Bloodfeud (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 3) (58 page)

It sounded like a confession instead of a death sentence. Merion raised his bloody hands. Inches behind him, he could hear Dizali grinding his polished teeth.

‘If you don’t change with it, you die in the wasteland,’ said Calidae. ‘You taught me that.’

Dizali snarled. ‘Take your shot, Lady Serped, and stop wasting our time!’

She must have seen the switch in Merion’s eyes. Calidae turned her head but not the gun. Lurker and Lilain had escaped their airship and were currently marching over the flagstones, rifles raised.

‘Not today, Calidae!’ Lilain yelled. ‘Not if you want to live past it. Kill Merion and we’ll put you down just as quick!’

‘I am sorry, Hark,’ said Calidae, fixing the boy with that trademark stare. Lilain and Lurker were running now, pelting across the flagstones as if chased by a twister. Merion held his arms out, feeling Dizali’s furious yet laboured breath on his neck, closer than before.

‘I refuse to be a hollow shell,’ she whispered, perhaps nothing but a trick of the breeze.

CHOOM!

Merion felt it before his ears even registered the noise. The slip of Calidae’s finger was imperceptible. Such is the effort of murder when guns are concerned, a life hanging on the twitch of a finger. Never has death been so easy, so removed from the dark business for which it was forged.

The impact was a hammer-strike. Merion spun as he felt the bullet rip through him; breaking bone, pulverising flesh. The Mistress had always been a cruel one. He felt the bullet escape his shoulder, tugging him in its wake.

He saw the shapes of his aunt and Lurker surging forward. Then he heard Long Tom speak; a thud against his eardrums. He watched as Lurker threw himself in a wild leap across the stones, tackling Calidae to the ground, her face a frieze of agony.

A hand grabbed his hair, but before his head was wrenched back, before the sky descended on him, before he and Dizali took their second tumble of the day, Merion heard another gunshot; muffled, damning, and chased by a shriek as cold as he had ever heard.

‘LURKER!’

DELIVERANCE

12th August, 1867

W
ater is an invasive thing. Give it a gap, give it a crack in a seam, give it anything, and it will seep in uninvited. Give it a yelling mouth and nostrils gasping for air, and it will flood.

Merion felt the brackish river water filling his mouth. He tasted the silt, crunching between his teeth as he thrashed and parried with the sucking currents. Every movement sent the fire of pain coursing through his shoulder, down his arm. In the cloying yet cacophonous underwater world, he could even hear the broken bones crunching in their sockets, gnawing at flesh. It was agony.

Lurker!

Half-dizzy from pain and blinded by silt and blood, he kicked out, aiming for something solid. He grabbed at the water and felt cloth. He seized it.

The cloth fought back, weaker than he, but still vicious. A hand grabbed his shoulder and he roared bubbles. Another sought his throat. He kicked again, catching skin and bone. He heard the muffled gurgle of pain and kicked again. The hands did not let go. Dizali was not defeated. Even now, as they both sank together, staining the Thames red, he sought murder.

Merion’s boot scuffed on the river-bed: a hundred years of junk and sewage. More bubbles breached his lips. It felt as though each of them were a measure of his life, floating away. The pain was beginning to cloud at the corners of his eyes. His head pounded with the weight of the water.

The young Hark thrust himself from the mud and wrapped a hand around the dark shape wrestling him, digging fingers into anything soft he could find. Eyes, face, the gaps between the lord’s ribs. There was no finesse in their fight. No sweeping blows, no jab and feign, just merciless thrashing. He could almost hear Dizali’s venomous thoughts leaking into the water.

If I die, you die with me, Hark
.

Merion felt something bump against his chest and brushed it away, thinking it another hand seeking his neck. Instead he found the vial with his fingers.

He swivelled in the water, pushing Dizali beneath him. His lungs were beginning to chase their own bubbles, forcing themselves into his throat. As he held the lord with one hand, pressed against his face, he sought the vial.

River water poured in alongside the kelpie blood, no matter how hard he clamped his teeth around the glass. He knew only to drink, and pray that the shade would not be soiled. Either that, or Dizali would have his last laugh; or choke, to be precise.

Merion had no idea how many quarts of the Thames he had choked back, nor how long they had fought. All he knew was to push, and push hard against the coldness that now filled his belly. He felt nothing. No rush. No boiling. Just a roaring in his head. It sounded like the thunder of heavy engines.

A tingle spread through him, doing nothing for the burn inside his lungs. Merion could feel the last gasps of air crowding behind his tongue. He began to convulse as his insides spasmed.

And still Dizali’s hand refused to move, even though the silt now billowed around them, sucking them both down.

Familiar words came to his mind, then: an apology, useless and half-uttered between the choking fingers of a Brother Seventh.
I’m sorry
, he had told himself. He shook his head, weighed down by water. He was not sorry now; only for those he had left on the riverbank. Even with another death looming, he had finished his work. He had felled Lord Dizali and dragged him to the lowest depths he could find. It had only taken drowning to finish it.

The young Hark tilted his head towards the surface and the distant sunlight, and inhaled. The water was given its chance. It flooded in, strong and cold, filling his lungs to the brim in seconds.

So be it
.

The cloudiness faded from his eyes. His lungs burst back into life, sucking down more of the cold water. He blinked and saw Dizali’s crumpled face through the smoked-glass of the water; no longer blurry. He choked a laugh even then. Even after death, his father had saved him.

Merion let himself go limp, watching as Dizali took his turn to convulse. The bubbles exploded from his purple lips as he opened his eyes in panic, letting the boy loose. Merion took another lungful for good measure and pushed with his legs, forcing Dizali down to the river-bed. As he floated there, gliding on a carpet of silt, the boy watched the man’s death arrive in ragged slurps. Dizali had no shade to save him, just the awful realisation of failure escorting him to the darkness.

Merion watched the body until it disappeared, until the blood-loss brought the shadows back to his eyes. He hung in the currents like flotsam, letting himself drift with the waters.

He did not know how long he floated there in that world, drifting in and out of consciousness, listening as the throb of propellers come closer. It was serene, in a way, until pain shattered the tranquility.

Strong hands hauled at his arms, and only then did he give in to the weakness.

*

13th August, 1867

Silence can shock just as easily as a roar when first waking. It is the idea that eyes may be watching.
Waiting for you to wake so you can see the knife plunge
. The thought that something ill and evil has entered during slumbers. That silence can be more ominous than a clap, or crash, or a gunshot.

Merion tore into wakefulness like an axe through a curtain. He wrenched himself up from the bed and immediately regretted it. Pain surged through him and he collapsed back down again, clutching his shoulder.

‘Rest easy, boy,’ said a gruff American voice, thick with tobacco smoke. Merion’s aching eyes snapped open to find a man beside his bed, busy rolling a cigarette, white-haired and nonchalant. His coat made him look like a doctor of some sort. The room swayed.

‘Where…’

‘Where are your friends?’ he coughed, hacking up something before spitting it out of a porthole. The day was bright. ‘Outside.’

Merion felt a coldness claw at him, deep in his gut. ‘All of them?’

The man shrugged, moving to the door. He looked peeved by something, as if his patients usually died, and Merion had bucked the trend. ‘Don’t know how many there were to start with,’ he said, before promptly leaving.

Before the door could swing back in place, it was caught by a hand. Lilain stood in the doorway, silent. She stepped over the sill, one hand low and by her side. Merion stared at her past the hill of his toes under the yellow bed sheet.

‘I thought I had lost you. Again,’ she said, in a voice as small as her smile. Her eyes were red-raw at the edges.

Merion began to shake his head, but the bruising in his throat told him to stop. ‘It seems death doesn’t want me, yet,’ he croaked. He chose the order of his questions carefully. The coldness was turning warm, souring like milk left out in the sun.

‘Where are we?’

‘You should know, Nephew. This was your doing. Forgot to tell me this part of the plan, didn’t you?’ Lilain tapped her toe on the floor. It sounded like metal. ‘Having Lincoln, in his own
Black Rosa
, come to restore order to the Empire. A fine touch. His men pulled you out.’

The hands
. Merion’s wiregram had done its work and so had the Red King. Just in time. ‘How long—’

‘Ten minutes. They had to take the ship almost to the bridge to grab you. Lincoln didn’t stop searching until he’d found you. He would have been here to see you, but he’s currently giving a speech to the Emerald House about freedom from tyranny and whatnot.’ She thumbed her nose. ‘Could have told me he was a rusher, Merion. That’s one secret a letter knows how to keep. You’ve been asleep for almost a day. It’s just after sunrise.’

‘Dizali?’

‘You were the last one to see him. You tell me. You can tell Lincoln yourself. He dearly wants to know.’

Merion blinked slowly, savouring the after-image of a goggle-eyed lord being swallowed by the silt. ‘He’s dead. Drowned.’

‘Then good riddance.’

‘Rhin?’

That made Lilain snort. She avoided her nephew’s eyes, staring at the iron ceiling instead. ‘Clever little beast, that one. Seems to have made a pact with the Queen he saved, and got another off his back in the process.’

Merion tried to raise his head, but it was too heavy. He still felt as though half a river was sloshing around inside him. Lilain put a hand on his leg to keep him still, but stayed at the foot of his bed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He saved Victorious from the noose. Made her promise to pay his debt before he cut her down. She was true to her word, for a royal. Sift has a new Hoard, and Rhin has a new life. He’s waiting outside, looking half-dead but happy enough. Explainin’ him to the sailors was tough, but they’re leaving him be. Rushers all, if I’m correct.’

Merion had one other name before he could let himself say the last. He swallowed. ‘And Ca—’

The name made Lilain hold up her hand and clench it into a fist. ‘That girl may have spared you, but she still took everything from us.’ Stifling a cough, she shook her head. The sourness spread to the back of his throat as she lifted her other hand. In it, she held a leather hat, bent at one corner. A dab of dark blood stained its peak. Merion choked on the sight of it as she laid it on his knees. The boy wanted to shrug it away, as if that would deny the truth.

‘He’s ready to see you when you are,’ she said, and then left.

Merion stared at the hat for a long time before he allowed himself to touch it; to recognise it for what it was. It was heavy in his weak arms, so he resorted to thumbing away the blood, fighting back every emotion his heart and gut threw at him, until he could do nothing but throw the hat to the floor and curse it for its loneliness. Sobs wracked him until he could do nothing but sleep.

*

The carriage overtook him as he reached the open gates, guardless still as they were a week ago. Merion stood aside as it passed. The driver was whipping the horses hard, and their hooves sprayed dirt that spattered his cloak; but he did not care.

Hands in pockets, the young Hark walked on. Far too many miles had passed under his feet that morning. He hadn’t even taken the rumbleground. He had forced himself to walk all the way in his new stumbling shamble; shoulder still bandaged with enough cloth to wrap up a tree, arm hanging heavy and lopsided. Above him, perched on the gate, a magpie cawed. Keeping watch from a distance as always, Jake had refused to come to anybody.