Bloodfeud (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 3) (47 page)

The lordsguards charged forward at the sight of the figure, wading boldly through the wet murk into their lantern-light. Rifles were raised, shouts blared into the night, spears levelled. They were twitchy, considering recent events. Fingers hovered on triggers, hands gripped blade-handles, already slick with drizzle.

‘State your business!’ a captain shouted, shoving his way forward through his guards. He levelled a pistol at the lonely shape, standing hunched in the rain with its hands up.

‘I said, state your business!’

‘I’m here to see Lord Protector Dizali,’ said a small voice; a boy’s tone and no doubt about it. The pistol was lowered slightly. ‘I have a message for him.’

‘What is it about, damn it? Speak up!’ ordered the captain. ‘ ‘Afore I get bored of asking questions!’

It took a moment for the boy to reply and when he did his voice cracked. ‘It’s about Tonmerion Harlequin Hark!’ He raised his hands; up, out, and empty.

‘Almighty’s balls,’ whispered the captain, instantly beckoning his men forward to seize the figure. Once he was roughly patted down, the hood was thrown back, and they stared upon a young boy, possibly thirteen at the most, with shaggy blonde hair. He was expressionless, but for a grimace at the cold rain on his face.

‘It’s bloody ‘im!’ the captain roared, clearly delighted. He shoved the boy forward and up against the gates. ‘Fan out and see if he’s brought any friends. You and you, with me. You, run ahead and tell his Lordship we’ve got a present for him. Open the gate!’

*

‘The problem with you, Calidae,’ said Dizali, ‘is you believe yourself to be smarter than I.’

‘Doesn’t take much believing,’ she replied, receiving the back of Heck’s hand. Dizali could see it in those mismatched eyes: the man and his Brothers were enjoying this. A misplaced sense of accomplishment.

‘And yet you are the one tied to the chair, in my cellar, refusing to answer my questions. I want to know what it was that you and Hark were plotting for me.’

Calidae pursed her lips.

Dizali clutched his empty glass with rigid fingers. ‘You will tell me what I want to know, Calidae.’ He stood over her once more, holding the glass high, threatening to bring it crashing down at any moment and cut her a new set of scars.

‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?’ he hissed, grabbing her shoulder in a vicious grasp. She winced. ‘Lincoln was working with Karrigan Hark. After the shambles of the circus, you thrust yourself into his employ, and he sends you and Hark back to London aboard his own ship. Not Lilain Rennevie, as some believed…’

Here he eyed the Brothers. Their mismatched gaze fell to the floor.
Useless poltroons
.

‘Upon your arrival, Hark disappears and you come to stand outside the Emerald House to attract my attention. I take you in, treat you as a house-guest, during which time you worm your way into the Order and my good graces in order to glean my secrets. Hark then breaks in to steal away his family friend Witchazel and you use the distraction to sneak into my most private of quarters, and terrify my wife half to death, if she were not already halfway there already! Do tell me if I have missed anything!’

Dizali could feel the others in the room flinch at the information, but he didn’t care. His eyes were fixed on Calidae’s, burning hot and furious.

Calidae slowly inclined her head to offer him her scars. ‘I think it was you who terrified her, Dizali, not I. And who could blame her, after being imprisoned against her will for three years, left as a ghost of her former self? She was such a sweet soul, was she not?’ There was a detestable honey in her voice. ‘I remember her from parties. I was merely a lifeline that she grasped for. No maid would ever cross you. But I could, and she saw that. A way to lift her
curse
.’ Calidae let the word linger.

Dizali’s lip quivered in fury. His arm shook as the glass was raised higher, as far as it could go, ready to be smashed into that impudent face.

Calidae was saved by the slam of a door and footsteps thumping on floorboards above them. A lordsguard came running down the stairs.

Dizali, all thoughts of murder quashed by the intrusion, whirled on his heel to demand an explanation. The lordsguard was breathless, but before the Lord Protector could speak, he blurted out his excuse.

‘My Lord,’ he wheezed. ‘Rolick has found Tonmerion Hark at the gates. They’re bringing him in as we speak.’

‘Alone?’

‘Seems that way, my Lord.’

So much for the promises of faeries, foiled by the impetuousness of young men
.

Dizali jabbed a finger at each of his Brothers. ‘My study. Now!’ They bounded up the stairs without a word, following the wheezing lordsguard.

Lord Dizali looked back to Calidae and grinned. ‘Your partner in crime has arrived.’

Calidae sneered.

Dizali left her alone, to ponder her choices in the gloom.

*

The lordsguards shoved the hooded figure up the stairs and into the grand atrium. They gave him no time to look up at the marble or the arching stairs. He was hauled and harried with all haste. Dizali did not like to be kept waiting.

The boy kept silent the entire way, as he was told; eyes down and feet moving. The captain swaggered behind them, sword out and swinging, just in case.

He was led deeper and deeper into Clovenhall. The corridors narrowed as they marched between the patches of gloom and puddles of lantern-light.

When at last they came to a stout set of doors attended by two more lordsguards, their captive was offered a moment of rest, as the handcuffs were yanked from a pouch and secured tightly, pinching at his skin. He winced, hands trembling slightly.

The captain strode forward to knock. The door opened immediately, and the light of Dizali’s study spilled out. The boy was hauled out of the shadow and thrust before the Lord Protector’s huge desk; head hung, hood low, shoulders hunched. The captain shut the door and flashed the Brothers a smug look before he bowed.

‘Lord Protector.’

‘Captain Rolick,’ said Dizali, looking down hungrily at the young boy kneeling before him. He was shaking more than Dizali expected.

‘My Lord, it gives me great pleasure to introduce…’ He threw back the hood. ‘…Ton—’

‘That is not Tonmerion Hark!’ spat the Lord Protector, decorating the lad with spittle.

‘What?’ Rolick’s face fell. ‘But he said—’

Dizali snarled, wrenching the boy’s head back by his hair and staring closely at his face. ‘This is
not
Merion Harlequin Hark! This is some boy off the streets. Explain yourself, Captain!’

‘I—’

Dizali slammed his hand on the desk. ‘It’s a ruse!’ he yelled.

‘I have a message, Lord Protector,’ explained the boy, in a voice garbled by fear.

‘And what is that?’ Dizali wrenched the lad’s chin up with a finger.

It took a second for the boy to find his words. ‘He t… t… told me to tell you, “Knock, knock”. That’s it. I swear, Milord. I didn’t know!’

The boy spun twice before he hit the floor.

‘Get this wretch out of my sight. Throw him back into the rain! I want the mansion searched, top to bottom! I want guards filling every square foot of the grounds. I want him caught!’ he roared.

It was then that more knuckles met the wood of Dizali’s door.

Knock, knock
.

*

The shade was a slippery one, that was for sure. Even though it had held strong while creeping through the gates, in the middle of the lordsguards, he did not trust it an inch. Even when he was pelting ahead across the slippery gravel, even tiptoeing through Clovenhall, wrapped in a sheet of invisibility; he couldn’t grasp it like other shades. It settled into his bones and lurked there, fizzling away whenever he tried to grab at it. It hardly filled the young Hark with confidence, which was precisely what he needed right now, in the depths of Clovenhall, alone and unarmed. In the mouth of the beast.

Merion hugged the wooden wall, head full of the clattering footsteps from the stairwell below. He clenched his teeth and checked his hand for the dozenth time. It was still invisible, even to him. If he looked harder he saw a faint smudge in the air; an indistinct outline speckled by raindrops. But that was all. His heart beat no slower for it.

The footsteps grew to a crescendo. A lordsguard burst from the doorway and ran past him, almost brushing his arm. A second later, four more figures emerged. Three Brothers Eighth, bowler-hatted and hurrying. And then Lord Dizali, inches close, his sharp face chiselled from stone and his eyes narrow in anticipation. No doubt eager to finally get his hands on the Hark boy.
A paperboy, more like.

Merion could have easily reached out and encircled his throat.

Not yet.

Merion bared his teeth and peeled away from the wall, allowing himself to breathe. He froze solid as Dizali paused in his steps, boot-sole brushing the next stair. The Brothers surged on without him. He looked over his shoulder, scanning the hallway cautiously as he swayed back and forth. Merion stared right at Dizali’s moss-green eyes. Even though his heart thundered, part of him wanted to grin at the cheek of the moment. He tensed as hard as his muscles would allow, clutching at the oily tails of the Fae shade.

How did Rhin do this so easily?

It was an age before Dizali swore to himself and raced after his Brothers. Even after he had disappeared, Merion stayed still, counting the minutes in his head.
Five or ten
. That was all he had, and he had used at least six of them getting into this damned mansion. Now here he was, wasting more time, standing at the foot of the cellar stairs.

Witchazel had drawn him a map, but Merion would have come here even without one. Where treasures were concerned, there were usually only two options: up, or down. The tallest towers or the deepest cellars. In every fairytale his maids had ever read him, it was the same. His father had chosen the latter for his own lair. Dizali was clearly of the same ilk.

Allowing himself to unclench his fists, Merion slipped through the door and down the carpeted steps. His feet fell like feathers—quiet and unseen—which made it tricky to know where to place them.

Down, he coiled into the darkness, until he found a grand set of doors. Behind them he felt the cool air embrace his skin. He followed the natural curve of the mighty wine racks and shelves to find more stairs leading down into the dark. Only a handful of gaslights offered guidance.

Merion’s boots tapped against the steps. He tread as fast as he could without tripping, and held out unseen hands to steady himself. Falling and breaking his neck now would have been preposterous.

Another level came and went. Merion’s eyes still darted back and forth. He was biting his lip so hard, it was close to bleeding.
Ten minutes
. Time must have been almost up. He glanced at his arm, checking he was still invisible. It was hard to tell in the gloom.

He found a final flight of stairs and hurtled down them, coming to an abrupt and stumbling stop as he reached a dusty floor and an open space. A gold contraption stood quietly in a shaft of gaslight.

The Orange Seed was a magnificent thing, cast in burning gold and pieced together from countless shapes and interlocking whorls of metal. It looked much like a globe of the known world; only instead of countries and borders, it was emblazoned with miniature fissures and mesmeric lines. At its top was some sort of protuberance; a swirling cone of metal that pierced both the orb and the golden cage that enclosed it. Here was Merion’s fell swoop; his penultimate shift of the chess-pieces, cast in flaming metal.