by Dave Rudden
“Oh.” Well, that was going to be a problem. Denizen had no idea if he could teach the Cants. Technically, he hadn’t learned them at all. Mercy had just poured them into his head. Before that, he’d only known Sunrise, and that was more from overhearing Grey use it than any actual teaching. That was the problem with Higher Cants—they weren’t particularly difficult to say; it was just about knowing where and when. ...
“Uriel,” he said suddenly. “Do you remember when we fought in the library? And when I tried to escape from here? Do you remember what I did?”
“Yes, why?”
“Do you remember when Ambrel screamed at me, and I opened a hole in the air to swallow her fire? And when I spoke to Grandfather about the Art of Apertura?”
“Yes,” Uriel said. “You made a funny face and sort of half fell over.”
Denizen scowled. “Well—yeah, but do you remember the sound? That was a Cant. It lets you use the Tenebrae as a shortcut from one place to another. You’ve been to Trinity—you could get back there and tell the Order where you are. It’s practically instant: your family wouldn’t even notice you’ve gone.”
If it works, his skepticism added.
And if you survive, whispered everything else. There was a kernel of a plan forming in Denizen’s mind, but that involved only risking his own life. Risking someone else’s was something different entirely.
His guilt redoubled when he saw the raw hope on Uriel’s face.
“So they might never know,” Uriel whispered. “Ambrel might never know.”
“She might not. But it’s dangerous. Really dangerous.”
“I don’t care,” Uriel said, his voice trembling with fervor. Denizen suddenly felt even worse. “But ...” Uriel’s smile vanished. “I’m not sure if I remember it. It was the strangest thing I’d ever heard. Barely like sound at all.”
“I know,” Denizen said. He could feel the Art of Apertura at the back of his head, wide awake and eager. He had to choose his words carefully because he knew that if his concentration broke, it might bolt for his mouth. “But sometimes they want to be said. I wish I could say it for you, but the Cants draw the fire through you and ...”
The wire trembled at his neck.
“I’ve trained for years to speak my Prayer,” Uriel said. “Focusing my mind into the shape of a sword. What if I can’t—”
“That’s all the Cants are,” Denizen said. “Just a way to channel the fire.” He tried to keep desperation out of his tone. “We just have to try. Reach back, think of how it sounded, how it made you feel. You have to remember—”
His next words were cut off by the wire jolting at his neck, tugging him toward the door of his cell. Uriel leapt backward, eyes wide with sudden fear.
“Listen,” Denizen said. “Picture where you want to go. Picture it on the other side of a dark corridor, as a painting behind a painting, and lift your fingers like you’re tearing your way through. You’ll fall through dark water. Don’t open your eyes, don’t—”
The wire yanked. Denizen half came to his feet with it. Just a second, he thought, just one second more.
“Don’t open your eyes. The iron will drag you. There are things in the—”
No more words would fit around the pressure in his throat. The message of the Redemptress was clear.
Come.
THE CASTLE MIGHT ONCE have been massive, but its fall had fractured its innards into a maddening maze. There were any number of paths through Eloquence, and Uriel knew them all.
The second Denizen surrendered to the wire’s pull, Uriel was up and running. Grandfather had told them all as children that the Redemptress could see sinful thoughts in their heads, and there was a child’s terror in his heart. Did She know?
She can’t. If She could, Uriel would have been long exposed. Grandfather’s warnings were lies. Just like everything else.
It’s not his fault. Uriel scrambled up a half-collapsed wall, squeezing between the two crumbling pillars separating the Abyssal Gate and the crushed tunnel network that had once been the East Tower. Grandfather had been lied to as well, lies told and retold from the moment Eloquence fell, from the First Croit to the last.
It all stemmed from Her.
Finally, his running slowed, and he lost himself in a crowd of Croits. There was Abucad, haggard and drawn, and Osprey, and Magnus. Uriel hadn’t seen the latter since Tabitha died. Tears had cut a path through the dust on his cheeks.
Uriel fell into step with Abucad. His uncle had lost weight, and there was a bruise under his left eye. No one knew better than Uriel and Ambrel that it was common for those who were low in Grandfather’s favor to suffer at the hands of those who enjoyed it, and these days you couldn’t get much lower than Abucad. Being seen with him was only marginally better than being caught talking to Denizen, but Uriel had a sudden desperate need to actually talk to someone and not just hear Her words parroted back.
“Uriel,” the older man said. “Have you recovered from the battle?”
“Yes,” Uriel said. “I think so. I ... I’m sorry about Tabitha.”
“It’s the way she would have wanted to go.”
He said it like a curse.
They descended deeper and deeper into the ruin. Uriel looked around before he spoke again, his voice meant for Abucad alone. “Do you…do you think Grandfather knew what these…what the Adversary was capable of?”
Do you think he knows what they really are?
Abucad’s voice was grim. “Did he say he didn’t?”
“Yes.”
“Then he didn’t.”
Uriel opened his mouth to ask again, but Abucad threw him a furious look.
“Stop, Uriel. I ... the time for this has passed. I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “I have a son.”
I’m Family too, Uriel wanted to say. We’re all Family. But that was it, wasn’t it? Abucad would do whatever the Redemptress wanted, because he cared about what happened to those who shared his blood. And the worst thing was—so did the Order. The Croits would slaughter every Knight they could in return for a salvation that would never come ... but the Order wouldn’t do the same. Uriel had seen this truth, even before he’d talked to Denizen. There was a reluctance to the Knights when they had fought the Croits.
The Order had looked genuinely surprised that human would attack human.
Nausea flexed like a fist in the pit of Uriel’s stomach. He couldn’t think. Nothing seemed permanent—not the stone around him, nor the familiar faces of his Family as they entered the Shrine one by one.
Not even Her.
In slow and terrible increments, She turned to regard them, black eyes flicking from face to face. The piled iron statues of the long-dead Adversaries just stared at Uriel, hands reaching out at strange angles to grab at the air.
Uriel tore his gaze away from them. It gave him a now-familiar ache to see that Ambrel was standing beside Grandfather. They used to wait for each other at the entrance. When had that stopped?
Denizen Hardwick.
The crowd parted as Denizen half walked, half stumbled into the chamber, wire noose around his neck. At a sharp look from Grandfather, two cousins came forward and draped him in black. A pang of fear went through Uriel. He had never seen a robe of that color before.
Another new and terrible thing.
The Judging White of Grandfather’s robe was nearly Failure’s Gray after long weeks of wear. He looked like he hadn’t slept since the Redemptress had awakened.
“We have thought long and hard about the fate of this Adversary, and—”
Do you know them? the Redemptress said in the chill voice of an empress. The Cants. Do you know them?
She twitched, quick as thought, and when the wires stilled, Her voice was that of a frightened girl.
The fire, it marks you. If I had known, I wouldn’t have ... I would never have let you ...
Twitch, and the voice was cold again.
The weapons of the enemy will be our weapons. You will teach us t
he Cants that the King would not, and here we will forge an army and storm the dark itself. He will pay for what he did. For what he would not do.
“No.”
He looked tiny before Her, just a scrawny little boy with no weapons and a razor leash around his neck, but his voice didn’t shake.
“I’m not going to give you weapons to hurt the people I care about. I don’t even know if I can, to be honest. I didn’t really learn them in the ... conventional way. But I don’t think you’re going to kill me, because then you won’t have a prisoner at all. And you don’t want to kill me ...”
He took a breath.
“Because you know what grief is like—”
“Do not speak to Her like that!” Grandfather snarled, but the Redemptress held up a hand and the old man’s mouth shut with a clack.
For a long moment, She was silent. He silenced Her. Her face was unreadable, and, as the quiet stretched, Uriel wondered who was going to speak from that woven-wire mouth. Would it be the grief-stricken widow? Or the ruler, the warrior, the queen of revenge?
His answer was not long coming. With a rasp of slashed air, wires spun and writhed from the body of the Redemptress. They snaked through the crowd, alive and seeking, before whipping outward to tumble Croits to the ground. One was left—standing, shaking, alone in the middle of the floor.
What was her name? Uriel didn’t know. So many had come in the last few weeks ... She had the pale skin and graying hair of a Croit, but her eyes were bright blue—she was some lesser cousin, barely in her twenties, a girl who’d trained at Grandfather’s feet and then gone off into the world.
You’re right, the Redemptress said, as wires plunged down like sharp-tipped rain, I want you alive.
Uriel had seen that girl before. He just hadn’t recognized her without the look of rapture she’d worn ever since coming home. The same look they all wore since a goddess had awoken and told them they were special.
Now she just looked terrified.
The wires froze centimeters from the girl’s pale skin, tracking the passage of tears down her cheeks like a scorpion’s hovering tail.
I’ll kill one of them instead.
“You ... you monster.”
The words seemed to echo round the chamber for far longer than they should have. Maybe it was the silence that always followed Her words, or how Her radiating aura of wrongness twisted sound ... but Uriel had a sinking feeling that it was the words themselves.
It took him a moment longer to realize that he was the one who’d spoken them.
Thirty-odd pairs of eyes stared at him. There was a quiet shuffling as the Croits closest to him tried to subtly inch away.
“What did you say?” Grandfather’s voice made everyone flinch. “How dare you—”
“We’re supposed to be Her Favored!” Uriel retorted. He couldn’t help himself. All his anger and frustration and loneliness boiled to the surface. He’d tried so hard. Every time the Family had shamed him for his parents’ betrayal, every time training had felt impossible, or Ambrel had been afraid—he had held on. He had believed.
Family. That was what was important. And all this thing saw them as was leverage.
“Surely you can’t go along with this?” he shouted desperately at the gathered Croits. Not one of them would meet his gaze. “This isn’t right.”
Meredel was staring at the floor, lips moving silently to himself. Osprey, Adauctus, the Afterwoken…all of them turned their eyes away.
The only people who didn’t were Grandfather, Denizen—who looked extremely annoyed—and the Croit girl the Redemptress intended to kill.
He looked at all of them, because he knew, eventually, he’d have to face her.
“Ambrel ...” It was nearly a plea. “Ambrel, you can’t think this is right.”
No hint of emotion crossed her face. Uriel was so used to being able to read every minute detail of her features that to see nothing there at all scared him more than the Redemptress. Finally, she spoke.
“It was my idea.”
His heart stopped. For a moment, all there was in his chest was a lump of cold iron, sluggishly pushing horror through his veins. “What?”
“Victory is loss, Uriel,” she whispered. “Nothing is a sacrifice if we do it for Her.”
He staggered backward, away from that gaze. How ... How can she ...
“You will do as you’re told, Uriel Croit,” Grandfather said, advancing. “You will do what you were raised for. What we were all raised for. That’s what Family means.”
Uriel didn’t look at Ambrel again, because he knew if he did his heart would break.
“That. Thing. Isn’t. Family.”
The words had barely left his mouth before Grandfather’s left sleeve cracked through the air and spun him off his feet. Uriel felt a rib give way, like a hinge he didn’t know he had, and pain followed him all the way to the ground.
It took him a long time to raise his head.
Grandfather stood over him, flanked by the Family, and in slow, measured jerks he pushed up his sleeve.
A Croit chose their Prayer from the histories, and yet what Grandfather had done was a singular devotion. Uriel had always assumed that it was from some tome or codex he didn’t know ... because, now that he thought about it, Uriel had always just assumed that Grandfather knew more than he did about everything.
But if the Redemptress was just a Tenebrous, just a thing, and all their histories were lies, then maybe Grandfather had simply done it because it was the kind of thing he thought should be done, the kind of thing that looked right, and maybe everything the Croits had ever believed was just a madman raving in the dark.
It began at the bend of the old man’s elbow, the skin long lost to black. The iron had been carved—the marbled strata of muscle and bone exposed in varying dark shades, down to the wrist, the palm, and a single finger terminating in a razor-sharp point.
It was a promise. A declaration. No gloves, no make-up, and no masks. Grandfather would never pretend he was anything else than a weapon for an inhuman hand.
“You have no knowledge of what I have done,” the old man hissed, “and of how willingly I have done it. My entire life. The lives of every Croit before me. Every moment a promise. Every choice a battle.”
Fire leaked from the bones of his sharpened hand. Uriel began to honestly worry that he might die.
“You were supposed to be a continuation of that. The sum total of everything this Family is supposed to be, sharpened down to you.
“And you question. How dare you? All I have done. All I will do. It means something.” The light in Grandfather’s eyes dimmed, just a fraction. “It has to.”
“Stop.”
Denizen had come as close as the wire noose would allow. “Just stop. If you leave him alone, if you let him live ... I’ll do it. I’ll teach you.”
Good, the Redemptress said, as if the last few moments hadn’t happened. We begin tomorrow. The King will be slain with his own Cants. My love will be avenged.
Denizen was dragged away. Uriel didn’t know why She even thought the noose was necessary. She had a far more effective one now anyway. Denizen Hardwick wouldn’t let others die for him.
What monster would?
Slowly, painfully, Uriel got to his feet. Grandfather was already striding away. No one would look at him.
“Ambrel, I ...”
She stared at him like he was a stranger.
“Don’t talk to me,” she whispered. “Just…just don’t.”
She walked after Grandfather, and at the entrance they both turned to look at him. Uriel had seen that look before, but never directed at him.
“Get out of my sight,” Grandfather said. “And think on your sins.”
“Yes, Grandfather,” Uriel murmured. I will.
WELL, THAT HAD BEEN a disaster.
Denizen stumbled along the corridor, halfway between an awkward run and a prolonged collapse. If he moved too slowly, the wire would start to draw tight
round his neck; and if he moved too fast, the knot banged painfully off his Adam’s apple. He had no idea what would happen if he tripped, but he’d rather not find out.
He hadn’t seen where Uriel had gone after his outburst, but silently he hoped it was as far away as he could, Art or no Art.
They passed through atriums punctured by fallen pillars, through wrong-angled staircases and broken doorways, before finally reaching the lower depths and Denizen’s cell. If Simon were here, he would’ve been able to extrapolate information about the guard from his clothing and mannerisms. Abigail would already have produced a hidden knife to cut herself free. Darcie would have taken one sniff of the air and deduced the castle’s exact location.
Vivian would never have been captured in the first place.
All Denizen could do was stand in the middle of the cell and wait for the wire to relax enough for him to sit down. The Croit guard gave him one last look of disgust and left him alone with his doubt and exhaustion.
And his magic.
It started slowly. Denizen had been trying to stay calm, carefully experimenting with the give of the wire, when the fire unfurled itself like a cat stretching in sunlight. Denizen froze. Usually, the power of the Tenebrae came when it was called, or responded to strong emotions like anger or fear.
This was the first time it had simply presented itself, like a sword being unsheathed, ready for his hand.
A bead of sweat slid down Denizen’s forehead. The urge to lash out at the Redemptress every time he was in Her presence had been almost overpowering, even though his brain knew that it was suicide. That had scared him almost more than She had. Had he done it, he would have died, and yet he still wanted to do it anyway.
The fire sat there, in the pit of his stomach, a reservoir of power so pure and clean and eager that Denizen at once felt tiny before it and the mightiest human in the world. It was ready, willing; he could almost see the patterns of light overlaid across his cell, every place the fire would touch.
His control wavered. It was all well and good, Denizen thought, when you were training in the safety of Seraphim Row, or in battle, where you could immediately clamp it back down when you no longer needed it.