Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #15 June 2015 | Page 38

Chapter I

of white skin around the black thread were clean. Not
a single drop of corpse blood seeped through. Not
surprising, thought Tonmerion, seeing as so much of
it had been left on the steps of Harker Sheer’s western
garden.

“TO THE LOST”

For a brief moment, the boy’s eyes flicked to his
father’s closed eyelids. He thanked the Almighty
that those sharp sapphire eyes were hidden away, not
bathing him with disappointment, as was their custom.
Even then, in the grip of cold death, Tonmerion could
almost feel their gaze piercing those grey eyelids and
jabbing him. His own eyes quickly slunk away. Instead, he looked at the surgeon, and was somewhat
startled to find the man staring directly back at him,
arms folded and waiting patiently.

18th April, 1867
‘To the lost.’ The surgeon raised his tiny glass with a
gloved and rather bony hand.
Tonmerion Hark did the same, though he could only
summon the wherewithal to raise it halfway. He let it
hover just beneath his chin, as if he were cradling it to
his chest. The liquor smelled like cloves. Sickening.
However he tried, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from
the pistol, that sharp-edged contraption of humourless
steel and stained oak, lounging in an impossibly clean
metal tray at the elbow of his father’s body.

‘And what now?’ Tonmerion piped up, his young
voice cracking after the silence.
‘The constable will be here in a moment, I’m sure.’
‘Is he late?’ asked Tonmerion, biting the inside of his
lip. The body was so grey …

‘The lost,’ he murmured in reply, and flicked the glass
as if swatting at a bothersome bluebottle.

The surgeon looked a smidgeon confused. He pushed
the wireframed rims of his round glasses up the slope
of his nose. ‘I beg your pardon, Master Hark?’

A pair of wet slapping sounds broke the sterile, whitetiled silence as the liquor painted a muddy orange
streak on the milky vinyl floor. So that was that. What
precious little ceremony they must observe was over.
Lord Karrigan Bastion Hark, the Bulldog of London,
Prime Lord of the Empire of Britannia, Master of the
Emerald Benches and widower of the inimitable Lady
Hark, had been pronounced dead. As a doornail.

Tonmerion huffed. ‘I said, is he late?’
‘No, young Master. Simply finishing the paperwork.’

Tonmerion could have told them that from the start,
but such was tradition. His gaze inched from the
gun to his father’s pallid skin, bruised as it was with
the blood settling, or so the surgeon had told him as
he worked. Tonmerion had decided he did not like
surgeons. They were rude; being so bold as to poke
around in the visceral depths of other people. Of boys’
dead fathers.
His gaze moved to the neatly sewn-up hole in his
father’s chest, directly above his heart. The oozing
had finally stopped. The puckered and rippled edges

Tonmerion scratched his neck as he tried to think up
something clever and commanding to say. Gruff words
echoed through his mind. Get your chin up. Stand
straight. Look them straight in their beady little eyes.
Words from dead lips.
‘Then he must have been late earlier in the day. Why
else would he not be here, on time, when I am ready to
leave. Instead I am forced to stand here, stuck looking
at this … this …’ His words failed him miserably. His
tongue sat fat and useless behind his teeth. He waved
his hand irritably. ‘This … carcass.’
For that was what it was. A carcass. So callous in its

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