by Joe Ducie
Tal had sacrificed herself again, because history rhymes and doesn’t play fair, and spent ten thousand years, the slow way round, imprisoned with Dread Ash in a cell made of celestial illusion deep in the caverns of the Swiss Alps. I had freed her last week, we had killed Dread Ash using the petal of protection in my heart, now in Tal’s heart, and thus this whole mess now.
Even when I win, I thought, a familiar thought, I lose.
Her burnished gold hair was tied in a loose ponytail over one shoulder, the scent of peaches, and her gentle green eyes beheld me with the tried and tested infinite sadness that was our relationship summed up in a glance.
“Remember when we were kids,” Tal whispered, leaning her head against my shoulder, “all the hopes and dreams we had. We were going to be so brave, so clever, fight in the Tome Wars, never get old and never die.”
“We’re still here,” I said.
“So many of our friends are not.”
“Tia Moreau lives, as does Marcus, though he betrayed me. Aaron and a few others…”
“A handful out of hundreds, and none of us unscarred or whole.” She sighed. “You most of all.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I lied, because bravado was easier than tears, hurt less than despair.
I’d despaired in the past, drank myself well and truly into oblivion, and such weakness got me nothing but problems. I had to be better than despair, than the booze.
“Declan Hale, King of the Knights Infernal,” Tal said. “Fifteen years ago, when we met as children, I did not see this coming.”
“We had a lot less worries back then.” I paused. “Though it didn’t feel like it at the time. I remember doing everything I could to try and impress you. Any excuse to spend time with you.”
I felt Tal smile sadly against my shoulder, felt the weight of her sadness. It was a part of her as beautiful, as certain, as her lovely eyes, her peachy hair. “Did we worry less? I don’t remember.”
“What am I going to do, Tal?”
“How are you different, Declan?” she asked. “I fought against Oblivion for years and couldn’t break his hold. You’re slave to that monster a few days and you overcome him. How? Why are you so special? Always so different. The rules never apply to you…”
I held up the star iron manacle, cracked and getting worse. “This holds him at bay. I don’t know how, or why, yet, but I don’t have long. It’s breaking down, you see the damage? A few days, at best.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Time enough to say goodbye, I suppose. You need to run, you and Sophie both, find some deep and peaceful corner of the Story Thread a million universes from here and never come back to the inner worlds.”
Tal shrugged. Her tears were warm against my neck, just like her breath. “You’ll find a way through,” she said. “You always do.”
“I’m not so sure, this time.”
Tal slapped my chest, over my heart, gently, then slipped her hand into my shirt and rested her palm against my skin. Comfy and getting comfier. I couldn’t remember the last time, honest years, since I felt so at ease. Tal had always been that—even when things were at their darkest, their most dire, and the dawn promised nothing but war and chaos, the last days of the Tome Wars, Tal had calmed me. I loved her, simply.
“Remember what I told you in the Elysium Gardens?” she asked.
Boy, did I. I hadn’t been able to forget, each word blazed against my soul like a brand: Tal wrapped her arms around me and pressed her cheek into my shoulder. She shook, fighting tears. The twilit air was warm and so was she, like a good fleece blanket. “I can’t see that. I won’t. You’ll fight this war, because that’s what you do. When it comes to conflict and battle, war and chaos, the universe seems to spin around your head. You attract the absurd. I won’t go back to watch you be consumed by it. Because that’s the worst part, you know?” She pulled away and laughed bitterly, grasping my hands. “They won’t be able to kill you. You survive, Declan. You always, always survive. Even when you die, you live. No, you won’t die. But you’ll change. I can see it. The war will take you and you’ll become hard, harder than you’ve ever been. You’ll sacrifice entire worlds for one inch of an advantage against the Everlasting. Don’t tell me you won’t, because I know you, and you have.”
“Here I am,” Tal said. “Back with you anyway. Ready to fight your wars, King Declan Hale.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said. “Not you, please.”
She chuckled softly at some joke I didn’t get, no doubt. I’d always been a bit dim.
“I can send you back, if you’d like,” I said, and hated the words as they left my mouth. “The path through the Void to Atlantis-that-was, where you wanted to stay. It is still open, Tal. You could go. You and Sophie both. Leave all this behind.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Not in the least,” I said honestly. “But I want you safe, want you to know you have the option. Always. As long as I live, as long as I have… control.”
“Till about Wednesday then, eh?”
I laughed. “If we’re lucky.” I stroked the back of her neck. “Seriously, if I can be so selfish yet again, I want you with me, fighting at my side in the thick of it, giving the Everlasting, the New Renegades, and all who would stand in my path hell. I want Arbiter Tal Levy of the Knights Infernal at my side—not at the side of the king, but of that young, dumb kid she met at the academy those long years ago. I want you, Tal.”
Tal considered my words for a long moment. “You have me,” she said, and brought her sad smile to meet my lips.
Briefly, only briefly, a skimming stone across a still river of too much memory, but it was enough.
*~*~*~*
I managed three hours sleep that evening alongside Tal, and we only slept, as we were not really alone, but warm and in each other’s arms was more than I deserved these days. And three hours was all I could afford, all the Story Thread’s many and myriad problems would allow. I was running the largest empire in existence now, by choice and by circumstance (by hook or by crook), and I had started a war.
Not concerns that catered to a good night’s sleep.
Time to spare was in the shortest of supply. I had been idle, during the last day, despite all I had done. I needed to act, and now, before it was too late.
Abandoned fields, I thought, of what might have been.
That sounded like a song lyric. I felt Oblivion roll his eyes.
A quick shower and shave, the water turned scalding hot against my skin, and I slipped into a pair of jeans, a black shirt, and a dark-grey waistcoat. All of which had been enchanted to provide protection equivalent to, if not greater, than plate armour. I’d saved and doomed entire worlds in this get-up. It was my brand, my trademark style. I wasn’t about to strap on a kingly cape and crown. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when the fighting was done and the people of this city lined the streets to cheer me as I sauntered past them, waving royally, I’d shrug into a cape and wear the crown.
Yeah, sure.
I practiced my royal wave in the mirror and Tal snickered from the doorway of the marble-cast (as everything was so cast in this damned palace) and opulent (struggling to find another word to describe it: grandiose, affluent… ample?) en-suite.
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” I said. “Sorry, you’re too late to join me in the shower.”
Tal’s lips quirked and she slipped out of her clothes. She trailed her fingers across my back as she stepped naked across the tiled floors and into the large, double shower. And that sight alone was worth every moment of pain and torture in the last few years, was it not? Small victories, little wins, immune to the curse of defeat I carried like an infectious germ.
Now that’s got to be a record, I thought. Happy to miserable in the time it took Tal to step from the tiles into the shower.
I brushed my teeth as she steamed up the bathroom quite considerably.
‘I’ve had her,’ Oblivion whispered. ‘In every conceivable way. She was mine.’
&nbs
p; “Never again,” I muttered around my toothbrush and spat into the sink. “You had nothing you didn’t force, you sick fuck.”
A dark chime, the crack of distant crystal, rang out and I frowned down most severely at the star iron manacle. Another chip of the alien black-glass rock fell away, clattering down the sink, gone forever—the big hand ticked closer to midnight.
‘Enjoy this while you can, your grace.’ Oblivion spat the last much like my toothpaste, spat the words as the Story Thread’s curse and cruellest joke. Ladies and gentlemen, your entertainment for the evening—King Declan Hale, the world’s last fool and first coward.
I used the tablet interface they’d given me to monitor the well-being of the empire to order some soda water and breakfast-y snacks, though it was the early hours of the morning. I didn’t see myself sleeping again anytime soon. Not till it’s over now, one way or another. After all the years and all the fights, I had a sense when things were gearing up toward the end game. Although it was calm at that moment, everything rested on the edge of a knife. I sighed. Feeling out of sorts.
The reports had piled up considerably in the last few hours. I set to reading and waited for Tal.
She emerged from the bathroom the same time breakfast arrived, the plates and steel-domed bowls cast under a net of protective enchantments designed to prevent poisons and such from killing the king. I sighed again and snacked on a piece of honeydew melon.
Tal enjoyed yoghurt and strawberries on toasted muesli, dashed with a dollop of healthy honey.
The reports were dire, miserable, a list of reasons why we couldn’t possibly fund a campaign against the Everlasting. They still didn’t see. Couldn’t see. None of them truly believed. What would it take? Give them Oblivion on the throne, ready to behead them all, and I reckon they’d figure it out before too long.
I did like that the tablet provided the option to respond and issue my kingly commands in real-time, all from the comfort of my quarters. I tapped a button and tens of thousands of Knights and resources began to move. To quelling the rebellion in the southern continent on this world, I gave that a big green tick. Authorisation to write enough titanium into existence, a world made of the metal already refined, which would debase its value, potentially crash the economy, but allow for the building of a hundred eternity-class starships before the end of the month? Tickety-tick. My orders were issued, the armies unleashed. eRuling, the wave of the future. I approved the costs to build, treble, the Cascade Fleet’s current capacity of weaponry and soldiers. The budget took a big hit on that one, but fuck it. If I was being honest, I didn’t expect my reign to last long. Long enough to see the Citadel of the Everlasting fall, would be nice.
“You’re frowning,” Tal said. “You’ve enough worries without wrinkles, Declan.”
I found half a smile. “Don’t suppose you want to be Queen of the Knights Infernal, do you?”
Tal raised a delicate, perfect eyebrow, and held a spoonful of yoghurt-coated muesli halfway between her bowl and her lips. “Did you just ask me to marry you?”
I blinked. Shit, I suppose I had. “I won’t survive the week, Tal. Not as I am now.” I waved the star iron manacle. It had loosened around my wrist, as well. The thing was decaying hard. “Before this breaks, I’ll end it—destroy my body before Oblivion can have it again. The Story Thread, the Knights, will need someone on the throne after me who knows what we’re up against.”
Tal ate her muesli in slow, concentrated bites, and considered. “Oh, and here I was thinking it was because you loved me.”
I grinned. “That is always a given. Always.”
“Say it.”
“I love you.”
Tal nodded. “No, I won’t marry you.”
I shrugged a shoulder and returned to my reports. “Never mind, then.”
Her spoon clattered against the fine china bowl. “And, technically, if you were… no longer able to sit on the Dragon Throne, for whatever reason, it wouldn’t be your queen who took over—whoever is fool enough to tie the knot with you,” she winked to ease the sting of that, “but your heir, Declan. Your son.”
I felt Oblivion prick up his ears.
“That child is no part of this,” I said, both to Tal and Oblivion. “He’s to remain no part of this.”
“He won’t have a choice,” Tal whispered.
‘No,’ Oblivion said. ‘He will. As his uncle, I will ensure the boy never sits on any throne, least of all yours. I will devour his essence and pool his power with my own.’
Tal read the look on my face. “Did an Everlasting son of a bitch just threaten the kid?”
I nodded. “He’s all threats this morning. Grouchy bastard.” A thought occurred to me. “I wanted to ask you something—I’m sure you would have said so already—but can you do anything about the parasite in my head?”
Over the distant mountains, the hour just turned four o’clock in the morning, the sky began to bleed orange with sunrise. Ascension City sat far north, and it was summer. The lights in the city twinkled against that can of spilt orange paint. Only the lonely, the mad, and those shackled with power would be up so early.
“Declan,” Tal said softly. “I’m sorry, no…”
“You were able to pull Dread Ash from her vessel—I know you spent the next ten millenniums imprisoned with her, but you were able to do it. From pixie-faced Fix. Why not for me?”
Tal shook her head and squinted at me. She held her hands together and produced a dull, white radiance, a spot of Will and wild magic. Tendrils of the light spread across the breakfast table and touched my hands. When the tendrils hit my skin, they recoiled as if stung. Beneath my skin, something slick and black flowed like oil.
Oblivion laughed.
“It’s not the same,” Tal said. “The first thing I did, when I entered this room earlier, was cast silently, to see if I could. Oblivion himself taught me the trick, I watched him use it more than once when he had me as his vessel, though he never thought I’d be free to use it myself.”
‘True.’
“What’s different?”
Tal shrugged. “I think it’s whatever makes you different, Declan. It could be anything. I mean, honestly, anything. Think of all you’ve done, the rules and laws you’ve broken, ancient magic and menace you’ve been embroiled in, not to mention the time you died.”
I had a somewhat colourful past, this was true. I kind of saw the edges of the problem that presented. Square peg in a round hole deal, it seemed.
“For once, it hasn’t worked in your favour,” Tal said. “You’re immune to the enchantments I know that would, should, help you. I can’t force him out. That parasite is your problem, your particular brand of cancer. The treatment… well, I don’t think it exists, but if anyone—and I truly mean this, Declan—if anyone can beat this, it’s you. By hook, by crook, or…”
“…or by luck. Only treatments I can think of would be rough.” Even I heard the whine in my voice, like a toll of defeat echoing across the battlefields I’d left in my wake. So many of them. So many dead. And for what? So we could just face the next threat, it seemed.
Tal pushed aside her half-eaten breakfast and folded her arms under her breasts. “You want me to pity you? Me? And you, pity? That’s not Declan Hale.”
I slammed my fist into the table and almost tossed the tablet computer across the room. But throwing a tantrum wasn’t going to help. “Tell me what you really think,” I muttered.
Tal took that as invitation.
“OK, I will,” she said. “Why are you hiding in this cell, Declan? A fine cell, to be sure, the finest in the Story Thread. The Fae Palace itself, with you its rightful ruler at long last. The Story Thread rejoices! All hail King Hale!”
“Tal—”
“Shut the hell up, your grace.”
I shut the hell up.
“You’ve got everything you ever wanted—everyone you’ve ever wanted, including Fair Astoria of the Everlasting, it seems. Fucking all of us, one way or anothe
r, weren’t you?” She laughed bitterly. “Your love is a curse, Declan. When you told me you loved me a moment ago, I hated you for that. Despite my love for you. I hated you—because you cursed me again. Burdened me with it. Here you are trying to marry me, when a few days from now this palace will be ash unless you do something. Unless you act.”
“I haven’t been idle—”
Tal cut her hand down through the air. “The Declan Hale I knew, the one I hope I still know, would have torn half the Story Thread asunder by now, searching for a cure to the poison in his head. Searching for a way to save the day, get the girl, defeat the evil assholes and still have time for a few witty one-liners, that casual charm and winning attitude people think is actually a positive when they first meet you, before it ruins them, before they die for you. Where is that Declan?”
I blinked and leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms around myself. A touch protectively, one could argue. One wouldn’t dare, less they incur my wrathful wroth. “I’m tired, Tal. How long can you, can anyone, expect me to keep going? I’ve done so much, as you said, lost as much as I’ve won. Victory at a cost so high it may have well as been defeat. That’s all I’ve ever been. The best of a fucked-up situation. And I. Am. Tired.”
“Spare me.”
“Love me.”
“You started this, Declan.” Tal stepped around the table and kissed me—hard, angry, biting down on my lip almost sharp enough to draw blood. “You bloody well don’t get to walk away before you end it.”
I pushed back away from her and stood, throwing up my arms and cursing her, the palace, the whole damn Story Thread. I paced the floor of my quarters, stewing and angry. “Fine,” I said. “What should I be doing?”
Tal held my gaze for a long moment, searched my eyes, and obviously found something to her liking.
“There you are,” she said. “I’d wondered where you’d gone, Declan. You certainly weren’t here a moment ago.” Her face softened and she offered me a sad smile. “Right now, you’re to come with me. There’s somewhere you need to go, and after… Well, that’s up to you. I would hope you would be about destroying a few of our enemies.”