by the time he could interfere.
‘That’s my rucksack …’ he said as he reached out to grab it.
‘Oh, no problem. You’ve had a hard couple of weeks. I’ve got it,’ she replied, striding towards the centre of town. Merion had no choice but to hurry along in the wake of her long, loping strides. Rhin winked from under the lip of the rucksack. Merion could see his purple eyes glowing softly.
‘Are you taking me to the body, or your house?’ Merion enquired, hoping it was the latter.
‘The house,’ his aunt replied. He sighed in relief. ‘Via the body.’
‘Did you not hear what …’
This time, Lilain did cut him off. ‘Oh, I heard just fine, thank you. It’s a left here.’ Lilain swung into a short alleyway, and then out along a hip-high fence that guarded patches of vegetables. A goat bleated somewhere in the shadows.
‘Do you live out on the edges of town?’
‘Last house in the Runnels. It’s where they always put people like me.’
‘People like you?’
‘Undertakers. They like our business, but don’t want to see it on their doorstep … especially not in a town like this.’
Merion wasn’t quite sure he got her meaning, but he mumbled an ‘I see’ all the same. She was leading him up a very gentle rise now. The houses, or shacks in some cases, were thinning out. The road became less defined and more rugged. Soon enough, they came to a long cart, its handles propped up on the arm of a fence so it lay almost flat. On it lay a macabre object covered by a sack. Merion gulped.
‘Come on out, Eugin. Boy’s not interested in games,’ Lilain called to the darkness.
Merion’s heart stopped for a brief moment as the sack moved. A pair of arms groped for air. Lilain grabbed the corner of the sacking and yanked it free, revealing a portly man with a pair of spectacles hanging on his grime-smeared nose. He looked at the boy, then at Lilain.
‘What? Why?’
‘Tired.’
‘Oh. Well, Boston is almost two thousand miles away, as the crow flies. Boy has come a long way.’
‘At least somebody realises that,’ Merion said. He had not really meant to say that out loud.
Why did that keep happening
?
‘Don’t encourage him, Eugin. Go home. I want to see you working on that cooler bright and early. No slacking, you hear?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Eugin sloped off, waving a hand at Merion as he scuttled away.
Lilain snapped her fingers and shouted over her shoulder, ‘Oh, and Eugin?’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Is the body on the table?’
‘Both halves, ma’am,’ came the reply.
Merion’s stomach churned. He looked around him, peering into the darkness, as if he were trying to root out this offensive table. In truth, he was considering whether he could make a break for it, as if running might solve all his problems, but this desert all looked the same: dark, empty, and dangerous. Lilain called to him, and he froze.
‘You coming or not?’
Merion bit the inside of his lip again, nursing the perpetual scab that had formed there thanks to his new habit. ‘Do I have to sleep near the body?’
‘Well that depends on where you’re sleepin’, doesn’t it?’
Lilain’s house was slightly larger than the other houses, and a little more ornate. It definitely was not a shack, as Merion had feared. It looked like there might have been some money under its pillows and floorboards once, but no longer. It appeared young and yet old. Even in the dark, Merion could see the flaking paint, the little crack in the window to the left of the door, the missing roof-tiles. Lilain thrust her key into a lock, and waved. She still had the bag over her shoulders. ‘Come on, do you want to see your options?’
Merion shrugged then. It was a tiny movement, but it spoke volumes. It was a shrug for the world and everything in it, for fate and destiny too, for all the blasted things that had brought him here, and for his father’s murderer. It told them that tonight, they had won, but tomorrow might be different.
One night couldn’t hurt
, he told himself, as he stepped over the threshold into his new, if not temporary, life.
SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND
‘She’s persistent. Two weeks now, and I’m still running, still being chased. She’ll have my head on a spike if it’s the last thing she does. There’s no going back now. Onwards.’
7th May, 1867
I
n the bustling core of London, to the west of its beating heart, was Jekyll Park. It was a sprawling carpet of green fields and huddled trees, stretching from the backside of Bucking Tower, all the way up to Kensing Town Gardens. In fact, Jekyll Park was so vast, that if you stood at its very centre, just to the west of the Long Water, and ignored the towering spires of Knightsbridge and Westminster—and the cloying smog—you wouldn’t have a clue you were standing in the middle of the largest city on earth.
In the park’s southwest corner, in the very centre of a square field of grass, sat a copse of old oak and elm. The trees were so tightly packed together that it was nigh on impossible to see the old well at its centre. A hundred years ago, a boy had drowned in it. He was one of the gardener’s lads, and a sad funeral it was. The father almost tore the well to pieces, but the other gardeners had calmed him down, and planted a ring of saplings around it to keep other children from meeting a similar end.