by Joe Ducie
That didn’t sound right. Kings didn’t explain, did they? They commanded.
“Your grace,” Vrail said formerly, and not one part of me enjoyed the title, the royal honorific. He found half a grin—troubled, distant, terrified. The man had a family, after all. “Bit of a shit show, eh, Declan?”
I had to laugh. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. “I may have fucked us all, mate,” I said. “Time will tell.”
Vrail scratched his chin and nodded once. “Mondays, am I right?” He took command of the execution party. “Right, my lords and ladies, I suppose you still are, let’s see you to your quarters.”
My brother and his advisors, those loyalist and stalwart to him now that Fenton Creed had fled (and wasn’t that going to be trouble down the line), were led from the opulent chamber. I endured the glares, the unspoken death threats in their eyes, as I had always endured such things—with the weary indifference of the constant survivor. Kill me, if you can, but don’t waste my time.
As the hundreds of nobles, the Knights and the lordly, the merchants, ministers, and advisors—all my subjects, I reminded myself, which right then was the last thing I needed—looked on in utter silence, I held my head in my hands and sat forward in the throne. Elbows on my knees, rubbing at my face, peeling away the mask of blood in dark flakes.
I felt like eight pounds of shit in a five pound bag. Such was my first hangover in over a year. Oblivion had been hitting the sauce hard. Shadowman had seen that first. I could still taste the scotch in the goblet he’d dropped in his panic as the star iron manacle closed around my wrist.
After a long moment, I sat up again and investigated the receptacle in the arm of the throne that had sprung forth the band of redeeming star iron. Mighty curious, that, almost a little too convenient.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t surprised when I found a folded piece of preserved parchment in the base of the receptacle, sealed in enchanted wax—with the crest of the Knights Infernal mashed into the wax. I hesitated just a moment before breaking the seal, weighed the slip of parchment in my hands, wondered on the future, the past, and all that was in between.
I broke the seal and unfolded the missive.
Declan,
You’ll thank me for this one day, even though it’s going to hurt a lot over the next few days. Fuck, pal, is it going to hurt.
But remember, when you meet him, he’s just as scared as you are.
With love from my past—from your future,
Declan Hale
King of the Knights Infernal, Guardian of the Story Thread, Slayer of the Everlasting, Bearer of Astoria’s Mantle, the First of His Name (you won’t believe the Game of Thrones finale, mate), Moon Volleyball Champion, Runner-Up in the 1kg Burrito Challenge, Bit of an Unlikeable Asshole.
I blinked. Read the note again, recognised my own handwriting, and then crumpled the paper in my fist. Time travel, I thought. Fucking time travel. And why the hell hadn’t my future self been a little more specific? A little more helpful on what I needed to be doing over the next few days? Already I was lost, but then… Unseen rules, most likely, know too much and risk the future. I’m sure he… me. I’m sure I had my reasons.
The time-travel path through the Void, which I had forged accidentally with the Roseblade in the ruins of Atlantis, a path that spanned not only impossible distances but time itself, was still open. I could traverse the path as I pleased, back and forth ten thousand years’ of time and here in my proper stream, the clock still ticking inexorably forward. I was unbound from time, in a way, but seconds still became minutes, became wasted hours and fast-forgotten days. Though having ten thousand years to play around in was a significant advantage.
One of the few I had over the Everlasting.
And, it seemed, as I gazed down at the star iron bracelet around my wrist, an advantage I leveraged well. I wondered how long it would be before I messed it up. As I was now, this current day and this current age, I had no clue how to subdue an Everlasting’s influence. Star iron could hurt them, Infernal blades (something gifted to every Knight Infernal on their graduation) could wound them, and a concentrated petal from the Infernal Clock of celestial illusion direct to the heart could kill them. Valuable, dangerous knowledge to have.
Oblivion had fallen silent, but I still felt him there, no longer forcing the walls of his cell but testing for the weak points, scheming and plotting. He was a tight nest of anger in the back of my mind. I pictured him as a cancerous brain tumour the size of a tennis ball and getting larger.
Did I doubt he would find a way out?
Did I believe that the band of star iron would hold him indefinitely?
Of course not.
The clock was already counting down. I had an empire to rule, at least two gods to slay, when Dusk returned with his ships, unrest to subdue, wars to fight, and I had to do it all before Oblivion regained control of my mind and sent me screaming into an abyss from which I would never recover.
And what’s Dusk going to do when he returns with the Peace Arsenal?
‘Raze this world,’ Oblivion promised, his voice low, certain, a guarantee.
War, then. So be it. I was good at war.
*~*~*~*
Dozens of responsibilities and problems demanded my attention, but one more than any other an hour after regaining control of my body. Oblivion pressed, pressed so hard, but I had him trapped for now.
So with a to-do list a mile long, I entered my half-brother’s apartment, the most elegant of prison cells (certainly the apartment beat the imagined brig in the back of one’s own mind), with windows overlooking the many parks and gardens surrounding the Fae Palace, and the city itself beyond—which perhaps served as harsh reminder of everything he had lost that day, and so easily, too. Faraday—Jon—had a cell of comfortable couches, television and screen interfaces, hundreds of books, hidden and cosy nooks—as well as the staff and stewards of the palace on call.
No one was allowed in the room but me, though. I’d ordered that fairly swiftly, not being entirely bereft of a sense of self-preservation, despite appearances to the contrary.
A decanter of red wine sat on the dining table, barely touched. That was a… good sign, I supposed, though Jon had never had issues with the booze like me. It didn’t run in his side of the family.
As far as prisons went, it could be worse. I could have thrown him in Starhold—the orbital prison platform circling the planet. He’d thrown my grandfather in that awful place, which held the worst of the Knights’ prisoners, after the Tome Wars for supporting me, and he had tried to have me shipped there after I broke my exile. Eye for an eye, perhaps, because that never backfired.
“Now, Jon,” I said, when he stood from the dining table, shafts of sunlight playing across his face, sparking in his eyes, and crossed his massive bear arms over his chest. He wore just his leather trousers, his body slick with sweat. He’d been working out—always looking for that edge, that extra kick. “We’ve got ourselves quite the pickle here, don’t we?”
“Kill me,” he said. “You almost had my head in the throne room. You or the madness you claim is in your mind, what’s the difference? Why prolong the insult? Do not mince words, do not draw this out longer than necessary, Hale. For as long as I breathe, I will strive to reclaim my throne.”
I leaned against one of the bookshelves, keeping ample distance between me and him. I’d been in a few fights, a few scraps, you might say, and even with the royal retinue, my guard of Arbiters at my back, I could read the look in Jon Faraday’s eye. If I came close enough, he’d snap my neck and die laughing.
This wasn’t about Ascension City, the Dragon Throne, this was sibling rivalry at its ugliest. And, now, I had the better toys.
We could have thrown down—thrown our power against one another. He wasn’t shielded, or manacled against accessing his Will. But he was savvy, and knew I would win such a contest. Even before seeing me defeat Fenton, before Astoria’s mantle of power, I could ha
ve taken him. And he knew it.
“We can find a happier middle ground here,” I said, “than death and ruin. Not much profit in that, is there?”
“Am I speaking to Declan Hale, my half-brother and once Arbiter of the Knights Infernal, the Hero of the Tome Wars, or am I speaking to the parasite that has infested him?”
I waved the star iron manacle at him. Already, sharp lines had developed in the glass-like stone. The Everlasting setting his will against the complex and intricate enchantment. “A trap was set for Oblivion. He’s contained, for now. But we don’t have much time. Less than I think, most likely.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I felt like I’d been awake for a week. I’d been awake longer, trapped without a body. “I didn’t want the throne, Jon. Well, not like this.”
“Spare me. It’s done, you have the city. How many died for your ambition?”
Enough. The reports were still filtering in on that. Some hundreds fallen at last count. “As I said, I didn’t want this. I would have quite happily kept hiding on True Earth—”
Jon snorted. “This was coming, one day, sooner or later. We both knew it. Despite my best efforts, despite your rampant disregard for morality and the edicts that govern the Knights Infernal, you remained in the hearts and minds of too many. Here and on a hundred thousand other worlds.” He shook his head and laughed—a sound which rang a touch mad. Vrail’s avarice was catching. Or was I Patient Zero? “That I didn’t kill you when I had the chance, I do not know.”
I licked my lips and held my tongue.
“It wasn’t out of any sense of family, or respect for you,” Jon said and stroked at his chin, honestly giving the matter his consideration. “Though I do respect you, despite everything. Your resolve. It is… alien. The strongest will, the best of humanity. That’s what you could have been. Perhaps I spared you because some part of me, the scared, doubtful part, knew that the Story Thread would need you one day. That the Everlasting were real, and loosed in the night, and for some absurd reason the universe has set you in their path. Chose you to nip at their heels.”
“I didn’t want that, either,” I whispered. “To stand against them, often alone. Who the hell would?”
In that, Jon conceded the point and nodded slowly. “You ask too much of yourself, to stand alone against such cruelty and hate.”
“And yet here I stand. Even when I run, I fall ass-backwards into one of their plots. Not fate, Jon, not purpose, but puppet strings of my own making. In too deep, gotta keep swimming, that horseshit, you know.” I glanced at the star iron manacle. Future Declan’s problem.
“For how much longer? They’ve killed you once, broken your mind, and now. The dye is cast. Once… Lord Oblivion… resumes command of your body, we’re all for the rope. You’re being ground down and away, brother. Perhaps I won’t need to kill you, perhaps all I need do is wait and you’ll vacate the Dragon Throne through your own mad greed.”
Former king of the Knights Infernal Jon Faraday grunted and then relaxed, uncrossed his arms, and sat back down at the table. He looked smaller, somehow, though no less dangerous, not really.
“I warned you for years about the Everlasting,” I said. “You did nothing.”
“Ah, no,” Faraday said. “You didn’t warn, you threatened. You broke exile, stole ancient relics, unleashed the Lost City of Atlantis against the Story Thread, along with all the hidden and dangerous magicks and power in that blasted ruin. You released some of the Everlasting, you constantly attract their ire, their resolve to destroy us. You were not warning us of the Everlasting’s return, Hale—you were their loudest herald, borne on wings of prophecy and doom.”
My turn to give his words due consideration, and I found them true, for the most part. Hell, true in whole. I’d won as much as I’d lost, though. Dread Ash alone was worth the years of upheaval and the swaths of the Story Thread plunged back into war. Or was I so wrapped up in my vendetta, my universe-ending schemes, that I’d strayed so far from the light as to be wholly in shadow? Shadowless, in truth, but not because of the corrupted demon wearing my face.
“I came to ask you something,” I said.
Jon waved me away and turned his attention to the decanter of red wine. “I know what you want. You want me to debase myself, to humiliate me, and take what little pride your rebellion left me. I won’t do it.”
“Now who’s letting people die in the streets?” I sighed. “Support me, publically. A show of united strength, a true alliance—the Knights Infernal against the Everlasting. Not Declan Hale against Jon Faraday.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Jon, brother, I am looking for a reason not to kill you. Please give me one.”
“You are Everlasting,” Jon snapped. “And you sit upon the Dragon Throne. We’re already lost. No. I refuse. You started this, brother. You can finish it.”
THE SECOND INCONVENIENT FUNERAL
A lot of stories present this promise. This… sort of contract with the reader, that no matter how dark or weary things get, things will be okay in the end. The dark lord will be defeated, the ring will be destroyed, and that sordid tower will fall. Everything will be beautiful and nothing will hurt. I think I stole that last sentence from somewhere, but the river of amber liquid has burst its banks tonight, and I’m far past remembering where those words belong.
I sense that you are not amused. We’ve only so many nights for dancin’, Lara. With you, I feel like I have everything.
Without you, oblivion.
~ Billy St. Claire
CHAPTER TEN
WAITING TO BE TAKEN
‘I don’t even think of you that often’
Half a day after my brother and I had reached our impasse, our diabolical gridlock, unlikely to be resolved this side of the veil, and not even a single day since I’d seized the Dragon Throne, my recent past—all the sordid mistakes—caught up with me quite spectacularly. I was beginning to regret ever coveting that ancient seat of power in Ascension City.
Well, done was done, and since Oblivion had saved me the trouble of claiming it, I was confronted for my sins by one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. Someone I’d missed terribly over the last year of adventures.
In the throne room as the afternoon sun failed toward the west, almost slumped on the Dragon Throne under my stress and fatigue, as I listened to the bureaucracy of the kingdom, heard reports of the Knights fighting Knights all across the city and the worlds beyond, those subdued and those on the run, the outer garrisons at the distant ends of the Story Thread which had openly rebelled, or turned on one another, as word spread of my… ascension in Ascension. For the most part, the worlds kept on turning, content to consider me hero or villain, so long as I left them to their bread and circuses, but I’d had to deploy the legions of the Cascade Fleet to subdue the chaos and keep the peace.
Which was a bother—as I had other plans for that fleet. Grander, more everlasting plans.
Hell of a first day.
Again, I’d never wanted any of this—not like this, anyway, but even those words had begun to ring hollow in my mind. I had wanted the Dragon Throne, one day and in some way. It should have been mine after the Tome Wars. For that alone, I was a fool. The Everlasting, if anything, had achieved my wants in a far less bloody coup than I could have done on my own.
‘You’re welcome,’ Oblivion growled. ‘Lord Hallowed Dusk will return and end you, boy.’
“Are we back to boy now?” I said. “Still not willing to concede I may be a few steps ahead of you, eh? Even if I don’t know it myself.” I rattled the star iron manacle, a gift from my future self, hoping to also rattle the elder god.
Oblivion said nothing.
My Secretary of War, one of about thirty such men and women eager to have the ear of the new king, stopped mid-speech and looked at my curiously, a little fearfully, at the heart of that vast and opulent chamber atop of the Fae Palace.
It wasn’t so long ago that I’d been responsible for the Degradation, which had made the fou
ndation of new worlds, written in worldly tomes, impossible—temporarily stalled the grinding of the ancient gears that kept creation spinning. I was the Shadowless Arbiter, I dealt with beings and powers beyond imagining. The truth was often eclipsed by the rumours surrounding me, and the truth was terrifying enough. In a word, I was everything the Knights Infernal should be. If nothing else, if my reign on the throne lasted a day or a century, I would ensure we got our heads out of our asses and back in the game.
Again, the lords and ladies in the seating around the perimeter of the chamber were deathly silent. Here is our new king, their faces said, talking to himself. He’s mad, they say, I hear he converses with invisible demons in his head. The Everlasting, he claims, like in the nursery rhymes. Yes, yes. We’re doomed.
“Sorry,” I said and immediately regretted the apology. Kings didn’t apologise. Did they? “Let’s hear the rest, Secretary…?”
He cleared his throat and straightened the collar on his fine silk and scholarly robe. Dressed in his Sunday best to impress the new, big swingin’ dick in town. “Briarwood, your grace.”
“Secretary Briarwood, let’s hear the rest.”
“Yes, your grace.” He returned his eyes to the tablet slate in his hands. From the dais under my throne, I watched him stand alone with the eyes of hundreds on him. If nothing else, I admired his courage. Half my advisors hadn’t come into work that afternoon. I doubted I’d see them anytime soon. “Three hundred and forty-seven captains are assumed to have mutinied during your… transfer of power. Their vessel transponders have been deactivated, and those crew members who refused the mutiny were left abandoned on distant worlds, if not slaughtered in the upheaval. We estimate thirty-three hundred Sentinel Knights or higher, some six hundred and twelve full Arbiters, in open rebellion aboard those ships. Renegades, your grace.”
I nodded. New Renegades. Had I reignited the Tome Wars, as well? So be it. One of the only decent things I’d done with my life was end the Tome Wars. Had even that been taken away? More ships than I’d thought in open rebellion, but it was still less than dire. We were still in control, despite those sordid, reminiscent appearances to the contrary.