Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (40 page)

A bolt of panic thrust up from James’s gut. For the first time since the traveller had laid hands on him, the itch in his legs was gone.

No! Malverston knows!

Beth seemed to sense his thoughts and shook her head. “They don’t suspect. It’s not because of you.” She choked. “It’s because of me.”

“Because of what you did at the banquet?”

She nodded miserably. “He showed up himself after they had taken Mel away, said I’d showed him up for the last time. Can’t tolerate some slut facing up to him—even if I am his favourite.” She rubbed her eyes with a venomous scowl and slouched back towards him, burying her head in his chest. “He’s breaking me in, James. I have to be a good girl, or they’ll do the same to her as they did to me. I’m his goons’ plaything until George is happy the debt is paid.”

James swallowed. His throat cracked like a rifle shot. He needed several attempts before he could get a single word out. “I’m sorry.” Then, before he could hesitate, he muttered, “But I can’t stay. I have to go. There’s something I have to do. Something important.”

She met his gaze and he saw something he had never expected to see from her: plain, unveiled hurt, childish and raw. “What?” she said.

“I’ll be back soon.”

“James …”

“The others won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You have no idea,” she said, shaking her head. “No idea what I am to these men. I’m less than a whore, a plaything. I’m meat, a punching bag, one rung below the mangy dog they all kick under the table. You … you’re going to leave me with them.” Suddenly the childish pain was ripped back under the hardened callous of her sombre gaze, and she nodded as though understanding him anew. “Fine.”

James took hold of her shoulders again and held fast even when she tried to shake him off. “Listen—
listen!
” He placed his forehead on hers and whispered, “I
will
be back, as soon as I can. And I don’t care if I have to tear up every treaty we have, we’re going to get her back.” Then, his voice shaking with red nauseating fury, he said, “And you … they’re never going to bother you again. I promise.”

Hating himself a little more every second, he untangled himself from her and stepped back. “As soon as it’s done.”

“What?” Her stare was like a cold lance slicing his cheeks. “What could be so important?”

Sinking in his heart. Another swell of self-hatred. “You wouldn’t understand.”

She looked at him a long time and nodded, but a small part of the twinkle in her eye had faded, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever see it again. “Okay,” she said. “Go.”

He stepped back out of the alley, backing away so as to keep her in his sight just a little while longer. “Be safe. Stay with the others.” He tried a smile and his chapped lips split, bleeding bitter blood. “We will get her back, Beth.”

Then he stepped around the corner before he could become trapped there in front of her. But the image of her that remained scarred on his retinas wasn’t one he had hoped for: a young woman, alone in a dark alley, lost in a strange place, looking more alone than ever.

Billy smelled soil, wet and earth-rich, thick like soup, filling her nostrils. She opened her eyes and stared up at a sky the colour of naked granite, lifeless and bleak. It was a struggle to move, but she hauled herself onto her haunches and shook a harsh ringing from her ears.

A moment ago she had been standing in the ringstones of Stonehenge with the Panda Man standing over her. Now, she was alone and the flat, endless plains of Salisbury were gone, replaced by woodland that even at a glance seemed ancient, even more so than those hallowed ringstones. Here the air was dense with stories, hidden amidst the amorphous growths of bark.

She was very far from Daddy now. She could feel it.

And that itch in her legs was full awake, radiating its will up her body in brilliant, irresistible pulses. She gave in to it, resigned to whatever she had been sent to do, allowing her limbs to be pulled about by the alien power inside her.

All around were Echoes of things past, moving indistinct and blurred in her peripheral vision, replaying snippets of long-forgotten lives over and over. She ignored them, placing one foot in front of the other, keeping Daddy’s face centred in her mind’s eye.

Just do what the Panda Man said
.
Then me and Daddy will be together. Just us, all safe and alone. No monsters, so sickness, no secret mission. Just us
.

I get to go home as soon as this is done. He promised.

The old forest passed by, the mulch of eons running underfoot, and in time she came to the treeline. Beyond was a landscape as barren and grey as the overcast sky, cast iron in tone and stripped of all vitality by ceaseless whistling gales. Twisted heathland, muddy bogs, black lakes, foggy moors and looming cragged mountains met her gaze, stretching away to where land met sky, with no change in sight.

She paused a while to take it all in, knowing that somewhere out there was what had been calling her since she had left the farm and Ma’s graveside. That had been only a few days ago, but it could have been a dozen lifetimes.

“I’m coming, Daddy,” she said.

She was about to place her next step when total blackness blotted out the sky, and scratching canvas enveloped her head. Rough hands capped by long, tapered fingers gripped her own, and pinned her arms behind her back. Even through the bag was over her head, she smelled the rank odour of rotten breath seeping in, gouging at the back of her throat.

“Look at what we have here,” said a high-pitched, chilling voice. It seemed to alight on her body like treacle, dripping off her shoulders, burning like acid. “A wanderer, all alone in the woods. We can’t have her getting lost, now, can we, lads?”

A murmur of amused agreement rang out from all around, and suddenly Billy realised that she was surrounded by Bad Men, laughing and treading closer.

No! No, I have to go!

The itch in her legs burned impotently, and she made to run on its direction before she was lifted into the air and her shins pinwheeled uselessly.

I can’t stop. I have to go. I have a job to do.

DADDY NEEDS ME!

As that thought ran through her head, a snippet of Daddy’s face flashed up as bright as the sun. His skin was the colour of moss, his lips chapped and torn to shreds, his eyes a pair of flint shards. His breathing was pitiful, little more than a shudder.

Hurry
, the Panda Man’s voice uttered from somewhere far away, yet right beside her.

Her heart hammered. Not only because of that image or the Panda Man’s voice. It was the other voice, the one that had spoken from the other side of the bag on her head.

She had heard that voice before, the night Grandpa had gone away forever. It was the other voice—the one who had chased them through the woods in the night, and then taken Grandpa away from her. The voice of the monster.

She kicked and screamed too late, for her hands were already being bound, and her back pressed firm against the feverish heat of the monster’s chest.

“Welcome to Radden, little girl,” he breathed.

Billy whimpered as men laughed and snorted all around her in the pitch darkness, and she was carried away in the monster’s grasp. “No,” she whispered.

“I should have listened to Dad,” Robert said to the wind.

Dad had always told him to stay away from women.

New Canterbury, trussed up and boarded with myriad barricades, could have been any one of countless abandoned settlements. Any sign of the sparkling glory it had displayed by night under Alexander’s reign had long passed.

He hadn’t been up to this. He had given it everything he had, but he wasn’t cut out for leadership. Too much politics, too much hand-holding. His place was in the field, where surviving was the task at hand, not keeping good face with the locals.

He shifted uncomfortably, pulling at the tightness of the starched shirt straining across his chest. The smell of mothballs filled his nose, wafting up from the lapels of an ancient tuxedo that was redolent of mould and decay. Below, in the lee of the hill overlooking the northern spur of the River Stour, preparations were being made.

Ignoring the sheer blind absurdity of what they were doing, droves of men and women flitted back and forth from their homes, bringing all manner of hoarded Old World knick-knacks and long-forgotten odds and ends. A mottled red carpet had been laid out on the grass, populated by rickety chairs and stools from the cathedral. From God-only-knew-where a group of struggling young men had brought out a white archway woven from cheap lengths of balsa wood and placed it at the head of the procession. All around, people were placing bouquets of wild flowers and tied bunches of grasses, even bringing the potted plants from home to fill the empty spaces.

Agatha’s crooked form staggered back and forth upon a small, raised plinth before the arch. She had arrived only half an hour before, but upon being told of the coming ceremony, she had leapt from her wagon and demanded to perform the union. Robert didn’t know if she even recognised him or Sarah, yet Agatha had insisted, pining over their youth, clearly lost to some long-distant past.

Now she was dressed in her long, white elder’s shawl, sporting a vicar’s collar to boot. In her hands was the King James Bible from which she had given service in the cathedral for as long as he could remember. As he watched, she muttered her lines in preparation, her eyes milky and faded.

She had been a great woman once, a leader of Alexander’s original band. And this tiny old crone was all that remained of her. He would have given anything to have her back at the height of her power, when the End had been fresh in people’s minds, and the fires of hope burned bright in the hearts of a few.

Things hadn’t seemed so bleak, even when life itself had been tougher. Things had simply seemed more possible back then.

Not like now. The city had fared poorly under his lead. But how would the city cope without even him? If he was really going to go gallivanting into the unknown, he had to know they would stand if the attacks started again.

A trail of people on horseback was approaching from London, weighed down by enough ordnance to turn a small city to cinders. Norman’s troops, come for their trail-hunter. Come for him.

Still, his mind remained on his leaving.

This turmoil, however, wasn’t one born of doubt, but of dread. Because he now knew Sarah would come forth if he left. She would rise to take his place.

She wasn’t the same woman she had been. Infinitely stronger. She had put him to shame of late.

“Should’ve beaten it into me a little more, Dad,” he said, turning his eyes on the cloudless sky. “With a big fucking stick.”

Lucian waited for Max to duck his head back into the tent and nod the all clear before turning to the others. A group of around a dozen had been brought into the fold, a dozen out of legion. But he couldn’t afford to trust the majority. He’d had to use his gut to choose only those he could be sure wouldn’t break under pressure, and those he could use. Most were moribund, fragile sticks after so long in the labour camp—only these precious few had kept strong through luck and bargaining and tooth-and-claw.

He had ended up with a troop of the biggest, ugliest and meanest men he’d ever seen. In any other circumstance, he would have given them a wide berth. If these men had come loping into New Canterbury one evening, he would have shot them all on sight.

But they were a means to an end. And he had every intention of meeting that end.

“Now’s the time to walk if you have doubt,” he said. “We’re all screwed either way, but if we fail it’ll be a bullet in the ear before sundown. So walk now if you’re not itching for it, because you’ll just slow us down.”

He waited. Nobody moved an inch.

“Fine.” He turned to Max. “What do we have?”

“Few knives, hammers, and suchlike. And this.” He pulled a single stunted pistol from the inner folds of his myriad sweaters, the barrel spotted with rust, puny and pathetic in his dinner-plate-sized hands. “Might as well throw it.” He looked at it in disgust. “Might get one shot off, if it doesn’t explode. I wouldn’t dream of holding out for a second.”

“Keep it.” He turned to the others. “We’ll make do. That means getting close. You’ve all seen the cliffs. We’re going to have to get up there and into that tent on the top without being seen. And once we’re in—”

A crack nearby sent them all ducking back into the masses of spent ammunition and twisted scrap yet to be smelted, holding their breath. They had each slipped away from work in turn, and it was only a matter of time before they were missed. If they were found, it was all over.

Lucian ignored the stink of festering sweat and shit wafting up from his own body, and waited until he was sure the noise had been innocuous. He was about to signal them to emerge from hiding when a ruckus kicked up outside, passing the other side of the tent—several sets of footsteps, both regular and staggered; the sick laughter of little boys torching ants with a magnifying glass and the unmistakable cries of a child.