Bloodfeud (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 3) (25 page)

A voice broke his reverie.

‘They should put you in a circus.
The Amazing Frozen Boy
.’

‘They tried that. It didn’t work out too well,’ said Merion, dragging his glazed eyes from the river and up to his aunt.

Lilain shrugged and set herself down beside him without bothering to wipe the seat. She seemed to enjoy the rain.

‘What’ve you learnt?’ she asked, staring out at the riverbank and the passing ships, spewing smog from their funnels.

‘Pardon?’

‘One of my tutors, Lerbersson, a Nord gentlemen with the softest voice you’ve ever heard. He always used to ask me that when he caught me staring off into nothin’. He would slam his ruler down on the desk.’ She slapped her britches for good measure. ‘Then he’d say to me, “Lady Hark, what have you learnt? You must have been thinking about something more important than this lesson. Tell me what you’ve learnt!” Crotchety ole mule, but a fine letter. So, what have you learnt?’

‘That it’s hard being a traitor,’ said Merion. At first he spoke slowly and quietly, but then his words ran away with him. ‘This is the first moment in weeks where I’ve been able to sit and just… be. To truly put my thoughts in order. I keep forgetting I’m in London, for Almighty’s sake. I am home, as I promised myself, and yet all I can think about is Dizali swinging from a rope. That moment grows more golden every day. The moment I end this and go back to simply living. Back to a life where I can sit here and watch the ships and feed a duck, and not worry about being strangled to death by Calidae Serped or a Brother.’

She must have seen his hand rise to his throat. ‘Is that what happened with Gavisham?’

Merion nodded. ‘I would have died had it not been for her. It still bothers me.’

‘Well, it would.’ Aunt Lilain ruminated for a while, nodding slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I used to go out on the east road out of Fell Falls, remember it? I used to get up an hour before dawn, and go sit up on the ridge so I could watch the sun rise out the earth. Put my back to the town and pretend I was the last soul on a scorched Earth. I never took any water, or supplies. Not even a gun. Just my mind and thoughts for company. Makes you want to sort through them, weigh everything up, put it all in perspective. Solitude. It’s as good for our thoughts as sleep is for bodies. And by the looks of you, I’d say you needed this. That’s why we left you alone. I understand time’s an evil mistress and we’re not on her good side, but you don’t have to fight the world all at once, Merion.’

‘It’s not the whole world. Just Dizali.’

Lilain chuckled. ‘I know you, Nephew. If you wanted revenge on just one man, you’d have fried him the first day you set foot in London. But no, you develop this grand scheme to bring him to his knees in the most public of ways. Otherwise you wouldn’t be making your list of lords and ladies, now would you? You’re far from a fool, Merion, and that’s the truth. I’d wager that you know full well that anythin’ you do here, in this city, will echo around the world. And you want that. You want the whole world to see him fall, right?’

It was Merion’s turn to shrug. ‘You may have a point,’ he said, a smile sneaking over his face. He could always trust Aunt Lilain on matters of the mind.

‘I get it,’ said Lilain. ‘You’re following in your father’s footsteps. I saw the glint in your eye when Dower spilled the beans. You want to finish the work he started and see the whole Order down in the dust with Dizali. Lampreys against leeches. It’s the oldest battle there is. I don’t doubt you and your plan, Merion, and I have faith you can do this, but I have to say this, otherwise I wouldn’t be fit to call myself an aunt. If you stretch yourself too far, you’ll get yourself killed. Or one of us, for that matter. That ain’t high on my list of plans.’

Merion thumbed a rebel raindrop from his chin. ‘How did you get so wise, Aunt?’

‘I do my best.’ She nodded, and they fell into silence. She had spoken, and Merion would listen.

‘Have you missed it?’ asked Merion, once an iron-plated Queen’s cruiser had drifted past, its brass clockwork cannons glistening. Off to the Obsidian Sea, most likely. It reminded him of a similar ship he had felt beneath his feet, not so long ago.

Lilain snorted. ‘Not one bit. Give me the wide open nothing any day. It’s too close and crowded here. Far too vertical for my liking. I appreciate it, but I don’t enjoy it.’

‘So you won’t be staying when all of this is done?’

Lilain shook her head. ‘I ain’t a clue, but something tells me wherever I’ll be, it’ll be with Lurker.’

‘With Lurker?’ Merion echoed, watching her from the corner of his eye. He had seen their sly looks at each other, the brief touching of hands.

‘Yes, Lurker.’

‘Then I was right, that night in Yara’s tent.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I learnt something else, too.’ Merion nudged her with an elbow.

‘What’s that?’

‘That if I am to fight the whole world, there isn’t another strange gaggle of people I would rather fight it with. I’m glad you came looking for me.’

‘Oh,’ said Lilain, ‘I know.’

*

‘You’re telling me whenever my father said he was overseeing the grounds, he was in his cavern, cooking up shades?’ said Merion. He was tense in the jaw. The perfection of his father’s secret still niggled at him.

‘Or practising,’ said Gunderton. Together, they negotiated a deep puddle and hopped back onto the pavement. The rain was a fine thing indeed; the sky above them a murky black, delivering a fresh torrent upon London. Anyone still mad enough to be out in the downpour was running for their lives. Nobody spared the men a glance. Just another couple of poor souls, weathering the storm.

‘So that’s why you always kept me inside.’

‘And I remember you screaming about it.’

Merion blew rainwater from his lips. ‘Well, perhaps if there had been a bit more honesty in the Hark household, I might have understood.’

Gunderton chuckled, disarming Merion’s jab. The boy was making a habit of exercising his wit; fair repayment for all the secrets he had been refused. At first, the jibes had a sharp edge to them. Now they were blunt as a hammer, just jokes to keep the conversation rolling.

Gunderton had crawled further out of his shell with each passing day. He and Lurker had grown some sort of rapport, no doubt based on a mutual love of whisky and tobacco, guns and magick. Hardship too, perhaps. They had both seen war. Old soldiers always talked the lowest and the longest.

Merion had warmed to him as well, despite who and what he was, and the lingering ghost of Gavisham. When Gunderton could get away from Lilain’s eager letter-chat, he had shown Merion some bloodcraft, sharpening the boy’s rudimentary skills. They had even squeezed in a little training, when the gaslights were low and the city slumbered. He still thought the old butler strange, but that was nothing more than a product of his years. Merion wondered what it meant to be a Brother, and how he would have turned out had he been born to a different bloodline of leeches. It was a disturbing thought; how the ingredients of time and circumstance can forge a man and how powerless a soul can be against them.

‘Are we close?’ Merion asked again.

‘A mile or so.’

‘You said that a mile ago.’

‘It’s been a while since I’ve been here.’

Merion nodded, looking around at a part of London he had never seen before. The streets were narrower than ever here, winding in all directions like a dilapidated maze.

After a dozen more bends, they came to a corner where a red-fronted shop squatted, shiny in the wet. The paint around its doorway and porthole windows was flaking away, revealing a previous life when it had once been green. Judging by the wrought-iron symbol of an open book hanging over the doorway, and the piles of spines and loose pages that pressed up against the windows, it looked to be a bookshop. A dim light shone from inside.

Gunderton rubbed his hands. ‘This is it.’

A bell sang as they opened the skinny door. Merion wiggled a wet finger in his ear as he wiped his boots on the mat.

A man strode out of a doorway behind the counter and bowed. He was in his later years, with shorn salt and pepper hair. He had a square jaw, and his nose was crooked. By the shape of him under his yellow cloth shirt, Merion guessed the man might have been a boxer in his younger days, or at least one for heavy labour.

The interior of the shop looked as though it had been consumed by some unstoppable fungus made of books. The blasted things were everywhere: the counter-top balanced on neat pillars of them; the chairs and tables were swamped; shelves bent with their weight; every gap and nook on offer had been filled with paper and spine. Merion wondered how on earth the man ever found anything.

‘A rainy afternoon to you,’ greeted the man, voice cracking at the edges, fond of the pipe.

‘And to you, Mr Spirn,’ said Gunderton, approaching the counter. He fished the dark scales from his eyes and blinked the sting away.

The man clicked a finger. ‘Ah! Errant. One of the Fifth, right?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘In that case, welcome back! And a new acolyte, I see?’

‘Merion Harlequin.’

Spirn wrinkled his nose. ‘Sounds high-born.’

Merion was about to tell him he was mistaken, but Gunderton answered for him. ‘Fear not, Spirn. Bastard son of some minor lord, he is.’

Spirn reached over the countertop to thwack Gunderton on the arm. ‘Still going strong, I see!’

Gunderton nodded and flashed a smile. ‘Indeed I am, though running low on crimson.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Spirn sighed as he tossed a key to Merion and waggled his finger at the door. Merion locked it.

Spirn spread his hands over the counter. ‘Want to know what I got? Or just want to name ‘em and see?’

Gunderton made a show of pondering, even though they had discussed Merion’s needs at length. ‘Here’s one right off the top of the list. Fae.’

Spirn guffawed at that. ‘I should be so lucky.’

Merion tried not to look too disappointed. The bulk of his plan rested on that shade. ‘Nimerigar then?’ he asked with hope in his voice.

‘I don’t know if I have that…’ Spirn’s voice trailed off as he browsed his shelves, humming. His fingers went to work over the weathered spines, as if each dog-ear and rumple was a tiny signpost to where he was headed.

Spirn took his merry time searching. Merion held his breath.

‘You know what? You’re in luck!’ The letter plucked a small, fat book from the squeeze of its neighbours and placed it on the counter. ‘Last one in the city, I’d wager.’

‘What about electric eel?’ the boy asked.

‘That I have!’ Spirn fetched a small stepladder from an alcove and propped it against a nearby shelf. Up and up his hands spidered, until they came to rest on a tome with a burgundy cover. He slid it from its pile with care and laid it next to the other book. Merion stepped forward, curious as any young man would be.

The vials sat in expertly carved grooves in the pages of the books. Spirn slid the eel shade free and admired its clarity in the light. ‘It’s been steeped as well, like all my shades.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Merion, wondering what that meant.

‘Purity, Merion,’ explained Gunderton.

‘Ah.’

‘Always got to keep them learning.’ Spirn chuckled, and snapped a finger again. ‘That’s how you acolytes stay alive.’

Merion was confused, but smiled nonetheless.

‘What’ll be next?’

‘We’ll need some more carp. The last lot was far from quality,’ said Gunderton, with a sideways look at Merion. The boy just rolled his eyes. His letting of the carp hadn’t turned out so well. He had mistaken its swim bladder for its liver. Fortunately, he hadn’t tried to rush it yet. It was probably still in the bin in Gunderton’s lair.

Spirn tapped his nose. ‘Now I got something you’d like. Two in stock, as it happens. A shade-blend of carp and anglerfish.’

‘Interesting.’ Gunderton rubbed his beard.

‘What’s an anglerfish?’ said Merion. Lilain hadn’t filled him in on that particular shade.

‘Let’s you see in the dark,’ said Gunderton.

Spirn nodded. ‘Makes your eyes glow, too. I’ve heard it’s fun.’

The Brother grunted. ‘Oddly ironic, when you want it for stealth.’

‘We’ll take one,’ said Merion, receiving another sideways look from Gunderton. He realised he had spoken out of turn, thanks to his eagerness. The shade was perfect for what he had up his sleeve. ‘Won’t we?’

Gunderton just tutted. ‘Anything for silence and obedience?’

Spirn frowned. ‘Fresh out.’

The man proceeded to take a jaunt around the shop, plucking two books from beneath a pile of old, beaten-up atlases. It was a miracle how he found them so quickly. Merion longed to know the secret.

‘Two blends!’

‘What are we up to?’ Gunderton asked.

‘Five florins and two shillings.’

‘Three more shades.’ The Brother counted the coins in his pocket. ‘Mantis shrimp? Leech?’

‘Good choices. Only got one leech—’

‘That’ll be fine,’ said Gunderton.

‘—but one mantis shrimp.’

‘Pick another, Merion.’

Spirn cleared his throat. ‘Tell you what, pick two more. I’ll do you a bit of a deal, seeing as you’re getting so many. Anything for a Brother.’