Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

‘Master Hark,’ boomed the constable, as he shuffled to a halt at the foot of the table. His eyes were fixed on Tonmerion’s, but it was easy to see they itched to pull right, yearned to gaze on the body of Tonmerion’s father. Tonmerion didn’t blame him one inch. It wasn’t every day you got to meet a Prime Lord, especially a freshly murdered one.

‘My apologies for …’ he began, but Tonmerion cut him off.

‘Apology accepted, Constable Pagget,’ he replied. ‘Have you captured my father’s murderer yet?’

Pagget shook his head solemnly. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid …’

‘Well, what is being done about it?’

‘Everything that can be done, Master Hark.’

‘Well that’s not …’ Tonmerion began, but it was his turn to be cut off.

‘Please, young sir, it’s about your father’s will.’

Tonmerion threw him a frown. ‘What about my father’s will? What and where must I sign?’

There was a moment of hesitation, during which the constable’s mouth fell slowly open, the ample fat beneath his chin gently cushioning the fall. Not a single sound came forth for quite a while.

‘Whatever is the matter?’ demanded Tonmerion impatiently.

Constable Pagget summoned the wherewithal to shut his mouth, and soon afterwards he found his voice too. ‘It’s your father’s last wishes, Master Hark, they concern you directly,’ he said, his eyes flashing to the surgeon for the briefest of moments.

Tonmerion huffed. ‘Well of course they do! I’m the only Hark left. The estate will be left to me,’ he replied, trying to ignore the truth in his own words. It frightened him a little too much.

‘Not … exactly,’ Pagget croaked. ‘That is to say … not yet.’

‘Yet? What do you mean,
yet
?’

The constable took a step backwards and waved a couple of fat fingers at the stairs. ‘You’d better step into my office, I think, young Master Hark. We apparently have much to discuss.’

‘This is highly irregular,’ Tonmerion began, his father’s favourite phrase, spilling out of his mouth. He bit his lip and said no more. Fixing a frown onto his face, the young Hark raised his chin and went to take a step forwards that said everything his traitorous mouth could not: a confident step that said he was inconvenienced, displeased, that he deserved respect, that he was in command here, and not crumbling with worry and fear and disgust and all those other things that lords and generals and heroes don’t feel. Sadly, Tonmerion’s step forwards was quite the opposite. It was a step so lacking in grace and dignity that Tonmerion would forever shiver at the very thought of it. As his foot hit the floor with a wet slap, not a squeak, Tonmerion realised his mistake. The liquor.

His foot slid away from him, betraying him so casually that his leg, and the rest of him for that matter, were powerless to resist. Tonmerion performed an ungraceful wobble and grabbed the nearest thing his flailing arms could reach … his father’s dead arm.

A small wheeze of relief escaped his tight lips as he found himself upright, safe. A similar sound came forth when he realised what exactly it was that had saved him from the most embarrassing fall, though this time it was strangled by horror, and disgust. Tonmerion’s gaze slowly tumbled down his arm, from the expensive cloth to his ice-white knuckles, to the dead, bruised, slate-coloured flesh that his fingers were squeezing so tightly. Tonmerion gurgled something and quickly righted himself, red in the face and wide in the eyes. He quickly began to smooth the front of his shirt, but stopped hurriedly when it dawned on him that he had just touched a dead body. He held his hands out in the air instead, neither up nor down, close nor far.

‘A cloth,’ he murmured. The surgeon obliged him, leaning over to pass him a startlingly white cloth from beneath the bench. Tonmerion dragged it over his knuckles and fingertips, and nodded to the constable. ‘Lead the way.’

Pagget had not yet decided whether to stifle a laugh or to share the boy’s revulsion. He simply looked on, one eye squinting awkwardly, his face stuck halfway between the two expressions.

‘Jimothy?’ the surgeon said, and Pagget came to.

‘Right! Yes. This way if you please.’ He only barely managed to keep from adding, ‘Mind your step.’

Tonmerion followed him without a word.

*

‘America.’ Tonmerion gave the man a flat stare that spoke a whole world of disbelief.

Witchazel was his name, like the slender shrub, and it was a name that suited him to the very core. He was more stick than man, loosely draped in an ill-fitting suit of the Prussian style, charcoal striped with purple. His hair was thin and jet-black, smeared across his scalp and forehead like an oleaginous paste. Tonmerion had never liked the look of the lawyer.
One with power should dress accordingly
. His father’s words, once more.

Witchazel shuffled the wad of papers in his leather-gloved hands and coughed. It meant nothing except a resounding yes. Tonmerion looked at Constable Pagget, but found him idly thumbing the dust from the shelves of his ornate bookcase. Tonmerion looked instead at his knees, and at the woven carpet just beyond them. He tugged at his collar. The constable’s office was stifling, heavy with curtains, mahogany, and leather. The news did not help matters, not one bit.

‘And this aunt …’ he asked.

‘Lilain Rennevie,’ filled in Witchazel.

‘Lives
where
exactly?’

Witchazel’s face took on an enthusiastic curve, a look of excitement and wonder, one that had been well-practised in the bedroom mirror, or so it seemed to Tonmerion. ‘A charming place, right on the cusp of civilisation, Master Hark,’ he said. ‘A frontier town, don’t you know, going by the bucolic name of Fell Falls. A brand new settlement founded by the railroad teams and the Serped Railroad Company. They’re aiming for the west coast, you see, blazing a trail right across the country in search of gold and riches and the Last Ocean. An exciting place, if I may say so, sir. I’m almost envious!’ Wichazel grinned.

‘Almost,’ Tonmerion replied drily.

Witchazel forced his grin to stay and turned to look at the constable, hoping he would chime in. All Pagget did was smile and nod.

Witchazel produced a map from the papers in his hand and slid it across the desk towards the boy. ‘Here we are.’

Tonmerion leant forwards and eyed the shapes and lines. ‘It looks small.’

Witchazel templed his fingers and hid behind them. ‘Yes, but it has so much potential to grow,’ he offered.

‘Very small.’

‘You have to start somewhere!’

‘And forty miles from the nearest town.’

‘Think of the peace and quiet. Away from the hustle and …’

‘It’s literally the end of the line.’

‘Not for long, mark my words!’

‘And what does this say: desert?’

Witchazel’s temple collapsed and he spread his fingers out on the desk instead, wishing the green leather would magically transport him out of this office. What a fate this boy had inherited. Whisked away to Almighty knows where. No mansion. No servants. No money … Witchazel almost felt sorry for him.

‘Desert, yes. It seems that the territory of Wyoming is somewhat
wild
. Deserts and mountains and, oh, what was the word …’ Witchazel clicked his gloved fingers, resulting in a leathery squeak. ‘
Prairies
, that was it. But surely that’s exciting, isn’t it?’

Tonmerion had crossed his arms. His eyes were back on the lawyer, trying with all his might to drill right into the man’s pupils, to wither him, as he had seen his father do countless times. ‘Do I have any say in the matter?’

Witchazel made a show of checking the papers again, even though he already knew the answer. ‘I’m afraid the instructions are very specific. You are to remain in the care of your aunt until such time as you are of age to inherit, on your eighteenth birthday. Until then all assets will be frozen in law, under my authority.’

Tonmerion let out a long sigh, ruffling the strands of sandy blonde hair that stubbornly insisted on hanging forwards over his forehead, rather than lying to the sides with the rest of his combed mop. ‘And what manner of woman is my aunt?’ he asked. He had barely known of her existence until twenty minutes ago. Now he was staring down the barrel of a five-year exile, with her and her alone. He felt a lump in his throat. He tried to swallow it down, but it held fast. ‘Is she the mayor? A businesswoman?’ he croaked.

Witchazel flipped through a few of his pages. ‘She is a businesswoman indeed, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

Tonmerion sagged a little in his chair.

Witchazel peered closely at one line in particular. ‘It says here that she works as an undertaker.’

The boy came straight back up, stiff as a board.

*

It was a day for wanton staring, Tonmerion had decided. He may have escaped the body of his dead father in the surgeon’s basement, but now he was trapped by the dried pool of blood on the steps of one of the Harker Sheer estate’s many vast patios. The stone beneath was a polished white marble, which made the blood, even now that it had dried to a crumbling crust, all the more stark. Tonmerion watched the way it had settled in a thick, rusty crimson slick that dripped down the stairs, one by one, until it found a pool on the third.

When Tonmerion finally wrenched his gaze from his father’s blood, he turned instead to the thin fold of paper he clutched so venomously in his left hand. He held the paper up to the cloud-masked sun and scowled: tickets for a boat to a faraway land. Tonmerion didn’t know which to hate more: the blood or his looming fate.

‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he asked aloud. Unable to bring himself to utter a response, and having none to offer, he let the sound of the swaying elms and whispering pines fill the silence.

During the coach ride home, Tonmerion had pondered every avenue of escape. Once his mind had drawn out all the possibilities, like wool spilling off a reel, neither running nor hiding had seemed too fortuitous. He had no money save what he had found in his father’s desk: a handful of gold florins, several silver pennies and a smattering of bronzes and coppers. That would not last more than a few weeks. He had given complaining a little thought too, but had come to the decision he’d done enough of that in the constable’s office. In truth – in horrid, clanging truth – Tonmerion was stuck.

He was bound for America, the New Kingdom.

That was the source of the hard, brutal lump wedged in his throat. He lifted a hand to massage it and tried to swallow. Neither helped. He took a gulp of air and felt immediately sick. The blood beckoned to him, but Tonmerion steered away from it. He was not keen to repeat the liquor episode.

Remembering the water fountain at the bottom of the steps, he let his shaky legs lead the way. His wobbling reflection in the hissing fountain’s pool confirmed that he was indeed paler than a sheet of bleached parchment. Tonmerion put both hands on the marble and dipped his head into the water to let the cold water sting his face. It was refreshing and calming. He took in three deep gulps and felt the coldness slide down into his belly. Wiping his mouth, he stared up at the pinnacles of the pines.

‘By the Roots, you’re white.’

Upon hearing a voice speak out from the bushes, on an estate that was supposed to be emptier than a beggar’s purse, any other person would have jumped, or even squealed with surprise, but not Tonmerion. He did not flinch, for this was nothing out of the ordinary for him.

‘He’s dead, Rhin,’ he muttered, still staring up at the trees.

‘Speak up.’ The voice was small yet still had all the depth and resonance of a man’s voice.

‘It’s all going to change.’ Tonmerion looked over at the blood, stark against the marble, and nodded.

There was a polite and nervous cough, and then: ‘I’m sorry, Merion, for your father. I truly am.’

Merion’s gaze turned to the marvellous little figure standing in the dirt, half of his body still hidden by the shadow of the ornamental bush – no, not hidden,
fused
with the bush in some way. Merion did not bat an eyelid.

‘It’s all changed, just like that,’ he clicked his fingers, and the figure stepped out of the shadows.