Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) Page 7

  “That it is.” Alex rode across the meadow, his white steed parting the tall wheat until he was abreast James’s chocolate colt. “There might be hope for us all yet.”

  “Even if we lost everything else?” James thought of the vast stores of books that lay in the libraries he loved so dearly, his childhood playgrounds; the vast treasure troves that lay locked amidst moss-covered underfunded public shacks.

  “It’s happened before,” Alex said. “Mankind has lost all sense of itself time and time again through the ages. But no matter how far we’re knocked down, we always find our feet again. It might take decades, centuries, maybe millennia, but we get there, if we have but the simplest tools.” He planted his hands on his hips and surveyed the alphabet emblazoned on the stone rock face. “Cornerstones like this, they’re all we ever really need.”

  James had heard it all before, enough times for it to roll off his own tongue and into the ears of countless young’uns who gathered to hear their oratories wherever they bunked during their travels. Yet to hear the words straight from Alex’s mouth never lost its charm, that unique spark that seemed forever undiminished. He really was a relic of an older world, one gone from this Earth. Oftentimes, to hear Alex speak was to be at peace.

  “You packed the capsule like I told you?”

  James nodded, kicking the dirt mound at his feet. “Just like all the others.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Do I look like an amateur?”

  Alex reached down from his mount and clapped him on the shoulder. “Only in a certain light.”

  “You can be a real arsehole when you put your mind to it.”

  “Practice, my friend. Practice.” His white mare wheeled around and headed back into the wheat stalks. “The sun’s getting high. Better move. We have a long day ahead.”

  James nodded, but his mind was elsewhere, on the steel box at his feet, covered in a mound of fresh dirt. Beside the alphabet was a sizable arrow pointing to the very spot where it lay buried, filled with a few vital trinkets; the OED, writing implements and carefully wrapped paper, maps marking the sites of bank vaults they had filled with literature, poetry, philosophy and scientific texts, and sealed their heavy doors with thick films of resin. Such tombs of wisdom would last for hundreds of years, at least long enough to endure the ravages of any new dark age that may befall the world, with any luck.

  Trails of breadcrumbs. That was the way Alex taught it. Start small, let those who sought the light come forth of their own accord.

  Their lives were secret lives, under the reign of barons and feudal chiefs and blood feuds, the cruel stirrings of the Old World’s remnants. After the End, the remaining populace had clumped into villages, clans, and gangs, and while many clung together in innocent hope of a peace, the strong had begun to prey upon the weak.

  They lived under the radar, moved in shadow, and spread their message in stuttered whispers.

  “James,” Alex called. He was already some distance away.

  James uttered a non-committal grunt, still eyeing his work. Alex was right; it was crooked. His lip curled at the thought of such shoddiness, and a moment of inadequacy brought with it a resentment he couldn’t quite place. Then he was seeing it with fresh eyes once more, and a more chipper air fell over him. Mounting his colt and parting the corn stalks in pursuit of his elder brother’s trail, he left the rock behind, forever marked by the words of man.

  *

  They rode hard for an hour or more, crossing endless wild meadows and young sapling forests that had once been cultivated farmland. The morning’s engraving hadn’t been their primary item of business today and had taken longer than James would have liked. Now they were in danger of being late.

  The sun was directly overhead when wisps of campfire smoke appeared on the horizon. The meadowland ahead buckled into a corrugation of rolling grassy hills, and upon the peak of one, where the grass was downtrodden in many places, the tops of chimneys and thatched roofs came into view. They slowed their pace and waved to a few field hands returning home from nearby orchards, nestled in the lee of a valley. Though they received welcoming smiles in return, James saw Alex shift his rifle around from his back and under the duffle swinging at his thigh.

  Reluctantly, he did the same, keeping one hand on the safety. Even among friends, firefights were still common over simple misunderstandings, even misrecognition. These were dark times.

  But as they rode higher and their view of Newquay’s Moon fleshed out into narrow alleys, rickety plank-walled huts, stables, taverns, and bunkhouses, James’s apprehension melted away. Excitement squirmed in his gut as they rode into the centre of the square before the water tower, where the populace was gathering. The day’s comings and goings stalled in a trice, and people came running. Any break in the monotony was welcome.

  Already, he was searching their muddied faces while Alex bade them all hearty greetings. He too smiled and waved, but at the same time he searched for one in particular. It had been hell being away from her so long. She had plagued his thoughts every minute of these long weeks.

  He spotted her off to the left, sandwiched between a pair of gruff, filthy farm hands, a head shorter than the rest of the crowd. One moment all he saw was the ash blond crown of curled locks, and then the crowd parted some, and there she was. Eyes like polished steel, pale skin in perpetual blush, a jaw too rugged to be wholly feminine, but hardy and well-formed.

  James almost forgot himself by waving to her. She was no classic beauty; her hair was matted from work and she was dressed in a muddied Old World tunic, the cheap product of factories that had once enslaved great droves in the East—clothes that had carpeted all the land after the End. But James was intoxicated. A beast once unknown to him clawed up from the depths of his subconscious, pulling a primal red blindness over his eyes. He wanted to touch her, feel that hair between his fingers, her skin on his.

  But at the same time, there was something else, altogether different. It was a stoicism, a kind of peace that nothing else could bring. It was the looks she gave him. Beth Tarbuck was one of those people who brightened up the world just by having been born into it. If she had been born in the Old World, she would have been the sole desire of boys for miles around—not for her looks, but for her smile, her laugh, and the look in her eyes that only few people can give, one that can make someone feel truly understood.

  She smiled for the merest moment, so fast James wondered if it had been his imagination, followed by a wink just as fast. Then her face was plain as the rest, filled with the same adulation as the rest of the crowd. Before he was aware of it, James had nickered his mount forward, drawn toward her. A wave of dizziness washed over him, the hand on his rifle forgotten. Hands were slapping against his legs and horse as people cried welcome, and he mumbled back, but in his mind, he was already over there with her, climbing down from the saddle and taking her in his arms. His chest felt swollen with something entirely unlike air; it was like soup, thick and expanding, filling him up. And elsewhere, other feelings stirred his flesh.

  “James,” Alex called. His voice cut through the haze, snapping the link between James and the golden tunnel separating him from Beth, and then he was blinking amidst a sea of faces, bombarded by a racket of voices. “Come on.” Alex had already turned away. He hadn’t noticed anything.

  James cleared his throat, making a renewed effort to smile and shake hands with the traders, aides, mothers, and scavengers below him. But his eyes were still drawn to the left, to the very same spot, furtively stealing glances at her whenever he could.

  All the while she remained immobile, the shadow of a smile lingering on her lips, watching him. When it proved too much for him and he once again made to inch forward through the crowd, she shook her head almost imperceptibly. Her eyes flashed.

  Later, they said.

  She turned in a flash of icy gold, leaving an impression of thick lips, grey eyes, and a smile to light up the world frozen in the air. When he looked again,
she was gone. In her place were only the beefy paws of the farm hands being mashed together in great booming claps.

  Drunk on the afterglow she had left in the air, even from thirty feet away, James made to carry on in Alex’s image, but couldn’t quite shake the stupor that had fallen over him. They reined up by the stables and James dropped to the ground, taking a feed bag from the head stock keeper with thanks and attaching it to his mount’s muzzle.

  “Glad to see you both, young masters!” cried Malverston, town mayor four years running. “Elected mayor,” he proudly announced at every opportunity, though no election had ever been held. He was an enormous near-spherical man with a grimy beard that ran down to his navel in tangled greasy spiracles. His beady black eyes latched onto Alex and James like leeches. “Always a thrill, always. What news of the world?”

  James cringed inwardly at the exaggerated falseness, the grandiose antiquated exclamations. Malverston was full of them. He thought himself some kind of generous member of the gentry, a relic from the eighteenth century who was embarrassed to find himself of good fortune and chose to mingle with the commoners. But James knew better. They saw his kind all too often.

  “As always, Mayor, there’s plenty to tell and little time to tell it,” Alex sang over the continued hum of the crowd. James hated these pleasantries, pretending friendships that were simply not there. Alexander Cain was no songbird, but a quiet, pensive soul. He would be a great man one day—they all said it, wherever they went. James would be lucky to be half the man he was when he came of age. Yet this eternal front he put on in public, the showmanship, it was all a lie.

  But it was all part of the mission. That was the way they had always done things. And all things told, James was glad to endure a little falseness if it meant success. He had a destiny, after all, and he would do anything to see it realised. The world relied on the precious few like Alex and himself. If they failed, a new Dark Age would sweep over everything in a generation.

  “And you, my dear Mr Chadwick! You’re looking more strapping by the day.”

  James nodded and called on his practised diplomatic smile, honed to perfection over countless iterations. But his body seemed gummed up, his mind still on Beth. “Mayor,” he stammered.

  He caught a confused warning glance from Alex and shook himself, squashing Beth’s face from his mind.

  Malverston clapped, lest any attention waver from him, and laughed in great hacking gulps. “Good, good, fortune smiles on us all. My dear friends, I’m sure our guests are tired after their long ride. Let’s give them some space and refreshment.” He flicked a hand in the direction of the stock keeper. “Harry, give their horses a fair seeing to, won’t you?”

  The stock keeper’s brow twitched, but he nodded. “Of course, Mayor.”

  “Good, good. We ran out of the jerky you brought on your last trip. We certainly have a taste for it around these parts.”

  “I’m glad everyone enjoyed it.” Alex was still smiling, but James knew every inch of him too well for the micro expressions of distaste lurking under his brow to go unnoticed.

  The partiality to jerky was chiefly that of the mayor, rather than the town. His subjects were lucky to receive anything but the occasional tinned spam or tuna when after a taste of the Old World. Newquay’s Moon was a long way from any city of note, and so the scavengers had picked the loot left behind after the End clean in the Early Years.

  “In time there’ll be plenty more,” Alex was saying.

  “So what have you brought?” Malverston cried.

  “Only good intentions, and an offer you’d be a fool to refuse.”

  A momentary fury flashed behind Malverston’s piggy eyes. But then the flicker was gone and he was wearing his amiable smile once more. “Indeed, young master Cain? Please, let’s get comfortable.” He gestured to the largest building in town, the pantry around back overspilling with the goods brought by those looking to win his favour.

  That was how power exchanged hands in the South-West. They relied on trade caravans and wandering allies for such luxuries, which carried a hefty premium. It was no surprise they had taken to Alex and James. They took to anyone willing to give a discount, regardless of their ulterior motives. Their affections and allegiance came down to how much you were willing to shave off your price. James and Alex had spent the last few months shepherding carts of goods into the area for far less than it was worth. They would ride into town and give a few sacks away for dirt cheap, then spend the rest of the day giving it away free to the surrounding area, flooding the market, devaluing even the finest Old World treats. If they could keep prices low, they might be able to shake the hold some of their competitors had over Newquay’s Moon.

  There were some sour people about, all bad news. The more leeches they could pick off this place, the easier it would be to gain a foothold.

  The crowd began to disperse, excitement fizzing out. James always hated this part of opening negotiations with a frontier settlement. The everyman always ended up caught between squabbling fat cats.

  They’ll have all they want soon enough, he consoled himself.

  Alex ducked his head close to James, dropping his voice to a murmur. “I’ll give him the pitch. You stay out here. I don’t want to crowd him. This one likes mano-a-mano. Play nice out here. Join us in ten.”

  “And if things don’t pan out?”

  “Then we’ll be leaving pretty fast. Malverston’s all for playing big daddy when the chips are in his hands, but if we ask him to play fair … be ready.”

  He disappeared inside with the wobbling tower of gout and furs that was Malverston, and James was left alone by the stables, fighting back a grin. He admired Alex’s guts. He had just walked right into the bear’s cave.

  Malverston was crooked, indeed, but they were going to give him the offer to join the alliance in any case. It would mean he would have to go straight—unlikely, but possible. Offering and risking things going south was still a hell of a lot better than usurping a kingpin. And if he refused … well, they would carry on with their plan.

  Once these people no longer bowed to petty bribery, maybe they could sit at the table and enter a real dialogue. Too many resilient pockets of civilisation had succumbed to the ravages of a new barbarism that was sweeping the land; alone they would all fall in time, but together, maybe they stood a chance.

  They’d get rid of Malverston and his slime, in time. But for now, they had to play along. For the time being, he held all the keys.

  The South-West, notably Cornwall and Devon, had been so scarcely populated even before the End that, in some respects, little had changed.

  Malverston had been a farmer once, rich in his own way. But then the End had come, and he had awoken to find all his neighbours gone. Naturally, he had claimed all their land and assets as his own.

  Now, he was the wealthiest landowner for over a hundred miles, having somehow convinced everyone inside his domain that he, and he alone, held rights to its bounty.

  That was just the way the dice had landed. It could have been far worse. So long as those who worked his land paid their duty to his inner circle, they were left in peace.

  But that didn’t mean things were fair. The town was Malverston’s throne, and it didn’t pay to forget it. By now, many of the locals were already filing back to their homes, the fields, or the tavern. James searched for Beth among them, but he knew he wouldn’t find her. She never let him see her until she was ready. By now she could have hidden herself anywhere, fetching water or working the farthest orchards.

  Fire stoked in his gut, squirming and tingling like a glug of fine whisky. He had to bide his time and wait for her to come to him, when the excitement had waned and they could be alone. He just hoped Alex could entertain Malverston long enough. He couldn’t bear not seeing her—he would wither as a summer flower succumbs to a frosty night.

  A little crestfallen, but still excited, he dawdled a minute to make sure a gunfight wasn’t about to kick off inside. But no,
from the mayor’s house came only rancorous laugher, and the sound of plenty of drink being decanted.

  James finally let his fingers fall away from the safety catch on his rifle, and slung it over his back. Then he returned to his mount, lifted the duffle bag off the saddle, and set off towards the nearest house. Before he could rap his knuckles on the door a second time, a milky-eyed old woman in a patched tunic opened the door with trembling fingers. Her face screwed up into a mask of wariness and suspicion until he touched her on the arm and said, “Mrs McKinley, it’s me.”

  She snuffed, jerking free, squinting and pursing her ancient lips at him.

  He blinked. “Mrs McKliney?”

  His heart sank. Didn’t she recognise him?

  Her squint persisted a moment longer, then her myriad wrinkles smoothed with delight, and she tugged him inside, a great croaking laugh storming from her lips. “Gotcha, sucker! I’m not that old yet.”

  He grinned and stooped into the gloom, taking in the dust on the mantelpiece, the halo of soot around the fireplace, and the musty odour of unwashed skin and stale urine. The flames in the grate were the only source of light, but still it was obvious nobody had visited in some time.

  Anger flashed in the soft membrane behind his eyes. It was all too easy to forget the elderly, he knew that, but this was more than that.

  She was clutching at his sleeve still, caressing it, her eyes swimming, searching his own. A crooning whine rattled deep in her throat, pining like a puppy. She squinted, inching closer, scrutinising his face through thick cataracts. “So handsome,” she muttered, taking his chin between claw-like fingers.

  “How are we today?” he slurred around her hand.

  “Hip’s killing me.” A phlegmatic grunt welled in her throat. “Girls will eat you up in no time.”

  Beth’s face flashed before his eyes. “I don’t know about that.”

  She cackled, showing rows of brown rotten teeth. “We’ll see.”

  James blinked in surprise when her fingers pinched his buttocks. For a moment, he was aghast, disbelieving, then he smiled helplessly. He watched her hobble, and his heart sank at how far she stooped, how slow she moved.