The Forever Court

by Dave Rudden

  It had not been far enough.

  “You’re crying,” Ambrel said. “Are you all right?”

  “The wind,” he said tonelessly, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “That’s all.”

  She stared at him a moment longer before turning away to look at the vastness of the ocean. It must have an Outside name. They’d probably have to learn it. If the Croits were to rule the world, then they’d need to know the names for things.

  Unless we start renaming everything, Uriel thought. A whole world, named for the ramblings of a grieving goddess. Would the sickening pall of Her presence infuse everything then? Would there be anywhere you could go to escape it?

  This was the first time the twins had been alone since the raid. Always something, some sermon or training session, keeping them apart. Uriel would have thought it by design had he not known the truth—he could spend all the time in the world with Ambrel if he were willing to spend all his time with Her.

  “So what did you think?” Ambrel said.

  Uriel was momentarily caught off guard.

  “Of what?”

  “Of Dublin, you goose,” she said. “Did you ever imagine something so huge? I mean, I’ve seen pictures of cities in books, but I never imagined so many people, so many colors and buildings and strange devices… . It was amazing, wasn’t it?”

  He couldn’t help but smile back, a real smile, the first one in what felt like forever. He could lose himself in books and the histories, but when she found something that she loved it was infectious. Inspiring.

  “When did you read a book?”

  She clipped him across the ear.

  “Over your shoulder at some point, probably. But, seriously, that place was magical. Just ... magical.” Her grin turned dreamy. “And it’ll be ours.”

  A chill went through Uriel. “What?”

  Ambrel hadn’t heard him. “I mean, maybe not ours specifically, but I’m sure we could ask Grandfather. There are much bigger cities. And then you could live in that library—we’d rebuild it, obviously—and I could try out a skyscraper, and we could go for runs in the parks and visit the others, and—why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Ambrel ...” Say it. Be honest with her. For a while, it had almost been a novelty to have a secret from his twin. There had never been a reason to have one before. Would she listen to him? Would she report him to Grandf—No. She wouldn’t. He trusted her.

  But the childish hope in her voice ...

  “Ambrel, do you really believe that?”

  Her smile disappeared. “Believe what?”

  Everything. Of the two of them, Uriel had always been the more diligent student. He was good at details. And the Redemptress had awoken, and since then every single tenet of his Family’s beliefs had been proved a lie.

  That She had fallen along with Eloquence in a great battle was true enough. It was all She seemed to be able to remember. But they had been promised a savior, not a creature of crazed anger and grief. There had never been a mention of Malebranche, and so far there had been no talk of the Croits’ salvation at all.

  And then there was Denizen Hardwick. A living, breathing Adversary, who wasn’t a creature of Transgression but a boy who seemed very confused as to what was going on. A boy with the same gifts as them, but far more versatile ... almost as though he hadn’t been taught that a person could have only one Prayer.

  Was that a sin? Was that what made him an Adversary?

  Wasn’t that why they had put Ambrel on trial?

  Uriel couldn’t get the words out. It was so open out here that he could imagine sky and dirt and sea as all there was to the world, so desolate and stark that he could see all the way back through time—the winding path of his Family shaped by a thousand thousand lies.

  But there still wasn’t space for what he wanted to say.

  “Ambrel, there were so many people.”

  Stalling. Stalling while he tried to navigate the path between what he wanted to say and what he thought she could handle. Grandfather had been very clear on what would happen if anyone was overheard sharing weak thoughts, but that wasn’t Uriel’s worry at all.

  “So?” she said, fixing him with her stark green stare.

  “What do you mean, so?” he responded. “You saw how many people lived in that city. How many must there be in Ireland? In the world? How are we supposed to take that over? All we’ve been told—”

  Don’t. Not yet. Draw it back.

  He coughed. “I just ... surely you can’t believe that we’re just going to ... get all we were promised? Just like that?”

  “Of course I do,” she said simply. “Don’t you?”

  He turned away before that gaze could draw the truth out of him, but staring out into the sea gave him no comfort because he knew that beyond the waves was Outside, and War. A War they had been promised they would win.

  What good are promises now?

  “I do believe,” he lied. “But I just can’t see the how, you know? I can’t see from here to there. I don’t know what we’re going to lose on the way.”

  “Victory’s about loss, Uriel,” Ambrel said, and her voice was gentle. “The Redemptress has lost more than any of us.”

  “Tell that to Tabitha,” he said bitterly, folding his arms around himself.

  Ambrel frowned. “Uriel ... you hated Tabitha.”

  Uriel scowled back. “Everyone hated Tabitha. That’s not the point. I’m just ... I’m just scared, that’s all.” Yes. Better to admit his own weakness, here, to her, when it was safe, rather than point out the cracks spreading in everything else. His weakness she could handle, but the weakness of the truth ...

  “Oh, Uriel,” Ambrel said, throwing her thin arms round his neck. “Is that all?”

  “Gack,” he said, stumbling back in surprise. She didn’t let go, instead grabbing him by the scruff of the neck so he had no choice but to look at her.

  “Uriel,” she said. “I’m terrified.” He struggled against her, but she held him fast. “I’m always terrified. I have been since She woke. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep going. Sometimes I just feel sick—”

  A terrible kind of hope—She feels it too?

  “But then I remember,” she said. “All our lives we’ve been told that we’re special. That we’re better than everyone else. That we are chosen. And it’s only now, after looking upon Her, after everything that’s happened, that I realize ...

  “They were right. It’s us, Uriel. This is our time. We were promised, and we will be redeemed.”

  Redemption. No more Transgression, their fire flowing free without the crawling cold that came after it. And then ... what? More war? Sending fire down those crowded streets Ambrel had loved so much? A thousand wire nooses around the necks of those who wouldn’t comply?

  And her eyes were so wide, and her smile was so bright, and Uriel could not for the life of him figure out when the half second between him and his sister had become so long.

  “And the boy? Denizen?”

  His voice was tired. It didn’t matter what he said, or how he said it. She wasn’t going to listen. Her mind had been made up centuries ago by the First Croit and the first lie.

  She was certain.

  Ambrel’s eyes were bright. “He can teach us. With that power and Her at our head, we’ll be unstoppable.”

  For a horrible moment, Uriel wished she were right. The only hope, the only hope, for Uriel’s Family against the Adversary and the uncounted millions of Outside was that Uriel was wrong and the Redemptress was right.

  Unless ...

  “You’re right,” Uriel said quickly. “It’s just fear. I have to trust that the truth is bigger than I understand, and that the path set for me is the right one. Right?”

  Ambrel squeezed his shoulder. “Set for us, brother. We’re going to walk it together. Into the light of a new truth.”

  She started to lope back toward Eloquence, and so Uriel’s final words were lost to the wind and the sea.


  “I don’t want a new world. I was happy with the one I had.”

  —

  THERE WAS NO GUARD on the chamber when Uriel approached. Why would there be? They’d put Denizen far away from any Croit-occupied rooms—to avoid corruption, obviously—and this part of the castle was silent but for the whispers of settling stone.

  The boy looked up as Uriel approached.

  “OK,” Uriel said, “convert me.”

  IT DIDN’T TAKE VERY long. Denizen had initially been suspicious, but there was no strategic advantage in Uriel’s questions. He just wanted to know about the Tenebrous. About the iron in both their palms. Denizen talked until his throat was hoarse and Uriel’s reluctant interest turned to horror, and then ... they just sat in silence.

  Finally, Uriel spoke.

  “I’ve never been afraid of the dark. Not even before my thirteenth birthday. Not being able to see doesn’t matter when you know other people have seen already.”

  A tear rolled slowly down his dust-stained cheek.

  “Night comes and shadow falls and fear takes root in lesser hearts ... but not ours. Not Croits. We can always see the path ahead.”

  “Intueor Lucidum,” Denizen said. “The Shining Gaze.”

  “We call it the Luster,” Uriel replied forlornly.

  “Oh,” Denizen said. “That’s actually much better.” His next words were tentative. “So ... so do you believe me? That I’m not your Adversary?” And don’t need to be sacrificed or used as crusade-paint? That was sort of the important bit for him.

  “It’s not that I believe you,” Uriel said hollowly. “It’s that it makes so much sense. I’ve never seen the holes before because I’ve never looked for them. And when She was asleep it was easy—we just did as we were told, and it all just seemed ... far away.”

  “A story,” Denizen said.

  “Yes,” Uriel responded, “a story that all of us were living ... But it’s not true. It’s all wrong. Everything is wrong, and I’m the only ... the only ...”

  He looked like he was about to be sick, and Denizen suddenly realized that was why Uriel had come down here by himself. This wasn’t some officially extended hand of friendship—Uriel’s doubts were his and his alone. Which meant the whole vital-fluids anointing was still on the table. Great.

  Denizen’s bitter flippancy disappeared as Uriel brought a fist to the side of his own head with a dull smack. Sweat was running down his face, despite the chill of the cell, his breathing a thready gasp of fear.

  “It’s all a lie. All of it. She’s just one great lie—”

  Denizen flinched as Uriel hit himself again, his eyes tracking wildly across the broken flagstone floor.

  “Everything has been a lie ... all of it, all of us, Grandfather, his arm, oh no, oh no, oh no ...”

  The Croit boy was coming apart and Denizen couldn’t blame him. What did you say to someone who had been lied to for this long?

  Actually, now that he thought about it . . .

  “I know you’re angry,” Denizen said. It was funny, in a twisted sort of way—he’d spent so long picturing these words, but he never thought he’d be the one saying them. “I know that once one thing turns out to be a lie, you start questioning everything you’ve ever been told. Even yourself. I know it destroys trust. And I don’t know if that can be fixed, and it shouldn’t be you doing the fixing. I know this isn’t fair.”

  Uriel was staring at him, eyes wild, fist paused shaking at his temple. Denizen took that as a positive sign and plowed ahead. He was about to launch into the second part of Vivian’s imagined apology speech—it was a really good bit too, full of clever symmetry and heart-rending honesty—but the words wouldn’t come.

  It was like the way the Cants sometimes twisted into their own patterns, as if they knew better than him what shape they had to be. What Denizen wanted to say ... what he had wanted to hear ... was gone.

  In its place was cold, hard truth.

  “But this is war.”

  Uriel’s trembling stopped.

  “You might be hurting, and that hurt might be justified, but all that matters is the fight in front of you. All there is now is keeping people safe. They’re depending on you, even if they don’t know it, even if they never know it, and if your scars are the price you pay for their lives, then you pay it. Being hurt…being human, can wait. We have a duty.”

  Oh, Vivian. He’d been an idiot. He understood. He finally understood, bone-deep and nerve-sharp. He couldn’t blame her for the choice she’d made any more than he could blame the world for being what it was. She’d done what she had to do to keep him safe, and whether she’d been right or wrong ...

  Life was too short to keep punishing her for it.

  “So,” he said, “what are you going to do about it?”

  Certainty replaced panic in glass-gray eyes. “I’m going to save my Family.”

  “Right,” Denizen said. “Good. Ummm ... how?”

  Frown No. 27—I Am Facing Impossible Odds. Denizen knew that one when he saw it.

  “It’s Her,” Uriel said finally. “Before She awoke, there wasn’t this unity, this fear. Now all of them live and die by Her word.”

  “OK,” Denizen said, very aware that, though Uriel appeared to be calmer, only a moment ago he had seemed to be trying to rearrange his thoughts from the outside. The last thing Denizen wanted to do was push too hard, too soon. Let him say it himself. “So what do we do?”

  Uriel’s voice wavered. “The Order. Your people. Would they help us? I can’t fight Her on my own. Or any of the rest of the Family.” He thought for a second. “Well. A few of them. But not all. If She was gone, I could maybe try and talk Ambrel round, and some of the others ...”

  “Uriel.”

  “What?”

  Denizen’s words were careful. “You know what the Knights will do if they come here. Your family…if there’s any way not to hurt them, the Order will find it, but…I can’t promise the same about her.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was saying it to Uriel or himself. Denizen couldn’t kid himself about what a rescue mission would mean. The Order had spent centuries fighting Tenebrous, and Denizen couldn’t get out of his head the phrase When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

  What had Mercy said?

  Your kind and mine were never meant to share the same universe. Every time it’s happened, it’s ended in pain and death. Until us.

  And the Redemptress’s words, redolent with madness and misery.

  Why should you have peace? When we were given none?

  Pieces. Pieces assembling in Denizen’s head. He swallowed. “First, we need to get you in touch with the Order. Where actually are we?”

  “It’s Eloquence. The seat of our Family since ... well, since forever.”

  “OK. What country?”

  Uriel looked blank. “It’s ... Eloquence. We’re on an island, if that helps?”

  “Not particularly,” Denizen said. “How did you get to Trinity?”

  “The Family have bodyguards, people we hire for ... things,” Uriel said. “They had a plane waiting, and then a truck.”

  Denizen frowned. “How long was the plane ride? Did you see any street signs?”

  Uriel shook his head. “We were told not to concentrate on the trappings of Outside. So I ... I meditated. I think the plane ride was a few hours.”

  Too long to walk or drive, basically. That was as accurate as it was going to get.

  “How do you ...” He didn’t want to antagonize Uriel, but frustration and fear were making his head ache. “How do you not know where this place is?”

  “We learn what is useful for the War That Will Come,” Uriel said. “Weapons training, our Prayers, our history, relevant Outside technologies. We don’t need to know anything else.”

  “And how much does Grandfather know?” Uriel had latched on to removing the Redemptress as the means of salvation for his family, but Denizen had looked into the old man’s eyes and t
here had been a vicious kind of madness staring back.

  “Stop it,” Uriel snapped. “He couldn’t know—he’s as misguided as the rest of them. It’s Her. That’s who we need to stop.”

  “I completely agree,” Denizen lied. However tangled the web between him and Vivian, he had the firm impression that it was nothing compared to the trials of Uriel’s childhood. “What about—”

  Rage twisted Uriel’s features. “What would you know about us? It’s Her fault. My Family are innocent. The bird-thing says you’re just slaves as well and—”

  “I didn’t mean to ... Wait.” Uriel looked indignant at being interrupted, but Denizen didn’t care. “A bird-thing?”

  “Yes. It was a ... a Tenebrous. I think. It felt wrong, like—”

  “Like a wound in the world,” Denizen finished. “Was it a group of bird-things? Like a flock all moving at once?”

  Uriel nodded. “How did you know?”

  Malebranche.

  Denizen honestly hadn’t thought there was any more room for urgency in his head. All that worry about whether Greaves was planning an ambush, and a traitor in Mercy’s own ranks had been preparing one all along. It made total sense: if there were Knights who didn’t want peace, why not Tenebrous?

  “You need to get to the Order,” he said. “They need to know about the ... bird-thing. And you have to make them tell Mercy as well.” He was momentarily so distracted by wondering whether Malebranche counted as a Grand Vizier that he didn’t notice Uriel staring at him. “What?”

  “Mercy,” Uriel said. “Is that your Tenebrous?”

  “Excuse me?” Denizen said. “What are you—? Listen. She’s not my Tenebrous.” If anything, I’m probably her human, he thought, and then immediately tossed those feelings in a box until later. “Look ... the Order doesn’t want to fight your family. We already have a war on our hands.” Think. Think. “What about phones or computers?”

  “Grandfather has a phone,” Uriel said. “No one else. Maybe on the next raid I could ...”

  Denizen fought the urge to bang his head off the stone behind him. “We can’t wait that long. Has anyone said what they plan to do with me?”

  Uriel shook his head. “My sister wants you to teach us what you can do. These ... Cants.”