It stopped.
Will was left breathing shallowly. He was alone, the rain dripping from his hair, soaking through his cap and his clothes.
Just like the mirror, the medallion was ordinary again. An old, dull thing, with no hint of what he had just seen. Will looked up to the place where Matthew had disappeared into the rain.
What was it? What had Matthew given him? His fingers gripped the medallion so tightly the jagged edges cut into him.
The streets by now were empty. No one had heard his gasp at the medallion’s vision. The men searching for him had moved on. It was his chance to get away, to run.
But he needed answers – about the medallion, and the lady, and the men who were chasing him. He needed to know why all of this was happening. He needed to know why those men had killed his mother.
Putting the medallion on its cord around his neck, he started running back through the rain, feet splashing in the mud. He had to find Matthew. He had to know what Matthew hadn’t told him.
The streets whipped past him. The eyes of the lady in the mirror burned in his memory.
When he finally came to a stop, panting, he saw that he had come almost all the way back to the warehouse.
Matthew was sitting on a street bench, a few blocks from the river. The street was better lit than the ones he had come from, and Will could see that Matthew was wearing buckled shoes and pleated pantaloons with his white shirt and black waistcoat.
Will had so many questions that he didn’t know where to start. He closed his eyes and drew a breath.
‘Please. You brought me that medallion. I need to know what it means. The Stewards – what are they? How do I find them? And those men – I don’t understand why those men are chasing me, why they killed my mother – I don’t understand what I’m meant to do.’
Silence. Will had spoken in a rush. Now, as the silence stretched out, he felt his need for answers transforming into a darker throb of fear.
‘Matthew?’ he said in a small voice. Though he knew. He knew.
It was raining hard, and Matthew was sitting out in it, oddly exposed. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. His arms were slack in his drenched shirtsleeves. His clothes were sopping on his body. Water dripped from his unmoving fingers. The rain was pelting him, running in streaming rivulets down his face, into his open mouth, over his dead open eyes.
They’re here.
Will threw himself – not along the road, but sideways towards one of the doors, a last desperate hope that he might alert the owner or find his way inside. He took the first blow at the outer gate. Before he could reach the door, a hand grabbed his shoulder; another closed around his neck.
No—
He saw the hair on one man’s arm and felt the hot breath of another against his face. It was the closest he had been to any of them since that night. He didn’t know their faces, but with clotting horror he saw one thing he did recognise.
On the underside of the wrist reaching for him, an S was branded into the man’s flesh.
He had seen that S before, at Bowhill. Burned into the wrists of the men who had killed his mother. He saw it when he couldn’t sleep, snaking into his dreams. It felt old and dark, like an ancient evil. Now it seemed to squirm over the man’s skin in raised, moving flesh, crawling towards him—
Everything he’d learned in nine months on the run vanished. It was as if he were back at Bowhill, stumbling away from the house and the men who were chasing him. The rain had made it hard to see that night, and easy to trip and fall, scrabbling down banks and splashing through ditches. He hadn’t known how long he’d pushed on until he collapsed, shivering and wet. He had wanted – it was stupid – his mother. But she was dead, and he was unable to go back to her because he’d made a promise.
Run.
For a moment, it was as if the S was reaching for him from out of a deep pit.
Run.
Thrown down hard onto his back on the soaking cobblestones, Will tried to push himself up, putting his weight on an elbow, and was shocked into gasping at the pain of his shoulder as his arm collapsed under him. They overmastered him immediately, though he used all his strength. He’d never had to fight before that night in Bowhill, and he wasn’t terribly good at it. Holding him down, one of the men hit him methodically until he lay, reeling, on his back in his sodden clothes, breathing as best he could.
‘You’ve had an easy life, haven’t you.’ The man raised his foot to nudge at Will briefly with his toe. ‘A mama’s boy, clinging to your mama’s skirts. That’s all done now.’
When he tried to move, they kicked him, again and again, until his vision turned black and he stopped moving altogether.