by Dave Rudden
Denizen remembered fists held over D’Aubigny’s head, clenched fingers, a rain of rust. The sheer, caged hatred that had been in the Emissary’s voice, the kind of hatred that could only accrete over hundreds of years in the wind and the rain …
‘It’s just one Tenebrous.’
Simon opened his mouth to protest, but Denizen shook his head.
‘One big Tenebrous. I heard. But it’s a city. Abigail’s smart. Smarter than both of us when it comes to these things. They’ll either find her, or she’ll make her way back, or she’ll show up with half the Order to save us. You know what she’s like.’
‘Yeah. You’re … you’re right.’ Simon rubbed his face, and then pulled his hand away, as if only now realizing how dirty it was. ‘We should get ready.’
‘Yeah,’ Denizen said, and suddenly the thought of leaving had become horribly real once again. Was that it? Was he just going to leave?
Walls shivered, inside his head and without. Yes. It was. For once in Denizen’s life, what duty demanded and the right thing to do had aligned. It hurt, physically hurt, to leave Darcie behind, but that was her choice. We’re needed.
Abigail was another matter entirely, but, as much as he hated it, Vivian was right. None of them seemed to have any illusions about how long Daybreak’s garrison could withstand the forces arrayed against them, even without the odds set to worsen with every passing moment.
That left …
Nobody. Absolutely nobody. You’re not thinking about anybody. There is nobody to think about. And that nobody came here because she wanted to help, and you wouldn’t be doing her any favours by getting in the way …
‘Denizen?’
Simon was saying something, but all Denizen could think was that for all the many masks he had seen Mercy wearing – trapped princess, regal queen-in-waiting, remorseful fugitive or blazing warrior – he had never seen her frightened until he left her behind.
That was all it took. That flicker. That fear. Denizen could have erected every battlement known to the human race in his head, forged them out of the hardest iron, reinforced them with the coldest ice, and still Mercy would slip between them. Like a knife. Like the ghost she so often resembled.
Like she had never left him at all.
‘I’m fine,’ he told Simon, as around them the castle shook. ‘Definitely fine.’ His voice was heavy. ‘I just … I need to go and get something.’
15
Teeth of the Gear
You’re an idiot.
Denizen scuttled through Daybreak’s innards, wincing at every step he took. It wasn’t that he was worried about being overheard – since that first battle at the Glimpse, the tremors shaking Daybreak had been more and more pronounced.
It felt like footsteps, like the approach of something huge.
He wasn’t even worried about being seen: with only a hundred Knights to go around, and a castle’s worth of preparation to make, the halls he now traversed were deserted. Any warrior he did pass probably assumed he was on some important errand on behalf of his mother or the Palatine himself.
They definitely wouldn’t guess what he was actually doing, because they were intelligent, and he was not.
No, what Denizen was really wincing at was that every step he took was another nail in his coffin. What that coffin contained changed from moment to moment, as fluid as the mosaics on the walls.
There was his career in the Order, though that had already pretty much been on life-support since birth.
He didn’t care so much about what the other Neophytes thought, but he could just imagine Simon’s reaction to what he was doing. Don’t think about it. He’ll understand eventually. He always does.
And then there was his relationship with Vivian. That thought nearly froze him mid-step before he forced his limbs to move once again. He’d disobeyed her before, but this made every previous infraction look like … well, the trouble normal teenagers got into.
She’ll understand too.
I hope.
Hope was what Denizen was running on right now. Hope was his destination, and hope was his path, more than the half-remembered map from Greaves’s office. Denizen liked maps. He would have been absolutely fine this morning had someone just thought to put a map in the Neophytes’ Solar. But that seemed like centuries ago, and it wasn’t the primary training chamber he was trying to find now.
‘Comfortable quarters. Our very best.’
Greaves hadn’t been wrong. The Luxes’ quarters were a whole lot nicer than the Neophytes’ cells – a series of plush apartments that wouldn’t have looked out of place back in Dublin. The castle shook again, harder than before, and all the paintings jumped off the walls in a clatter of wood and glass. Denizen fought the sudden, stupid urge to go and fix them. Which was Darcie’s room? What would she say?
She’d understand. Darcie knew that Greaves would do anything to ensure victory. The Usurper had told them that Mercy was its challenge – what could Greaves negotiate for with a bargaining chip like that? He wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice Mercy if it bought the Order time to respond.
What loyal Knight wouldn’t?
Besides, Darcie has to be here. He didn’t have time to search anywhere else.
Knights chose the Cants that suited them, and, though Denizen knew all seventy-eight, there were some he had gravitated to more than others. The ones most linked to property damage, as it happened.
What does that say about me?
It says I have a habit of ending up in stupid situations.
Like this one?
This isn’t stupid. It’s necessary.
Can’t it be both?
Sluggish from his regime of denial, the Cants stirred muzzily in his head, and Denizen took advantage of their lethargy to seize the one he wanted. He’d only ever cast it once before – a dirty trick in a fight that had been far too dirty already – and, though the phrase bending light had always seemed softly at odds with the belligerence of the other Cants, nevertheless there was a violence to this one as well.
Denizen spoke the Starlight Caul, the syllables so sharp that the torchlight hit them and split, flowing round Denizen like a stream round a rock. An arm’s length beyond, the world was as normal as a passageway in a besieged magical fortress was ever going to get. Behind him, the flow of light closed up again, drawing even a Knight’s eye away from the fourteen-year-old boy who’d carved himself a little teardrop of invisible night.
He began inching forward, senses stretched in the hopes of detecting Mercy’s umbra. It was very nearly enough of a distraction from the fact that Mercy had already made her case to Greaves and got precisely nowhere. The thought of peace had been one thing six months ago, but neglecting the defence of Daybreak at this crucial hour to save a Tenebrous was a step too far.
Denizen wasn’t even sure he could argue with the logic, and with Vivian Hardwick in the room he hadn’t dared try.
There was no reason to think he would have any more luck with the honour guard, and every reason to think they would simply march him back to his mother. He hadn’t a hope in a fair fight against a Knight nor the guts for an unfair one.
All he knew was that she had come to help them, and he couldn’t leave her behind.
You have to listen to me.
Only Mercy’s voice saved Denizen from being caught. He reflexively ducked into a doorway just as Grey came round the corner. Denizen hurriedly narrowed that teardrop of darkness around him in case the Knight advanced, but he just stood there, staring at nothing, a hand pressed to the stone wall. Denizen had seen Grey switch off before. He had his own mask, the same as Greaves, and sometimes Denizen felt honoured that he had seen past it and sometimes guilty that Grey had to wear it at all.
This wasn’t either. This was Grey unobserved, and the raw exhaustion on his face should have made him look older, but it didn’t – it gave him the expression little kids wore in Crosscaper’s courtyard when the gates closed with them on the inside.
He l
ooked trapped. Afraid.
Mr McCarron, please.
And then it was gone. Grey rebuilt himself like a Malleus donning plate, and that scared little boy disappeared. The Knight turned back to the voice and, like a ghost, Denizen followed.
Luxes obviously didn’t visit very often. Everything in the apartment at the end of the hall was covered in dust sheets. Mercy sat on the end of the bed, and Denizen could see through her to the mattress cover beneath, undulating as if it couldn’t quite decide whether someone was sitting on it or not.
She was staring plaintively at Grey, who was draped across a chair like a discarded coat, but it was a woman who answered first, her Mohawk frost-bright against her dark scalp.
‘Be quiet.’
It wasn’t her tone that stopped Denizen in his tracks, though it was at once surprising and not surprising at all how quickly the Knights had stopped treating Mercy with any kind of courtesy. No, it was the hammer at her waist, drawing Denizen’s gaze like a magnet.
A Malleus. Of course. Only the best for a trusted ally, valued prisoner or crucial bargaining chip.
Some long-ago fight had turned her left eye into a blind gem set in silver scars, and she swallowed wetly before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her pointed glare at Mercy spoke volumes as to the source of her distaste.
Denizen, by comparison, felt barely anything from Mercy at all. He had never liked thinking about her umbra the way he thought about other Tenebrous, but he couldn’t deny that she did carry an air of distortion around her. Now, however, she was so muted she was barely there at all.
Except she was. That was the problem. And if he left her behind, there was every chance Greaves would betray her, or Daybreak would simply fall and she’d die at the hands of the Usurper. And every second that went by felt not like the ticking of a clock but the building of one thing on another, the whole tottering edifice about to come down –
And something in the woman’s posture changed. It wasn’t that she had looked comfortable before – she had possessed the same air of pre-lightning-strike tension all Mallei did. But now she looked pained, swallowing so thickly that Denizen could hear it across the room.
‘Grey, I’ll be right back.’
Grey nodded, and Denizen leapt out of the way before she strode right through him. Denizen couldn’t blame her for needing a moment. Mallei didn’t usually spend much time in the company of Tenebrous: they usually killed them on sight.
And then there was one.
His mentor. His friend. The person standing between Denizen and the Order’s only real chance of victory.
Do you really believe that?
He had to. Denizen realized it with a crystalline clarity that went beyond crushes and gardens and almost-kisses and mistrust. He had to do this. He had to believe he could both help the Order and free Mercy, that freeing Mercy was helping the Order … because if it wasn’t then he was wrong, and everyone else had been right.
And all I have to do is strike down the man who’s suffered far too much for me already.
A single careful line of fire fed the Cant in Denizen’s head, but others were clawing desperately for the flame that could give them life. It wouldn’t even have to be him that did it. He’d just have to not hold himself back any more. Not doing something wasn’t the same as doing something, was it?
That’s why you came here.
You don’t have much time.
Didn’t he betray you?
That was what clinched it. No, Denizen thought. He didn’t.
He’d talked to Grey when Grey had a gun to his head. He wouldn’t put one to Grey’s now.
And then the decision was made for him.
You can come out now.
Denizen lost his grip on the Caul, the glow from the torches finding him once more, and it was no consolation at all to learn that Grey only moved at a fraction of light speed.
‘Ulp,’ Denizen said around the sword point under his chin.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Daybreak trembled, and Denizen felt the blade shiver with it.
‘Can you put the sword down, please? It’s a little hard to think –’
‘Denizen,’ Grey snapped, whipping the sword away so quickly it took a drop of blood with it. Denizen watched it hit the wall, and dreamily considered that the seventy-eight Cants in his head hadn’t even had a chance to stir.
He tried to raise a hand to his throat, but, blades still in hand, Grey half pushed, half tossed him into the room beside Mercy.
‘You can’t be here. You can’t. What are you thinking –’
All right, Denizen thought, staring into Grey’s livid face. I’ve got this far. Here goes.
‘Emm …’
Oh, good grief.
Denizen’s here to tell you the same thing I’ve been telling you. The Order can’t hold back an entire universe of shapeshifters, and the more that come, the more that will come.
Your only hope is reinstating the King. If we find him, I can help him regain himself. We can combine forces. Destroy the Usurpers. Both our peoples will live.
‘Exactly!’ Denizen blurted into the silence that followed. ‘What she said.’
Why didn’t she make that much sense earlier?
Grey’s expression shifted from homicidal shock to homicidal incredulity. ‘Denizen, I can’t go against Greaves’s orders. He told me to –’
‘Greaves will trade her back to whatever’s on the other side of the Glimpse!’ He flinched. ‘Sorry, Mercy.’
It’s fine.
Grey sighed. ‘I know what you think of Greaves, but he’s not an idiot. Even if he’d contemplate such a thing, he knows not to make deals with Tenebrous. And buying off one Usurper doesn’t stop the Emissary –’
But if it buys him a day … if it buys him an hour … what then? When he believes that a cavalry charge will save you? What wouldn’t he do to give Vivian Hardwick that extra time?
There. The tiniest flicker of doubt.
‘I can’t stand here listening to this,’ Grey said. ‘I just can’t. You’re supposed to be leaving the castle. If Munroe catches you here, she’ll –’
‘Yes,’ Denizen said. ‘We’re leaving in … ten minutes. Probably. And when we do, Mercy has to be with us. I don’t know about … about finding the King or whatever, but she just can’t stay here.’
Grey’s eyes were wide. ‘You’re insane. That’s insane. What? What? You want to sneak her out under Vivian’s nose? You think that’s better than staying here? Vivian would let her die without batting an eyelid!’
He flinched. ‘No offence.’
None taken. I focused my umbra on Munroe to drive her out of the room, but she’s vomited up most of what she’s capable of vomiting, so I imagine she will be returning soon.
Grey’s head was in his hands. ‘This is treason, Denizen.’
‘Come on,’ Denizen pleaded, painfully aware of the seconds ticking away. ‘We’re trying to save the Order, you know we are. There’s nobody else. You know she’s not a villain. You know she’s not a monster. You … you gave her books, back in Crosscaper. She’s just a girl. She’s trying to help us.’
‘I know she is. But I have my orders.’
‘Is that why you’re down here?’
Grey raised his head.
‘The Master of Neophytes – except when they need you. His trusted adviser, except when you’re not. A guard for a prize prisoner, except she has a guard already. Why are you down here?’ Denizen pressed. ‘If you’re trusted?’
Is this what it feels like to be Greaves? Denizen despised how the Palatine made levers out of loyalty, machinery out of need – reducing the sum total of your life experience to a set of buttons he could press. People weren’t lab rats. People weren’t toys.
‘Grey …’
Say it.
‘You put her in a cage before. Don’t make that same mistake again.’
Very Edifice Greaves.
Grey stared at him
for the longest moment, and though every fibre of Denizen wanted to apologize, to take it back, to scrub himself raw of every word he’d just said … he met his mentor’s gaze, and every drop of pain that was in it.
As penance for what he had just said. As penance for betraying his friend. And because that’s what the Palatine would have done, to drive his point home.
‘No.’ And on that word Daybreak rocked, actually rocked, like a punch-drunk boxer on his last legs. ‘I see what you’re saying, I do … but I can’t betray my Order again. I just can’t.’
He sheathed his blades with a muted click, and Denizen suddenly wished that the Starlight Caul could be reversed, simply so he wouldn’t have to see the look on Grey’s face.
None of them were wearing masks any more.
The Solar was still a hive of activity by the time Denizen returned. Weapons were being handed out under Vivian’s expert supervision. Neophytes were testing mobility in harnesses and sheathes.
Simon looked up as he approached, screwing the cap on to a canteen of water.
‘Here, I grabbed you one.’
‘Thanks,’ Denizen said woodenly.
Simon frowned. ‘Did you get what you were looking for?’
Denizen shook his head.
‘All right,’ Vivian said from the middle of the chamber, clapping her hands. ‘We’re leaving. No – one sword. Are you trained to fight with two? No. Then one is enough. For God’s –’
Any other time, watching his mother try and deal with teenagers might have amused Denizen. But he couldn’t find it in himself. What was he going to do? How could he have been so stupid? How could he have lived in books for so long and still not been able to find the words to convince Grey he was making a mistake?
How could I have said that to him?
How … how could it not have worked?
‘Right,’ Vivian said, in exasperation that had nothing to do with the apocalypse and everything to do with having to talk to young people. ‘Are we finally –’
‘Ready.’
They all turned to see Grey standing in the doorway, hair casting a scythe of shadow across his face, a coat folded over his bare arm. ‘Palatine’s orders,’ he said airily. ‘Can’t be letting you rush off into battle by yourself.’
