Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (39 page)

That sneer appeared on the pallid rider’s face once more, but it was faded now, on the brink of embarrassed anger. He was quiet a moment, then a barely-audible
click
rang out from under his duffel, and he relaxed back a tad in his saddle. “Renner,” he said.

Alex nodded. “Mr Renner, it’s a pleasure to receive the scholars of Newquay’s Moon. If you’ll dismount and follow me, we’ll get you settled.”

All was silent for an absurd, awkward stretch. James momentarily wondered whether everyone would start shooting then, and the courtyard would vanish in a hail of shrapnel. His finger tightened on the trigger, and a single rivulet of sweat danced down the groove of his spine.

Then Renner slithered down from his mount, waxen face tight and ugly. He stepped out on to the cobbles and extended his hand. James was sure he could see a slick of dark slimy something clinging to his fingers, even from this far away.

Alex nodded, that same plastic smile on his lips even now, and took the hand in his.

Renner flicked his head, and the other riders trotted forward into the courtyard, eyeing the place as though it were a gold mine ripe for the plundering, their piggy eyes eating up every detail with predatory relish.

James took a deep breath and, though it felt wrong, eased the safety catch back on his rifle, and stepped out slowly from the crawlspace. None of them expressed surprise at his appearance, and he made a note not to underestimate them. Seconds later, Lucian, Agatha, Lincoln, and Hector made their appearances, and in moments they were all united in the middle of the courtyard.

He tried not to focus on Beth, and she in turn was making a noble effort to ignore his existence. Keeping his face rigid and eyes devoid of emotion, standing in line with the others, he gestured toward the stables.

A medley of emotions raved in his guts. On one hand, his escape to Radden had been foiled, and a bizarre sickening itch in his legs was begging for him to break away and sprint for the fences. On the other, there was this whole mess Alex had gotten them into. On any other day, the snivelling group of men would have brought his stomach out in blooms of butterflies all on its own. He wasn’t fooled by the peace talks; these men were bile-spawn.

Then there was Beth. She was here, really
here—
now, amongst everything else. It was too much. The idea of her getting caught up in any of it, of her being hurt, was too much to bear. And the fact that he sincerely had to resist the urge to run the other way for the sake of some vision hurt the most of all.

He suppressed a tired sigh, one not of physical exhaustion, but a soul sigh.

Why did things always have to go to hell together?

Once the Mooners had disappeared into the stables, and Lucian had gone to stand watch over them, Agatha, Lincoln and Alex all ducked their heads together.

“Anything sensitive, anything valuable, anything we don’t want them seeing—hide it!” Alex hissed.

The other two, each twenty years his senior, nodded without hesitation and made haste towards the farmhouse. Alex was left standing with a hand buried in his beard, fingers stroking and pulling at knotted strands. He spotted James, and his eyes flickered. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll have to wait.”

James nodded. He couldn’t muster the energy for anything else, not even a scowl. His face felt as if it had turned to stone.

He slouched back toward the house, slinging his rifle up onto his shoulder. He didn’t see the boy until he had almost stepped on him, lurking in the shadows.

Norman had been standing in the doorway, clutching the frame with both hands, watching owl-eyed as the stoop-backed sallow men loped past one by one. Now he fixed his gaze on James and whispered timidly, “Does this mean I can get teached too, now?”

The Mooners had made themselves at home and were lounging on the benches of the kitchen table by the time James was done helping Agatha and Lincoln. Between them, they had successfully hidden every scrap of paper, every weapon, every map and shred of the Old World under their roof. All of it was pushed under floorboards, behind cupboards and into crannies in the cellar; anywhere the sly serpents wouldn’t be able to get their grimy hands on it.

They were honour bound to teach these men the very knowledge they had hidden, in time. But they would do it in their own way, and they would do it slowly. With luck, they could do it slow enough to keep from teaching them much of anything at all before Malverston’s time came to an end.

Then this sham of a
school
could end, and the scrabble for power could be allowed to play out. Then, finally, they might just get what they had wanted in the first place—free reign to carry out the mission’s work in the South-West without fear of the noose.

Lincoln and Agatha cornered him in the cellar, and in harsh whispers he laid everything out straight.

“What’s going on with you and Alex?” Lincoln said. “Come on, now, lad, there’s no sense hiding what’s in plain sight.”

“He’s not hiding anything,” Agatha hissed. “He was going. North.” She turned her gaze upon him, glazed with the thinness of coming old age, and sighed. “Radden?”

He nodded, his throat too tight to form words.

The two of them looked at each other. A bolt of concern passed between their eyes. There was no mistaking it; they thought he was crazy.

Hell, who wouldn’t? He would have thought the same if the roles had been reversed.

“Listen,” he said. “You have to hold things together here while we’re gone.”

Lincoln laughed. “Hah! Surely you’re not still going, boy?”

James said nothing, waiting until both their faces had grown graver still, then become incredulous.

“I have to,” he said. There was nothing to add. He had no more to give.

It was that simple.

And, to their eternal credit, they both started nodding. The incredulity had faded to something altogether deeper, as though they had both remembered something—or, rather, admitted something to themselves that they had buried long ago.

“Well,” Lincoln spat with a haggard sigh, “s’pose it was always going to be you. Always were different. Just fits that you’re the one to get some crazy spirit call.”

James swallowed. In truth, he would have liked either one of them to lunge forward and seize him, to rain parental scorn down upon him and forbid him from going, to save him from this madness. But instead, they both nodded quietly, over and over, until finally they went back to their work in silence.

Lucian accepted it without a trace of resistance at all, just gave the usual grunt, and muttered in resigned agitation, “Just another day in the life of the Chosen One.” He spared a moment to lay a hand on his shoulder, and leaned close enough for their foreheads to touch, even though they were alone, as though he were afraid of his sentimentality being overheard, and muttered, “Be careful.”

After that, he needed only to make a moment’s eye contact with Alex in the corridor. It was settled. They would turn tail, and ride north, away from the very thing that would decide the future of their life’s work in pursuit of a vision.

Vision
.

Urgh. Even the word made him feel fake. It was thin, absurd. It was just too crazy.

But that didn’t change a damn thing. He had to go.

Now, standing in the kitchen among the wolves who had entered their den, the strange itch in his legs was no fainter. He was being called, and it was time to go. Even if it meant hating himself for evermore.

The men talked constantly, bickering and hissing at one another, forming ever-shifting tenuous alliances, double-crossing without a moment’s notice. Each face was twisted by a malice not born of hardship or loss or sorrow, but of an inner ugliness—the kind that made every bit of them seem green and translucent and sticky, clean-shaven and decked out in finery befitting Malverston’s inner circle.

Sitting to one side, staring ahead at the wall and sipping from a cup of water as though she were the only person in the room, was Beth. She didn’t clock James as he entered from the hallway, but he knew she had seen him, sensed a tightness grow about her, some inaudible buzz hanging over her head.

For a moment he was paralysed by fear and anger and bewildered helplessness, then he noticed that all of the men, especially Renner, were staring at him with slanted eyes.

Mustering every shred of energy left in him, he clapped his hands together and addressed the room. “If you’d like to follow me this way, we’ll get you all set up!”

“We’re waitin’ on your woman to fix a brew,” one of them drawled, casting a calloused talon in the direction of the stove, where Helen was clutching the sideboard as though it alone was keeping the men from devouring her. Her eyes watched the kettle as though begging it to boil faster.

“They’ll be time for that later,” James said, squashing a swell of hatred. “We’d like to get started as soon as possible.”

Grumbling, but canny enough not to be seen to be unwilling, they all followed him to Alex’s classroom.

Before leaving the kitchen, Renner took a moment to halt the group and turn to Beth, grumbling down at her as though she were a whipped dog. “Stay, girly,” he said, a sick glint in his eye. “We’ll be back for you later.”

“S’right,” said the man directly to his right. “Back for you all night. Maybe you’ll get lucky and we’ll all give you a little attention.”

They all roared with laughter and filed into the corridor.

James stood frozen on the threshold. What he felt was beyond anger. The look on Beth’s face, stony and resigned, was enough to convince him that she hadn’t volunteered for this. Far from it. He couldn’t tell what the reason was, but he knew it was something far worse than that.

Her veil broke for a single instant in which her eyes flicked to his, and it was enough to solidify a single unbreakable certainty.

Before all this was over, he was going to strangle the life from each and every one of those men.

He ached to swoop down on her, to take her into his arms and shield her from their hungry stares. But now wasn’t the time; not now, not in front of either Malverston’s men, or the others. For now, at least, their secret was secure, and with that came at least some semblance of safety.

If they didn’t know they were involved, at least they couldn’t use her as leverage against him.

Through sheer force of will, he turned away from her and followed the procession of men into the corridor, leaving Beth alone with Helen in the kitchen.

They reached the classroom, which was large but still nowhere near fit to accommodate a dozen grown men. The men each sneered visibly, as though they had caught their hosts out in some act of great incompetence. In short order they were seated on the floor, cross-legged like infants, staring up and waiting in silence for the lessons to begin.

James was pleased that neither Lucian nor Lincoln was visible, though they were both hiding only inches out of sight beyond the window, weapons at the ready. At the slightest sign of trouble, all dozen men would be lying in a heap on the floor.

Agatha was ready at the blackboard and was about to begin when Renner spat, “What’s this old biddy doing, staindin’ up there like she’s Queen of the Hill?”

“Ms Fisher will be delivering your instruction for the day,” James said.

There was immediate uproar. A few of them even kicked their chairs over as they leapt to their feet, cursing openly and gesticulating obscenely, red faced in moments.

Renner quieted them after a while by adding his own gutteral growl. “Ain’t I ever going to be taught by no
woman
. We came for Cain, and I expect him to give over every goddamn word of his sacred little oratory himself.”

“That’s not going to happen,” James said, staunching a pause of hesitation. This was the danger point. If they wouldn’t play ball now, they were in trouble. He was going to have to push them. Steeling himself, he added, “This is your lot. Take it or leave it.”

Terse silence.

Renner slowly licked his lips, his eyes darting between James, Agatha, and the open doorway. James could see the conflict there: the unwillingness to appear weak, the desire to saunter away from a bad deal, and the knowledge that he wasn’t getting anywhere near Malverston’s throne without this deal.

Staring straight ahead, he lowered himself down onto his seat. The others looked disconcerted, blinking, but followed suit, slinking behind Renner. A muscle in Renner’s jaw jumped, and he set his eyes dead ahead, staring at Agatha with open hostility, but he stayed silent.

James backed out of the room with a silent nod to Agatha. She gave him a momentary half-smile, picked up a pointer, and turned to the blackboard. “We start with the Greeks—” she said, and then the door was closed behind him.

He gasped—Alex was pressed against the wall parallel to the door, ear pressed to the wall. His face was drawn, tired.

“I hate this,” James mouthed.

Alex nodded.

They both headed for the kitchen, and all the while James fought the urge to break into a run. The gnawing itch in his legs burned like a hot knife imbedded deep in each heel. If he didn’t satisfy its hunger soon, he might never stop screaming. But first, he needed to see her.

Beth gasped as she was planted fast against the wall of the stables. “James!”

“What the
hell
are you
doing
here?” he hissed.

Her stony exterior persisted a moment longer, then her eyes twitched, as though caught in a sudden struggle. Her bottom lip quivered, though she seemed to be making every effort to stop it. “They took her.”

James, braced to scorn her for giving into desire, felt his cheeks fall slack. “What?”

“They took Melissa.” Her gaze grew angry and her eyes wide as a redness fizzed up behind a thin veil of tears while her brows furrowed above. She teetered a moment on a shuddering precipice, then crumpled and pushed away from him and hid her face as the shuddering cries came in earnest.

James let her go and watched her stumble in the shadows, wiping her eyes fiercely.

“They came to the house after you left, took down the door.” She was spitting with rage now, though her voice was still porridge-thick with tears. “Mum and I couldn’t stop them. They would have killed us all right there and then.”