by Dave Rudden
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Tabitha hissed. “Of course you’d stick together. Who else would trust you, knowing what your parents did?”
Uriel rolled his eyes a half second before Ambrel did. This again. Uriel could never understand why Tabitha thought the actions of strangers would shame them. UnFavored did what they did for whatever reasons unFavored had for doing things.
It’s nothing to do with us.
“Maybe it would have been better if your parents had succeeded in hiding you from Grandfather,” Tabitha purred. “Then we wouldn’t have to put up with this unseemly loyalty to each other, instead of to the Family and the cause. You could have grown up Outside. In the suburbs, with nice sweaters and a little dog, far away from us. Far away from Her.”
Ambrel’s hands had curled into fists. Uriel’s teeth were clenched. Every Croit child belonged to the Family. Uriel and Ambrel’s parents—or, rather, the strangers who forfeited their right to that title—had tried to conceal the twins’ birth from Grandfather so they ... well, Uriel didn’t know. He had no idea why they had done what they did or what they hoped to get out of it.
He was just tired of having to pay for it.
“We are worthy, Aunt,” Uriel snapped. “Our thirteenth birthday proved that. We are as Favored as you.”
“Please,” Tabitha said. “Look at you. Bound and trussed. Neither of you are strong enough for what the Redemptress demands. You’re just half a person each.” She smirked. “Worthy.”
Ambrel snarled something through her bonds. Uriel’s eyes widened.
Tabitha frowned. “What did she say?”
Then let us show you.
And Uriel’s sword burst from Ambrel’s hands.
He couldn’t tell who looked more surprised—Tabitha scrambling backward, Magnus reeling in agony as the golden blade slashed his leash to ribbons, or Ambrel herself.
Holding a sword was a familiar feeling for any Croit, though, and training took over. Ambrel leapt to her feet and spun the blade in a flaming figure eight.
Magnus bolted. Tabitha stayed only long enough to stammer, “I’m ... I’m telling!” before turning on her heel and running after him.
The flaming sword came apart with a sigh of sparks. Uriel and Ambrel both stared at the place where it had been.
“Uh ...” Ambrel was opening and closing her hand, the skin shiny pink where the sword had lain.
You get used to it eventually, Uriel wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.
“How did you…do that?” he said finally. The Prayer of a Croit was a sacred thing. You devised one, or chose one an ancestor had made, and the rest of your life was spent practicing it, studying it, learning how to channel Her fire into a usable form.
“I was there for all of it,” Ambrel said distantly. “All your preparation—I helped you choose it, remember? You’ve told me a hundred times what it feels like, the pattern you imagine. I just…I just thought it into shape.”
She was right. Uriel had watched her do her lung exercises, her meditations. He knew the channels of her Favor almost as well as she did.
“Grandfather didn’t…say we weren’t supposed to try each other’s Prayers,” Uriel said, with the yawning sort of horror he always felt when he realized the old man was going to be angry. “He didn’t say that.”
No. He hadn’t. He hadn’t said anything about it at all, which is why every Croit had thought it impossible.
Did Grandfather not ... know? Had he been wrong?
“Sister,” said Uriel. “What does this mean?”
Ambrel was still staring morosely at her hands. “It means I’m probably not going to get my hair dye.”
DUBLIN WAS A CITY of secrets.
It was what Denizen liked about it. He’d loved maps as a kid, how cities seemed to make sense—neat grids of buildings and streets, geometric and solvable. Places where you could know where you were.
Dublin, however, was a liar of a city. It hid its enormity from you—tucked it into alleyways, veiled its true proportions in skirts of stone and lamplight. Dublin would trick you into thinking you’d figured out a new shortcut and then reveal a whole town hiding between you and your destination, like a folding paper puzzle.
Maybe it was a bit early to have a favorite city. The one constant in the life of a Knight—besides horrible danger—was travel. London, New York, Sofia, Moscow—there was a good chance Denizen would get to bleed over all of them.
But Dublin would always be his first crush.
Palatine Edifice Greaves was arriving today, and so Denizen and the others had walked from Seraphim Row in the gray haze of dawn, winding through the brash color of the shopping streets and the hidden green of Mountjoy Square.
Eventually, they reached the red, shade-dappled brick of Upper Drumcondra Road. Trees rustled in the day’s first breeze, casting traceries of shadow across the white stone building nestled demurely between the grim gray of two Georgian houses. A small sign peeked out from behind a fall of ivy, discreetly informing you that the building was the Goshawk Hotel and that it would like you to come in.
A line of smaller text asked you first to wipe your feet.
“Fancy place,” Simon said, staring down at his hastily polished shoes.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Darcie. “Fascinating venue. It has politely excluded itself from every hotel award in Europe.”
“Why?” asked Abigail.
“So other people can win,” Darcie replied.
“Right,” Simon said. “So ... very fancy.” He sounded a little nervous. They’d scrubbed up as well as they could, but the clothes Vivian provided were more functional than showy. Besides, Simon was so gangly that it was his limbs more than his clothes that made him look untidy.
“I’ve never heard of it,” Abigail, the most traveled of them all, said.
“Well,” Vivian said. “They consider advertising ... impolite.”
“You don’t sound like you approve,” Denizen said, giving her a sidelong glance.
Vivian scowled. “No. It’s just ... it’s very Edifice Greaves.”
They made their way up the steps, where a charcoal-suited concierge swept the door open with a flick of his gloved hand.
Beyond was the kind of opulence that made Denizen intensely aware at a molecular level of his each and every flaw. Black and silver couches lurked in every corner like comfy jaguars, lit by discreet lamps. Pale vines had been seduced into growing up the walls, filling the room with a cold and sweet perfume.
He spoke in a whisper. It was the kind of room that bred them.
“What do you mean, very Edifice Greaves?”
Vivian wore a sharp black suit, scars pink against the pale of her cheek. With her granite eyes and dark expression, she looked like an undertaker, possibly one willing to drum up her own business. Her hammer was in a duffel bag on her back, but her hand was tapping unconsciously against her thigh where it would normally hang. Denizen wasn’t sure she was even aware she was doing it.
It was strange seeing her out in public, surrounded by and interacting with other people. The sunlight had seemed to wash her out, making her at once ghostly and far more permanent than the world outside—something separate and distinct.
“We could have at least lodged them in Seraphim Row,” she explained, scanning the room with a warrior’s practiced eye. Denizen had been under her tutelage long enough to know she was clocking exits, blind spots, and choke points where she could direct the flow of enemies toward her. “A far more defensible location.”
She ran her hand down a cushion and sniffed. “But something like this has never happened before, and the Palatine wants it to be an event.”
Abigail glanced around with a fair approximation of Vivian’s disdainful expression. “Wasteful.”
Denizen and Simon shot each other wry glances. Abigail hadn’t ended up in Seraphim Row by accident. She’d requested to be sent there because of a respect for Vivian that bordered on hero worship.
“Oh, I’d imagine he paid for this himself,” Vivian said. “He wouldn’t like to be accused of misappropriating Order funds. He’ll dress it up as just a nice thing he wanted to do for people who’ll soon be risking their lives.”
An amused frown flitted across Denizen’s face. It was quite a new one, but he’d found himself using it more and more. No. 26—My Mother Is Pretty Much a Lunatic. Only Vivian Hardwick could make the words a nice thing he wanted to do for people sound like dentistry with a rusty nail.
A porter materialized beside Vivian, so close the Malleus flinched. His prepackaged smile faltered as she turned toward him, inexorable as a guillotine.
“May I ...” He swallowed, his voice coming out a lot smaller than he intended. “May I take your bag?”
“No,” Vivian said flatly, and then cocked her head in thought. “But would you like a tip anyway?”
The man’s smile returned, twice as wide.
Vivian leaned into his face.
“Don’t ever sneak up on me again.”
The man went white and vanished. Denizen couldn’t be sure—he never was around Vivian—but for a second he could have sworn a smile lurked at the corners of her mouth.
She may have been doing the porter a favor, Denizen thought, looking around the Goshawk’s foyer. The residents might have seemed normal—reading papers, drinking tea, chatting—but if you knew what to look for ...
There. A woman with half her head shaved, the bright coil of a dragon tattoo on her cheek. She seemed engrossed in the magazine she was reading, but her eyes had tracked Denizen and the others from the moment they entered.
There. A whipcord-slender Asian man examining one of the paintings on the wall, a thin plastic tube in his hand. It looked like something an art student would carry to protect rolled-up drawings ... but it was also the perfect size for a duelist’s sword.
The Cost was the easiest way to pick out a Knight, but it was by no means the only one. You looked for the wariness. The focused calm. The grace that came from a life lived between claws and fire.
There were ten—no, twelve—Knights scattered around the room. Denizen followed Vivian to a corner couch—back against the wall, naturally—but there was someone already there.
Jack stood out against the opulence of the Goshawk like a bear on a catwalk, shirt straining against his muscles. A paperback sat on his lap and Denizen resisted the automatic urge to cock his head and see what he was reading.
“Lads,” Jack said.
Vivian nodded. There was an underlying tension there, but neither one of them seemed willing to acknowledge it. It made Denizen wonder why Greaves had chosen Jack as his messenger. Did he not know? Or ... maybe that’s why he sent him in the first place.
Denizen was starting to put together a mental picture of Edifice Greaves, and he had the creeping suspicion he didn’t like it. On the other hand—as the doors of the Goshawk slid open to admit a sharp slant of summer sun—Greaves did know how to make an entrance.
The Palatine of the Order of the Borrowed Dark stalked through the doors like a warship cleaving the open sea. A close-cropped black beard cupped his chin and lips, half a shade darker than his skin, his smile a stripe of sunlight in the Goshawk’s artful gloom. He was tall but not toweringly so, handsome but not distractingly so, and the sleeves of his expensive shirt were rolled up, as if he were more used to working with his hands than dressing well.
And yet something moved with him, a cloud of confidence and easy mastery that made even the normal residents hush and stare. The hammer strapped to his back had been wrapped in black silk, but Denizen recognized it all the same. Somehow it irked him.
Five Knights followed—the Palatine’s personal bodyguard. Violent storms in slick attire, each scanning the foyer with flat, cold eyes.
Greaves swept toward the white marble counter dominating one wall. Without so much as a gesture, Knights rose from their seats one by one. The girl with the shaved head tossed aside her magazine. Jack pushed himself to his feet with a hand like an oar. From every dark and secret recess of the foyer, men and women with black gloves and dark expressions appeared, falling into Greaves’s orbit like comets cold and sharp.
Denizen joined them. He couldn’t help himself.
We have to go sign in, he thought. That’s all it is.
The receptionist was a young woman with complicated hair. Her bright smile faltered as Greaves pressed both hands down on the counter, staring her dead in the eye.
“Hello,” he said, in a voice as warm and deep as a subway tunnel, “we’re librarians.”
Her eyes went very wide.
“Oh,” she said, before—in a magic that had nothing to do with the Tenebrae but everything to do with the Goshawk—she was replaced by a manager, who took in the lupine circus before him as if it happened every day.
“Good morning, sir,” he said with an unctuous smile. “Can I—”
“Guild of Esoteric Librarians,” Greaves said slowly, drawing out each word. “We’ve booked rooms. A lot of rooms. Page under your right hand, thirty-three lines down.”
He hadn’t seemed to look down at all, but it took the manager three long seconds to find it.
“Ah! Mr. Greaves. Your rooms are ready. I shall just—”
“You do that,” Greaves said, already turning away. There was something very familiar in his smile. “Hello, Vivian.”
“Showy,” Vivian remarked coolly. “Palatine.”
“This is the Goshawk,” Greaves responded simply. “They don’t gossip. And if they did, what would they say? We’re librarians.”
Vivian sniffed, but Greaves had already moved on, clasping Abigail’s hand in his two. “You must be Abigail Falx.”
One eye on Vivian, Abigail grudgingly let her hand be shaken.
“I had the pleasure of training with your mother years ago in Iran,” he said. “I think I still have the bruises.”
A smile quirked Abigail’s lip before she straightened it. “Oh,” she said. “Cool.”
He shook Darcie’s hand next, inclining his head in something that wasn’t quite a bow. “Madame Lux.” He turned to Simon. “You know we were getting book requests from our central archives from Darcie at, what, age eight?”
Darcie dropped her gaze to the floor. “Well, I—”
“Speaking of reading, I’ve brought along my copy of the Incunabulae Ferrum.” Darcie’s head immediately came back up, but Greaves had already turned to Simon.
“Mr. Hayes. Our unexpected find.”
Not everyone had received Denizen’s recent wealth of family revelations. Knightly fire ran in Simon’s veins, but where Abigail could relate her family history back to the Crusades, and the proof of Denizen’s lineage was glaringly present—literally—Simon’s parentage was still a mystery. Sometimes revelations cut out just when you needed them.
“Despite our best efforts,” Greaves said, “sometimes a bloodline goes missing. The Incunabulae have a record of every Knight, going back centuries. If we can, we’ll find your family together.”
Simon’s voice was a little hoarse. “Oh. OK.”
Greaves smiled at him a moment longer and then turned to Denizen. His dark eyes gleamed. “And you must be Denizen Hardwick.”
I must be, Denizen thought. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.
“Yes,” he said, and let his own small hand be engulfed. “It’s—”
“Business, I’m afraid,” Greaves finished for him. “Shall we?”
“IT WAS A VERY pretty letter,” Greaves began, “but I don’t give skin for the promises of monsters.”
Murmurs of approval rang out round the conference room—though conference room was a terribly boring name for a chamber so opulent. From furniture to fixtures, it felt like the kind of place where sultans had conferences, if sultans had conferences. Denizen didn’t think they did, but until this morning he hadn’t thought Knights had conferences, so what did he—
“Good morning.”
Greaves cl
asped both sides of his lectern, his gaze sweeping the seated Knights. Denizen had been trying not to stare, but he had never seen such a diverse group of people in one place.
The only requirements for the war against the Tenebrous was fire and the will to use it. Breaches happened everywhere in the world, and so everywhere warriors had risen to fight them. Each sect, coven, and cult had sent representatives, many traveling thousands of miles. All here. All for this.
Denizen swallowed. That’s how important this is.
“It has been too long since all those touched by iron have stood under the same roof,” the Palatine said in warm tones. “The Knights of the Borrowed Dark, the Choir of Candles, the Burning Mirror, PenumbraCorp—”
“Cool,” came a voice. “Hi. What do we know?”
Greaves’s smile was faint. “The Palatine acknowledges Agent Strap of PenumbraCorp. Good to have you, Agent. It’s been a while.”
“Well,” Strap said, thumbing his nose, “I hate the food.”
Skinny limbs in a too-big shirt—the American might only have been a few years older than Darcie, but he wore exhaustion like another decade. There was a shiny bruise on his cheek.
“So what,” he repeated, “do we know?”
It was a little fascinating to see so many different Knights in one place, but it had also begun to remind Denizen uncomfortably of the food chain. There had been a deceptively cheery graph in his schoolbook about it. The diagram explained that it took fifty antelopes to keep one lion fed. Predators needed space. They needed freedom. They weren’t meant to all sit in one room.
The air hummed with the promise of violence.
“We will be met by three of the Forever Court and Mercy herself,” Greaves said. “A Concilium of the worlds. It will be held in Retreat”— there were murmurings at that—“and I have secured undertakings from Mercy that should promote ... trust.”
He didn’t look like he believed it either.
“We’ll keep it short. Get in, get out. They want to honor the boy who saved the world from war.”
Denizen tried very hard not to check whether people were staring at him.