'I don't know if this boy is fearless or just plain mad. Then again, I'm not too used to nine-year-old human young. I told him what I was and he just nodded as if I had told him the day of the week. He hasn't stopped asking questions since I croaked a few days ago. Most humans just scream or faint. This one seems utterly delighted to have a faerie under his bed.
Maybe he is mad. Who cares? I think I'm finally safe.'
15th May, 1867
'Almighty's balls, boy. Not in the bloody toolbox! Spew somewhere else, you idiot! Bloody hell! It's on the spanners and everything,' yelled Master Bowder, the flushed and balding man screaming from the floor, body half-swallowed under a piece of machinery that looked so complex, it gave Juspin a headache just looking at it.
'Sorry,' he said, half-mumbling as he wiped his mouth. Now that the ship had come to a halt, the pitching and yawing was even worse. It was playing havoc with his stomach.
'I'm starting to wonder why I listened to your grandmother, and apprenticed you. If she hadn't helped raise my ma, then...' The end of Master Bowder's sentence was a violent shaking of his fists, greasy knuckles and all.
The engineer shimmied out from under the machine and sighed at his soiled tools. 'Bloody hell!' he spat.
Juspin had decided the Iron Ocean did not like him. Ever since he had been manhandled on board the Amitie in Plymouth, the waves had rolled and the wind had howled. The angry sky hadn't spared a scrap of sunlight, and the sea had battered the prow and flanks of the steamship day and night.
It must have despised him almost as much as his master at that very moment. Juspin shuffled awkwardly and made a show of squinting at the cogs and tubes and greasy cogs. 'So ... what's wrong with it?' he asked, quietly.
'Needs a whole new set of gears is what's wrong with it, lad,' huffed Bowder. The man was interminably irritable. 'Got spares, luck has it, but not the bolts. They're in the for'ard hold, right in the bow. Square-headed, 'bout yay long.'
Juspin nodded, but his legs didn't move. Bowder looked him up and down as he would one of his great steam engines, as if to check to see if he was still functional. 'Well, lad, get to it!' he bellowed, panicking Juspin into flight.
The boy skidded through the doorway of the engine room and trotted down the hallway, trying desperately to dig out his internal map of the ship. Four days, and already he was expected to know where everything was on this lurching, dripping ship. A wave of nausea rose and fell, and Juspin swallowed hard as he pressed on, mumbling directions to himself and worrying his carrot-hue hair with nervous fingers. He was desperate not to mess this task up. Just one would be nice.
After another few anxious minutes of jogging through dark corridors, sparsely lit by twitching lanterns, he finally came to a heavy door secured by a wheel. Juspin almost winded himself trying to loosen it, but finally, with a horrendous screech, it came free and spun for him.
The hold was darker than the corridors. In a stroke of brilliance, Juspin fetched a lantern from its hook and thrust it into the shadows. A dozen boxes wrapped in brown sheets greeted him, nothing more. The floor was thick with grime and crusted salt. Juspin held his breath as he wandered deeper into the hold, though he knew not exactly why. More crates, more boxes, more brown sheets. Juspin was starting to wonder whether he had made a wrong turn when he saw the curve of the bulkhead in front of him, and heard the dull crashing of the waves over the drone of the powerful engines. Those confusing bloody engines.
Where the deck met the bulkhead, he saw a little tower of small boxes stacked against crates bursting with cogs and sprockets and all manner of spare parts. Juspin punched the air and ran to the boxes.
The lantern was put on the deck while Juspin delved into the first few boxes. The first was full of washers, the second screws. The third, to his delight, were the bolts Master Bowder had described: square-headed and the length of his hand.
He did not notice the pain at first, only a cold pinch in the back of his legs, just above his ankle. Then he felt the blood seeping into his borrowed, oversized boots, and the pain began to surge. Fae steel cuts deep. With a squeal, Juspin collapsed to the floor and clutched at his leg. His foot flapped uselessly in the air. Blood dripped down his trousers.
'What in—?' Juspin gasped.
A cold needle of black steel rested on his forehead, and he fell instantly still. The lad blinked furiously. To his tear-stung eyes, it looked as though a strange white creature with black armour and crystal wings stood by his head, staring down at him with a terrifyingly confident smirk.
'We've caught a rat, Kawn,' said the creature, in the Queen's common. Juspin began to howl again, but the steel tapped him sharply. 'Easy now, rat.'
Another creature loomed out of the shadows, and poked something bloody at his ribs. Juspin whined. 'And what are we going to do with this rat, Wit?'
'Can't have this caelk squeaking, can we?' said the Wit, cocking his head to the side to get a better view of his prey, sweating profusely as it was, its tears mingled with its sweat.
'Take him below for the Fingers. See if he gives any sport. If not, throw him in the bilge,' the Wit ordered, calm and cold as an iceberg. It was then that he lent forward, and offered the poor boy a consoling shrug. 'Sorry, my lad. Looks like you boarded the wrong ship,' he said.
As the other faerie clicked his fingers, just before the bag was thrust onto his head, Juspin found himself wholeheartedly agreeing with the murderous little beast.
*
'And the two onions, that'll be fine,' Lilain smiled and pointed at the last surviving onions on the market stall. The deliveries had been sparse. Trouble on the line, they said. Though that didn't do much to stop the shoving and yelling earlier that day.
'No fish today, ma'am? Got sardines in.'
Lilain's ears pricked up. 'Fresh?'
'No ma'am, in brine.'
Lilain frowned. 'Spoils the meat,' she said.
'Yes ma'am.'
Lilain paid and cast around for her next objective: the sheriff's office, to see if there had been word of that damned Merion. The boy would not have gone far. He must be hiding in the town somewhere. Lilain couldn't wait to give him a hiding when she saw him. She didn't trust herself to dally with the other thoughts, the dark alternatives. Lilain put a little more kick in her urgent stride, eager to weave a little faster through the crowds. The streets were choked and excitable. Lilain slowed a little, watching how the tide of townspeople moved against her, surging slowly yet inexorably towards the railway line.
Clutching her bag of vegetables and dried meats close to her chest, Lilain decided to follow the flow, and let herself join the rank and file of the curious crowds. Together they kept moving until they reached the platform, and found it already awash with crowds and clumps of people. Green and yellow pennants fluttered here and there, twitching with anticipation. Lilain bent her ear to some of the surrounding gossip, and soon found herself frowning.
'Lord Serped and his whole family!'
'Come to sort this wraith nonsense out, I hear.'
'For once and for all.'
'I'll drink to that.'
'I'll believe it when I see it,' said the last, a sullen-looking worker.
Lilain found herself slowing to a crawl, and letting the others nudge and brush past. There she waited. Slowly but confidently, the whispers began to grow and grow. Lilain stood on her tiptoes to see, but the press on the platform was too thick. As the thick-knitted crowd on the platform began to cheer, others surged forwards to catch a glimpse. Whether they were there to grin or to glower, everybody wanted to see the Serpeds up close. Even Lilain crept forward, partly because it was futile to push against the flow of the crowd. Soon enough, she glimpsed a pale hand waving above the crowds, stiff and stoic. Lilain raised herself on tiptoes to drink it all in.
Lord Serped stood tall in his open-top carriage, decked with silver and painted coat of arms: a green wyrm, coiled casually around a silver spinning-top. The ladies Serped sat upright and prim on either side of their lord and master, surveying the dusty crowds with carefully drawn smiles. The mother, Ferida, and her daughter, Calidae, were copies, mere decades apart.
Their clothes were fine enough to draw some grumbles from a scattering of workers in the crowd. The lordsguards, trotting proudly on their horses and decked out in black cloth and mail, kept a watchful eye for any trouble. Sheriffsmen walked between the gaps in the crowd, their narrowed eyes vigilant.
Lilain sneered. Pomp and ceremony, purely for the inflation of the bastard's ego, she thought to herself. It was then that she caught it; the space between the elbows and waving arms, forging a clear channel for her to stare down, straight into Castor Serped's eyes. Lilain froze for the briefest moments, and then made sure to glare right back as his gaze locked on hers. For all the shortness of the moment, the space in the crowd, enough silent words were said. Then Serped's eyes were lost in the throng of hands and faces, and Lilain turned away, to glare at the dust instead. As she waded her way out of the crowd, she could not help but shiver at the chill that ran down her spine. The boiling sunshine failed to warm her.