by Dave Rudden
“Soon enough,” Grey said. “They were so angry. And quite specific. No more loopholes. They think it’ll be fun if you kill me.” He spun the hammer round him as he spoke.
“At least I think that’s it. They stopped making sense a while ago. Tenebrous aren’t really meant for long jaunts in the real world and…”
Denizen couldn’t tell if there were tears on his cheeks or if it was just the rain.
“Is everyone dead?” asked Grey.
“D’Aubigny,” Vivian said, stone-faced.
“Oh,” Grey said in a small voice. The air trembled as he drew power to himself, his eyes consumed by pallid light. “Vivian,” he said, words almost lost beneath the whirring of his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” she said, and charged.
The fight couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. Abigail and Denizen just stood and stared.
He’d seen Grey fight Pick-Up-the-Pieces. He’d watched his mentor spar with Abigail and D’Aubigny. The man moved like a conjurer’s trick—blade darting faster than the eye could follow, the point of his sword never where you thought it would be.
He’d been deadly before, and now madness and the dark will of the Three fueled his blows, his mouth open in a snarl, his eyes leaking violent gold.
Denizen’s mother took him apart.
At first, Vivian didn’t even draw her own weapon. Instead, she caught Grey’s first wild swing on the edge of a gauntlet and drove her fist into the younger Knight’s face so hard Denizen couldn’t help flinching.
Grey turned with the punch to attack again, other hand suddenly aflame, but his outstretched fingers caught only the head of her hammer, sizzling uselessly on the pockmarked stone. Vivian jabbed the weapon back, smashing Grey’s own hand against his lips—the Cant guttering out in a cloud of sparks—and then brought the haft of the hammer around in a tight, vicious arc.
Grey hit the gravel hard, howling through a broken jaw.
Vivian stood over him silently. Her expression hadn’t changed once during the fight. With a start, Denizen realized that she hadn’t just beaten Grey down, she’d neutralized his ability to use Cants by the brutal expedient of breaking his jaw.
Absurdly, it was Grey’s words that came back to Denizen then. You don’t rise to the position of Malleus by setting fire to coffee cups. Everyone who had ever spoken of Vivian—human and Tenebrous alike—talked about her with the same kind of awed respect. It was only now that Denizen saw why.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Vivian whispered.
Grey’s body arched, legs twitching ramrod straight. He clutched the stolen hammer tight, his moans of pain becoming hoarse, rhythmic—staccato sobs of mechanical hate.
Ticking.
The front doors of Crosscaper slammed open, jarring the last few shards of glass from their panes. A foul wind howled out from the darkness of the orphanage, bringing with it the stink of bad dreams and grease.
Denizen staggered under a wave of misery—a crawling sort of dread that made tears well up involuntarily in his eyes, like every cut and bruise and little insult he’d ever suffered all came back to him at once.
What was he even doing here? How could he face something like the Clockwork Three? He didn’t know how to use the sword at his waist. The Cants were only his because Mercy had taken pity on him, useless rescuer that he was—and his own mother didn’t want him. But why would she? What kind of mother would want a pathetic, cowardly, short—
Abigail was on her knees. Grey writhed on his back, head in his hands. His mother—abandoner, a part of him bayed, absentee—swayed, hammer planted between her feet as if she were weathering a storm.
“Yield not to evil,” she snarled through gritted teeth, “but attack.”
And the power in Denizen responded.
He had almost forgotten its presence, but now it rose in him in a shrieking, molten wave. The terror melted before its touch like cobwebs held to a flame. Light rippled beneath Denizen’s skin as he called more power than he had ever dared.
Beside him, Abigail was rising, raindrops sizzling as they hit her skin. Her eyes were the blue-white of a welding torch and whole suns flared when she smiled.
Only Grey still quaked as the Three stalked from the orphanage doors. His clockwork hand droned in sympathy.
The Woman in White came first—movements an arrhythmic prowl, her teeth bared in a gearwork grin. Pale skin and brass gleamed through the burned tatters of her coat, and her knee popped unpleasantly with every step.
Behind her walked the Man in the Waistcoat—his eyes bright stones in fleshy little pockets, his smile that of a teacher dealing with a favorite student. Half his white hair had been burned away and his left arm ended at the elbow, but it didn’t appear to trouble him at all.
Despite the power blazing under his skin, Denizen shivered as their gazes met. He had seen insanity lurking in the eyes of the Woman in White. In the eyes of the Man in the Waistcoat, there was nothing at all.
Vivian, he said cordially. His mouth didn’t move. Hair wafted down with each movement of his head. Grey was right. Their human forms were unraveling.
The Woman’s arms had lengthened, her spine a hyena-arch straining against fabric. As Denizen watched, the skin on one of her fingers tore, a long talon of brass sliding free.
We knew you’d come back, the Tenebrous said. This little feud has made us both so…predictable.
“Things have changed,” Vivian said.
Ah, yes, it said, indicating the hammer with one bloated hand. For a creature confronting the one weapon that could properly kill it, the Man didn’t seem terribly worried. Not much of a consolation prize, though, is it? Your husband was so pretty, and that’s just a piece of stone.
Vivian’s eyes flashed with fire. For a second, Denizen thought that she was going to attack—no, that’s not the plan—but the Man ignored her. His eyes were on Denizen.
It has been…trying, these last few days. We are not meant for concentration. Hold the Mercy, keep it hidden…so boring…but we can always rely on the Hardwick family for entertainment. And when you and these useless cubs are dead…
His smile split his cheek in a clockwork yawn.
War. War unending—a feast for all time.
Grey moaned. Denizen kept his mouth shut. He didn’t trust himself to respond with anything other than flame.
So come on, then, dear girl, the thing taunted, turning his gaze back to Vivian. Are you going to try to kill us one more time?
Vivian was silent for a long moment before she spoke, and Denizen could see how much the words cost her.
“There are bigger things here than you and me.”
And she vanished.
Vivian hadn’t lied about her lack of prowess—her disappearance was far less smooth than Simon’s had been earlier. A streaky after-image hung in the air. The Woman in White flung herself at it, face twisted in animal rage—and a perfectly enunciated Anathema Bend folded her in half with a sound like cracking timber.
“Hi,” Denizen said, thoroughly and inappropriately enjoying her look of shock. “Remember me?”
The Anathema Bend created a transparent curve of hard light that was practically unbreakable but carried a heavy Cost—unless you adjusted it, made it small and short-lived, just a hiccup in the air. When the Woman bounded to her feet and lunged again, she only made it a little way before slamming her face off a dinner-plate-sized shield only Denizen could see.
He flung a Helios Lance at her, just to clock her reaction time, and when she bucked away from the fiery dart, he jammed a fist-sized shield into the side of her throat.
A human would have broken her neck. The Woman in White just rolled, baying like a burning wolf, and leapt at him with claws outstretched.
She swallowed Abigail’s crossbow bolt instead.
Denizen didn’t look to see if the Woman was dead. It would take a lot to put the Three down, and with a whole orphanage drowning in bad dreams, there was plenty of misery for
them to draw on for power. He needed to wound them, keep them both distracted while Vivian did her work.
Denizen turned toward the Man in the Waistcoat, another Helios Lance on his lips—but the other Tenebrous was gone. Denizen cursed. The Three were fraying here, slowly losing their reason. They hated Vivian; they knew she wielded the only threat to their existence. But in their black and ticking hearts they were animals—easily distracted, inconsistent. Denizen had been betting on the Three’s predatory nature—their desire for the prey in front of them.
Had she gotten there in time? How would they even know?
Abigail was frantically reloading her crossbow. The Woman in White was scrabbling in the dirt, choking round the bolt in her mouth. It wouldn’t hold her for long.
Suddenly Crosscaper shook. A hollow detonation made the ground quake and both teenagers stagger sideways. Vivian stumbled from the doorway, visible once again in a scarlet-stained cloak, the Man in the Waistcoat driving her back with solid strikes of his pudgy fists. Her hammer was nowhere to be seen.
You think after this long I can’t smell your grief? the thing cried. There is no running from this pain—keep it, keep feeling, keep hurting, and FEEEEEED UUUUUSSS!
Vivian slammed him back with a howl of fire and turned to Denizen.
“GO,” she snarled. “The bottom of the stairs. GO.”
Denizen ran. The Man in the Waistcoat made to follow, but Vivian brought down both fists on the back of his head.
He saw the Woman draw out the bolt transfixing her and stalk toward Abigail, who drew her blade with a rasp of steel—
—and then he was pelting down dark corridors, praying he could lift the hammer when he found it.
He had moments. Just moments. His footsteps rang out against the linoleum, past Ackerby’s snoring body, half falling down the stairs, and there it was—the ancient hammer, handle slick with his mother’s blood.
His hands closed round it and Denizen lifted. The weapon weighed as much as a continent, but terror and adrenaline lent him strength and he staggered into the basement of Crosscaper, hammer clutched tight to his chest.
Mercy spun and dipped, barely more than a smear of light darting round the circle. Her glow strobed across the files and folders strewn about the floor. Could she sense the battle happening upstairs? Did she know what was being done to save her?
“Mercy,” he said. “Mercy, I’ve—”
And then he heard the sobbing.
Oh. Right. The Clockwork Three. Funny how that had escaped his memory up until now.
The Opening Boy descended from the ceiling—a patch of darkness so deep even Denizen’s eyes couldn’t penetrate it. The air froze in its wake, a thousand tiny particles of ice billowing behind it in a shroud of white. It looked as if someone had cut a boy-shaped hole in the universe. In its depths, Denizen could see…stars, or faces, or turning cogs.
The Boy is every child they’ve ever hurt. That’s what Grey had said. They keep him just to…just to make him watch.
The Boy drifted nearer. Denizen could feel his eyebrows frost over. The folders were crinkling with the cold. Denizen drew the power of the Tenebrae close, reached for a Cant—
Do it.
Its voice was soft.
Please.
The Opening Boy closed its hands round the hammer, lending its strength to his. Smoke rose from its fingers where they touched the weapon.
All that misery. Everything the Boy had seen.
It just wanted an ending.
“Thank you,” Denizen said. He didn’t know what else to say.
They swung the hammer together.
THE CIRCLE EXPLODED.
Denizen caught a blurred glimpse of a triumphant smile before a hot slap of air spun him backward. His vision filled with falling white—thousands of pages kicked up by the blast—and he had a single moment to worry about landing on hard concrete before something caught him in tendrils of mist.
The darkness fled, driven away by royalty.
You came back, she said in a silvery voice.
Denizen went very still. He couldn’t quite figure out what was holding him up, but at least it felt nice—like being adrift in hot water. He could sense the immense strength in it, but it held him as gently as it could, as if he was very fragile. Which, he supposed, he was.
Mercy leaned in, hair a pallid avalanche. This close, he could see every detail of her—the sapphire glow of her eyes, the translucent perfection of her skin. Every other Tenebrous he had seen was darkness wearing a form, but at the heart of Mercy there was only light.
They were very, very close.
Thank you, she murmured. Lightning climbed the distance between her lips and his.
“Ummm…,” Denizen began, and then she was gone, falling apart into a brocade of mist. Very gently, he bumped to the ground.
“Uhhh…,” he elaborated, and then just lay there, staring at the ceiling in silence.
It took a full minute before everything else that was happening crashed back into his head and he heaved himself to his feet.
The hammer lay across the circle, its head shattered into a hundred splintered shards. The largest was half the length of his forearm. It fit his hand like a short sword—an awful lot easier to carry than the hammer had been. If I ever become head of the Order, he thought as he ran, everyone gets switchblades. Or tasers.
The courtyard was in ruins. Great chunks had been ripped from Crosscaper’s walls to litter the ground like lost and jagged teeth. The rain tasted like metal, sizzling where it struck burned swaths of gravel. The air stank of smoke. Everywhere, there was the chokingly alien feel of the Tenebrae.
Oh, look, the Man in the Waistcoat purred. The full set.
His smile was splitting what remained of his face, skin catching on the clockwork beneath. His buttons—or were they eyes? It was hard to tell—glittered with their own unreflected light. His bulk shifted as if shapes inside fought for release.
The Woman in White had become a cadaverous thing of long scalpels and camshafts. Mad eyes glinted beneath a toothed, spinning brow. She skittered back and forth behind the Man, scarring the gravel with her touch.
Where is the Boy? The voice of the Tenebrous was mildly amused. Did you kill him? Did it hurt?
I hope you’ve run, Denizen thought. I hope you’re far from here and free. He stepped forward and the Man’s grin returned, the Boy momentarily forgotten in the face of new prey.
Denizen’s gaze flicked to beyond the Tenebrous, and anger bloomed anew. A little more misery.
The Tenebrous were playing.
Vivian’s face was painted red from a cut near her hairline. There was another on her cheek. Her armor was slashed to pieces—the metal scarred in a dozen places, and her cloak was rags on her back.
Abigail, her crossbow long gone, had sacrificed her blade to Vivian’s superior talent and held a bolt in either hand like knives. She too was swaying slightly, a bruise darkening one amber cheek.
Denizen watched as the Woman lashed out with a long blade of brass—striking sparks off the stone. Vivian flinched back, a flicker of light moving behind her eyes. With everything that had happened tonight, he had no idea how she was still standing.
“About time,” she called. “Do I have to rescue you too?”
Denizen couldn’t help but smile.
This is how our feast will start, the Man in the Waistcoat murmured, spitting a tooth out onto the gravel. An old grudge flavoring new meat. He padded closer, grotesquely light on his feet.
Denizen opened his fist and let the stone shard fall. What was left of the Man in the Waistcoat went pale.
“Now, I’m a bit new at this,” Denizen said jauntily, “but what was it you said about the Endless King’s anger?”
Thunder roared somewhere in the distance. The wind began to pick up.
“Devastating,” Vivian said, her eyes narrowing. “Apocalyptic.”
“An extinction-level event,” they said together.
The
air dropped twenty degrees. Denizen had never felt a Breach so violent, so immediate and intense. Sound distorted. Colors veered to blues and blacks. Pain stabbed through Denizen’s temples at the sheer force of it. This wasn’t the Tenebrae’s slow intrusion—this was a sword blade through reality.
The Tenebrous roared. The sound shook with rage and hate…and loss too, the knowledge that they had failed, that the darkest of all fates was coming toward them.
They moved as one—the Man in the Waistcoat and the Woman in White—coming together in a weave of jagged clockwork, limbs winding, spines fusing, twisting into something more terrible, more honest than the forms they had held before. A shadow suddenly swept by Denizen, freezing the air in its wake—the Opening Boy, unable to escape, bound by misery to a greater shape.
The Clockwork Three reared. Denizen caught a blurred glimpse of something huge and spindly, a bent-spine mantis of spavined gears, faces split by shining teeth. It rose to its full height, spurs clawing at the sky, lunging for Denizen with a manic howl—and stopped a hair’s breadth from his nose, talons scratching impotently at the ground.
Denizen fell back, heart in his mouth. The beast that had been the Clockwork Three writhed and snapped like a scorpion impaled on a hot needle. Its stink—rank oil and madness—made his stomach churn.
Behind it stood the Emissary of the Endless King. It pinned the Three on its spine with one great boot.
The air still shivered with the effects of the Breach. The ancient warrior towered over all of them, massive gauntlets curled into fists bigger than Denizen’s skull. Rust hung about it like a cloud, jarred loose by the Three’s useless struggles.
CLOCKWORK THREE, it thundered. The Three wailed and fought its grip. YOU HAVE BETRAYED YOUR KING.
Gear-mouths screamed. Needle-claws dug in the dirt.
The Emissary’s helm swung toward Vivian. You kept your word, Malleus Hardwick, it said in a softer voice. And the King will keep his. His Pursuivants will be withdrawn. And this…
Its boot ground down harder.
…this FILTH will suffer the full justice of the Endless King.
Darkness bled and boiled through its joints. You are owed, Malleus Hardwick. We remember our debts, and a favor from the Forever Court is no small thing.