Bloodfeud (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 3) (50 page)

‘I WANTED TO DIE!’ Avalin exploded from the bed with a scream. Dizali’s face grew stormy as her spittle flew. ‘I didn’t want to live with this any more! You promised me you would let me go. The headaches, my memory, all of it, and yet you left me here to rot for years! Every moment excruciating. Every day the same. Unable to do anything except listen to your delusions as you fed me blood to keep me alive.’ Her voice had withered from a scream to a strangled growl.

‘Delusions?’ Dizali’s anger was building now. ‘I remember every whisper you laid in my ear. Talk to that lord, to this lady. Climb the ladder… So that I could be remembered as a great man! All I have done I have done for you!’

‘A great man! Not a murderous lunatic seeking to topple a queen!’

‘The Order and I are—’

‘Almighty damn your Order!’ Avalin howled, pulling at her hair, as if the headaches still pounded inside her skull.

Dizali swung a hand and struck her across the face. It was a blow lacking in feel, that was for sure, but it still knocked her weak frame to her knees. The Lord Protector instantly saw his mistake and reached to help her up, but she swatted him away.

‘I am no lamprey like you. I never was, and never will be!’

Dizali straightened, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket, trying to distract himself from where he was and what was happening.

‘Then you are not the Avalin I remember,’ he said quietly. ‘And no wife of mine.’ Sift could hear the knot in his voice, as if a fist had been shoved down his throat. Men are wont to loathe a problem they cannot fix. ‘You shall stay here until that changes.’

He turned away, leaving Avalin to retreat to her bed, wiping a thin trail of blood from her nose. Sift slipped into Dizali’s wake. There was nothing like a display of weakness to bring a smile to the face. Every secret can be turned against its owner.

She waited until Dizali had locked the door behind him and stood, silent and still. He pressed his fists to his temples. His jaw bunched over and over as he thought to himself.

‘A busy night?’ Sift whispered, fading into view a yard or two along the hallway, as if she had been waiting for him all along.

Dizali threw her a dark scowl, trying to hide his shock. ‘Queen Sift. What a pleasure.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, cocking her head to one side. ‘You look distressed, Lord Protector. Something the matter?’

Dizali’s frown deepened. ‘I imagine you have come to discuss your failure in retrieving the boy.’

‘Failure, is it? From what I understand he’s been caught and captured.’

‘By people in my own employ.’

‘And who forced him here? Who drove him to you?’ Sift turned her grey hands palms-up. ‘I do believe that constitutes success.’

‘I was not born yesterday, Sift.’

She flashed him an acerbic look. ‘To the Fae, you were.’

‘Our arrangement has changed.’

‘You have no right—’

‘I have every right! You failed to deliver the boy.’

‘And yet you have four new guests, if I’m not imagining things. Leverage you wanted, leverage you have.’

Dizali looked down his nose at her. She wanted to whip the black sword from her belt and cut something precious off him. ‘Frayed ends to be tied,’ he said. ‘Scraps from the table and nothing more. You did not hold your end of the bargain. Therefore I shall not hold mine. And here was Rhin Rehn’ar telling me that Fae Queens were true to their word.’

‘I want my Hoard, Dizali. You do not want to make an enemy of me. I’ll do more than just shout at you.’ She flicked a look to the door behind him. Dizali bared his teeth, and she tapped her pointed ears. ‘If you ever stopped to look down, you might just notice the world is not built for humans. It never was.’

Dizali stepped closer to her. Sift’s fingers wrapped around her sword-handle.

‘Perhaps it is you who should look up,’ said Dizali, ‘and see how our spires scratch the sky! I have been making a habit of stamping on traditions and ancient ways lately. You and your kind are no different. If you want Rhin Rehn’ar, I will sell you him.’

Sift almost drew her blade there and then, and lunged for the Lord Protector. But he stepped back and wagged a finger. ‘At what price?’ she snarled.

‘While I wager you have caverns of gold hidden in your faerie palaces, my price is not coin. I want you and your Fae soldiers at my beck and call, whenever I should have need of you. Faeries may prove useful to me in the future.’

Just like a banshee, tethered to a curse
.

‘You have one day to decide, Queen Sift.’ Dizali brushed past and continued on his way.

‘Roots curse you!’

‘I do not believe in such things. Not any more.’

Sift faded from view, clenching and cracking her knuckles. The Empire had just made a new enemy.

*

Merion was indeed taking Dizali’s advice: trying to get some rest for the morrow. He wanted to be sharp for it.

‘Are you sure you’re alright, Merion?’ Lilain had shuffled over to him again. Gunderton was picking at the floor. Calidae slouched in a corner, silent and brooding. Witchazel stared longingly at the stairs through the bars. Rhin was also trying to sleep, hidden in his cage.

‘I’m fine, Aunt. Don’t worry,’ he lied. His hand throbbed; Lilain had bandaged it with a strip of his shirt to stop the bleeding, but it still felt as though he had been hammering an anvil for a day straight.

A hand pressed itself to his forehead, and then withdrew.

Merion turned to look at her. ‘Aunt Lilain, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’ He put his finger to his lips. Lilain nodded, shifting her eyes to the two Brother Eighths lingering on the stairs, monitoring their prisoners’ behaviour and on the lookout for meddling Fae. The captives had barely said a word since the cell door had slammed. None of them trusted themselves to give anything away. Brothers were not your usual doltish key-keepers.

Although the events of the last hour had been far from pleasant, the plan was progressing smoothly. Well, except for the fact that the cell was only supposed to have two occupants—him and Calidae—and not the whole of this strange family he’d collected. Dizali’s actions had tangled some vital threads, and now it all depended on one man alone, rather than an aunt, a Brother, a lawyer, and a faerie. Lurker.
He will know what to do
, Merion told himself, trying to make it sound like a proclamation rather than a prayer.
He will
.

‘So who’s this associate of Dizali?’ said Lilain. ‘I don’t like the sound of him.’

‘Fever Rowanstone,’ Witchazel whispered, with a shudder.

‘The one who…’ Gunderton’s words fell away as he looked over the man’s cuts and scars.

‘…who tortured me, yes,’ said the lawyer, voice as frigid as a winter’s eve. ‘If you get a chance, stick something sharp in his beady little eye.’

‘That can be done,’ said Calidae.

‘He won’t get anything out of me,’ asserted Gunderton, although he couldn’t hide the glint of worry in his strange eyes. He had been on the run for years, fearing this exact situation. Now that he was finally here, perhaps he was doubting his resolve.

‘I don’t think he wants anything,’ said Witchazel. ‘Apart from fun. There are two twins as well. Sven and Sval. Monstrous bastards.’ Witchazel reached up to feel his cheekbone, still tender.

‘I think it’s best we just try to sleep,’ suggested Merion. ‘We wouldn’t want to yawn through our punishments, now would we?’ He raised his voice so the Eighths could hear.

Lilain patted him on the shoulder before moving away. He half-closed his eyes, flooding his mind with thoughts of the day ahead. If he lingered too long on the possibilities, his heart began to lurch. It was part excitement, part nervousness. He could not wait to be done with it all.
To be free.

Just before sleep took him, he stretched, and in doing so caught the gaze of Calidae, narrow like a blade at the back of the cage. They held each other’s eyes for a moment, before she turned away.

Freedom, it seemed, would come with a price.

*

Lurker poked the empty metal cup towards the barman and nodded. A shot of whisky tumbled in. The prospector beckoned a finger, and another shot joined it. He slid a coin bearing Lincoln’s face across the metal of the bar; a length of airship fuselage bent into purpose.

‘You’re lucky I take all sorts of coinage in ‘ere, mate. That won’t do you no good in any other pub in this city.’

The man was right. The image of Lincoln wasn’t exactly welcome in London. Here, in
The
Prop and Gondola
, it was good enough as Cathayan, Prussian, or Indus coin.
That’s what you get for having a saloon full of aviators
, thought Lurker.
And when you put a “pub” at the top of an airship tower…

He had kept well away from the porthole windows and the precarious view they held. If he sat straight and still, he swore he could feel the tower moving in the wind. Jake didn’t seem to mind, nutting his head into his ear ever now and again.

‘Say, you don’t know where I can find a Captain Higgis do you?’

The barman snorted something into his throat. ‘It don’t do too well askin’ names in a place like this, mate. People start to wonder why.’

Lurker shrugged harmlessly. ‘She’s a friend. Helped her out on a previous run. Got into some trouble over the ocean. Said I owed her one,’ he explained.

‘That’ll get even more tongues waggin’. Ships with captains like her float on favours, not gas. Nobody likes ‘em called in. You’re not from ‘round ‘ere are you?’

‘America.’

The barman narrowed his eyes at the magpie sat on Lurker’s shoulder. ‘And if it weren’t for the bird I’d say you aren’t no aviator, neither.’

‘No, sir.’ Lurker shook his head. ‘I’m the prospectin’ type.’

The barman grumbled and moved away, clearly upset by something.

Lurker slid from the stool and went to find a quiet corner, far away from the windows. He found a space between two booths and settled in to watch the goings-on.

He had seen
The
Cloudy Belle
docked just a tower away. After trying his best to get close to her, the guards had turned him away and told him to come back tomorrow. Higgis had either done another run, or stuck around in Britannia for some more business. In either case she was in London, and that’s what mattered.

Lurker held onto his drink as a huge airship—a Prussian zeppelin-class—passed by the tower. As the ship peeled away towards a larger spire,
The
Prop and Gondola
caught the full brunt of her wake, all eighteen engines of it. The pub shuddered violently. A cheer went up from the patrons, deafening and altogether disturbing.

Lurker rolled a cigarette, feigning nonchalance, but ears wandering from conversation to conversation. He sniffed deeply, letting the smell of engine grease, deck plating, old ale, and cheap stew fill his senses. He tried to catch Higgin’s scent, but it was fruitless.

‘Off to Greenwitch no doubt.’

‘Full of snobs as well.’

‘You ever see the inside o’ one of those?’

‘I may have snuck on one. Midair dock. Like a flying mansion inside.’

‘ ‘Eard
The
Cloudy Belle
is still docked.’

His ears pricked at the airship’s name. Two accents, not too far away. They sounded European. He listened as smoke wreathed his face.

‘Yeah, seen it three nights now. She must be workin’ on something big.’

‘Thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?’

‘Hijack it?’

‘No, follow her to the source. Replace ‘er.
The
Endless Horizon
’s far quicker than that hunk of shite.’

Lurker sniffed.
There it was
. That tang of gun-oil and grubby coin.
Higgis
.

There was a scrape of chairs and Lurker wafted the smoke out of his face, revealing Higgis and her ginger-moustachioed crew-member, Smythe, standing at the edge of a table. Two scrawny tanned men sat there, black hair greased back, faces sharp and ratty.

‘Jovio. Pleasure to see you again,’ said Higgis, before her fist connected with his jaw; the crack was audible over the rumble of patrons. Jovio went down like a sack of potatoes, falling off his chair and onto the sticky floor. His friend went for a knife but Smythe headbutted him hard in the bridge of the nose, and he too sank to his backside, blood gushing over his hands.