by Dave Rudden
Eventually, Denizen reached out and touched her on the arm. He doubted she could feel it through her coat. He could barely feel it through his gloves. But it was there. A peace offering. A little moment of connection.
“You’re very direct,” he said, and then gave her a quick grin.
“Raised by Knights,” she said. “You pick it up with the throwing knives.”
As they spoke, the Emissary suddenly twitched, darkness boiling out from a thousand rents in the armor to lift the head and set the shoulders, life suddenly returning to the body like a puppet’s strings pulled taut. The haft of the hammer quivered in its chest.
Its voice was a roar. Denizen could feel it vibrate in his bones.
TAKEN.
Even D’Aubigny took a step backward. The thing’s massive fists rose to smash the petite Frenchwoman to paste. Denizen and Abigail froze.
What do we do?
He could see D’Aubigny gather herself, utterly fearless, eyes narrowed, hand lifting to—but not gripping—the sword on her back.
“You chose peace, creature,” D’Aubigny snapped, and the fists paused in the air, shaking with barely contained rage. Particles of rust floated down.
Woman and Tenebrous faced each other, D’Aubigny’s jaw outthrust as though she meant to hold the giant with her willpower alone. Eventually, it lowered its fists.
“What has been taken, Emissary?” D’Aubigny said.
His heart. The Endless King has had His heart carved out. It is lost. It is stolen. He will burn this world looking for it.
D’Aubigny scowled. “What does that mean, his heart?”
A piece of Him. His mercy. The King rages in the dark. His hunters come from every shadow. If they do not find what was lost…war, Iron-hand. War unending, between our kind and yours. The Pursuivants walk the worlds. If it is not found, we will eat your cities and take your night. Make you fear the dark again.
Denizen could swear there was eagerness in the Emissary’s voice.
I will find my sword.
“That will not happen,” D’Aubigny snarled. She didn’t seem in the least bit afraid, as if she spoke to animated suits of armor threatening an apocalypse all the time. Her hand still hovered near her sword.
“War serves no one. And we will not go quietly, wretch. The Order will unite. We will stand against the King with light and fire. A war will serve no one.”
Then find what was taken, the ancient Tenebrous growled. And soon.
With that, the Emissary of the Endless King fell silent. The helm bowed as the spirit animating it departed. Piece by piece, the armor fell to the earth.
Denizen shivered involuntarily as the tension seeped from the air, the sharpness of the stars fading until they were simply dots of white light again. The wind began to rise, bringing with it the smell of salt rather than the electric taste of the Tenebrae.
“What did he mean?” Denizen asked. “The Endless King’s mercy?”
“I do not know,” D’Aubigny said. “We need to get home and speak to the others. I do not like being here any longer than I have to.” Her face was grim. “The Endless King crossed over once before. I have no desire to spend any more time with the body he left behind.”
“What do you mean?” Denizen said.
“Os Reges Point. This is where the King crossed over before. Made a body, as all Tenebrous do, and left it here as a warning.”
“Where is it?” Abigail asked.
D’Aubigny gestured down to the massive fingers of rock beneath them. “You’re standing on it.”
THE STORM HAD gotten in.
Nowhere was safe. Wind howled through Crosscaper’s corridors, tearing sheets from beds, hammering on doors, and shaking windows in their frames. Frost climbed the walls in ugly traceries of silver and white, ready to stick to skin, to freeze tears, to blister unwary hands with cold.
Simon had memories of other storms—vicious tempests held back by a thin sheet of glass, a blanket round his shoulders and the silent company of a friend—but they were long gone. He barely remembered what they were like. Maybe they had never existed at all.
This wasn’t anything like nature. Nature was pure and unthinking. This was a sly storm, a hurting storm. It carried flecks of broken glass; it hunted and it hated and it hungered.
The Clockwork Three were bored.
Hide. Hide, scrabble, hide. Simon had lost track of just how many times he had moved in the last few hours. Nowhere was safe anymore, not even for a night. The strangers prowled now—sweeping through rooms, looking for anything fragile left to destroy.
The cold wooden floor scraped his chest as he slithered under a bed. He didn’t know what dormitory he was in, or if it was a dormitory at all; the world had become unknown rooms and hard corners, them and him and the distance between—
A howl sounded from somewhere in the orphanage, followed by the crashing of something heavy pushed down the stairs.
That was the woman—or what had been the woman. He’d known all along they were nightmares, and the clicking-clacking thing that now left half-human footprints down the corridors was just the beast revealed.
The others could be anywhere.
He hadn’t slept in so long. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t done anything other than run and hide and run again—
It’s my birthday today.
The thought came out of nowhere, and Simon pushed trembling fingers into his mouth to stifle a hysterical laugh, every muscle clenched so the slightest vibration didn’t carry through the floorboards.
He was thirteen. Had been for hours now, probably. He honestly had no idea.
As soon as it had come, the realization was dismissed. There was a sort of crazed practicality to Simon now. All nonessential systems had been shut down. All that mattered was keeping one step ahead of them—or rather a step behind, as the only places he trusted to harbor him were those that the Three had exhausted the night before.
As always, the room was a mess. They had passed through this dorm twice at least. Simon could tell because the obvious things were destroyed, and the Three had taken to tearing clothes and ripping at light fixtures instead. The only things that weren’t disturbed were the children in their beds, though they still moaned and twitched as if eternally in nightmares.
Why them? Another question he no longer had the energy to contemplate. Why leave them alone?
The man’s voice purred through his memories, and Simon bit down harder to stop shaking.
We can grow fat here.
More crashes sounded, echoing from elsewhere. With the sick sort of expertise bestowed by an eternity in the dark, Simon knew that meant they had found something new to ruin. Something they’d neglected, something they hadn’t seen—
And then the storm said his name.
Deeeeeaaaarrrr Siiiiiiimmmoooonnnnnn.
Simon banged his head on the bottom of the bed. He let out a hoarse wheeze of pain and immediately flinched at how loud it was in the sudden silence.
The man in the waistcoat. He’d said Simon’s name. How did he—
Panic. Panic, panic, panic. Every single little piece of fear he’d been trying to suppress since the night the strangers came washed over Simon in a freezing black wave. He nearly drowned in it.
I hope this reaches you by your biiiiirthdaaaaaay.
He had to get out. He had to leave. He had to run. All his barely kept control vanished, and he scrambled to his feet, a sick, churning terror in his chest. It was hard to swallow. Sweat leapt from his temples as he whirled. Where do I go? Where do—
THEEEEERRRRE’S SOOO MUUUUUCH IIII WAAAAANT TO TELLLLLL YOOOOOU.
Simon ran.
A blast of painful cold as he darted through the corridor. The gale was constant now, a shrieking pressure that might have been as much inside his head as outside—it was hard to tell—it was so hard to think.
They’d found him. Had they found him? He’d dreamt of the moment since that first night, that first bolt of lightning: the doors
of his cupboard ripped open, a hand closing on his ankle as he slept—
His bare feet pounded on the floorboards; after so long being silent, it all seemed horrifyingly loud, but he had to get away from here, he had to run. He braced himself for the sight of them coming round the corner—
Nothing.
Simon forced himself to slow, skidding to a halt and turning back the way he’d come. The voice had stopped.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
They hadn’t…they hadn’t found him. They were just amusing themselves. The man in the waistcoat had unearthed something, a letter perhaps. He’d just been…reading aloud.
That was all. Simon had moved without caution, flung himself out into the open, nearly thrown away his life because panic had gotten in. Just for a moment. This was what happened when—
Hsssss.
It was the woman in white, though neither of those titles was truly accurate anymore. Someone somewhere had subjected her to great heat and violence, and now she was little more than fabric over clockwork. Simon watched with wide, terrified eyes as threads of skin started to pull their way across her face, the damage repairing itself slowly, cloaking her once more in meat.
She stood at the far end of the corridor, staring up at the boards of the ceiling as if wondering how best to pull them down. All she had to do was look down.
Please don’t. Please don’t. It’s my birthday.
Sudden pain at his temples. A tingle in his palms. He’d been so very careful. So very careful up until now.
Just let me not be seen.
The woman turned to look at him. A slow grin tore her face apart.
SERAPHIM ROW HAD never seemed so dark.
They had assembled in the kitchen, all clustering in a corner as if hoping to somehow ward off the gaping emptiness of the room. Darcie and Denizen hunched over one of the tables, staring down at untouched cups. At some point, Darcie had laid her hand over his—nothing romantic, but for comfort.
D’Aubigny’s arms were wrapped round Jack, her head resting on his massive chest. Her katana still hung from her back, the hilt close to her hand as though she expected to be attacked right here in the kitchen. Maybe she did.
“What are we going to do?” Grey said. It was the first time Denizen had seen him since they’d returned from Os Reges Point two days ago.
Grey’s face was stricken with pain, gloved fingers trembling against his temple. He must have been hurt worse in Rathláth than Denizen had thought. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“I’ve contacted the Palatine,” Jack said. “Cadres are searching their records for any reference to the Endless King’s mercy, but it could take days. Weeks. And the first reports are coming in—it’s no longer just clashes in alleyways now. The war is starting. The Order is mobilizing. There’s been word from PenumbraCorp in the States, from the Russian and the Thousand Choirs. They’re ready when we are.”
“Does that mean we have a chance?”
“It’s not about that, Denizen,” Jack said. “We can’t afford for this war to be dragged into the light.”
Denizen’s tea cooled between his fingers. How would people deal with the knowledge that the Tenebrae existed? Lately, the world seemed constantly in danger of falling into war anyway.
If the Tenebrous started pouring from every shadow, there would be global panic—armies trying to fight an enemy that could come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. And if people found out about the Knights…Denizen was too much of a skeptic to think that the governments of the world would welcome a secret order of sorcerer Knights, even if they were trying to help. At best, they’d be jealous and mistrustful, and at worst…
His stomach went cold as he imagined doctors and scientists prodding him, carving out samples of the iron in his palm. Don’t we have enough to worry about already?
That said, there was a tiny part of him that was thrilled at the thought. A tiny, insane part, but a part nonetheless. If he became a Knight, then his life would be hidden in the shadows; he’d be fighting battles no one would ever know about. But if the war came out into the open and the King was defeated…
The Order of the Borrowed Dark, saviors of the world.
Listen to me, he thought. I don’t even know how to use a sword. The last time I tried to face a Tenebrous, I nearly blew myself up. Go off to war with the Order? They wouldn’t even let me hold their coats.
D’Aubigny was now pacing like a collared cat. The hawkish focus normally present in Abigail’s eyes had been replaced by a pinched look of apprehension. In how many garrisons across the world was this scene being repeated? Wounded, worried Knights preparing for a battle that might consume the world.
“Where’s my aunt?” Denizen said. He couldn’t stop a thread of bitterness from curling round the words. “Shouldn’t she be here? Isn’t this an emergency?”
“I don’t know,” Grey said. “She said she was going to Berlin to reinforce a cadre.”
Jack shook his head. “There isn’t a Berlin cadre anymore. They were attacked two days ago. No survivors.”
“Wait,” Denizen said. “Then my aunt—”
“She wasn’t there,” Jack said. He seemed reluctant to say the words. “All the bodies were checked. She was supposed to reinforce them, but she never did.”
“Then where was she?” Denizen asked.
“I don’t know,” Grey said. “She hasn’t been answering her phone.” They all shook their heads.
“And none of you find that weird?” Denizen said angrily. “The fact that we’re about to go to war and she’s nowhere to be found?”
Is this what happened eleven years ago? Did she get her whole cadre killed because she wasn’t there when things got rough? The cruelty of the thought shocked him.
“Denizen, your aunt is a war hero,” Jack said. “Whatever she’s doing, I’m sure she has a good reason for—”
“A good reason for what?”
They all turned to see Vivian standing in the doorway in a long black coat, hammer held loosely in her hand.
If the strain of the last few days had taken its toll on the other Knights, Vivian seemed grimmest of all; a bruise had stained one cheek and there were dark hollows under her eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, as if it were sheer force of will keeping her upright.
Denizen’s eyes were drawn to the weapon in her hand. It suited her. Like the hammer, there was no art to Vivian, nothing but hard edges, the singular intent of a warrior.
Her eyes glittered.
“Malleus,” Grey said. “We need to talk. The Endless King—his…mercy has been stolen. We don’t know what that means, but we have to find it before the King crosses over.”
“I know where it is,” Vivian said.
“Where?” D’Aubigny asked, stepping away from Jack. “Where is it? We need to contact the other Knights. We need to—”
“We’re not going to the other Knights.” Vivian’s words were cold. “Your orders are to stand down. Inform the other Knights to stand down as well.”
“Stand down?” D’Aubigny said in a low and dangerous voice. “The Endless King thinks we have taken something from him. We are in terrible danger.”
“No, we’re not,” Vivian said. “Not after tonight.”
“Malleus, how can you know that?” Jack asked.
“Because I know who took it from him!” Vivian snapped. “You’re to stay here. All of you. That’s an order.” Without waiting for a response, she strode off into the flickering darkness. They stared after her.
“What was that?” Denizen asked.
“Go to bed,” Jack said. “Both of you.”
Denizen and Abigail began to protest until D’Aubigny silenced them with a sharp look.
“Now,” she hissed.
They went upstairs in numb silence.
“Do you want to talk?” Abigail asked.
Denizen just shook his head.
—
DENIZEN HAD BARELY been in his roo
m ten minutes before there was a knock at the door.
It was Grey. He stuck his head round the door. “Can we talk?”
The first thing Denizen noticed was that Grey looked awful. His fingers clenched and unclenched rhythmically, as if missing the hilt of his sword. The bandages on the side of his head had started to come loose.
The second thing Denizen noticed was that Grey was dressed to travel.
“You’re going after her,” Denizen said. It wasn’t a question. He’d thought about nothing else since D’Aubigny had dismissed them. A thousand different plans had darted through his head, and if any of them had been possible, he’d have been after Vivian like a shot.
“We’re going after her,” Grey said. “You know Crosscaper, right? The layout of the place?”
Denizen nodded in confusion. That was an understatement. But why—
“You think she’s going to Crosscaper?”
Grey pulled a crumpled envelope from his pocket. “This was on Vivian’s desk.”
SIMON HAYES
CROSSCAPER ORPHANAGE
Every molecule of Denizen froze. He’d posted Simon’s birthday card a week ago. He’d never received a response.
“No, no, no, no…”
It took a moment for Denizen to realize that he was the one speaking. The power of the Tenebrae woke in his stomach, curling through him like a serpent, making the pads of his fingers itch. Crosscaper. His friends. The people he’d grown up with.
Simon.
“Denizen.”
He suddenly ached to unleash the power straining within him, panic twisting through the rage. They were supposed to be safe. That had been the point. The only thing that had kept him going the last few weeks was the knowledge that, though he missed Simon terribly, their separation was keeping him safe.
“Denizen.”
He shook himself, suddenly seeing in the mirror that his eyes were glowing in the darkness of the room. Something fell from the envelope into his hand, and he stared down at the jagged shape. It was a cog—a little brass piece of clockwork, bright against the dark iron of his palm.