by Dave Rudden
That got a tiny smile. ‘Not always. I’m Edwina de Montfort. Ed to everyone but my parents. It’s an … ongoing conversation.’
Abigail smiled gently. ‘For them or you?’
Ed shrugged. ‘Them. I know I’m a he.’
‘Ed it is,’ Abigail said, grinning, and shook his hand.
Simon blinked, and then stuck out his hand as well. ‘Cool. What’s your garrison?’
‘London. My family have been in Islington for … well, forever. You know.’
‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I’m …’
Abigail pointedly didn’t look at him. Simon’s parents had died in a car crash, but his Knightly gifts spoke of some connection with the Order that no amount of research had been able to uncover. It had been a long time since he’d had to tell anyone.
‘I’m a stray,’ he said finally. ‘Don’t really know where I came from.’
Ed nodded sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But you’re here now. We’re all family in a way, I think.’
When Abigail was a kid, she’d wanted to be a princess. Her mother was Iranian, and Abigail’s childhood had been full of stories of women who’d fought and ruled, and what ruling meant. It was a duty. You served your people and your kingdom, and it was the quiet, automatic kindness in Ed’s words that made him part of the private kingdom that Abigail kept in her head.
It wasn’t a proper kingdom. Proper kingdoms had maps, and flags, and weren’t able to fit in a bobble hat. But, proper or not, Abigail felt responsible for the people in it. She’d known Ed for all of eight sentences, and now she would risk her life for him. It was as simple as that.
That there are things that cannot be prepared for, and may not be survived.
She shivered.
‘My family go back a long time,’ Ed was saying. He had a small bud of a nose, and eyes that were wide and morose. Now that Abigail and Simon had revealed themselves not to be terrifying, Ed was directing a prey-animal stare to the rest of the room. ‘Don’t ask me to name all my ancestors. My dad makes me do it at Christmas.’
‘Both Knights?’ Simon asked.
‘My dad. Mum spent the whole of my thirteenth birthday glaring at me and giving me ice water. I think she was going to tell the Palatine that I wasn’t allowed to go, until Dad told her if I didn’t get training I could explode in my sleep. He thinks he’s really funny. But I actually really like training, and … me and Dad have lots to talk about now.’
Ed tensed once again as three more Neophytes entered the chamber. One was the Eguzki girl Abigail had sparred with earlier, neck tattoo bared. Another was the squat, blocky boy, every inch of his exposed skin a tangled forest of scars. His eyes burned with an intensity that had nothing to do with fire, and everything to do with rage.
‘Who is –’
‘Matt Temberley,’ Ed said wearily, and it was only then that Abigail noticed the third boy, the one who had called Grey a traitor – blond and broad, those long curls arranged in a meticulous cascade.
He stalked to an empty seat, spinning it round before flopping into it artistically. Even his hair flopped artistically, before settling back exactly in its pre-flop position.
Something about his expression annoyed Abigail. It was … disrespectful. They were in a magic castle. He didn’t have to look bored.
‘Oh yeah,’ Simon said. ‘That guy. Do you know him?’
Ed nodded. ‘We’ve met a few times. He’s garrisoned in Edinburgh. I think he practises to make his hair do that.’
Abigail looked away before Temberley noticed her staring, but not before she caught the weariness on the Eguzki girl’s face as he made a comment and jogged her elbow to see her response.
Maybe it was the trio’s arrival, or Abigail’s bold move, but the atmosphere of the room turned concave, once-separate groups coming together like an invisible zip.
There were introductions in a dozen different languages. Simon and Ed got caught up talking to Stefan – Madrid garrison, very arm-wavy – so Abigail detached herself and ended up in a spirited conversation with Dmitry about crossbows. Abigail didn’t speak Ukrainian, and Dmitry’s English wasn’t perfect, but there was a surprising amount you could get across with hand gestures – if you were talking about crossbows.
Groups split and re-formed. As different as they all were, there were enough similarities for it not to matter. Not just being Neophytes, though that helped – shared training, favourite weapons, a pride in their purpose, a lore – but mostly because they were kids, and they were new, and in a very strange place indeed.
‘So go on then. Who’s fought one?’
And the moment was over, and the war returned.
Slowly, everyone turned to look at Matthew Temberley, who had steepled his fingers under the jut of his chin.
‘Who’s fought a Tenebrous?’
It was the one word that transcended the language barrier, the one word no one had said so far.
‘Edinburgh’s full of them,’ he continued. ‘Our Lux Precognitae – our cadre has a Lux, by the way – says that the Tenebrae runs like water through the city’s stones. It’s no wonder normal people think the whole city’s haunted.’
Silence but for Etienne – Mink Girl from earlier, surprisingly friendly, excellent braid – quietly translating for the girl at her side.
‘Matt Temberley,’ he said. ‘My kill count’s eight. That’s kill count, not just seeing them. I don’t even know how many I’ve seen. It’s a pity –’ he cracked his knuckles – ‘that you can’t mount them. You know, for trophies? Once, right, in the Queen Anne Room …’
His hands carved shapes out of the air as he talked, as if slicing invisible Tenebrous to pieces. At one point, golden light fluttered beneath the skin of his hands and everyone tensed, but then he let out a deep breath and the glow dissipated as he went on to say how his cadre – but mostly he – had run the dread beast Anarabix down.
‘That’s …’ Stefan’s voice was as burnished as his skin, a drawl both sun-warm and utterly neutral. ‘… great.’
It didn’t seem to be the response Matt was looking for. His expression darkened, as if he’d suddenly realized that conversations had more than one side.
‘What about the rest of you? Any war stories? Any scars?’ He said the last word with a strange kind of relish, and Abigail had been trying to be nice up until now, but it had been a very long day.
‘Scars don’t make a Knight,’ she said. ‘And we’ll all have them soon enough.’
He definitely heard her. His eyes almost – but not quite – snapped to her before he re-crossed his arms and regarded Simon instead.
‘What about you? I saw you spar earlier.’ A grin slid across his face. ‘You must have a scar or two.’
‘Clocks,’ Simon said, without missing a beat.
‘What?’
‘Can’t. Be. Around. Clocks.’ Simon’s voice was as sharp as a new razor. ‘Spent a month hiding in an orphanage from Tenebrous. They had a thing about clocks. Now I have a thing about clocks.’
‘Oh,’ Matt said, and then rallied. ‘Well –’
‘My Malleus fought a Tenebrous in Salut.’
Emilia Garcia – also from Madrid, missing two fingers on her left hand so she punched like a chisel. ‘She let me come. My first time. I had never seen her cry before. It put her down and went for me, and when our eyes met … I saw Grandfather.
‘That was what let her kill it. It made itself look like the people you loved, but it could only do one at a time.’
Matt opened his mouth, but Ed spoke up, each word an effort.
‘I haven’t seen one at all yet. I’ve trained and trained, but … they say they won’t risk me until it’s the right time.’ Hands scrubbed up and down arms. ‘I don’t have any scars at all.’
‘Well …’ Matt rallied. ‘Not to worry, sweetheart, it’s like what’s-her-face said –’
Ed winced. Abigail scowled at Matt.
Sweetheart?
And then a second lat
er –
What’s-her-face?!
‘– you’ll get your stripes.’
The scarred boy had been resolutely staring at the wall since they’d come in. A jolt of horror thrilled its way through Abigail’s gut as Matt turned –
Oh no –
‘What about you, big man? What’s your story?’
This close, Abigail could see that the estuaries of scar tissue were too messy for blades, and nearly too messy for claws. He looked … chewed.
Abigail wouldn’t have thought it possible for those eyes to chill any further. Though there couldn’t have been more than a few months between them, his voice was crushingly deep, as if winched out of the centre of the earth.
‘My cadre was Berlin. I had just Dawned when the Pursuivants hit.’
Abigail’s heart missed a beat. As vicious as they were loyal, the Pursuivants of the Endless King had left no stone unturned in their search for their master’s daughter. At first, it had just been scouting missions – warning shots across the Order’s bows – but with each failure the clashes had become bloodier until finally Vivian, Abigail and Denizen had found her. They had almost been in time.
‘Hagen …’
The Eguzki girl leaned forward, but he waved her away.
‘I do not remember much,’ he said. ‘They came through the walls. I fought. We fought. I remember stabbing and stabbing and then …’
Scarred fingers tightened against each other, as if trying to wring out the words.
‘It shouted mercy. Over and over again, in the most terrible voice. Why would it say that? Why would they speak of mercy, when they showed us none? It left then. I think it thought me dead. The Knights who found me … they thought I would die too.’
His eyes darkened.
‘But we are at war.’
8
A Different Prison
The look on Simon and Abigail’s faces when he abandoned them followed Denizen all the way up the stairs and into bed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get to know the others – he’d be spending a whole year with them, so presumably they’d have to talk sometime. He just couldn’t do it tonight.
It wasn’t life or death. That was the worst thing. Denizen had risked his life to face the Woman in White because, if he hadn’t, a toddler would have died. Life or death. Simple.
This, however, was just life, and Denizen wasn’t sure he could deal with it.
‘Hello,’ Grey said.
Denizen sat up with a start. He must have been closer to sleep than he realized – the Knight had somehow slipped into Denizen’s room like a ghost, an impression not helped by the Lucidum’s pearlescent shades.
‘Grey …’ Denizen said. ‘Why are you in my room late at night in the dark?’
‘Is it dark?’ Grey asked, taking a seat at the end of Denizen’s bed. ‘I didn’t –’ He stopped abruptly and shook his head. ‘I forget to turn lights on sometimes. You know how it is.’
No, Denizen thought but kept his mouth shut. Once Grey had been the easiest person to talk to in Seraphim Row. But now Denizen felt as if he were struggling with a language he didn’t understand – no, worse, a language he had once known but whose meanings had now been rearranged.
Grey even moved differently, no longer stalking like a leopard on the wrong side of hunger. Now there was a hesitancy – as if he was afraid of catching himself on sharp and hidden things.
‘Is … everything OK?’
Denizen’s voice was unsteady. It wasn’t fear – though Cants stretched in his head as if recognizing a fellow predator. It wasn’t pity either. Denizen had grown up in an orphanage. He hated pity.
It was guilt.
Red spilling down Grey’s nose, the wild look in his eyes as he managed to drag the gun aside.
They’ll kill you.
A mad, bloody smile.
One can only hope.
‘What?’
Denizen started. He had been staring. ‘Nothing. Sorry. What’s up?’
Grey scrubbed a hand across his face. ‘Don’t worry about earlier. Greaves told me he needed a word. You’ll have time to catch up. It’s exciting, really. My favourite subject was history. Century after century, all those battles, all those choices people made to lead us here. Being a part of something bigger than yourself, you know?’
He looked at his hands. ‘Meant a lot to a kid who didn’t belong to anyone.’
‘Grey …’
‘Now science is less fun. I don’t know if they should even be allowed to call it science. It’s mostly just flammability scales and how to turn cleaning products into napalm. And then next term there’ll be law or, more accurately, loophole management for secret organizations. It’s amazing what you can convince parliaments to write into their constitutions if you get there in the right century. Ah, article three, subsection two: how many times have you saved my –’
‘Grey.’
He sighed. ‘Yes?’
‘Why didn’t you answer any of my letters?’
Grey snorted. ‘What would I have said? Hey, kid, good to hear from you. Sorry I put a bullet in your mam? Not the best postcard.’
‘You could have said something,’ Denizen retorted. Long-suppressed anger was building, and he mentally hardened himself against the accompanying flame. ‘I know you were trying to get better … but I had to hear about where you were from Greaves, and he dangled it in front of me like a carrot.’
‘Yeah,’ Grey said tiredly. ‘He’s like that. For what it’s worth, I don’t blame him. Or envy him. Logistics. Budgets. Paperwork. Every time a battle’s won, we lose another somewhere else. Sometimes the fighting’s the easy part.’
His wan smile was testament to that.
‘I suppose you know that he wants me to stay here,’ Denizen said. ‘Forever. While my friends fight and …’
How would it happen? A pat on the shoulder and his mother’s obituary? His arms pink and unmarked and Simon paler and colder with each visit until the day there was no visit at all?
Grey’s lips tightened. ‘You say stay here like it’s a bad thing. Think of the people you’d help. The lives you’d save.’
‘I should be out there,’ Denizen said stubbornly. ‘I’ll meet Mercy, I’ll do whatever he asks, but I should be out there with my friends. With my family.’
And that was part of it too. He’d only just got his mother back. He wasn’t going to be separated from her again.
‘I was wondering when she’d come up,’ Grey snapped. Denizen flinched. The last time he’d heard Grey sound so angry was when the Three had been at the wheel. ‘She’s really done a number on you, hasn’t she?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s Vivian’s logic,’ Grey said. ‘Her selfishness, out of your mouth.’ His fists opened and closed, and that was all the oxygen the fire needed. Denizen struggled for a moment, slamming door after door until its advance was stalled.
Grey hadn’t noticed. He was looking at a different set of walls.
‘Remember how she acted before they attacked? Remember her silence? Her damned air of mystery? Do you know how different things could have been if she had just told us about the Three?’
A bitter sunrise flushed Grey’s drawn features, his eyes brimming with pallid light. With a shock, Denizen realized that all this time he’d been thinking about the Order forgiving Grey. He’d never once considered whether Grey would forgive them.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Knight said abruptly. ‘I shouldn’t have … I shouldn’t have got angry. I just …’
His eyes found Denizen’s. ‘I used to get excited, can you believe that? Feeling a Breach in the air used to make me feel afraid, sick, the usual – but part of me liked it. Liked the fighting. Liked being brave. That was magic. Real magic.
‘And then the Three came, and all they left me was the wrongness. Nestled inside me like a tumour, and all the fire in the world couldn’t clean me out.’
‘Grey … I –’
‘I remember wh
at you were like when you first came to Seraphim Row. Scared but defiant. You stood up to Vivian Hardwick five minutes after meeting her, which is more than I did. I knew then that you’d say yes. It might take you a while, but you would be a Knight.’
He stood abruptly. ‘When we first met, I told you I’d do anything to make this war end.’
‘You did,’ Denizen said quietly.
Grey tossed him a fold of black cloth.
‘Put this on. We have somewhere to be.’
You’d think, Denizen thought, hitching up his black robe for the twentieth time, that I’d start knowing better than to follow Grey on night-time excursions.
They hurried down a corridor, rough flagstones unwarmed by buttery candlelight. Grey had donned a black robe of his own and on him it looked dramatic and impressive. Denizen just looked like he was wearing a duvet cover.
‘Where are we going?’
A smile, somewhere in that shadowed hood.
‘Remember your thirteenth birthday? When I was supposed to wait out your Dawning away from Seraphim Row so if you did turn out to be normal you’d never know the Order existed?’
‘And you brought me to Vivian anyway, so she’d have to talk to me.’
‘Exactly.’
Grey’s next words were under his breath, but Denizen caught them anyway.
‘Edifice is going to kill me.’
Onwards and downwards, Denizen trying and failing to keep an internal map in his head. Each corridor looked the same. Only the murals changed, depicting battle after battle, creature after creature, blurring into a centuries-long serpent of war.
Grey seemed to know exactly where he was going, turning corners and opening increasingly iron-studded doors without hesitation. Around them the corridors were devolving – the stone rougher, the murals caked with dust.
‘Are these the dungeons?’ Denizen asked. He’d never seen proper dungeons before.
‘Oh no,’ Grey said. ‘The dungeons are much nicer.’
He paused at the next door, and lifted an iron key from under his robe.
