Rise of the Reaper by Lorna Reid

Author:Lorna Reid [Reid, Lorna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YA fantasy, coming of age, action adventure, swords & sorcery, magic fantasy worldbuilding, British fantasy, YA adventure, epic fantasy
Publisher: Hewlett-Packard
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

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RUSSELL WOKE UP WITH someone shaking him. He had slept badly, with visions plaguing him at every turn. The black creature, the scream, the metallic rasp of battle, and Isa falling to the ground. He massaged his legs and told himself that it wasn’t going to happen, that he would stop it.

It had unsettled him to the point where he was grumpy and miserable, feelings not helped by the fact he felt hungry and dirty, having fallen asleep on his cane stick, whose syrup had practically glued his arm to a bunch of straw. He peeled it off in disgust and tossed it aside.

Needles of sunlight javelined through the crack in the door and Patches stretched and yawned. Poppy was blinking and rubbing as best she could at the makeup smudged beneath her eyes. ‘I think we’re here,’ she said.

‘Nearly. Can hear the gulls,’ said Patches, smiling.

How he could hear anything over the train was a mystery, Russell thought, but he didn’t care. He wanted to clean his teeth and use a toilet that didn’t involve straw. His bladder was screaming at him to allow it to be emptied, but he refused.

‘What time is it?’ muttered Katrina.

‘Pushing mid-morning,’ said Patches.

‘What happens now?’ Danny yawned and stretched.

‘We wait until we ease in, then, just before we stop, we jump. Follow me to the fringe of the yard and we’ll drop over the wall and cut through to the docks.’

Jumping from an albeit slow but still-moving train with a full bladder, and then dodging across a train yard, avoiding piles of cargo, stray cats, and puddles of filthy water was not how Russell wanted to start his day.

When they scrambled down over a broken section of wall and onto the squashed grass on a path the other side, he breathed a sigh of relief.

They stopped at a bright, white-fronted establishment full of eye-poppingly dressed young men and women drifting around, escorting bleary-eyed patrons to brunch. After their group used the facilities, they made their way to the waterfront.

Russell glanced back, watching the stone columns of the establishment vanish behind a large, expensive-looking furniture shop. His cheeks had been flushed since he had realised what the place was. The fact that they seemed to know Patches like he was an old friend didn’t make his embarrassment any less acute.

‘Don’t they worry about getting arrested? I mean, it wasn’t very secret,’ said Poppy as they stopped on the corner for Patches to chat with a pie vendor.

‘Why would they keep it a secret? It’s all legal. What Land do you come from?’ Patches looked incredulous as the vendor passed him a thick paper bag, whose sides were already starting to go transparent with grease.

‘Erm … a small one.’

‘Stupidly backward, I think,’ said Katrina, accepting what looked like a Cornish pasty to Russell’s mind. He didn’t care what it was, or about the grease coating his fingers as he accepted his, and began devouring it.

‘So they … that stuff, it’s legal,’ he ventured.

‘Aye,’ laughed Patches, taking half his pie out in one bite.

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