Darkdawn

by Kristoff, Jay

  Perhaps that was why they had hated him.

  “Husband,” Niah said.

  “Wife,” Aa replied.

  “Sisters,” Anais nodded.

  “Brother,” they bowed, each in turn.

  They stood in silence as long as years. A millennium of suffering and rage and sorrow between them. And finally, the Moon turned to the Suns. Though his three eyes were closed, Anais knew Aa saw him. The Everseeing saw everything, after all.

  “Father,” he said.

  The reply came then, like a knife in the dawn.

  “You are no son of mine.”

  It hurt to hear him say it. Even after all these centuries. The wrongness of it was total—to be loathed by the one who should have loved you best. The silence grew deafening, the Moon’s mind filled with a thousand If Onlys and Why Couldn’t Yous.

  They were futile and he knew it. But even gods bleed.

  Anais looked downward, saw himself reflected in the mirrored stone/glass/ice at his feet. His form shivered and shifted like lightless flame. Tongues of dark fire rippled from his shoulders, the top of his crown, as if he were a candle burning. On his forehead, a circle was scribed. And like a looking glass, that circle caught the light from his father’s robes and reflected it back, the radiance pale and bright. He hesitated then, even then, wondering at all that might have been.

  But standing at his back, he saw a figure cut from the darkness.

  A girl.

  Pale skin and long dark hair draped over her shoulders and eyes of burning black. Fierce and brave and quick and clever. He knew her then. What she’d sacrificed. What she’d lost. He knew that unlike his own sisters, she’d loved her brother with all she had to give. And most of all, he knew her name.

  Mia.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned close. His mother frowned as the girl spoke, lips brushing featherlight against his ear. Her touch was ice on his skin, and her voice, fire in his heart.

  “Never flinch,” she whispered.

  And the Moon looked up then. To the Suns who should have loved him. Fingers closing into fists as he spoke.

  “You gave me life, but that does not give you power. And though you left me shattered, that does not make me broken. The pieces of me you left behind are sharp as knives. Sharp as truth. So hear it now, and know.

  “You struck at me when I was but a child. You lay me low when I was sleeping. But I am a child no more, Father.

  “And I am awake.”

  He was clad all in white, but not so bright that the Moon couldn’t see. He was tall as mountains, but not so high that the Moon couldn’t reach. And Anais stretched out his hands toward his father, cupping his face. The Suns tried to pull away. But it was truedark now, and with Night beside him, the Moon was stronger.

  His sisters held their breath as he leaned close.

  He kissed his father’s brow, just above the first of his eyes.

  And with his thumbs, he put out the second and the third.

  The Suns screamed. His sisters wailed. His mother smiled. He felt those orbs of red and blue give beneath the pressure, felt the hard, warm arc of the sockets beneath. How easy it would have been to push farther then. To feel the bone splinter, to reach up and tear out the last, plunge the world below into cold and black unending.

  But again, he felt the girl’s hands on his shoulders. Slipping about him in a cool embrace. Her cheek was pressed against the back of his neck, and all the rage, all the hate, all the bitter sorrow and regret, the worthless Could Have Beens and If Onlys melted away at the sound of a single word.

  “Enough,” Mia said.

  He turned and met her gaze, black as truedark skies.

  She kissed his lips, resting her brow against his as tears spilled from her eyes.

  “It’s finished,” she sighed.

  And she was gone.

  His father was on his knees, bleeding from the places his eyes should have been. His sisters knelt before him, their heads bowed low. His mother spread her gowns across the heavens, the bonds of her prison forever broken.

  And Anais ascended his throne.

  One sun.

  One night.

  One moon.

  Balance.

  “All is as it should be,” the Night declared. “The scales weigh even at last.”

  The prince of dawn and dusk looked to the infinity above them.

  He shook his head.

  “One tithe remains,” he said.

  And with black and burning hands, he reached for a piece of forever.

  CHAPTER 49

  SILENCE

  Mercurio stood in the dark of the Athenaeum, the scent of ashes in the air.

  The shelves remained untouched, but the books were all gone. Memoirs of murdered tyrants. Theorems of crucified heretics. Masterpieces of geniuses who ended before their time. The chronicler’s blaze had claimed them all, just as they’d claimed Cleo’s son himself. The shelves before the old man were empty now, the Dark Mother’s library gutted.

  Not a single page remained.

  “Marielle is looking for you upstairs,” the boy said.

  The Lord of Blades patted his robe, searching for his cigarillos. Finally finding one behind his ear, he struck his flintbox and breathed gray into the singing black.

  “Let her look,” he replied.

  Jonnen peered out over the railing, his eyes on the gloom. The ghostly choir sang in the stained-glass dark about them, and Mercurio wondered what exactly the boy saw. The shadows around Jonnen rippled and sighed, pooling thick about his feet and whispering with voices the old man couldn’t quite hear.

  “Have you any word from Ashlinn?” the boy finally asked.

  “Not since we hauled you two from the ocean that night,” Mercurio replied. “Somehow I think I’ll not be hearing from her again.”

  “A message arrived for us in Last Hope,” Jonnen said. “From Bonifazio.”

  “Who?” Mercurio blinked.

  “Cloud,” the boy replied. “Corleone.”

  “Ah,” he nodded. “And what did the King of Scoundrels and Tight Leather Pants have to say for himself?”

  “He wanted to know if we wished safe passage to Whitekeep.”

  “… What for?”

  “Sidonius. Bladesinger.”

  The old man blinked.

  “The wedding,” Jonnen sighed.

  “O,” Mercurio scowled. “Fuck that. I’ll send something fancy. I’m too busy to go traipsing over the Four war-torn Seas just for a piss-up.”

  “And too old.”

  “Mind your fucking manners.”

  The boy looked out at the dark with eyes that belied his youth. “We may not need the seas soon.”

  “Lessons coming along, then, little Speaker?”

  The boy looked up at him. A small smile on his lips.

  “Marielle says it’s not to be toyed with, but…”

  The boy reached down, drawing the gravebone stiletto he kept at his belt. The crow on the hilt seemed to peer at Mercurio with its amber eyes as the boy raised the blade and pricked his fingertip.

  Blood welled from the wound, a tiny bead of scarlet against the boy’s pale skin. Jonnen frowned, whispering beneath his breath. As Mercurio watched, the blood lifted off the boy’s fingertip, up into the air. It shaped itself into the likeness of a tiny crow, flapping little wings as it performed a slow circuit of the old man’s head.

  “Impressive,” Mercurio said.

  “Magik died when Anais did,” the boy said. “It was reborn with him, too.”

  Jonnen shrugged his thin shoulders.

  “And part of him is alive in me.”

  If he squinted, Mercurio fancied he could see a moonlight radiance on the boy’s skin. A power, thrumming just beneath his surface. It had been strange enough raising a girl with the fragment of a dead god inside her. He had no idea how he’d manage someone with the shard of a living god inside him. But in truth, last darkin or no, he liked Jonnen. He could see the Corv
ere in him. The her in him. And Daughters knew there was no one else he’d trust to raise a demigod with as much lip as this one had …

  “Here thou art,” came a voice behind them.

  Jonnen started, and the droplet of blood fell, spattering upon the floor. Mercurio turned to the Athenaeum doors, saw a beautiful woman swathed in black. Her hair was bone blond, rolling in thick waves about her shoulders. Her skin was albino pale, perfect as the statues that had stood in Godsgrave’s forum. Pink irises and blood-red lips.

  It made sense she’d use her magiks upon herself as soon as she realized how much they’d grown after the Moon’s rebirth. But still …

  “The weaver knows her work,” he sighed.

  “A pity, then,” Marielle replied with a beautiful scowl, “that the Lord of Blades doth not. The king of Vaan awaits reply to his missive. The four factions at war in Itreya’s ruins all seek suit from us. I have heard whisper that a new Magus King has arisen in Liis. All the lands are chaos. Dawn and dusk now stand but twelve hours apart, the Moon ascends his new throne every night, the Mother is freed from her prison. And we have not even decided what shape her new Church shall take.”

  Mercurio dragged his hand back through his hair. Drawing deep on his cigarillo, he sighed a plume of gray. “I’m too old for this shite…”

  “I concur,” Jonnen said.

  “Well, the joke’s on you, you little bastard.” The Lord of Blades waggled his smoke, rubbed his aching arm. “Odds are good I’ll be dead soon.”

  “I think you will be here for a while,” the boy replied, watching him with eyes deeper than his nine years should’ve rightly allowed. “You have much work to do.”

  Mercurio glanced to the dark above. The library around them.

  “You think she’d…”

  Jonnen shrugged. “The Mother keeps only what she needs.”

  The Lord of Blades looked to the weaver and sighed. “We’ll speak on it after evemeal. You have my word.”

  Marielle pursed her lips and bowed. “As it please thee.”

  She left with a silken swish of night-black robes.

  Mercurio turned to the echoing dark, cigarillo hanging from his lips. Listening to the choir and breathing the gray and savoring the ache in his heart. Finally noticing the boy still looking at him from the corner of his eye.

  Jonnen nodded to the empty shelves. “What will we fill them with?”

  “Do you not have lessons to attend?” the old man asked.

  “Do you not have a walking stick to find?”

  “I mean it, you little bastard. Off with the fuck.”

  “What have you been doing, spending all your time down here alone?”

  Mercurio looked out to the empty shelves and dragged on his smoke.

  “Keeping a promise,” he finally said.

  The boy nodded, eyes downturned. Toes scuffing, he made his way over to the mighty double doors leading out to the Mountain proper.

  “I miss her, too,” he said.

  “Out,” Mercurio growled.

  Jonnen faded into the shadows on soundless feet.

  Mercurio turned to the chronicler’s old office, shuffled inside trailing a thin finger of smoke. He sat down at the mighty oaken desk, rubbed at his rheumy eyes. And taking one last drag, he crushed his smoke and tugged out a stack of white parchment from a thick leather folio. The topmost was marked with his bold, flowing hand.

  NEVERNIGHT

  BOOK 1 OF THE NEVERNIGHT CHRONICLE

  by Mercurio of Liis

  The old man leafed through the pages until he found his place. He sighed, gray smoke spilling from his lips and into the dark above.

  “I remember,” he said.

  And he began to write.

  CHAPTER 50

  SILVER

  A house sat on the shore of Threelakes.

  It stood alone beneath an endless sky, the valley all about it wrapped in perfect silence. It was made of good oak, high gables and broad verandahs and tall windows looking out over the water at its back.

  A girl sat on the shoreline, watching the sunset.

  It was strange now, with only one sun in the sky. Stranger still to track its movement across the heavens in a handful of hours, watching it fall to its rest with her black and naked eyes. Aa and Niah shared dominion of the sky once more. Dark and light forever changed. Dawn the gateway to waking, and dusk the door to sleeping. All the world about her was trying to come to grips with the balance. Wondering what to make of the pale orb that waxed and waned in the new night sky.

  But Ashlinn knew they’d soon remember.

  He was rising, now the sun had fallen. Anais ascending his dark throne, the stars glittering like diamonds and steel all about him. He was beautiful, she had to admit. Casting a glittering light across the lake, turning all to quicksilver. But it struck Ashlinn as sad somehow, to watch him burning up there by himself.

  He was alone, just like she was.

  She didn’t know how to die. Didn’t even know if she could. She’d followed Tric’s directions, treading the path he’d already torn with his bare hands, his farewell kiss still burning on her brow. Her fingertips forever blacked from clawing her way through, her skin forever paled from that lightless path, her breath forever stolen by the endless dark. She had no regrets—she’d promised to kill the sky to be the one standing by Mia in the end. And looking to the Moon above, the swiftly turning night, she supposed in some strange way, she had. But Ashlinn had never stopped to wonder what she’d be when it was over. Or how she might endure forever without her.

  “Mia.”

  The name was a prayer on her lips. A kiss to alabaster skin. A question without an answer. Because what had become of her? Where was she now? Curled up warm beside the Hearth with those she cherished while Ashlinn lingered here, ageless, deathless, loveless? Wandering with divinities on some empyrean shore? Or had she simply been annihilated, consumed with all those other fragments so that the Night might regain her crown, and the Moon reclaim his throne?

  An immortality alone didn’t seem a fair tithe to pay for that.

  And yet she’d pay it all again. Because it seemed if she tried hard enough, Ash could still taste her. Salt and honey. Iron and blood. Running the tip of her tongue along her lips. Breathing it in and sighing it out. Looking out over the smooth expanse of silver beneath the Moon’s unblinking gaze and thanking whatever god or goddess or twist of fate had brought that girl into her life.

  If only briefly.

  Mia.

  And then, across the silver, she saw a figure.

  Walking on water so still it was like polished stone, like glass, like ice beneath her bare feet. She was pale and she was beautiful, draped in a gown made of shadows. Her scars were healed, her brand gone, the marks of her trials vanished like smoke. Long black hair streamed about her bare shoulders, her kohled eyes deep as the hole she’d filled inside Ashlinn’s chest.

  “Mia?” she asked, not daring to hope.

  Ash’s eyes were wide as she took a halting step out into the water. Ripples shimmered across the silver, and Ash feared Mia might be dispelled like an illusion, a fever dream, some desperate mirage born of impossible hope. But her girl walked on, across the glass, close enough now to see the black of her eyes, the curl of her lips. And then Mia was in her arms, her flesh as pale and real as Ashlinn’s own. Their bones colliding, their bodies entwined. She’d thought Mia’s eyes were just empty darkness, but this close, this dangerously, wonderfully close, she could see they were filled with tiny sparks of light, like stars strewn across the curtains of night above.

  Just like hers.

  Beautiful.

  They kissed. Sweet as clove cigarillos. Deep as midnight. A kiss that spoke of blood spilled and battles won, of reborn moons and blinded suns, of the dark within and the light without and the shadows of the past burned away in the glow of the new dawn. They kissed like it was the first time, like it was supposed to be, like nothing, not gods or goddesses or flames or storms
or oceans would ever come between them again.

  Their lips parted, their brows pressed together, their noses brushing against one another, ticklish. Staring into each other’s deathless eyes and understanding the meaning of Always.

  “How?” Ashlinn whispered.

  Mia’s shadow stirred, and a shape melted onto the dark shore beside them. Looking to the orb of silver above their heads with its not-eyes. It wore the shape of a cat, though truthfully, it was nothing close to a cat at all.

  “… one tithe remained…,” it whispered. “… now repaid…”

  Ashlinn sobbed. Mia smiled. They kissed again, black tears on their lips.

  “I love you, Mia.”

  “I love you, too.”

  All was silence about them, perfect and whole and deep. And they sat side by side on the shoreline’s gentle curve and watched Anais rise higher in the sky. Arm in arm, skin to skin, alabaster and onyx and gold. Two girls beneath one moon, one sun, one night, one heart. All and everything in balance.

  “… beautiful…,” the not-cat sighed.

  The hollyhock and sunsbell were so thick, the whole valley smelled like perfume.

  The lake was so still, it was like a mirror to the sky.

  “I’m going to be with you forever,” Mia whispered.

  “Just forever?” Ashlinn murmured.

  Mia smiled in the silver light.

  “Forever and ever.”

  DICTA ULTIMA

  The deed is done.

  The war is won.

  And at the last, gentlefriend, her song is sung.

  I suppose you can say you know her now, at least as well as I did. The ugly parts and the selfish parts and the everything in between. A girl some called Pale Daughter. Or Kingmaker. A Queen of Scoundrels. A Lady of Blades. I like little Crow best of all. A girl who never knelt, who never broke, who never, ever allowed fear to be her fate.

  A girl I loved as much as you did.

  Look now upon the ruins in her wake. As pale light glitters on the waters that drank a city of bridges and bones, and a Republic’s ashes dance in the dark above your head. Stare mute at the broken sky and taste the iron on your tongue and listen as lonely winds whisper her name as if they knew her, too. I gave you all I promised, gentlefriend. I gave it to you in spades. And if her death didn’t unfold in the way you dreaded, I hope you’ll not name me liar for it. She did die, just as I said she would.