Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (14 page)

“I’m not to be interrupted! What part of that didn’t you understand?” Malverston bellowed.

Renner gave a sarcastic bow. A little while ago that bow would have been deferential, but now it was openly derisory, bordering on condescension. Before her, yellow-skinned and weasel-faced, with a greasy cap of black hair and fingernails that could have peeled potatoes, was a true tyrant in the making.

Malverston, underneath his gluttony and pride and callousness, was just a scared and jealous little boy who never grew up, turned rotten by too many sneers and jibes. He would never match the cruelty that poured from Renner’s every pore. His lips pulled into a grin twice too large for his angular face. “The town is restless. Nobody went to the fields this morning. The women refuse to get water from the river. The mayoral stipend has vanished: most of the food, the tributes from the past month, the alcohol… most of the weapons.”

Malverston turned slowly on his heel. “
What
?”

The smile remained unmoved on Renner’s face. “As I said, mayor, you have a problem.”

“We.” Malverston strode towards him, towering a foot taller than Renner, outweighing him by at least a hundred and fifty pounds. “We have a problem.”

A renewed twinkle bolstered Renner’s implacable grin. “The town is gathering in the yard. They demand to see you.”

“Tell those good-for-nothing slackers to get back to work, or I’ll have their heads on spikes by the end of the day.”

He was halfway turned back to Beth when Renner said, “We’re having a bit of trouble getting them to leave. Some of them are armed.”

Malverston stilled. “Shoot the ones who dare carry a weapon outside my home. Scatter the rest.”

“I may have understated when I said they were adamant.”

Malverston rounded on him, the mirror raised threateningly. In it, Beth saw his bulging—but unmistakably terrified—eyes twice over, real and reflected. “Spit it out, you blasted weasel!”

“It’s McFadden. She’s riled them into a mob. They sprang your bitch’s mother and sister from the lock-up. They’ll overrun us if you don’t talk to them.” That grin stretched yet again, almost reaching the bottom of Renner’s ears. “The people demand it. My men and I will protect you, of course.”

Malverston didn’t move, his mouth working impotently. He let the mirror fall to the floor where it shattered and sent jagged shards skittering over the floorboards. “Fine,” he said. “If my loving people are so desperate to lay eyes on their devoted mayor, then I shall deliver.”

He whirled and strode to a cupboard beside the tray, pulling out something long and looping, his body blocking her view as he stuffed it into his jacket. When he turned around, he held a canvas bag and a cloak in his hands. “Come, dear, it’s time to face the people.”

Beth tried to spit blood in his face, but before she could purse her lips, the canvas bag had been thrust over her head. Her bindings fell away and she stumbled in darkness, half-dragged over the floorboards and down the stairs. As they walked, Malverston’s heavy breathing in her ear, she became aware of another sound, rising from the ringing silence: the combined rumble of dozens, maybe a hundred, voices.

Fresh air filtered in through the cloak Malverston had wrapped around her, then she was positioned by beefy hands. She sensed they stood on the porch from which Malverston was wont to give his speeches. Even without the power of sight, she sensed something amiss. The noise of the crowd was unmistakable, threaded with anger and turbulence.

“My people!” Malverston boomed, summoning his usual tone of doting magnanimity.

In response, the crowd roared, a poisonous sound that washed over Beth and pressed her backwards.

“Friends, this is unnecessary. Please, go back to your homes and chores. If we do not keep up our precious work ethic, our great and fair town will grow weak, and if we grow weak, I cannot protect you.”

The crowd gave another roar, no different to the first. Beth felt a surge of elation. Maybe they would rush the porch, cut him down where he stood.

Malverston’s voice came again, stentorian and livid. “I have spoken, you great load of ingrates! Get back to work before I have you all put in stocks. I’d sooner use you all as fertiliser than have you question me. I have made this town great. Me, I, myself. Without me, you’re nothing. You hear me? Without me, YOU’RE NOTHING!”

A lone, ancient voice cut through the crowd’s racket. “We’re not standing for your bile anymore, mayor. Too long have you starved us. We demand our daughter back.”

Old Alice McKinley. Once upon a time, this town had been fair under her hand, before Malverston had moved onto the scene. For years she had lived in shame, cowering in her home. No longer, it seemed.

“My property is not of your concern,” Malverston hissed.

“Your
property
is a young woman, one of us, our daughter and sister. Release her to us.”

Hands seized Beth roughly by the arms. Gritting her teeth against the pain as Malverston thrust his nails into the cuts on her shoulders, she stumbled over the porch. She sensed the crowd’s outrage close by; she could not have been more than a few feet away from them—from freedom. How she wanted to jerk free of his grip and dive. Would they get away in time before the shooting started?

No.

“You want your daughter, your precious sister? Here she is.”

Darkness gave way to blinding light, and Beth cowered as the sun bored into her eyes. Newquay’s Moon slowly resolved into view, a sprawling mass of cottages perched upon a hilltop by the sea, overlooking the peach fields. The bare-mud square before the hall heaved with farmhands, sons and daughters, smithies and tradesmen, milkmaids and cobblers. Their faces were etched with outrage, perched on the tips of their toes, ready to surge forth.

Malverston’s few dozen armed guards lining the porch and stationed atop the roof held them at bay, wielding guns that could have cut down every single one of them.

But they have guns too. Some of them are big. Maybe they can win this.

No. The guns amongst the crowd were far too few. The crowd’s mass was its strength; what would happen if they rushed the porch, Beth didn’t dare guess.

Alice McKinley, bent almost double by arthritis, stood a mere four feet below Beth. Beth’s sister Melanie stood beside her, marble-eyed and filthy, yelling along with the rest.

McKinley sprang her from Malverston. That’s all that matters. Even if he cuts off everything I have, at least Mel’s safe.

No sign of her mother. She would never have expected it—her mother had been a limp fish, silent and yielding, since the day Beth had been born. But still, not to see her now sent a tiny stake through her heart. Where had she gone? Probably retreated silently back home to bake bread and knit as she had always done with all the emotional and intellect of a goat.

“See your daughter, good people!” George boomed and whipped the cloak off Beth’s shoulders, leaving her half-naked upon the porch, her wounds exposed to the open air.

Horrified gasps rippled through the square, and suddenly the great writhing mass seemed dimmer, weakened by the sight of her.

“George… what have you done?” McKinley gasped.

“This is what happens when people fail to appreciate all the things I do for them. Know that the very same awaits any of you if you carry on with this nonsense.”

Beth cast a desperate look around, looking for some avenue of escape. The guards had their guns trained and ready, waiting for the word. Whether they still followed Malverston or not, they would be cut down along with him if the crowd surged. For now, they were bound to him; that meant he was still as dangerous as ever.

Renner stood close by, his expression stranded somewhere between puerile anger and intrigue. Out here in public, he was just another of Malverston’s men. He couldn’t make a move.

“Give her to us now!” McKinley cawed, banging her walking stick into the mud. “You give her to us now, or so help me God, we will tear the ragged lot of you limb from limb.”

Malverston laughed, an exaggerated, jeering roar. He pushed Beth a step away from him and opened his coat, pulling out a leather handle, from which a trail of whipcord snaked down onto the porch. “You want this one so bad? Good, that means you’ll understand what it means to defy me when you watch her get her just desserts.”

“Don’t you dare!” McKinley croaked. “I’ll kill you myself, George. I swear it.”

“Shut up, you stupid old bitch.” He turned to Beth. “Turn around, darling. Unless you want to lose an eye.”

Gritting her teeth, meeting Melanie’s gaze, Beth turned to face away from him, leaning against one of the balustrade posts.

Don’t move,
she tried to say with her gaze.
Do not move. No matter what happens to me, don’t risk yourself.

Melanie wasn’t like their mother. She was like Beth—maybe tougher. She hadn’t shed a single tear in all her nine years. But right now, her eyes were red and bloodshot, her mouth ajar. Her slingshot was gripped tight in her hand.

Whoom-psh!

Beth was sure the first strike cut to her spine. The pain was that bad, dwarfing the fire of the scalpel’s incisions. She managed not to scream, just.

The crowd gasped, straining against the porch. The line of guards tensed, their fingers trailing towards triggers.

The second strike was worse. This time Beth screamed. Then the third came, the fourth, the fifth. Each one seemed to carve entire chunks off her back, crossing over previous wounds. Each time she screamed. By the sixth, she fell to her hands and knees and wept. She cowered, but no more strikes came.

Malverston rounded on the square. “You think you can take us? Well come on, then! Either come up and do your worst, or crawl back to your holes and rot.”

For a moment it seemed the crowd really would charge, their bloodlust blinding them to their own imminent doom.

Then Beth was screaming. “NO! STAY BACK!” She shook her head. “He’ll kill you all.”

No movement, only bulging eyes. Just like that, she knew they were beaten. She had sealed her own fate.

Better that than we all die. Because that’s what would happen. Nobody would get out alive.

The crowd fractured, and people backed away. Rage crashed over the town hall like a maelstrom against a sea wall. But they retreated.

“Go,” Beth muttered to Melanie. “Stay out of this. Run.”

Mel didn’t seem to hear her, backing away, her hand shaking around her slingshot. She was lethal with that thing, could pick birds out of the sky from thirty feet. If she used it now, she could probably kill Malverston where he stood. But by then she would be shot to ribbons.

“I said run!” Beth screeched. “Get out of here.”

Mel finally glanced at her, and a tear dropped from her eye. She turned and ran after the crowd.

“Be strong, darling,” McKinley cried. “This isn’t over.”

“This is over,” Malverston growled. Then the bag was back on Beth’s head, and she was being dragged back inside.

Just north of Oxford, James burst into tears. Without warning a well of crushing sadness washed over him. He was resting the horse yet again, feeding a few of his pigeons in a fit of frustration. Presently he leaned on the saddle, breathing hard. A coldness had stolen into his chest since leaving Radden Moor, spreading from the secret place inside him that had driven him from home on feet that had moved of their own accord. The cold defied the summer air; a fizzing chill that didn’t belong.

It whispered things. Black things.

Right now, it transmitted something he knew was real: a scream. The sound of rushing air and something being struck. With each echoing slap, fresh pain shot through him. His eyes swam with tears. James grunted against the chill, forcing it away. After a moment it grew quiet, and he breathed heavily. Time slipped through his fingers.

He grunted when a figure slid into view; quite simply popped into being from nothing. A few days ago he would have thought himself crazy, that he had cracked under the strain. Now he knew the world he saw was just the tip of something much larger and stranger.

The figure was dressed in a black coat, pale-faced and tall. The man from the tunnels, back in Radden: the man with dark marks under his eyes. “Please, stop. You must come back. Come back now,” he said.

“You again.” James wiped his eyes, sniffing furiously. “Go away.”

Fol had abandoned the aloof and facetious air he’d flaunted when James had found him, deep underground in that strange place up north. Now he reached out to James, restless and maybe a little afraid. “I can’t stay long. I’m breaking the rules just by being here. You have to listen to me: you can’t do this.”

“Beth’s taken because of you! Stay away; go back to whatever faerie land you came from.”

“You don’t understand,” Fol uttered. “More rides on this than you can imagine. You have to come with me. If you don’t, all this is in danger. Everything that’s left, and so much more.”

James tightened his steed’s saddle, scattering his pigeons into the sky. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving her.”

“You can’t do this. You can’t.”

“Try to stop me. I know you can’t.”

He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. Just like he had known how to find Radden, and just like he knew he was special.

Whatever it was, he didn’t want it. It had only taken him away from Beth.

“You have such power,” Fol said as James swung into the saddle. Already he seemed a vague apparition, there and also not. “I can’t just let you go. You can save this world and so much more. But you also have the power to end it. We can’t risk it. You… you could bring it all crashing down if you don’t follow the path.”

James shook his head. He didn’t have time for mystical nonsense, no matter what hung in the balance. Not if this was the consequence.

“I don’t want to see you again,” he said.

Fol looked crestfallen. “Please, James. Please. I can’t do this again. If you go, we’ll lose everything.”

James paused for a moment, reins poised in his grip, and he met the eyes of the man… or whatever he was. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Fol rushed forwards. He was barely there at all now, diaphanous as netted curtains. “You feel it, don’t you? The Frost, inside you? James, if you let it, it’ll work through you. It lives on pain. You have to turn back. You can’t save her.”