by Dave Rudden
One hand was still clasped to Mercy’s chest. The other ended in a hard-light blade of incandescent white. Spots of black sizzled on her cheeks before dissolving away.
‘Mercy,’ Denizen whispered.
She stared at him blankly, and then lunged.
KILL HER. It was his training. It was the fire. It was his mother, and the fact that when a monster came at you your duty was to put it down first.
Flame punched from his hands, and it took every bit of strength to turn them aside, even as Mercy’s blade just grazed his shoulder to halve a Tenebrous’s skull.
He hadn’t … he hadn’t even seen it.
I nearly …
Move, Mercy growled, and spun him so they were back to back. The floor was already choked with debris that squirmed as monsters drank it in, and, of all things, Denizen’s shins ached with bruises and bangs.
A writhing nest of hair and veins grabbed his throat and he would have died then and there if not for the accidental backswing of a Malleus hammer. He fell, rolled, slashed inhuman ankles with Falter’s stone edge, before driving it into a thigh and dragging himself upright.
‘PULL BACK!’
There was such anger in that voice. Retreat was a curse to a Knight, proof of failure, a sign that nothing was as it should be. But suddenly hands were on Denizen’s shoulders, hands he almost slashed out at before he recognized them as iron.
Oh, he thought stupidly, that’s where we were. Three metres from the door, just about where he’d found Simon and Abigail earlier. He’d completely lost track.
The pristine chamber had become a junkyard wet with rising black, and no sooner did a twisted shape fall than it became reborn somewhere else. Knights still battled in diminishing bands, but now they fought to free each other, sacrificing themselves so that others could get to the doors.
In the centre of it all was the Glimpse, and the Glimpse had expanded. It had widened, and forcing it still wider was a forest of hands and arms and black, grabbing fingers, a tangle of human limbs.
Like a crowd. Like an army.
But that wasn’t what gave Denizen pause, even as the head and torso of a young man pushed its way out of the mass like the stem of a strawberry, stretching and smiling like a teenager after a long lie-in.
The shape looked human. Properly human. They had never been very good at it. The eel-of-tweed had made the most effort Denizen had ever seen, and even it hadn’t fooled people for very long. There were so many details to get right, all those evolutionary and behavioural quirks that marked people from … not.
But the boy’s body looked perfect, and even the web of straining limbs had a polish and art that Denizen had never seen before. They bent like limbs should bend and, as Denizen watched, more heads began to push through, each one accurate, each one human.
Except that they were all made of iron, as flawless as if carved by the Cost itself.
The Usurper looked at Denizen and grinned from a dozen mouths.
Daybreak, it whispered.
12
When the Rust Gets In
Abigail Falx could run a mile in under eight minutes. She was deadly with a rapier, had won awards with a crossbow, and was merely excellent with the staff, hand-axe and scythe. She was a black belt in kick-boxing, could put a 200-gram knife through a wedding ring at fifteen paces, and had once left a bruise on Vivian Hardwick’s cheek.
Someone somewhere was shouting, but then the Emissary growled, low and deep as muscle pain, and all Abigail could do was stare at the largest Tenebrous she had ever seen.
There was no body inside that armour, just a sloshing, slopping sea of black, now tall enough to stare a bull elephant in the eye. Plates bulged oddly. Elbows jutted. Its chest-plate seemed half a mile across, cracked concentrically around a hole Abigail could have fallen into without touching the sides.
There had been a hammer there. She had been there when it had been removed.
I FOUND MY SWORD.
The Emissary twisted at the hip, a ponderous grind of gorget and greave, and cut the nearest building in half.
Masonry groaned as a night-black blade longer than Vivian’s car carved through it with the ease of a butcher jointing a calf. Dust billowed. The roof collapsed inwards. And every shard of stone that touched that sword puffed into a haze of grit, as if not just sliced but disassembled on a molecular scale.
With an almost delicate snuffling, the Emissary leaned forward and breathed it in.
I FOUND IT. I FOUND IT.
Was that her imagination? Did the Emissary seem to grow? Flanks heaving, details sharpening … did it swell with everything it ate?
I FOUND … I FOUND YOU AND …
It stared down its sword, still buried in the building’s corpse, and its gauntlet unfurled with the clanking grind of an assembly line to lovingly stroke the blade.
And then it looked at her. WE ARE HUNGRY.
All her life, Abigail had been trained to fight. She’d chosen Cants the way other kids collected trading cards, she’d honed her body and she’d studied, because Tenebrous didn’t have muscle groups or pressure points. Each Tenebrous was a new language that overwrote itself with every passing second. Her father had taught her to observe. Her mother had taught her to appraise. And when she turned that expert eye on the Tenebrous before her …
Nothing. She had nothing. The Emissary was too big. Too … too impossible. You couldn’t dent that armour with a Malleus hammer, not unless you welded it to the front of a tank. She could have given every ounce of herself to the Cost and not so much as singed it.
The sheer scale of it slammed down like a guillotine, surgically disconnecting not just Abigail’s muscles from her brain but her muscles from her memory – every moment she’d ever spent replacing the human urge to flinch with the Knightly urge to fight.
The Emissary was, in every way that counted, bigger than her.
ABIGAIL FALX.
It took her in top to toe without even moving its head.
LITTLE ABIGAIL FALX.
And it knew her.
LEFT TO ROT. LEFT TO RUST. LEFT FOR CENTURIES WITH NOTHING BUT WIND AND RAIN AND EVERY HUMAN DESPERATE ENOUGH TO COME TO ME FOR HELP.
On the last word, its voice jumped, like a dying radio, and a voice trickled from under that helm, stretched by volume but unmistakably, horribly human.
WHEN THE TIME COMES …
Her voice.
I WANT TO BE GOOD ENOUGH.
She’d said that to Denizen on Os Reges Point. She’d told him that Knighthood was what she wanted because it was where she’d always known she was headed. She’d told him that she trained because there would be a time when life and death depended on her.
DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE GOOD ENOUGH, ABIGAIL FALX?
‘Stop!’
The voice rang out, as loud as human lungs could deliver, but still pathetically small compared to it. The Emissary was deafening even at rest, a low-level grumble of joints and chains clanging with every gurgling breath it took. Like standing next to the ocean. Like the noise in your ears when you were about to drown.
MALLEUS COILED.
The Tenebrous was so large it had to take a step back to turn in the narrow street, palm pivoting lovingly on the hilt of its sword. Coiled, in comparison, barely reached the Emissary’s knee, standing with her arms folded as if the now eight-metre-tall behemoth was a student stepping out of line.
This was Abigail’s moment. This was when she should act. The weight of the beast’s gaze was gone, and air and thought were rushing in to fill the gap. It had turned its back on her, the most simple and elementary mistake, and this was her moment, so why was she hesitating?
A tactical error. A fatal mistake.
And then –
‘Now!’ Coiled yelled, and the other Knights leapt from the roofs above.
Adler hung in the air as if physics didn’t quite know what to do with her, before bringing an axe down to hack a chunk from the Emissary’s helm. The Sikh Knight landed on one p
auldron and ran, actually ran, across the beast’s shoulders before whipping a blade into the darkness between helm and neck.
It howled.
Coiled was already darting between the creature’s tree-trunk legs, whipping the iron sphere into the gaps where hamstrings should be. The Emissary lurched in a circle of dust, leaving itself open to the wrinkled Knight’s jab of flame.
No movement wasted. No gap in the dance. A single swing of that massive blade would have broken any of them in two, so instead the Knights baited and dodged like hunting-dogs trying to take down a stag.
Abigail’s heritage boiled up inside her and she tensed, wanting to lend her fire to theirs, but then Coiled saw her and froze.
‘Abigail! Get –’
The dance faltered. Just for a second. Just for a beat. Abigail saw it. The Emissary saw it too.
The Tenebrous turned, suddenly lightning-fast – that poisonous Tenebraic inconsistency – and caught the Malleus with the bulldozer tip of its boot.
Coiled flew.
It felt like a play, a backdrop. It felt like the stories Abigail’s mother used to tell her when heroes and monsters battled back and forth and every step and blow was world-shaking.
Coiled landed beside her, a broken bundle of limbs, and Abigail could no more take her eyes from the Malleus than she could have arm-wrestled the monster behind her.
The little woman had hit the wall three metres off the ground. She’d taken a lump of the corner with her and it lay in pieces around her like a halo, slowly being soaked with blood. She stared up at Abigail with one eye already closing, the other a bright and shocking green.
‘Abigail …’
How could Abigail hear her? There was a howl behind her, a roar of flame – the dance was broken now and Knights were falling. The Emissary was bellowing like an air turbine. She shouldn’t have been able to hear someone whispering so quietly through a half-collapsed chest.
‘Abigail, you should have …’
Should have done something. This was her duty, her heritage. What she had been made for, what her parents wanted for her, the crux of who she was. Life or death.
DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE GOOD ENOUGH, ABIGAIL FALX?
The Emissary answered questions. Abigail had hers.
She fled.
13
Ghost Stories
Denizen hadn’t taken three steps out of the chamber before his muscles simply let go, dumping his frame in an awkward heap on the floor. He didn’t even register the impact.
What he did register was a hand closing on his arm like a bear trap. Terror pushed aside tiredness, and he swiped raggedly at whatever held him.
It was Grey, dragging him along the flagstones so that the chamber could be sealed. He caught a blurred glimpse of Knights with their backs pressed against one door, roaring as if they meant to push it back by sound alone, and then a lone Hephaestus leaning into the other, taking step after deliberate step.
The doors slammed shut, but not before a hand trapped itself between, snap-scrabbling at the air with knuckles that didn’t move the way knuckles should move. With a deliberate backhand, Greaves smashed it to shards.
‘Seal it,’ he snarled. ‘And light it up. I want them to burn.’
Denizen stared numbly at the door as the remaining Knights – this corridor had been … it had been full – pressed bare hands to the exposed metal. Light purled beneath their skin, faint at first, then brighter, streaky with effort. After a moment, the lines and carvings on the doors began to glow as well, the spoken steel channelling their fire.
Soon the whole wall glowed geometric with precise lines of illumination. And with the light came sound – rising low from under Denizen’s senses, an earth-deep rumble that pitched louder and higher until he had to press hands against ears to drown it out.
Tenebrous. More than Denizen had ever heard before. It sounded like …
It sounded like hundreds.
Light flickered across Graham McCarron’s stony expression as he listened to Tenebrous burn inside the chamber walls. There was no smell. Sealed. Airtight.
How long will it hold them?
‘Upstairs,’ Greaves said. There was a ragged wound down one side of his face. ‘Now.’
Rain was still beading on the balcony when they returned to Greaves’s office – the drops clear with no trace of black. Denizen had no idea if that was a good sign or not.
Greaves wasn’t giving orders any more. There didn’t seem to be any to be given. Cadres had been stationed round the Glimpse, some to power the spoken-steel wards, and others if those wards …
A woman with a dragon tattoo on her cheek and a man with a sweep of dyed blue hair across his scalp entered the office, Mercy between them. Even that small detail was unnerving: her honour guard had halved. They had better things to be doing right now.
I am sorry, she said. It seemed to be her go-to phrase. I –
‘What is it?’ Greaves said. He had one hand on the head of his hammer. It was as dented as Vivian’s now. ‘That thing. The thing that spoke to us.’
I don’t –
‘You do know,’ the Palatine snapped, and scraped the weapon across the desk with a whine of iron and wood. ‘It knew you. It called you its challenge.’
We follow the strong, Mercy murmured. The fury she’d shown in battle had drained away. Now she seemed … resigned. Usurpers are rising. Those who think they could be King.
And, like a dog sensing an earthquake, Denizen turned just in time to see Vivian come through the door so hard it slammed open and closed in the same breath. Everyone jumped. Hands went to hilts.
Denizen, however, did not jump. He was used to it. Vivian could slam a bead curtain.
‘Do you want to explain,’ Vivian hissed, ‘why we nearly just lost the next generation of the Order to the Emissary of the Endless King?’
That was two hammers being waved in Mercy’s face now, and still she didn’t flinch. Perversely, it made Denizen think of Crosscaper. What did Simon always say? Oh yes. Don’t panic. If you were here, the worst had already happened.
He is my father’s Emissary no longer.
The reflection of Vivian’s hammer was a spot of darkness on the brightness of Mercy’s eyes.
Obviously.
A muscle twitched in Vivian’s cheek. Knights did not get on with Tenebrous. That was an understatement. But it also wasn’t a patch on how Vivian felt specifically about Mercy.
They did not get on at all.
‘You. Led. Them. Here.’
I chose a side. I don’t want anyone else to die.
‘Tell that to –’
‘Enough!’ Grey snapped, and Vivian was so surprised that she actually shut up. ‘The Neophytes? The cadre? Where –’
His friends! He hadn’t even –
‘Coiled, Adler, the others … They covered the Neophytes’ retreat … and paid for it with their lives.’
Knights hissed, or slammed hands into fists, or swore, and Grey just seemed to … deflate, clutching his right hand with the mangled machinery of his left.
‘And the Emissary?’
Vivian shook her head. ‘We don’t know. When we’ve finished our search, we’ll formulate a response. The Neophytes –’
‘Are mistaken,’ Greaves said, and the hope in his voice was worse than fear. ‘You didn’t speak to the cadre? It’s something else. They’re wrong –’
‘They’re Neophytes,’ Vivian retorted, ‘not children. Not idiots. I interrogated them myself. And it’s grown, Greaves. Nine metres tall, and wielding that damned sword it always talked about –’
‘It’s shock,’ Greaves snapped, and somewhere Denizen found the headspace to be insulted. ‘They’re –’
‘They’re right.’
Darcie stood in the doorway, so frail Denizen had to stop himself from running to her side. She’d shrunk since he’d seen her last, disappearing into the folds of her coat. Even her hair had drooped, flat and tangled, against her scalp.
&nb
sp; ‘So much movement on the other side of the veil. Like pressing my cheek to the side of a beehive. Feeling that vibration. That awful, awful hum.’
She licked her lips, the motion convulsive and sad.
‘Like they’re crawling on the inside of my brain.’
‘That’s enough,’ Greaves snapped, turning to a slim lynx of a woman behind him, her skin dappled brown and black with the Cost. ‘Phones are out. Islington, Berlin: we need reinforcements.’
The Art of Apertura. The Cant that allowed Knights to step from one shadow to the next. The woman nodded and three things happened in quick succession:
Darcie lurched forward. Mercy went out but for her eyes – just two points of light like fireflies frozen in flight. And the voice of the light and the Lux overlapped in fear.
‘No!’
No!
And that unnamed Knight opened a hole in the universe and died before the sound of her Cant left the air.
It was quick. That was the only mercy. Tendrils of black lashed out from that half-opened hole like a century of spiderwebs from a growing spinneret, and the Knight’s expression didn’t even have time to change before her feet left the ground.
And then the rent in the air closed. It had to, when the life supporting the Cant went out.
It seemed that they stared at that patch of air for an unforgivably long time.
It is as I said. There is no escape. Not by the Art. You are surrounded. You are besieged.
Detail returned to Mercy with every word, like a radio tuning back in, like an artist pulling lines from ink and paper.
It is difficult to plan when you are liquid. You are rigid things. Stacking one thing upon another comes easily to you. For us, it is far harder. We are flowing. We are impermanent. We are …
‘Mercy,’ Denizen hissed, ‘start making sense.’
And, finally, the lines fell into place.
You have been anticipated. That is what I am trying to tell you. A cloudburst infiltration. Hundreds of Tenebrous using the concentrated distortion of their presence to disrupt communication with the outside world. We are creatures of will, the weak follow the strong and what proves strength more …
