Free Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) by Ben Galley Page A

Lilain said.
    Merion looked around and decided that his aunt was a liar. In the street ahead, tucked into an alleyway, he could see a man urinating on his own boots. ‘Doesn’t look too friendly to me,’ he muttered.
    ‘You’ll see,’ Lilain winked. The gesture reminded him of the old woman on the barge, and he wondered if his aunt was just as crazy as she had been. ‘Now, where are my manners?’ she asked herself, and all of a sudden she was transformed into a different person. She stood straighter, taller, and her hands came to rest gently in front of her. She clasped her fingers and curtseyed, looking for all the world as though she had just entered the dining hall of Humming Tower. ‘My nephew,’ she said. ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’
    Merion was desperately thankful for the touch of refinement. Perhaps his aunt had been joking all along. ‘Tonmerion Harlequin Hark of Harker Sheer, at your service,’ Merion replied, bowing low. Always lower for family, no matter how distant.
    His aunt curtseyed again, and introduced herself. ‘Lady Lilain Hark of Fell Falls, formerly Lilain Rennevie, socialite, citizen, crack-shot, and town undertak– Oh, hah! I can’t do it! Can’t stand all that pomp and ceremony, dearie me. Left all that behind long ago. Still got it though, eh?’ she snorted, her veneer crumbling to ash in front of Merion’s eyes. As she chuckled away, he began to boil.
    ‘Anyway, Tonmerion, that reminds me. Before we get you settled in and talk about anything else, I need your help. I’ve got a body that came in just this afternoon. The workers have already gone to the saloons, so it’s just me. And dear me if he isn’t a big fella. You look like a strong young lad—fancy giving your aunt a hand?’ Lilain asked, cheerful as could be, as though she had just asked him to help pick strawberries.
    Merion’s voice was flat, but nowhere near calm. ‘You want me to help you move a dead body.’ It wasn’t even a question, the way he said it. ‘A dead body.’
    ‘Yes, just over to the Runnels, back to the north.’ Lilain jabbed a thumb in the air and smiled again. ‘Fancy it?’
    Before he could answer she had already turned and begun to walk away. ‘It’s this way,’ she chimed, in that eroded Brit accent of hers.
    It was then that Merion chose to explode, with no warning or apology.
    ‘Now, just wait one … bloody … SECOND!’ He had not really meant to yell, but he had, and now it was too late to take it back. He dumped his rucksack in the dust and squared up to his aunt. He brandished a finger as if he meant to poke her with it, but he could not quite summon the tenacity. Instead he just vented, as he had wanted to since getting on that blasted locomotive in Boston.
    ‘In case Mr Witchazel has proven thoroughly incompetent, and you are not aware of what I have been through, the last three weeks of my life have been utter torture. My father— your brother—has been murdered. My home has been taken away from me. My life has been torn apart at the seams. I spent two weeks in a tiny cabin on a ship more rust than metal. I have thrown up more times than I can bear to count, and several of those times through my nose, which until then I hadn’t even thought possible. I have seen icebergs decorated with dead soldiers. I was battered senseless by the crowds of Boston and nearly bored to death by a lawyer’s assistant. And to top it all off, I have just spent the last week on a variety of trains travelling across this godforsaken country of yours, only to be made aware that my final destination, my last hope for refuge, is a meagre scratch in the middle of a desert, surrounded by creatures that want to tear me in half, and shamans who want to peel the skin off my bones at a hundred yards. So in summary, Aunt Lilain, please do excuse me if I don’t currently have the stomach for carrying dead bodies around in the dark! I would have thought my own aunt, my father’s sister,