Knights of the Borrowed Dark
Page 1
To Eilish, because I promised
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Dave Rudden
Cover logo copyright © 2016 by Jason Cook
Cover art copyright © 2016 by Kerem Beyit
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover by Penguin Books Ltd., a division of Penguin Random House LLC, London, in 2016.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rudden, Dave, author.
Title: Knights of the Borrowed Dark / Dave Rudden.
Description: First American edition. | New York : Random House, [2016] | Summary: A young orphan learns that monsters can grow out of the shadows in our world, and there is an ancient order of knights who keep them at bay.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015031377 | ISBN 978-0-553-52297-6 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-553-52298-3 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-0-553-52299-0 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Orphans—Fiction. | Monsters—Fiction. | Knights and knighthood—Fiction. |
BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues).
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R828 Kn 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015031377
ebook ISBN 9780553522990
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Prologue: Tick
Chapter 1: Absentee Aunts
Chapter 2: Nonfiction
Chapter 3: Bad-Dream Angel
Chapter 4: Doors
Chapter 5: Caper Dark
Chapter 6: Seraphim Row
Chapter 7: Twenty-three Past Midnight
Chapter 8: The Taste of Glass
Chapter 9: A Darker Place
Chapter 10: Three Days
Chapter 11: Real Magic
Chapter 12: Lux Precognitae
Chapter 13: Night Vision
Chapter 14: Pieces
Chapter 15: Run
Chapter 16: Where the Monsters Are
Chapter 17: Extinction-Level Event
Chapter 18: Iron Inside
Chapter 19: Abigail Falx
Chapter 20: Very Nearly the End of the World
Chapter 21: Needlework Sky
Chapter 22: Panic
Chapter 23: Singular Intent
Chapter 24: Dark Water
Chapter 25: Mercy
Chapter 26: Wounds
Chapter 27: Debacle
Chapter 28: C’est la Guerre
Chapter 29: Malleus
Chapter 30: A Little More Misery
Chapter 31: Tock
Epilogue: Daybreak
The Secret About Writers . . .
About the Author
LOOKING BACK, IT had been a mistake to fill the orphanage with books.
Director Ackerby tapped the rim of his teacup with a finger. The untidiness of it all, he thought.
Far below in the yard, children dipped in and out of the shadow cast by his tower office—gossiping in scattered groups, voices raised in excited chatter. All talking about the visitors, of course. This was what happened when you bottled up 250 boys and girls. Last week, a thrush had bounced off a classroom window and the orphans hadn’t shut up for days. Had they named it? He wouldn’t be surprised.
His gaze swept the buildings below. Crosscaper Orphanage slouched against the mountainside like it had been dropped there—a graying stack of towers and flat, fat dormitories that shuddered when the wind was too harsh and sweated when it got too warm.
It was an uphill struggle for orphanages not to be dismal, but Ackerby had always thought Crosscaper took special pleasure in it, as though it knew that the groan of its slumping masonry and the rattle of its window frames were giving entire dormitories of children nightmares.
“Sir?”
His secretary’s voice seeped through the intercom and Ackerby stabbed at the button to respond.
“Yes?”
“Your two o’clock is here, sir. Shall I send them in?”
The director barely heard him. He was staring at the newest addition to the orphanage grounds, standing out against Crosscaper’s comforting grayness like a healthy man in a hospital ward. Bright white walls. New windows that shone. A door that didn’t squeak but whispered open like the sharing of a secret. Children waited outside, as they had every day since it opened.
A library. As if the orphanage chaplain wasn’t filling their heads with enough nonsense.
The intercom burped again. “Sir?”
Ackerby sighed. He had flicked through some of the dog-eared books in the library and it had been much as he’d feared. His own office was lined with beautiful leather-bound works (the word book painfully inadequate—they were compendiums, they were texts, they were tomes), the kind one touched with gloves, if one touched them at all.
Some, he mused proudly, had never even been opened.
The library books, on the other hand, had been read to pieces. And as for the content? Story after story of noble orphans rescued from drudgery—and now every time someone came to visit, hopeful children began packing their bags, ready for their new life as wizard, warrior, or prophesied king.
Ackerby sniffed. Chosen ones. If they were wanted, they wouldn’t be here.
“Yes, send them in. And bring some tea.” He thought for a moment. “Forget the tea.”
Director Ackerby did not believe in coddling visitors. There was an art to these things. Inspectors were made to wait ten minutes; it didn’t do to annoy them, but you also didn’t want to make them feel too important. Solicitors were seen immediately (you never knew who might end up footing the bill), and potential parents had to wait half an hour, as a sort of test of their commitment.
In Ackerby’s opinion, if you weren’t prepared to drink bad coffee and flick through last year’s Home and Housing magazine, then you clearly did not deserve a child.
“Mr. Ackerby?”
There were shadows in his doorway.
Ackerby liked to keep the lights low. It shaved money off the bills and he had the vague idea that it might be beneficial to the children—exercise for their eyes, perhaps. The visitors had stopped where the light from Ackerby’s desk lamp and the glow from the hallway fell short. Their faces were obscured, indistinct.
For a moment, Ackerby wasn’t sure if they were people at all.
“Thank you for seeing us at such short notice,” the smaller of the visitors said. “I hate to steal time away from the busy.”
The couple stepped forward in unison. The woman was tall and thin, with a spine curved like an old coat hanger, her clothes and skin white as frost, hair chopped short around her neck in a frayed mop the color of chalk. The man beside her was the shape and pallor of a goose egg, with a shock of colorless curls that jigged and bounced as if trying to flee from his scalp. His waistcoat creaked as he offered Ackerby his hand.
Normally, Ackerby would smile firmly (if a little coldly) and grasp the visitors’ hands a smidge too hard as he asked their names. Ackerby was proud of his handshake. He had read books on the subject. A firm and painful squeeze—that was how you dominated a meeting.
The man in the waistcoat took his hand. “Of course, stealing time from the idle is no crime at all.”
Pain.
Distantly, Ackerby noted the throaty pops the bones of his hand made as the visitor’s grip ground them together—like a plastic bottle reshaping itself. The books he had read on the power of a good handshake were replaced by hazy diagrams from medical textbooks, and then swiftly by nothing at all.
He fought back a gasp of relief when the man in the waistcoat let go. The visitor grinned cheerily up at him and dropped into a seat with a pleased sigh, waving at Ackerby to join him.
An unlit cigarette hung from one side of the woman’s mouth. She didn’t move. She just stared.
The pain in Ackerby’s hand faded and he rallied. Commanded to sit? In my own office?
He stalked round his desk and spun on a heel, regarding the visitors coldly. Standing behind the desk made him feel better. He told himself that it was simply pride in the decor and not the comfort of putting a slab of solid oak between him and the man in the waistcoat.
“Good afternoon,” Ackerby said, though he didn’t mean it and it wasn’t. “Welcome to Crosscaper Orphanage. And you are?”
His feeling of unease deepened as the visitors continued to stare blankly at him. He couldn’t say what was wrong exactly, but there was something…calculated about their looks. As if they were working out something about Ackerby in their heads, an equation he wouldn’t enjoy.
“Your names?” Ackerby repeated, and although there was absolutely no need to explain such a simple question, he found himself stammering, “For—for our appointment book. Our files, I mean.”
The request hung in the air, slowly starving to death.
“Names?” the man in the waistcoat said after an eternity. “Ah. Yes. Names. Sorry. We are new.” His dark eyes flicked over the office before settling on Ackerby like flies. “I like the name Ellicott. A pleasure.”
It hadn’t been so far, but you couldn’t leave a statement like that hanging. Ackerby forced a smile. “Yes, of course. Nice to meet y—” His brow furrowed. “What do you mean new?”
The man’s smile deepened. “I understand that you must be busy, so we will take as little of your time as possible. We are looking for a boy. Denizen Hardwick.”
It took a moment for Ackerby to bring up a mental image. Nothing wrong with that—that was what files were for, and you didn’t get points for rattling facts off the top of your head. Hardwick was…small. Unremarkable. Had…hair. Brown? Red?
The director frowned. The only thing he could really remember about the boy was that he had never caused an abundance of paperwork, which was the only trait in a child that Ackerby actually liked.
But there was something else…something he couldn’t recall…
“What about him?” Ackerby asked.
The cigarette made a slow path to the other side of the woman’s mouth.
“He is a resident here?” The man popped his knuckles against his jaw, the noise so loud it made the director flinch. “Excellent. We have been looking for him for a long time. We are…relatives of his. Cousins.”
A knot formed in Ackerby’s stomach. This Ellicott character was lying to him. Ackerby was sure of it. He had no idea why he was sure of it, but a smile like that wasn’t cousin to anything, except maybe a spider.
“I would have to check my records,” Ackerby said stiffly. That was his usual phrase when he knew the answer to a question but hadn’t liked being asked it. “The name does sound familiar, but—”
“We will not take much of your time, Director Ackerby,” the man in the waistcoat said. “We merely wish to know a few things. First, has he turned thirteen?”
Ah. That was why Denizen Hardwick had stuck in his head.
“Yes, actually,” he said. “A few weeks ago.” He glanced around his desk. “There was a card they wanted me to sign…I’m sure I saw it….”
“The card is unimportant,” the man murmured. “We have been looking for Denizen for a long time. It is a pity we missed the celebrations.” The word skittered from his tongue like a cockroach. “No matter. Where is he now?”
“Now?”
The man fingered the buttons on his waistcoat. “Someone would have come for him on his thirteenth birthday. Another…relative perhaps. Come to take him away to a whole new life.” His plump lips twisted in a cheerless grin. “Exciting. We would like to know where they went. Where Denizen Hardwick is now.”
“Oh,” Ackerby said. “He’s downstairs.”
The man’s gaze sharpened. “Excuse me?”
“He’s downstairs. In class, I would imagine.” The director of Crosscaper drew himself up haughtily. “I don’t know where you got your information, sir, but no one has taken Denizen Hardwick away to a new life. He is still a resident here, thirteenth birthday or no.”
The couple glanced at each other.
“Is that a…problem?” Ackerby said, his sudden burst of defiance disappearing as soon as it had come. He didn’t know who these people were, and their questions were unnerving him.
“No,” the man said slowly, as if tasting the word. “No problem. And he has received no visitors?”
“On his birthday?” Ackerby said confusedly. The conversation had gotten away from him, and he felt the beginnings of a headache behind his eyes. The thrum of his heartbeat in his ears was suddenly very loud.
“Ever,” the man said. “But that day in particular. Anyone at all.”
Ackerby shook his head. The man’s eyes were…strange. They glittered with a sort of chill, metallic brightness. Ackerby wasn’t sure what was more difficult—looking into them or looking away.
“Good. Now. Did anything strange occur on his birthday? Between midnight and midnight. Anything odd that caught your eye.”
Ackerby’s headache intensified. “Sir, I would ask you to—”
“It’s a simple question, Director. Any fires, disappearances, injuries, spatial or luminal distortion, shadows moving strangely…”
Sweat broke out on Ackerby’s forehead. His patience, never the most stable thing at the best of times, finally snapped.
“Sir, I do not know to what lunacy you are currently subscribed, but this questioning makes no sense. You cannot simply come in here with no identification, no papers, and start talking to me about shadows moving strangely! Who do you think you are?”
The man who had introduced himself as Ellicott sighed, lifting one chubby hand to his temple. His eyes narrowed like a disappointed uncle, and Ackerby was suddenly aware of a noise. It was soft, barely audible above the echo of his own voice.
Ticking.
It underscored their words, as fast and quiet as the heart of a bird. Ackerby glanced down at the digital clock on his desk, taking his eyes off the couple just for a second.
And the woman in white growled at him.
The sound slid from her lips like a tide of grime, a rough-static snarl of hunger. Something gleamed between her teeth as she stalked toward him. The man in the waistcoat rose to stand beside her.
His head twitched to the side like a snake preparing to strike.
Her head twitched the exact same way.
Ackerby blinked, and in the darkness between eyelid and cheek the woman in white had vanished behind him. There were hands round his neck, forcing him to his knees. He felt breath, cold and fast, on the back of his neck—
—and Ellicott’s voice was a purr.
A pity. Such a pity.
The words were pins of ice in Ackerby’s brain as the man in the waistcoat knelt to stare into his eyes. The woman in white held him rigid, her white fingers like a steel trap, and though Ackerby was not a small man, he could no more move than fly.
I thought we would n
ot have to resort to this. Given time, we can be…convincing. Imaginatively and painfully so. Regretfully, in this instance, we just do not have the time to spare.
The ticking rose to a roar. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. Distantly, Director Ackerby noticed that when the man in the waistcoat spoke, the woman’s lips moved silently in time.
You will tell us about any visitors he has had. Any watchers. Any letters. Any contact in the years since he was left here. Anything at all.
His eyes twinkled.
Family is so dear to us.
He nodded at his companion, one professional to another, and the woman broke the director’s collarbone with one smooth twist of her fingers.
Ackerby howled.
—
HE COULDN’T SAY how long they held him. An hour, maybe less—long enough for Director Ackerby to dredge up every fact he knew about Denizen Hardwick. There wasn’t much, but the visitors made him go over it again and again and again.
Denizen Hardwick had been left at Crosscaper Orphanage at the age of two. He had received no visitors and no letters, and his thirteenth birthday had passed without incident. It was only after the director started to sob and repeat himself for the fourth time that the iron grip on his collarbone went away.
Swaying there, delirious and on his knees, it seemed that Ackerby saw the couple more clearly than he had ever seen anyone before.
The pendulum jerk of their heads.
The peculiar hardness of their skin, like fingernails or teeth.
Their bright and empty smiles.
Strange, the man in the waistcoat said when they had finished. If she didn’t come for him on his birthday…then perhaps he is of no interest to her, and then of no use to us. No matter. Confusion suits us more than symmetry.