Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) (44 page)

*

The riverboat squatted like a fat whale in the water. Rhin eyed its huge arching stern and the big wheel that hung from it, half of its paddles in the dark, murmuring water. The river was low, and the dock had been built for smaller boats. The ropes creaked with every wash of current. Sand scraped against the hull.

The faerie moved off, thumbing his nose against the cold air. He had followed Merion as best he could, though following a boy who had antelope blood in his veins had proved rather difficult. Rhin had been forced to track him instead. Night had fallen, and the stars had come out to shine and mourn the lack of moon. It was a perfect night for sneaking.

For the most part, the riverboat was cloaked in darkness. Only a few windows at its centre glowed, and they shone with the sleepy orange of dying candles or crackling fires. A thin pillar of smoke rose up from a spindly chimney at the centre of the vessel. A few men were hunched over at the prow, a few at the stern, and a pair at the gangplank. Rhin smirked.

No problem
.

Within minutes, Rhin had found a rope, shimmied up it, and found a door down to the lower decks. Sometimes it was just so easy. Knowing his time was precious, Rhin darted along the edges of a corridor, towards what he guessed might be the living area. His wings were proud and his spell was strong. He barely cast a shadow as he strode past lantern after lantern, each standing guard beside a dozen boring paintings of pompous-looking rich people. The carpet was thick, and the ceiling high. He felt as though he were treading the carpets of Harker Sheer, rather than a riverboat in the middle of an American desert. Rhin shook his head.

His keen ears heard conversation behind one door, and the uncorking of wine behind the next. A door was kicked open and Rhin froze against the skirting board, tensing his spell so that it held strong. The servant was utterly oblivious. He strode past without a single glance for Rhin. The faerie smirked, and crept on. Soon enough, he came across another set of stairs and followed them down into a darker corridor. Like its predecessor, it too was bedecked with painting after painting of jewellery-laden octogenarians. Rhin’s eyes glowed as he took each of them in. He eyed their gold frames and sucked his teeth loudly.
Humans aged so quickly.

His instincts told him to try the door at the end, a room built into the boat’s snub-nosed bow. Rhin rubbed his hands. With a nimble skip and a jump, Rhin leapt up to wedge himself between the door-handle and the doorframe. While one hand gouged splinters out of the door to keep him steady, the other slid his thin knife into the keyhole and went to work. Rhin twisted it, jiggled it and cursed at it until there came a click and a snap. He felt the door-handle slip just a little. With his rough Fae hands he gripped and turned it until he heard another click.

Rhin was through the door in a blink. It was a study of sorts, filled with bookcases stuffed with folders and binders and books. It was chaos on the shelves, and on the desks too, one on either side of the room. Going to the nearest, he made short work of the jump to the desktop. He had that sort of nervous energy that can only come from trespassing and poking into other people’s business, from being set loose after a week spent sequestered under a bed.

Though he rifled through every sheaf of paper before moving on, he seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. Every folder was opened, every page turned. Rhin’s eyes darted over numbers and schematics and tables and coats of arms with tigers and eagles as if they were possessed. It was only when he reached the second desk, the one sequestered at the back of the room, that he found something, something that could very easily have been nothing, and yet which tickled his curiosity all the same: a timetable for a train, a big train.

Rhin started to claw at the numbers scribbled across the timetable, and the scraps of paper pinned to its top corner. He had always found human scrawl to be rough, like the wall-scrapings of bored prisoners. Rubbing his nose, he traced the grooved scrapings of a hurried quill.

‘One hundred … and seventy … thousand in…’ Rhin’s eyes widened as he whispered snatches of words. ‘Gold florins … Tuesday … Midnight.’

His nimble fingers ripped the piece of paper from the pin, quickly rolled it up, and stuffed it through his belt. Rhin went back to the timetable and began to examine the small ink-blotched map somebody had thoughtfully etched on the bottom for him. He counted off the stations one by one:

Kaspar

Hell’s Boot

Wheatville

Nilhem

Cheyenne

Linger Hill

Kenaday

Fell Falls

The gold was coming straight to him. Rhin stared at that map until his eyes felt as though they were going to bleed, until it had been scored into his brain. They say the Fae have excellent memories, but Rhin was not about to leave it to chance. He licked his lips. It was exactly what he had hoped for.

The faerie hopped down from the desk and began to pace circles around the room, dissecting his ideas piece by piece, trying them out in different arrangements, sewing some together, mentally defenestrating others. His mind was either a playground for lunatics, or a tabletop for geniuses, he could not decide. A week underneath a bed, staring at a door can play havoc with one’s perception. Yet there was one thing he was certain of: this train and its cargo could be his chance to rid himself of the Wit, his Black Fingers, and that dreaded queen forever. He just needed to get his little grey hands on it first.

Thump, thump.

Boots stamped on the carpet outside the door, and heavy boots at that. Rhin froze and strained his magick. As the door swung open, and a wave of bright lantern-light spilled into the room, the faerie slid quietly under the nearest thing he could find—a small footstool fringed with … some sort of fur, or hair maybe. It tickled the back of his neck as he crouched to peer out at the boots, and their owner.

The man was not short, nor was he tall. He did not ripple with muscle, though neither was he plump or waddling, nor a thin bag of bones. The man was average, in every angle a man could be. Even his attire was simple and unremarkable. His clothes were tailored, his seams razor-sharp, and yet the entire ensemble was a lesson in how many shades of grey a tailor could muster. His head was shaved short at the sides, the rest hidden under a black, round hat, similar to a bowler. Only two things separated this character from a shop-window mannequin: his boots and his eyes.

The boots were heavy, over-sized, and over-worn. They had seen long days on the road, on both cobble and sand, but had been looked after. Rhin could smell boot-polish, oils, even the damp on the laces from washing. Here was a military man, no doubt about it, just one stuffed into a suit.

His eyes were another thing altogether. One was a verdant green, the other bright piercing blue, like an arctic wolf’s. Rhin caught their colour as the man lifted the lantern up and over the nearest desk. He too was looking for something.

The faerie held his breath as he watched the man move between the desks, his boots skimming worryingly close to the footstool. The man whistled to himself as he rifled through the papers. He emitted a sharp tut and Rhin peered out to see what the man had found: the timetable. The man shook his head, and stuffed the paper into his pocket before continuing to rifle. Soon enough, the man found what he was looking for: a square scrap of yellow paper. It looked blank. Rhin narrowed his eyes as the man folded it neatly together and slid it into his pocket.

As the man marched back to the door, Rhin followed in his shadow. The corridor was bright, but the faerie hugged the walls on the man’s blindside, praying nobody else would come sauntering past. He was growing tired. After a sprint up a flight of stairs, the man came to an ornate green door and knocked three times.

‘Lord Serped?’ he called.

‘Come!’ came the muffled shout, and the man entered swiftly, far too fast for Rhin.

The faerie was left crouching in the corridor, breathing hard and pondering the situation. So the timetable was not just some idle scribbling, or the erroneous note-taking of a nervous clerk, full of too much coffee. It was important enough to keep safe in Lord Serped’s pockets. Rhin could smell the pipe, wood smoke and brandy wafting from under the door. No doubt Merion was in there. Business, outside of business hours. Rhin smiled as he began his escape, though it was shakier than he would have liked. It was bittersweet. His salvation had not been earned quite yet. First, he had to rob Lord Serped of his train.

*

This room was more brightly lit than the dark dining room, with its silver-washed pillars and dark moss-green walls. There was a chaise-longue at the far end, in front of a window, and several luxurious armchairs gathered around a rug in front of the fireplace. He could smell the woody sickliness of cigars in his nose, the warm scent of leather, and the stink of ash sitting in the grate. Why on earth a fire was needed in this corner of the world, Merion had no idea.

As he perched on the edge of his allotted armchair, Merion wondered how safe it was having a fire on a boat made, as far as he could tell, entirely out of wood. But he did not dare complain.

If Merion knew anything at all about lords, and he had known quite a few in his short time, it was that they loved to broadcast their words from a height. It was though a little strut and stretch would press them a little harder into the ears they were aimed at. His father had done the very same. Castor was no different.

‘Why do you think it is I chose to make my fortune here, Master Hark, instead of in the Empire, where many argue I belong?’

Merion racked his brain for the cleverest response, or the correct response, anything that was not a joke about the weather. The wine was gurgling in his full belly. He held his tongue and shook his head.

‘Over-crowding,’ Castor announced, as he turned to make another circle of the room. ‘Competition. Exhausted opportunities. The Empire is full of them. There is one problem with a thousand-year reign and an Empire larger than a map can hold. Do you know what that is? It gathers dust, Hark.’

Merion nodded, half-imagining a horde of red-coated soldiers running about with mops and dusters.
That damn wine
, he chided himself.

‘Your father did a fine job of keeping it at bay. He was not shy of this new world.’ Castor looked around as if the plush innards of his fine riverboat encompassed everything about this lopsided continent. ‘But he did not see its full potential,’ Lord Serped added. He turned to look at Merion.

‘That is, not to impugn your late father, Master Hark. He was a fine Prime Lord. The Benches will be poorer for his loss, I’m sure.’

Merion decided to be brave. This was the moment for it, after all. ‘Do you know the manner of his death, Lord Serped?’

Castor moved to a table topped with elaborate decanters and glasses of all different kinds. Crystal, by the way they chimed against his rings. ‘I do.’

It was an empty answer, to be sure. Merion pressed. ‘Then you must know that his murderer is still at large, unknown and unpunished.’

Castor returned to the fireplace, a pair of ornate glasses resting in the bony cradles of his fingers. If Merion had hoped for a little mercy in the measure, he was disappointed.
Was Lord Serped trying to get him drunk?
The brandy was a deep red in colour. Merion reached for his and raised it to his host.
Measure to measure
.
Man to man.
Or so he hoped. He sipped, trying not to choke as the brandy burned a path all the way to his soul.

When Castor finally sat, Merion leant forwards. Castor sat and swilled his brandy around as he mused. ‘I am aware of the investigation. And I am aware that it has been fruitless so far. But I hear the Queen herself has called for the murderer’s head. You are not alone in your thirst for justice, Master Hark. Fear not.’

‘The Queen?’ Merion echoed.

Castor sipped his crimson brandy and hummed. ‘Indeed. The murder of a Prime Lord is no small matter. A thousand flowers were laid at the Sage Steps, did you know? A silence was held in the Five Parks. Both London and the Empire have mourned your father this past month.’