Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) (55 page)

Six finally rolled around the clock and it found Merion back in his bedroom. Faerie or not, he had to wash and change. At least Rhin had the decency to keep his mouth shut. If it had not been for the nervous, intermittent buzzing of his wings, and the occasional rustle of paper, Merion would have thought himself alone.

Six-thirty came, and Merion had run out of things to wash and press and button and comb. He sat on the bed and twiddled his thumbs, all the while fighting a growing urge to say something, to have one last swing at knocking some sense into this moronic faerie.

A quarter to seven, said the clock, perched on the bedside table, its ticking as gelatinous as ever. Merion could not fight it any more. He stamped his foot and pushed himself off the bed.

‘I won’t let you do it. I can’t let you do it,’ Merion hissed.

‘I have to,’ Rhin sighed, after a moment.

‘You
don’t
have to. You can wait here until I secure us a ticket home, and then we’ll deal with those faeries together.’

There was a grunt and a curse as Rhin rolled out from under the bed. ‘If you had listened to a single story I’ve told you, you’d know there would be a long cut across your throat before you even caught a glimpse of the Wit or his Fingers! They make a living cutting throats, Merion. You make yours manhandling bodies onto carts. Your rushing won’t save you. Just trust me!’ he shouted.

‘This is not my living. It’s over the sea, back in London! You call yourself a friend? A friend would know how much I hate this place. A friend wouldn’t knowingly rob me of that. But I guess you are a thief, after all,’ Merion spat.

Rhin flickered with anger. ‘Serped has more gold than the desert has sand, Merion. You really think he’ll blame you? Cast you in irons? He’ll have another train in town by the weekend, and you and I will be as safe as houses.’

‘The town will bloody riot!’ Merion was struggling to keep his voice down. Lilain was only in the kitchen.

Rhin snorted. ‘Let it riot! What do you care?’

‘They could hurt Castor and Calidae. The Shohari could attack, and they’ll refuse to fight. Then where will we be?’

‘I don’t know, but we won’t have a band of murderous faeries on our tail.’

Merion tore at his hair in frustration and stamped his feet. ‘By the Almighty!’

Boots in the corridor once more. The door-handle rattling.

Lilain peered into every nook and cranny the room had to offer. ‘What is it this time?’

Merion paused his hopping to point at his foot. ‘Stubbed my toe.’

‘Are you ready?’ she asked. ‘It’s almost seven.’

Merion shot a glance under the bed before he answered. ‘I am,’ he replied. ‘Let me just comb my hair.’

Lilain wore a suspicious look, but she said nothing more than, ‘I’ll be on the porch.’

Merion nodded and let her leave. He ran his fingers through his hair before kicking the frame of the bed. ‘I have to go. You do this, and you’re dead to me.’

‘If I don’t do this, you’re dead anyway,’ Rhin grunted. ‘Simple as that.’

Rhin’s words put a chill in the boy’s chest. ‘So be it,’ Merion whispered. He did not need this thief of a faerie, this liar. He could fend for himself from now on. Merion had his rushing now, and Lurker, and Lilain. And the Serpeds, Almighty willing. He would be the master of his own destiny, not a selfish, twelve-inch tall beast with shit for brains.
To hell with him
, Merion told himself.

‘Tonmerion, the coach is here,’ came the shout from the porch.

The young Hark sucked in a deep breath. He took one last moment to pinch his collar tight and check his shoes before leaving Rhin to his madness.

The darkness, ushered in by the advancing clouds, was slowly sucking the light from the day. It was still hot but a breeze had come to stir the dust on the porch and to make the weathervanes rattle. Merion sniffed it cautiously, and was glad to find it was not as bitter as the last breeze he had tasted. The coach sat awkwardly in the middle of the street, one wheel halfway into a rut. A lordsguard sat on the cab, and the driver was waiting at the open door. Merion glimpsed shoes inside, and the telltale frills of evening wear. He would not be riding alone, it seemed.

Calidae appeared in the doorway. ‘It seems you owe me yet another favour, Master Hark. My father will have you to dinner,’ she said, as if it were casual chit-chat in the street. It was then that she turned her attention to Lilain, as if only just noticing her. ‘Madam Rennevie.’

‘Lady Serped,’ replied Lilain, without a single hint of a curtsey or bow. She did not bother to correct her on the title.

‘The pleasure is all mine,’ smiled Calidae. ‘Merion?’

Merion made for the steps, but Lilain caught him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered, before letting him go. Merion nodded, not quite sure what to make of that, and headed for the open door of the coach.

‘Your hair has grown far too long,’ said Calidae, as he sat down opposite her on the plush seats.

‘I heard it suited me,’ Merion could be heard saying, before the door cut him off and the coach stole him away to dinner.

*

‘Get up, Rhin,’ whispered grey lips. ‘Get up.’

If the sword hilt was a neck it would have been snapped long ago.

‘You can do this.’

Rhin counted down from ten, but seemed to get stuck around five when another wave of emotion washed over him. He was sweating in places he did not know he could sweat, and there was a dangerous tremble in his legs. The sort of emotion he had not felt in several hundred years. Not since his very first spear had been pressed into his soft hands. He swiped the sweat from his forehead. Now those hands were rough and weary, shaped from murder and battle. Was this murder, or battle, he was going to tonight? Both, he realised. They seem very similar when compared side by side. It was the battle for his own safety, to save the skin of his only friend. And yet it was the murder of that very same friendship. Rhin rocked back and forth as the guilt came again.

‘I owe him,’ Rhin snapped at himself, chiding the doubt away. ‘And that is why I have to save him.’

With a snap and crackle of his wings he was up and ducking under the frame of the bed. One hand was still firmly glued to his sword, the other to his chest, to marvel at how fast his heart was beating. He was halfway across the floor when he heard the almost imperceptible squeak of a door-handle.

*

Lilain stayed on the porch until the coach had disappeared behind a row of houses. After a hearty sigh, she went inside and closed the door with a click. The door to Merion’s room was shut, as always. An idea sprang up to bite her, and before she knew it, she was creeping across the hallway, pressing each heavy boot to the floorboards as if it were a feather being rested atop a house of cards. She narrowed her eyes as she reached for the door-handle. She knew what she was hoping for, what her wildest suspicions were taunting her with, but she also knew that she was most likely being absolutely delusional.

Her hands wrapped around the handle, silencing any rattle that would betray her. Gently she twisted it. She was almost at the full turn when the blasted thing squeaked at her. Not loud, just the coughing of a mouse, but still enough to make her curse. Lilain lunged through the door, springing into the middle of the room with her hands wide and eyes even wider. Nothing. Just as she had suspected. The room was dead and empty, just as Merion had left it.

Lilain rolled her own eyes at herself and shook her head. She was being fanciful, silly even, to suspect that Merion had been hiding something strange in his room all this time, something he’d brought from London that caused him to shout and argue…

‘Nonsense,’ Lilain told herself, before chuckling.

Rhin had to smirk at that, as he crept through the door which Lilain had conveniently opened for him. His boots tread softer than wind blowing. His armour was silent, its edges muffled with cloth and magick. His spell was strong. It always was at twilight; a time that human eyes have never grown used to, despite being born to it, all those thousands of years ago. Lilain was utterly unaware. He had to smirk. It kept his mouth from quivering.

THE HEIST

‘Another year, another birthday. Merion is thirteen now. It snowed today. Early, even for London. He played in the snow until his face turned blue. Karrigan had the servants give him some of his best brandy, and for a moment I thought a little differently of him. But then he bellowed at the boy for staying out too long in the cold. Made my blood boil. A son should never be scared of his father.’

6th June, 1867

I
t was cold under the charcoal clouds, far colder than a desert should rightfully be. The advancing storm had torn the heat from the day and used it selfishly, building and building itself until a colossal anvil lurked on the skyline, bound due south to come soak the scorched earth of Fell Falls. Rhin eyed its brutish, bubbling shape, clear as it was against moonlight and stars. Ash streaks of cloud spread their fingers across the sky, like furrows in a field. Or messengers of the approaching tempest, Rhin thought. If there was one thing Wyoming did well, it was a good storm.

He flicked a nail against the track once more and listened to it sing. He wished it would sing longer, anything to distract him from his impending task. A faerie, robbing a train. Even when size difference was taken out of the equation, the idea was still laughable. Hysterical, some might say, the stuff of fairy tales. Rhin rolled those words around in his head until they dragged him to his feet. His knees ached from kneeling for so long. His fingers ached from constant wringing.

‘Come on, Rehn’ar, you’ve stolen bigger hoards than this,’ Rhin chided himself, trying to work the knot out of his throat. ‘What’s the plan?’

Rhin’s week spent under Merion’s bed had not been spent in vain. Yes, there had been many long hours of staring at doors, sharpening swords and biting lips, but the rest had been spent poring over schematics and pictures and maps.

Faeries may have been of the old world, but their minds worked just like the scientists of the new. They can see patterns just as easily as you can say the word. They can absorb information like a sponge, and most importantly, if there is a weakness in something, a faerie will find it. Rhin had been studying maps and plans for centuries. A good soldier always does, after all. Those who do not quickly find themselves in a cage with a rabid mole, or dead.

It had taken him a week to find it, that little gem in the crown that was his scheme. The secret of mastering technology is not to examine the alignment of gears and valves, nor the ingenuity of its torque and thrust, nor its multi-chamber boilers and cow-catchers. All that is needed is to master the man who already masters it—in this case, the driver and his brakeman. All Rhin had to do was make them do his bidding. The edge of a sword and the sight of a faerie might just do it.
Humans. They were technology’s perpetual shackle.

Rhin sniffed, tasting the night air. There had been one other problem of course: boarding a train travelling at around forty miles an hour. One schematic had put the weight of the locomotive alone at almost one-hundred thousand pounds. Rhin weighed about two. Solving that had taken far less than a week.

Rhin spied the light on the horizon and felt his stomach begin to churn. The faerie took a breath and uttered his plan, blow by blow. Somehow it calmed him, set his mind straight and clear.

‘Last bend, five miles.’

Rhin drew his sword with a flourish and held the blade low.

‘Light the fire,’ he told himself.

His striking stone rasped across the blade and poured sparks on the kindling splayed across the tracks. He thanked the Roots and all their gods for keeping the storm at bay. Fire had been his only option, besides building a house on the rail.

His kindling was dry as a week-dead bone. It took to flame in seconds, and it was not long before Rhin had to step back and cover his face. He had built a fire that no train driver could miss. It had taken him an hour, but in the end he had covered the area of a sizeable dining table with sticks and brush and twigs. It was well and truly ablaze now. Rhin shimmered into nothing and stepped aside.