The Forever Court

by Dave Rudden

Attend upon Her …

  If a Knight’s fire was a searing summer heat, then her light was that of a faraway star. It fell like cool water upon Denizen’s skin. Somehow, through the massive bulk of the Hephaestus Knights, it reached him. Maybe they had moved out of the way. Maybe it had just shone through them.

  As if it were meant for him.

  Mercy.

  She wore a shawl of witchlight that shimmered with every step she took, becoming a longcoat, chain mail, a half-murk of cloud. Her limbs flashed with blue and lilac, the bright soft purple of an unworldly sunset.

  The color of royalty.

  The disembodied voice spoke again, but Denizen wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even afraid anymore, not really. There was only so much room in his head, and right now he was full of awe.

  She was bent light and blizzard in the shape of a girl, features changing moment to moment, her eyes gleaming polar white. Purling threads of lightning lit her translucent skin from within. Denizen remembered the taste of that lightning on his lips, and blushed so hard it could have been considered an act of war.

  “Hi,” Denizen said. Syllables were suddenly very difficult. “Um. Hello.”

  Now a couple of the Knights looked at him, faces taut with surprise.

  Wait. Am I not supposed to be—oh.

  Greaves cleared his throat.

  “The Order of the Borrowed Dark, and I, its Palatine and Malleus Primus, formally ...” He paused, as if even he could not believe the words he was about to say. “Formally welcome you to the freehold of Dublin, and Ireland, and to the mortal plane. The words we speak are words of greeting. Not fire.”

  Mocked-By-a-Husband inclined its bladed head.

  Wise, little meat.

  Denizen felt rather than saw the Knights around him stiffen. The temperature of the room jumped twenty degrees, light streaking beneath skin.

  Mercy didn’t say anything. She just looked at each face in turn, as though committing them to memory. It was an effort for Denizen to drag his eyes from hers.

  Forgive Mocked-By-a-Husband, Malebranche said in twelve voices at once. The sound made Denizen want to throw up. My dear comrade is out of practice speaking to any but itself. Allow me to caw in more civilized tones. Thank you, Palatine. This is … a strange meeting. We all know the truth of that. Feathers rustled as birds settled into new positions. But we of the Tenebrae are no strangers to change.

  Greaves’s smile had never looked so forced. “Indeed.”

  Denizen had never considered before how alien birds were—all edges and hollow bones, switchblades sheathed in flesh. One by one, Malebranche’s heads snapped forward to stare at him. He felt the weight of their glare like a physical blow.

  And this is the boy.

  “Let me guess,” Greaves said drily, “you thought he’d be taller.”

  Its black eyes glimmered. You all look the same to me.

  Idiocy, Mocked-By-a-Husband snapped, the syllables bouncing round the room like sharpened coins. Blades came up as the Court-creature took a step forward, shining limbs slicing the air. Even Malebranche jerked sideways in surprise. Why do we bother? These things are paltry, short-lived….What thanks do we owe them?

  Denizen could see them all reflected in her depths, tiny and pale and afraid. This Tenebrous stank of power. The air shimmered around her in a way Denizen had never seen before—not in the Three, not in Pick-Up-the-Pieces, not even in the Emissary itself.

  What is to stop us cutting through these frail beasts and gorging ourselves on the city above—

  “Do you know what a Claymore is?”

  Mocked-By-a-Husband froze. Evidently, it was not used to being interrupted.

  “Not the sword,” Greaves continued calmly, “though thematically that’s quite good. The M18 Claymore mine—a pretty simple contraption. Fires a whole mess of tiny spoken-steel balls at a very unfriendly velocity. One word from me and you’ll have to be separated from each other with a sieve.”

  As one, the Court’s heads bent to stare at the line of freshly laid flagstones on the floor.

  Mocked-By-a-Husband purred again, but this time there was a note of uncertainty in its tone.

  You would also die.

  There was nothing forced about Greaves’s smile now.

  “We are Knights.”

  Now that we have all shown sufficient teeth ...

  Mercy’s voice was a cascade of rain, each syllable soft and delicate.

  Your precautions are ... unnecessary, Palatine, but understood. Know, though, that my father is a King of his word. We are here under the colors of peace.

  Greaves nodded. “The Order has always held the Endless King in respect.”

  It wasn’t a lie. They had, the same way you respected forest fires and meteor strikes.

  We are here to thank Denizen Hardwick. He saved me when I was struck low by villains within our own ranks. An act of bravery crossing two worlds. A human helping a Tenebrous. Her smile gleamed. A most unlikely thing.

  A heartbeat passed, and then—

  But what if it wasn’t?

  The chamber was suddenly so quiet that Denizen heard Greaves blink in surprise. The Palatine’s voice was careful.

  “Excuse me?”

  What if humans and Tenebrous coming together was not the event of a millennium, the unique consequence of a vicious crime, but instead a chance to talk of peace?

  Shock rippled round the chamber at the word. Not one of the Knights took their eyes from Mercy, but Denizen saw shoulders tense and blades tremble. Even Greaves looked taken aback. It was harder to tell with the Court—alien bodies, alien reactions—but both Malebranche and Mocked-By-a-Husband swung round to stare at the daughter of their King.

  Mercy’s smile was innocent.

  We will return here, on the last day of the moon’s dark, with a gift. Something to show our resolve toward a new path. She waved a hand. And, of course, our gratitude.

  She didn’t look at Denizen. She didn’t even glance at him.

  Would you meet us, Palatine? Would you listen to us, if we had words of peace to share?

  To his credit, Greaves recovered magnificently.

  “Such words would be very welcome,” he said. “Here? The last day of the lunar cycle? And all accords and rules the same?”

  Agreed.

  Mocked-By-a-Husband growled low in its throat. You hardly think we will come back to this place, with your—your snares, your trap-things in the floor?

  Greaves shrugged with a clatter of armor. “That’s the deal. That’s diplomacy.”

  The darkness behind the Court began to recede, a tidal wave in reverse. Malebranche shook itself apart in a storm of glossy white wings. Mocked-By-a-Husband turned away, but not before baring her shard-teeth one last time. Mercy inclined her head. Perfectly demure, like the queen-in-waiting she was.

  I keep my promises.

  The shining form of Mocked-By-a-Husband turned sideways into the retreating murk and vanished, raw hostility rising off it like steam. Malebranche was a diminishing ripple in black liquid. Rout had already gone. Denizen had never seen it move.

  Mercy bowed—once, low—and then came apart in a thousand curlicues of light. The doorway behind her no longer led to an ocean of black, but to another long corridor of stone. It was as if the Tenebrous had never stood there at all.

  Except that where before thousands of carved knights had stood and marched, now there was only smooth stone, like a spoon licked clean.

  “OK,” Greaves said, when the eddying dread had faded. “What?”

  “KNOW THAT IT IS not I who judge you,” Grandfather said, each word a frozen nail, “for we have already been judged.”

  Panic. Uriel fought to push some measure of Croit dignity into his spine, but the shakes came all the same. He was surrounded by his Family in the midst of their stronghold. Their Redemptress hung above them, a spider-sprawl of wires topped by the most beautiful face he had ever seen.

  This was his home. This was Her Shrine. Th
is should have been the place where Uriel felt safest in all the world.

  But Ambrel looked so small.

  “We were judged long ago,” the old man continued. He had traded his customary stiff black suit for a robe of unblemished Judging White, billowing sleeves hiding his right hand and his empty left. The other Croits, arrayed in a silent circle, wore the same.

  Tabitha wore Accusers’ Red and Ambrel knelt in Failure’s Gray, her eyes downcast, her heartbeat pounding in Uriel’s chest.

  He had refused to wear the White. Let them punish me for that. Let them do whatever they want, as long as they don’t ...

  “We were judged, and found wanting, and we wear that black Transgression on our skin. It is unavoidable, as we train for our War. But it is only in Her service that we use Her Favor, and only in the ways She provides.”

  Uriel didn’t even have to look. Meredel would be fingering the splotch of iron on his cheek. Hagar’s left eye wept constantly since one side of her face had turned fully to iron, and the silence was filled with the soft clicks of her blinking. Roch, Osprey, Adauctus ... even Uriel, thumb relentlessly rubbing the cold spot in the center of his palm.

  Every Croit dreamt of the day when their Transgression would flake from them like rust, and the fire of their Favor could spill out without fear.

  “Accuse her,” Grandfather said.

  It was a good story, Uriel thought numbly, and Tabitha told it well—though in Uriel’s memory neither of them had been quite so incompetent. To hear their aunt, the twins wouldn’t have managed to cross the necropolis had only the crows stood against them. The part about the sword she told true. Why exaggerate when the truth was damning enough?

  Ambrel’s shoulders had slumped. She looked drained. Broken.

  The little color in Grandfather’s face had leached away by the time Tabitha finished. She took her place behind him once again, but not before Uriel saw a smile of cold triumph dart across her face.

  It would have been a lie to say that Uriel had never contemplated violence against his Family, because siblings fought and Tabitha existed, but Croits were raised on violence. It was a natural part of life: us and them, and always, always, those two were on a terminal trajectory.

  This was the first time, however, that he’d felt his Family was on the other side.

  A Croit must always be ready to judge the unworthy.

  But she isn’t. She’s my sister, and she believes.

  “Have you anything to say in your defense?”

  Slowly, slowly, Ambrel raised her head.

  “Everything I have ever done,” she said, “has been in service to the Redemptress. My every heartbeat has been for Her. Had our—my birthday proved me unFavored ... I would have died. I would not have been able to live had She turned Her face from me.”

  She stared at the Redemptress with tears in her eyes.

  “But She Favored me. Whatever happened in the Garden of the Waiting, it was a mistake. Grandfather—you always told us never to surrender, never to accept defeat. That’s all I was doing. I was desperate and I reached—”

  She took a deep and ragged breath.

  “I defended Uriel when I was assigned to hunt him with Tabitha. That was wrong, and I will do whatever Penance you require. But as for drawing his sword ...”

  Uriel had never been so terrified, nor so proud. Ambrel’s voice cracked with sorrow and, yes, rage—the rage that boiled under the skin of every Croit, only needing the smallest of excuses to be set free.

  “I didn’t even know I could do it! How can it be wrong if I didn’t even know?”

  “Because I say so!”

  Grandfather’s words cut the Shrine to silence. Ambrel flinched. Meredel’s hand went still on his cheek. The sneer disappeared from Tabitha’s face. Echoes crashed round the chamber, sliced to pieces by the wires, until the syllables fell around them like rain.

  A surge of nausea climbed in Uriel’s stomach. The noise didn’t stop. The echoes didn’t die away. Croits were looking around bewilderedly, pressing hands against ears. Even Grandfather had the most disconcerting look of confusion on his face, and it took Uriel far too long to see the cause.

  The wires were trembling.

  Fat cables throbbed their vibrations against the stone. Hair-thin filaments fluttered, separating from themselves in sine waves of absolute black. The walls shook as their secret tendons contracted, dust sloughing down in sheets of choking gray.

  SNAP.

  An iron statue fell as the wires pinning it to the wall retracted, curling back on themselves like sliced sinews. Uriel ducked away from their waspish hum. None of the Croits were standing now—none but Grandfather, prowling back and forth, seemingly mindless of the razor chords playing the air, and Ambrel, staring up with painfully wide eyes.

  What is She—

  The air was suddenly shocking cold. Motes of dust paused in their orbits and then fell as if turned to lead. A feeling of crushing, vicious wrong howled through the chamber, like nothing Uriel had ever felt before. It poisoned the air, painting him instantly in a layer of oily, freezing sweat. He barely noticed.

  The Redemptress was screaming, and it sounded like the end of the world.

  Stone shattered as Her wires flexed. The sound was everywhere—a retching, hive-hum drawl—and She clutched Her head with wire claws, back arched as though trying to tear Herself apart. Dust drizzled from the gaps in Her chest.

  Ambrel was screaming too—cowering on her knees, a child before Her gigantic shadow. Such panic in her voice. Uriel barely recognized the words.

  “I’MSORRYI’MSORRYI’MSORRYI’MSORRY—”

  Osprey cowered. Magnus wept. Tabitha had fled, her robe a smear of red on the ground. Another moment, another second, and the castle would come down. Uriel almost welcomed the thought. At least then the howl might end.

  “MAJESTY!”

  Everything stopped. The wires froze in the air, a forest of beckoning fingers. Dust still fell from the ceiling, but the creak of abused masonry faded. Grandfather’s voice echoed, and the universe held its breath.

  I …

  Darkness writhed in the cavern of Her skull. Tendrils wound and unwound, and Her empty gaze fell on the terrified faces of Her Favored.

  I heard a door open.

  Her voice was tiny.

  It opened and I woke.

  Each word a lost little thing.

  Are you there?

  Uriel had never seen Grandfather so gentle.

  “My Redemptress, I ...”

  WHERE ARE YOU?

  Suddenly She spun, wires thrashing, mouth twisted in a desperate snarl. Pillars came apart in slick-cut shards. She lifted the Adversary’s iron bodies and stared into their faces before flinging them aside.

  Ambrel. Uriel tried to inch forward, but a tendril scored the stone in front of him and he froze. Ambrel, where are you?

  “He survived, Majesty!”

  The Redemptress froze.

  Soft light bled from the skin of Ambrel Croit. She got to her feet, heedless of the slicing strands, and stared up into the face of her goddess.

  “The First Croit survived, Majesty. He survived, and we are what is left of him. We are his promise to serve You. To avenge You. We are Your Family and You will lead us to the War That Will Come.”

  Glacier-slow, the Redemptress frowned.

  War? I don’t…She looked around. This was our home. Her eyes traced the ruined stones. We were going to be happy here.

  Ambrel opened her mouth to speak again, but Grandfather cut her off.

  “There was a battle, Majesty. The Adversary came and the castle fell. You slept. The First Croit couldn’t wake you. But his Family waited. We waited for so long.”

  I slept… . I think I dreamt….

  Her voice was soft.

  Am I the only one there is?

  “We waited so long, My Lady,” Grandfather repeated. There was a horrible, aching yearning to his voice that Uriel had never heard before. “But You’ve returned
. I will call them—all the Croits, all Your servants. We are scattered, but for You ... for You they will return.”

  Croits.

  Uriel had never heard his name said like that before. Tasted. Weighed. As if the word were not simply enough.

  Yes.

  She stared down at each of them in turn. Uriel felt himself wither beneath that gaze, those twin points of shimmering black.

  How many?

  “Enough,” Grandfather said. “I promise you.”

  Her voice was sharp.

  There will never be enough to serve me.

  The words were stilted, as though She were quoting. Wires skittered through the dark, and it was all Uriel could do to stop the fire rising up through him. It recognized Her. Osprey’s hands were dug into his temples the way they always were when he was fighting for control. Meredel’s fists were white by his sides.

  Of course the Favor knows Her, a part of Uriel protested. It’s Hers.

  Rivulets of scarlet climbed his bones and it was only with the greatest of effort that he pushed them down again. Eager. That was it. They felt eager.

  And angry.

  The Adversary ...

  The Redemptress’s eyes were wide. She descended gracefully, pivoting as though on hidden joints. Black oil beaded on Her wires as She stared into Ambrel’s eyes.

  I remember that light, She whispered. We stole it. We stole it together. Her voice trembled. But all this ... these words. This war ... I don’t, I DON’T REMEMBER—

  The trembles became a shudder, then a fit. Once more the chamber shook, and the Croits ducked for cover.

  All but Ambrel. She stood tall and reached out to take the Redemptress’s hand.

  Grandfather stared. Uriel stared. They could do nothing else.

  “That’s all right,” Ambrel said. Her smile was saintly. “We remembered it for You.”

  VIVIAN WAS RIGHT THAT the visiting Knights could have stayed in Seraphim Row. The mansion was so vast that Denizen’s desire to explore the echoing, whispering darkness of the house had run out long before the corridors had.

  Seraphim Row was ample. It was commodious. Had the Neophytes wanted a room, or a suite, or even a whole wing to themselves, the manor would have grimly obliged.