by Dave Rudden
He hadn’t even come with them. Vivian wouldn’t have left them, even if she’d been ordered to stay behind.
That’s what I am. I’m a lesson that we are not invincible.
Things had got bad and, once again, Grey was nowhere to be found.
And then Malleus Coiled – just a little woman no taller than Abigail, as stocky as an artillery shell with shockingly bright green eyes – cleared her throat, and every eye turned towards her and the lump of iron she carried on a long, thick chain.
A Malleus hammer, of a design Abigail had never seen.
‘Eyes on every exit,’ she said crisply. ‘And the stairs. This floor is our fortress. Our Daybreak. Now go.’
The purpose in her voice steeled them all and, for a moment, instead of standing in a building emptied by a long-ago failure, they stood a chance to do something right. Lightning cracked outside, the tendrils wrapping Abigail’s heart in stuttering beats.
And then, like a tap turning off, the maelstrom became nothing more than a half-hearted shower plipping into the seething mass of ink now filling the street. It just sat there, not draining away or dispersing, rippling like something alive.
Coiled approached the doorway, light spreading through her in peals of gold. Some of the Neophytes held their power close too, glowing fitfully, Cants already visible as shapes beneath their skin.
The Sikh Knight opened his mouth, but whatever he had been going to say went unsaid as the mat of slick, sickening black suddenly retreated in one pulsing movement. It rippled and rose in defiance of gravity, caving in a door across the street to disappear with a wet slurp.
Abigail couldn’t help herself. Her heritage rose within, insistent, hungry, and instead of tamping it down she embraced it, letting it burn the doubt away. This was the war they had been trained for, and it was impossible for her not to want to act when sweat was trickling down her spine and the air was hateful in her mouth.
Normal people ran from that feeling. Knights ran towards it, to do what must be done.
Simon was beside her, his hands already raised. Ed was trembling hard but stood with her as well. They took their places, an arrowhead in the plaza, and pride briefly beat back the night.
This is where I belong, Abigail thought. This is what matters. This is our kingdom.
The building shifted with a groan of masonry. Dust billowed out from the door the nightstuff had struck down, but before it could reach them it retreated as if pulled by a vacuum.
Or … lungs.
One hundred mouths. The motto of the Order, in her father’s voice. One hundred tongues.
One iron voice.
The building imploded. The tenement crumpled as if crushed by a giant hand. Holes opened as bricks tore free, windows opening in screaming mouths. Neophytes ducked as a sudden sucking tore debris from the street in a gritty hail. Abigail’s robe flapped treacherously, tangling her legs; through eyes buffeted by hair and cloth she caught a glimpse of Malleus Coiled, her hammer unmoving at the end of its chain.
And from the vortex burst limbs, as black and crooked as spider legs, as long as Simon was tall. With insectile industry, they snapped flying rubble from the air, passed it from needle claw to needle claw.
Turning.
Sifting.
Sorting.
The weakest Tenebrous could only inhabit tottering frameworks, whatever their dim minds could devise … but the oldest were limited only by materials and their own twisted imagination. Abigail had never seen a truly ancient Tenebrous clothe itself before. It was the most spectacularly ugly thing she had ever seen.
‘Back!’ the Malleus shouted as a massive stone arm erupted from the murk to blindly sweep the air. More followed, clicked and clattered into place by the black – a barrel torso, an ogreish head – and still those nightstuff claws scraped and scrabbled, hewing out a monstrous shape.
Detail followed detail, wrenched into reality. Abigail could hear breath, low and grinding, and with it a smell of the sea – the oceans of history polluted and dead. It was that, more than anything, that told her: I know this thing.
The last time they had met it had been massive, four metres from fettered ankle to brutish helm, rust-caked and stinking of salt like a sunken battleship from a forgotten war. Now it was the height of a double-decker bus, and there was a bright, rustless band around its boot to show where a shackle had been.
That there are things that cannot be prepared for, and may not be survived.
The Emissary of the Endless King carried a colossal shard of metal in one bestial fist. Its roar was the death of an empire.
I FOUND MY SWORD.
11
Glimpse
They ran. What else could they do?
Denizen ran after the Palatine, he ran after his mother and he ran after the Tenebrous who had been bundled along with them. He ran through a thousand shouted orders: armouries opened, rescuers dispatched, Darcie bundled to the Palatine’s office, her hands pressed to her head.
He ran as if the hole at the base of Daybreak had been uncorked, and gravity was dragging him down.
The official entrance to the Chamber of the Glimpse was a slab of spoken steel as belligerently immovable as Monte Inclavare itself. It would have been immensely reassuring if a Tenebrous had not already Breached behind them.
Well, that was fine. Some walls were still going to stay up, Denizen thought, eyes firmly on the gates and not on the wraith-girl prisming between silver and blue. The fire wasn’t the only thing Vivian had been teaching him to keep out of his head these last six months. Normal teenagers probably didn’t welcome romantic advice from their mothers, but the Hardwicks had their own normal, and, if there was one enemy Vivian could be said to have vanquished over her long career, it was unnecessary feelings.
Whatever crush he’d had, he’d crushed it. He’d been doing so well too, though a part of him pointed out that it was very easy not to think about people who didn’t seem to be thinking about you.
She hasn’t even looked over –
‘Denizen!’ Vivian snapped. The chains were being unlocked. Weapons were being distributed. With phones down, Greaves was now in the centre of a maelstrom of Knights running to his side, receiving orders and then pelting away. ‘You need to go back to the Neophytes’ cells and wait –’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Denizen retorted, and took a deep breath. ‘You are.’
‘What?’
‘They’re sending out cadres to get the others. To get my friends. I need you to go with them.’
You could have handed out Vivian’s glare as a weapon. ‘I’m not leaving you –’
‘Yes,’ Denizen said. ‘You are. If anyone can bring them back – you can. We don’t even know if the Glimpse is compromised. But Simon’s out there with God knows what. I’ll be fine. If anything comes through … I’ll run, or something.’
He was lying and he knew it, and she knew it too. Six months ago, she would have unceremoniously marched him to his room. A year ago, there wouldn’t have been a conversation at all. But that was then, and this was now.
‘Stay at the back,’ Vivian said. ‘Remember what I taught you. Everything I taught you. And don’t hesitate to do what you need to do.’ He nodded, and her grip relaxed on the hammer just for a moment, as if her hands wanted to do something else.
And then she turned and ran. Denizen didn’t spare a thought for whoever had previously been in charge of the rescue mission. He knew who he trusted. Of course, now that she had gone, that was precisely nobody.
Greaves was staring at the opening gates so intensely that Denizen wasn’t even sure the Palatine realized that he was there. A host of Knights were crowding a corridor never built for so many, and more were arriving all the time – hard-eyed, scar-knurled, corded with muscle and iron. Denizen counted eight hammers – eight – and for an instant the unreality lapping against them receded.
Grey refused one, his hands on the twin swords by his sides, and Denizen remembered the last
time he had seen his former mentor wield a hammer, and the question of trust assaulted him one more time.
I’m staying here because I serve the Order. I’m staying here because it’s where I can do some good. That’s why.
Not because he could feel the canker growing behind these doors.
Not because staying here gave him an excuse to let the fire out.
Not because of –
‘Oh, now he wants to stay.’
Edifice Greaves had drawn a black steel hammer from its black silk sheath – the weapon all one piece, polished, faceted and heavy. Muscles strained against his expensive shirt.
‘And where did Vivian –’ He shook his head. ‘Hardwicks. Just –’
Grey slipped between them. ‘Kid, we have this.’ Behind him, the doors were opening.
The Tenebrae was swelling, and Denizen’s synapses misfired in response. His hands felt cold, then too hot. He tasted gun oil, had to touch his nose to check for blood.
‘Why don’t you go and get Darcie –’ began Grey.
‘Don’t,’ Denizen said, the syllables sharp in his mouth. ‘Don’t use her to get rid of me. That’s what he’d do.’
Greaves didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. But Grey did, and Denizen suddenly felt a pang of guilt. And then the doors opened, and all he felt was afraid.
The Glimpse was bleeding.
The edges of the Breach were hot with infection within its cradle of light, the criss-crossed beams heavy and orange with pus. Its every pulse darkened the air around it, as if necrotizing, as if eating healthy flesh. Tears sprang from Denizen’s iron eye at the sight of it. He felt the sudden need to vomit, to scream, to drink deep of the fire and perform urgent surgery before nothing could be saved.
‘See?’ Grey said, backlit by the diseased glow. ‘Totally under control.’
Denizen didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he drew the stone blade his mother had made him. He’d called it Falter because if he was going to have a magic weapon he was going to name it. Like Simon and the robes, some things were just tradition.
‘You know I can fight. Besides, you were keeping me from combat so I’d help with diplomacy.’ He gestured at the suppurating wound in the air. ‘Well, I think we’ve gone beyond diplomacy –’
Ohhhhhhhhhh …
It came from everywhere and nowhere. It unspooled through the Glimpse. It scraped itself from the shadows. It slunk through the gaps in the atoms in the air and stalked slowly up Denizen’s spine, caressing each vertebra slightly out of true.
You have no idea …
The Man in the Waistcoat had purred like a detaching fingernail. The Redemptress had wailed like a broken-hearted hurricane. But this voice suddenly, horribly, reminded him of Mercy – the way she played her strangeness like an instrument, muted one moment and deafening the next.
The Knights’ response, in comparison, was voiceless – a lifting of weapons, a blazing of light. Behind pupils, beneath tongues, between the whorls of fingerprints – and, cautiously, always cautiously, Denizen let his light out to join them.
Careful.
Sluicing through him, channelled by will but seeking, always seeking for an emotion, a weakness, through which it could escape: the Knights between him and the Breach, and the simple, automatic hatred he felt for them being in his way –
That’s not you.
Mercy cowering at the sound of the voice, and Denizen’s red-hot rage that she was allowed to be weak when it was because of her he had to be strong –
That’s not … that’s not …
The thing’s voice was a purr.
I knew you’d run to them.
She shrank then, like a candle flame battered by breath.
You think aping their form will make them trust you? Make them forgive you? Make them … love you?
It tutted. Freak.
Mercy spat sparks. My father will –
Your father, the beast growled, is the prize in all this, dear girl. The worlds are watching. Three challengers to the throne, three who have suffered the most at his hands. Only the worthiest will have the honour of taking his place and taking his head. We each have our challenge, Mercy … and killing you is mine.
‘Spooky,’ Palatine Edifice Greaves murmured, the simple human sarcasm a balm against the sick smugness of the voice. ‘Is there a body to go with this vaudeville act or should we do you some shadow puppets?’
‘I can do a duck,’ Grey offered.
Denizen took a shuddering breath that was the closest he could come to a laugh, and it was then that he realized why the air was so dry, why the whole chamber was spoken steel. A clean room – kept sterile so a Tenebrous wouldn’t have a mote of dust with which to build a body.
Very Edifice Greaves.
Ah. The little king, hiding behind promises that should never have been made. Would you like to keep your castle, dear Edifice? You only have to do one thing, and I will preserve all edicts my … predecessor left behind.
‘I –’
Just give me the child.
A hundred voices. A thousand, squirting through the room like sewage down a hose, thick and wet and needy, desperate with hunger and hate.
And Greaves did not immediately respond.
One ruler to another. A trade. That is diplomacy, is it not?
He wouldn’t.
The frustration in the Palatine’s eyes. The terrible burden of fighting an unwinnable war. The words he had said before the Concilium, when peace had been a distant dream:
‘We have lived this war for so long. If what happens here today has even the chance of ending it … For that, I’ll make any promise. For that, I’ll do anything.’
He couldn’t. Could he?
‘We don’t build peace on the deaths of children,’ Greaves responded, and relief was nearly painful in Denizen’s chest.
I’ve studied humanity extensively, Edifice Greaves. We both know that’s not true. The voice sighed in mock disappointment. So be it. Mercy?
Between the searing gold of the torches and the blighted uncolour of the Glimpse, she could barely be seen at all.
Remember that you came here. Remember that their deaths are on your –
Greaves slapped the haft of his hammer into his palm.
‘Right, we get it. You’re going to grind our bones to make your bread. Can we get on with it, please?’
The Tenebrous laughed, low and breathy.
That’s not what I’m going to use your bones for.
The Glimpse began to stretch, distending like a boil. Denizen shifted his grip on Falter. Grey drew his swords with a rasp of steel.
Come on. The fire rose in Denizen, hot and vindictive. Every Tenebrous spent their first few moments frantically hiding soft oil in stolen debris, but there was nothing here for them to take, to twist. Nothing but fire. Come on.
It was a day of things not happening the way they were supposed to.
What leapt from the Breach was not a black flood blindly seeking form; it was already formed – a ratcheting hulk of pistons and eyes that deflected the first barrage of flame from its massive shoulder before a second volley smashed it down.
The remains never had a chance to hit the floor – sucked back into the Glimpse on stringy pseudopods of black, like a parody of the test of Miriam Bell. The next Tenebrous managed three whole seconds of life before a Hephaestus Knight Denizen hadn’t even noticed pounded past him to squash it almost comically flat.
That corpse too was retrieved. The chamber rang with a vast sigh, as if something huge had tasted the air and found it pleasing.
And then the Glimpse exploded.
Denizen was suddenly face to face with a Tenebrous. He had no idea how. It swung a fist made of a crumpled shopping trolley and he deflected it with the reflex twitch of an Anathema Bend before another Knight cut off its head.
Another, then, with a mouth of flexing syringes, that he killed himself. A limb – human, Tenebrous, he didn’t know – cracke
d him in the face, and he careened straight into the path of something that could have been a spider had you made it out of rubber and stretched it to two metres tall.
Falter opened its belly in slops and smoke.
There was no line. No direction. Denizen lost track of everything but moving Falter and trying not to fall. Even the fire was silent – he hadn’t the breath for it to escape. He cut. He stabbed. He slashed. A frond of grit and cephalopod muscle picked him up and threw him, and he only stopped because a wall was in the way.
And, in that surreal, floating moment, a light across the chamber, bright and blue amid warring black and gold.
Mercy.
The thing that had flung him didn’t seem interested in following up, but there was another in front of Denizen now, and another, and half the time he had no idea if he was even killing them because the battle kept whirling them away and he had been stabbing for at least a hundred years and why were they still fighting?
Usually, Tenebrous Breached by themselves or in tiny bands thrown together by shared madness or opportunity. They found the Knights, or the Knights found them, and one way or another things were quick.
But this wasn’t.
Frown No. 1 – I Don’t Understand, even as Falter snagged in skin that had modelled itself on either shark’s teeth or an escalator, and it was scant consolation that the beast didn’t seem happy about it either. It spun, giving Denizen barely enough time to throw the palisades of his mind wide and let a single Cant free.
The Qayyim Myriad – orbs of hungry fire that pounded into the creature’s sternum, throwing out soot and crisping flesh. Denizen punched impacts up its chest, tearing away its jaw and blowing a hole through the back of its head.
It staggered, squirming against physics and physiology to replace the appendage it had lost, and Denizen struggled as well, shutting down channels in his head and reopening others, searching for a way to let the fire out without letting the fire out.
It raised a hand that became a claw that became a scythe, and, caught between agony and arson, Denizen could do nothing but watch as a perfect line of polar blue slit it in half. The Tenebrous bellowed – hateful, heartbroken – and dissolved, revealing a nuclear winter in the shape of a girl.