Dark Rise: Dark Rise 1

by C. S. Pacat

  ‘What you said about James? No one believes it.’ A familiar sneer on his lips. ‘The Stewards won’t act on the word of a Lion. They’re readying the great hall. That’s what my father decided. They’re going to kill you.’

  ‘So you’ve come to gloat,’ she said with a disgusted breath.

  ‘No,’ said Cyprian. ‘I’ve come to get you out.’

  ‘—What?’ she said.

  It was like putting her foot on a missing step, the ground vanishing out from under her. Violet stared at him.

  Cyprian lifted his chin. She suddenly saw the way his chest was rising and falling, and that he was standing there as if pushing himself hard into discomfort.

  ‘Every mission to rescue Marcus has failed. The Stewards don’t know where he is, or how to get him back. Maybe you were lying when you said you had a way to find him.’ Cyprian drew in a final breath, then pulled something from his tunic. ‘But maybe you weren’t.’

  It was a key. It was a key. Her eyes fixed on it, hope flaring. Behind Cyprian, Will was at the bars of his cell.

  ‘You’re really going to disobey the Stewards to help us?’ Will asked him. ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s my brother,’ said Cyprian.

  The perfect novitiate. He stood there in his immaculate livery, and she thought of all his thousands of hours of practice, forming himself into a faultless candidate. He was made to drink from the Cup and become a Steward. He had never disobeyed a rule in his life.

  Now here he was, in the cells under the Hall, with two descendants of the old world, siding with them against the Stewards.

  ‘You trust me, just like that?’

  ‘I don’t trust you, Lion.’ Cyprian lifted his chin again, in that arrogant way he had. ‘If you’re lying, I suppose you’ll kill me. But for even the smallest chance that you’re telling the truth, I’ll take that risk.’

  ‘Then open the door,’ said Violet.

  He stepped forward, put the key into the lock, and turned it. He was brave; it was infuriating, like his spotless tunic and his perfect posture. He stood without flinching as the barred door opened, and just gazed back at her as she came to stand in front of him in the passageway. She was ridiculously tempted to make a loud sound, or jerk towards him, to see if she could make him jump.

  She turned her back to him instead, deliberately displaying the manacles. Cyprian shook his head. ‘No. Those stay on until we get outside the Hall.’

  ‘Why, you little—’

  ‘Violet,’ said Will, bringing her up short.

  ‘I’m willing to risk my own life to do this. Not the lives of everyone in the Hall,’ said Cyprian. His chin lifted again.

  ‘The nobility of the Stewards,’ she said scathingly.

  ‘You said James would be unguarded at dawn,’ said Cyprian, gesturing for her to keep ahead of him.

  ‘That’s right.’ Violet scowled.

  ‘Then we don’t have much time,’ said Cyprian. Will’s cell door swung open. ‘Let’s go.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WILL WATCHED IN amazement as Cyprian’s calmly imperious words got them past the guards (‘My father has sent for the prisoners’) and out of the main building (‘My father is waiting for me’). He had horses ready for them, waiting in the east courtyard. No one questioned why he needed the horses. No one questioned him riding out of the gate either. Not even with two mounted companions on lead ropes behind him, wearing Steward cloaks (procured by Cyprian) to hide their manacles.

  True to his word, Cyprian unlocked their manacles once they were out on the marsh. The second they were off his wrists, Will felt better. His legs felt steadier. His head felt clearer. Cyprian bundled the manacles up in a cloth knapsack, and once they were covered, even the residual feeling they gave Will disappeared.

  Rubbing his wrists, he looked over and saw that Cyprian had driven his horse two paces back and was watching them with the tight-jawed calm of someone facing down fear.

  He really thinks we might kill him.

  Cyprian had released two dangerous prisoners on only the slimmest chance that they would help him. He was probably expecting Violet to slit his throat as soon as she was out of her manacles.

  And he had freed her anyway. For a chance that she would help his brother.

  Violet broke the silence, challenging Cyprian directly. ‘What’s the matter? Scared you’ll miss morning practice?’

  It wasn’t what he was scared of, and they all knew it.

  ‘You have been out of the Hall before?’ said Violet.

  ‘Of course I’ve been out of the Hall. I’ve done eleven full patrols on the marshes.’ Cyprian’s chin lifted. His hands were tight on his reins.

  ‘Oh, eleven,’ said Violet.

  ‘Have you been to London before?’ said Will.

  ‘Twice,’ said Cyprian. ‘Just not—’ He broke off.

  ‘Just not what?’

  ‘Alone,’ said Cyprian.

  You’re not alone, Will would have said to anyone else. But Cyprian had broken from the Stewards. And he was missing a lot more than morning practice. Once the Stewards realised he was gone, Cyprian would be branded a traitor who had betrayed the Hall to help a Lion.

  In every way that mattered to him, he was alone.

  So Will said, ‘We weren’t lying. We’re going to capture James and bring him back to the Hall.’

  Cyprian’s wariness didn’t relax. ‘Not even a Lion is strong enough to attack James head on.’

  ‘I know how to distract him,’ said Will.

  That part was true. He knew he could lure James out. He knew what would turn James’s head, what would hold his attention. It felt like innate knowledge. Like knowing the crate would break James’s concentration on the docks. He’d never forget the moment James’s eyes had met his – the sensation of coming home, as though they knew each other.

  He told them his plan on the ride. Violet didn’t like it, but there was no alternative, and she knew it. ‘Nothing else matters if we don’t get Marcus back,’ Will said. He could see her remembering the Elder Steward’s words. Conjuring a shadow is the first step to returning the Dark King.

  They had this one chance. This one opportunity to capture James and learn the location of Marcus. Everything was at stake, not just Violet’s reputation, or Cyprian’s future with the Stewards.

  Stripping back to her London clothes as they arrived, Violet blended in. Cyprian stood out, a storybook knight plonked down into the middle of London. His white tunic was the most pristine garment in the city. If it had been a light, Will would have told him to put it out.

  ‘You look like a blancmange,’ said Violet.

  ‘I don’t know what that is,’ said Cyprian, lifting his chin again.

  ‘It’s like a trifle with none of the good bits,’ said Violet. ‘We could rub mud on him like we did with the horses.’

  ‘And with yourselves,’ said Cyprian, and it took Violet a moment, but her frown descended ferociously on her face.

  ‘Let’s see how clean you are after a dozen Stewards attack you on the marsh—!’

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ said Will. ‘We’re here.’

  They had arrived with about half an hour before dawn. On the docks, the warehouses and the foreshore would already be bustling with activity. But in this part of London the streets were deserted, only one or two lights in the windows, lamps lit in the rooms of the earliest of risers.

  ‘Are you sure you have to be the one to go in there?’ said Violet.

  ‘It has to be me. You know that.’

  She nodded reluctantly. Behind her, Cyprian stood with one hand on the hilt of his sword.

  ‘The two of you get into position,’ said Will. ‘And don’t kill each other until we have James.’

  A bell rang over the door into the silence, janglingly loud in a dark space crowded with strange shapes, and Will walked into the London shop alone.

  Robert Drake’s place of work was empty of people, though pale curving surfaces were everywher
e. Robert was an ivory merchant, and Will was surrounded by the sepulchral shapes of the ivory. Elaborately carved tusks, ivory animals worked into caskets, clustered pale figurines.

  He walked in slowly. There was a counter at the back of the shop, and behind it two huge bins of horns, thick and white and curving in all directions. A light was faintly visible from a back room, and Will glimpsed a pallid boy sitting at a dark wooden desk on a raised dais.

  ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Hello there?’

  ‘We’re closed,’ came the reply from the back room of the shop.

  Will tried again. ‘Your door was open. I thought perhaps you might—’

  ‘I said we’re closed. You can come back at eight, when we—’

  The boy broke off.

  ‘Could I persuade you to open early?’ Will put his hand on his purse.

  The boy was staring at him across the length of the shop, a pale smudge of a youth wide-eyed near the only lamp.

  Will recognised him at once from Violet’s description. The colourless features, the lank white hair under the cap. His pulse kicked up a notch. This was really happening. The boy was Devon, Robert Drake’s clerk, and part of Simon’s pseudo-court.

  ‘Perhaps for a small fee?’ Will touched his purse again. Filled mostly with rocks, it looked substantial.

  ‘My apologies,’ said Devon, after a moment. ‘I forgot myself.’ He stood, lifting the lamp. Touching flame to candles, he lit the shop as he came forward, multiple sources of light that glowed on the surfaces of the ivory. ‘I am your servant.’ He didn’t take his eyes off Will.

  ‘No need for formalities,’ said Will.

  ‘No?’ Devon said. ‘Why – why is it you’re here?’ Devon glanced at the purse again, then back at Will. ‘At this hour.’ It was early. And Will was a stranger. Devon’s caution appeared to be warring with the potential to earn money. Will knew what he had to do. Show himself, get Devon talking, and then—

  ‘I’m looking for something.’

  ‘Looking for something?’

  ‘A gift.’

  His tension rose as Devon came out from behind the counter. It seemed that Devon had believed his pretext. But Will could still feel that he was inside the property of one of Simon’s loyalists. It was like being inside Simon’s home, the same dangerous feeling.

  ‘Ivory is a splendid gift,’ Devon was saying. ‘Each piece is irreplaceable. You have to kill for it. Look.’ Devon gestured in the dim light to a Roman ivory diptych of men with dogs that looked like leopards. ‘This piece is an antique. The Romans hunted elephants throughout their empire. Now the elephants in Northern Africa are gone. For all we know, this was the last.’

  Will looked at the ivory in the flickering light and felt a twist of unease as he thought of those great creatures, now vanished. He looked back at Devon, who was continuing his tour through the shop.

  ‘These days we hunt elephants south of the Sahara, where there are some remaining herds. More juvenile pieces make billiard balls, walking stick tops, hand mirrors, piano keys. The highest grade is reserved for ornamental sculpture and jewellery.’ Devon drew him through the pale shapes of the dead. ‘Perhaps one day a lady will wear the world’s last elephant as a hairpin.’

  Will stopped in front of a wall-mounted specimen, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. The ornate fixture held a horn both familiar and different. It was long, straight and spiralled, tapering to a pointed tip – a shape he’d seen before.

  But where the horn in the Hall of the Stewards had been a white spire, silver spume, helical fire – this one was yellowed in places, brown-lined where the curves of the spirals met, with the overall look of an old, dead tooth. καρτάζωνος, the plaque beneath it said in Ancient Greek. Cartazon.

  ‘A unicorn horn?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a fake,’ said Devon. ‘It comes from a narwhal, a type of whale they hunt in the northern seas. Others are crafted … Artisans in the Levant have a method of boiling walrus tusks. If you steep a horn for six hours it becomes soft and pliant so that you can work it, straighten it as you like. They fetch a good price.’

  A fake. One dead thing masquerading as another, like rabbit skins stitched together to make a lion pelt. The horn in the Hall had been so different, this one felt like a mockery.

  ‘You can touch it,’ said Devon.

  Will looked at him. Devon was gazing back at him. It felt like some kind of test.

  Lifting a hand, Will ran his fingertips along its length. It felt ordinary – a bull horn; a piece of old bone.

  ‘Robert collects the fakes as curios,’ Devon said. ‘An expensive hobby. People will pay a lot for the idea that something pure exists. Even if the trophy means they killed it.’

  ‘Have you ever thought one might be real?’

  ‘The true cornu monocerotis?’ Devon gave a thin smile. ‘The horn that neutralises poison, cures convulsions, leads you to fresh water? That if you hold it in your hand will compel you to tell the truth?’ Devon leaned back, a pale shape against the counter. ‘I’ve seen stacks of horns as high as buildings, entire herds slaughtered, carcasses littering beaches as far as the eye can see. It’s never real.’

  The horn men seek and never find. Will’s skin prickled, thinking of a world that was gone, but for a handful of relics buried deep in the Hall of the Stewards.

  ‘You don’t believe in unicorns?’ said Will.

  ‘I believe in commerce,’ said Devon. ‘Two hundred and fifty years ago, Queen Elizabeth was given a bejewelled horn at the princely cost of a castle. It wouldn’t have been worth quite so much if she knew it was a fish tooth.’ The candlelight flickered, and the ivory that cluttered every surface seemed to take on a different hue. ‘Why? Do you believe in them?’ The light played on Devon’s face too. ‘A glade of newborn foals, each one with a little nub in the middle of its forehead?’ There was something testing about the words.

  Will said, ‘I’m not here to chase unicorns.’

  ‘No?’ Devon’s mild word had something underneath it.

  ‘No. I believe I mentioned,’ said Will, ‘I’m here to buy a gift.’

  ‘For a lady?’ said Devon. His words were casual, but Will felt a flare of recognition.

  He knows, he thought, and the words made sense of Devon’s testing manner and the way Devon carefully wasn’t looking at him.

  His pulse spiked. Now that Devon had recognised him, he had to get out. And he had to do it without giving the plan away.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Will kept his own voice casual. ‘A lady.’

  ‘Cameos are popular.’ Devon moved to the desk and drew out a display tray. Five ivory cameo brooches were pinned to black velvet. ‘Or rings?’

  His movements were slow and deliberate, like his breathing. Now that Will knew he had been recognised, he could see that Devon was afraid. Devon glanced at Will’s hand holding the purse. His scarred hand.

  ‘A necklace, perhaps,’ said Devon. ‘An ivory rose so fine that you’d believe a real flower adorned the hollow of her throat.’ He’s stalling.

  ‘I ought to come back with a lady’s eye,’ said Will. ‘I’m spoiled for choice.’

  ‘Robert will be here soon,’ said Devon. ‘You could wait for him.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve taken up too much of your time already,’ said Will.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ said Devon.

  ‘I’ll return at a more reasonable hour. A token.’ Will scattered what little of the contents of his purse comprised coins on the counter and walked out of the shop.

  I’ve done it. He tried to walk calmly, letting anyone who was watching see him, exposed on the street. Devon knows who I am. He forced down the echo of that old voice, the moment when the world had changed and nothing had ever been safe again. Run!

  Because there was only one thing that would lure James out.

  Me.

  He knew what he had to do next, and he had made it to his appointed spot, hoping the others were in position, when he saw
Cyprian.

  ‘Cyprian. You’re not supposed to be here.’

  The back streets were deserted, tall houses rising on either side creating dark, empty canyons, perfect for an ambush.

  Cyprian stepped forward with the earnestness of a bodyguard. ‘If you are what Justice says you are, you can’t be alone.’

  This wasn’t part of the plan that Will had shouted as they galloped, the wind on the marshes whipping the words from his mouth. ‘You have to get into position. Devon’s going to tell James who I am.’

  ‘If you really are Blood of the Lady,’ said Cyprian, ‘I can’t be the one who lets you fall into Simon’s hands.’

  The words were as unexpected as everything else about Cyprian’s presence here. The perfect novitiate breaking all the rules. He had seen Cyprian’s discomfort at tricking the other Stewards to free them. Cyprian had an extraordinary sense of his own duty. But if they didn’t get Marcus back, none of that was going to matter. ‘Cyprian—’

  ‘Justice was right about one thing,’ said Cyprian, shaking his head. ‘Marcus did always believe in the Lady. He was sure you had survived. He thought that he would be the one to find you. He told me that he’d—’

  Cyprian broke off, blinked, and then crumpled. There was no warning, no sound or change; he simply hit the ground in an unnatural collapse.

  ‘Cyprian!’ said Will, racing to his prone body. On one knee, he felt desperately for an injury, a dart or a bullet, finding nothing. Cyprian didn’t respond, just lay heavy and motionless, eyes open as one frozen. Was he alive? Dead? He didn’t seem to be breathing—

  Will wheeled around to the dark, empty street, looking for an attacker, to see nothing, to hear only his own panting breaths in a silence that stretched out, just long enough for him to feel how completely he was alone.

  And then, footsteps.

  The leisurely sound of shiny boot heels on cobblestones. Step, step, step. James came strolling out of the dark as Will’s pulse skyrocketed. James was dressed for an evening out, in exquisite tailoring. Everything faded, this world insignificant; James the only real thing in it. You, you, you. James’s extraordinary beauty pressed in like a knife; it hurt.