The Endless King

by Dave Rudden

  But Mercy did.

  Careful not to touch the walls, Mercy edged her way round stock-still bodies until she was at the front of the line, where Vivian had stood. The Malleus herself had her hammer raised, but was staring at Mercy instead of taking a swing that might have doomed them all.

  Follow, Mercy mouthed with her borrowed lips, and they did.

  Hesitantly, Mercy led them through the tunnel. A low moan that might have been confusion or shifting earth seeped from the walls, but Mercy’s progress was steady and, one by one, they followed her. Denizen focused on stepping exactly where the Neophyte in front of him had, not for the first time wondering at the mind crackling electric in Mercy’s skull.

  If the candles beneath them were candlewards then they had to hurt or diminish her as much as they did the tunnel worm. But, more than that, she had to be scared, as scared as they were, because for so long her lineage should have been a passport, a guarantee, and now it wasn’t.

  Maybe it never had been. It hadn’t protected her from the Three, after all. Tenebrous fought each other as much as they did the Order, and being of a shared species was no guarantee of safety in any world. Either way, her steps were deliberate, and considered, and unafraid.

  Or maybe she just pretended they were, because that was what a leader did in this, a time of war.

  The walk lasted an eternity, each pulse-pounding second written in sweat on Denizen’s brow. Tiles popped from the walls, and Denizen put it down to coincidence that each falling shard left a painted Knight frowning, or snarling, or screaming through missing jaws.

  He flinched as a particularly violent tremor made a whole mosaic face slide free, the stone behind suddenly splitting to reveal an eye, bright and white and glistening blind.

  Denizen froze as a shard of glass pushed its way through the jelly of the eye, fumbled by the soft white into a pupil, vertical and green.

  It blinked, and narrowed.

  ‘RUN!’ Denizen screamed, and sent a seething pulse of fire into the eye with his very next breath. The crater grew teeth and howled.

  And then they were running, and flames were flashing, and ahead the walls tried to close and swallow, but flinched back when an arrow whickered past Denizen’s ear and punched into the tiled body of a long-dead Knight.

  Black was beading between the tiles, popping them free in volleys as hard as bullets, sharp as knives. Fins and growths of earth lurched blindly outwards, only to be lopped off or scorched away. The inside of the beast was suddenly oven-hot, but whether that was from so many Neophytes or the beast itself Denizen couldn’t tell.

  Something spanged off Falter in its sheath. Heat was running down Denizen’s cheek, but a far greater blaze was climbing his skull from the inside, trying to force his body to turn back and FIGHT. The tunnel worm yawled around them, and Denizen felt a horrible and absurd symmetry between them, two creatures being torn apart from the inside by flame.

  And then his hands clanged against something else – something cold, something unmoving and real. A ladder. He clung to it, gasping, but the chill through his skin just wasn’t enough to douse the inferno beneath it.

  Walls shattered in Denizen’s head, melting in a heartbeat, ice turning to mist, to steam. The fire was suddenly inside his fortifications, or had crept in a long time ago, or had never left. He didn’t register the Neophytes running by him, ignored the jostles and bangs as they scrambled up the ladder. Let them run. Let them flee.

  JUST LET ME –

  And Vivian’s hand caught him in the throat, just the right side of pain. The two Hardwicks stared at each other, and maybe the fire recognized the woman who had taught Denizen to control it … or maybe it just did what everyone always did when Vivian Hardwick glared – it guttered and shrank.

  ‘Nothing fancy,’ Vivian hissed, and, grabbing his shoulders, aimed him back down the tunnel like a flame-thrower.

  Got it, Denizen wanted to say, but didn’t dare open his mouth until the last possible moment. It felt so automatic now. Molten light lunged from the pit of his stomach, and the Cants dived down to give it shape.

  With long practice, with cold iron hands gripping his throat and shoulder, with a Croit’s focus and a Hardwick’s rage, but more than anything with permission, the castle in Denizen’s head shifted and remade itself.

  A channel. A cannon.

  A tide of eyes and tiles and stone teeth roared towards them, and Denizen Hardwick roared volcanic in return.

  After that, everything was a little bit blurry. His feet left the ground, first from recoil, and then from Vivian throwing him over her shoulder. He didn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed. That all went towards rebuilding the melted fortress in his head.

  And then there was sunlight on his face instead of trying to explode out of it, and it was very, very welcome. Denizen would have liked the ground to be at least fifteen degrees colder, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and at least now it wasn’t trying to grow teeth and digest him.

  Each blink sent plasma arcing through the back of his skull. Every time he unleashed his power, it became harder to hold back. How difficult would it be the next time?

  ‘Denizen?’

  He looked up. It had somehow become nearly morning; dawn flaring over the jagged skyscape. They were in the city. They’d made it out of Daybreak. One tower in particular loomed over him, until it somehow grew a hand and reached down.

  Denizen’s words, scared into hiding by the unearthly language that had just pounded through his skull, were only just coming back, and this was far too important to mess up. So instead he just took Simon’s hand when it was held out to him, and squeezed it as if he could convey everything through that.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Denizen said, and yelped as Simon pulled him upright. ‘Sorry. Are you –’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Simon said. ‘We all are. Except … Stefan.’

  Denizen’s entire body was an ache at the moment, but there was still room to feel another pang. He hadn’t known Stefan. Their confrontation earlier had told Denizen precisely nothing about the boy, and now he’d never know anything at all.

  The others had clustered in the shade of a huge arch. Grey was moving between them, checking for wounds, whispering soft words, and only left when he got a smile or a nod in return. Denizen couldn’t help but notice that, even after he had left, some of them still watched him, rubbing their arms where he had briefly laid his hand.

  The entrance to the catacombs was hidden under a manhole cover, and Vivian lingered by it as if debating fusing it shut. Denizen approached, a trifle shakily, and she gave him the closest she ever got to a smile, just a small quirk of the lips.

  Denizen returned it. They did actually make a pretty good team, even if …

  Vivian’s smile vanished.

  Oh no.

  Slowly, achingly, Denizen turned round.

  Mercy was chatting to one of the Neophytes, her expression the perfect mix of bone-tired and elated at her own survival. She wound a bandage round her bad arm, and Denizen knew that she’d be proud of how tiny spots of red soaked through it when she was done.

  That level of realism had probably taken a lot of concentration, which explained why Mercy hadn’t noticed the Neophyte’s horrified expression, or the fact that at some point a tile must have punched through the top of Mercy’s skull like a spoon removing the top of an egg.

  Lazy curls of white light escaped into the breeze like the pennant of a knight.

  Gaze after gaze fell upon her, until finally Mercy looked up.

  ‘What?’

  20

  As Above, So Below

  Dawn melted over Adumbral like spoiling butter, the day oozing across the sky.

  They’d taken refuge in what had been a guardhouse, once-thick walls eroded eggshell-thin by the elements and time. They didn’t plan on staying long. Vivian had made that clear as she placed sentries, with weapons drawn, at the windows and on Mercy. Denizen, she had bid stay
put with a glare before disappearing upstairs with Grey.

  The dismissal should have stung. Six months ago, Denizen would have indulged in a long and complicated inner monologue about how cold a mother had to be to prioritize someone else over her son.

  Now it just made sense. She had to be sure of the Knights under her command, and Grey had a … history of his actions not being reliable. There was a big difference between Grey freeing Mercy because he thought it was the right thing to do, and Grey freeing Mercy because she had made him.

  Deciding whether Denizen could be trusted could wait, because he’d made it fairly clear that he couldn’t.

  He sighed. Humans could feel when they were being watched – a prehistoric by-product from when noticing the weight of a gaze might be all that saved your life – but Denizen was learning that there was an equal and opposite chill when nobody would look at you at all.

  They’re just being careful, Denizen told himself. And it might have been true. When Vivian Hardwick told you to watch the approaches, you watched the approaches. I mean, what kind of soldier would intentionally put their comrades in danger? But theirs was a careful awareness. You needed to know where something was so you could not look at it.

  Even Simon had it, and that hurt most of all.

  The only person who was looking at him was Mercy. Denizen was doing his best not to look at her in case it made it seem as if they were secretly plotting, which felt a bit like closing the stable door after the horse had turned into a Tenebrous and eaten everyone’s family. But she was back in her true form now, and he could tell by the swirling dance of her shadow on the wall that she was facing him.

  He wondered what she thought of all this. He wondered whether she was afraid.

  How could you not be? Denizen had spent a lifetime trying to understand people, but he would have needed a dozen more to understand Tenebrous. At least humans were all working with the same facial expressions, the same body language – every Tenebrous was unique.

  Even Mercy, the nearest to human he’d ever met, displayed inconsistencies and gaps that couldn’t help but remind Denizen of just how alien she was. It was why he’d been absurdly glad she’d shed his friends’ features. People weren’t … props. You couldn’t simply take their skin and smiles to play the part you wanted.

  But, with the little experience he had, Denizen was realizing that Tenebrous were far more frightening when they had emotions and actions he could almost understand. He’d seen it in the Redemptress. God help him, he’d seen it in the Three’s unreasoning hatred, because he’d come close to it himself.

  And he’d seen it in the thing beyond the Glimpse. It hadn’t come for him. It hadn’t come for the Order. Leading an army against the most secure location in the material universe was just a by-product.

  It had come for her –

  ‘Denizen?’

  Grey was coming down the stairs. He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t look at him as he passed either but that was OK. Denizen was sort of getting used to it.

  The room at the top of the stairs must have been an armoury, its walls set with tall metal racks, the weapons long since gone. Sunlight slipped through the arrow-slits in sharp quarrels of gold.

  Denizen’s mother had pulled up her shirtsleeves to reveal the muscled iron of her forearms, the black scratched white in dozens of places. She was fingering one of those dents now, her face turned away, and Denizen absently wondered if she even felt the cuts any more, or had the distancing Cost rendered pain an abstract, just something to ignore?

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said, with an awkward smile, ‘you’re not angry, you’re just disappointed.’

  His smile disappeared as she looked at him. There weren’t tears. Vivian had cried exactly once in front of him. She didn’t even look angry, or as close to not angry as Vivian ever got. Instead, her shoulders were slumped, fingers curled against the haft of her hammer like a walking stick or cane.

  What arose in Denizen then was cousin to the dread that had assaulted him when Tenebrous had set foot in Daybreak, or when it had rained black from a cloudless sky. A sense that the world was not the way it should be.

  Vivian looked defeated.

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘I am. I thought we’d come further than this.’

  ‘I had to save her,’ Denizen said. ‘You know that Greaves would have handed her back when things got desperate, and the Usurper would have just taken her and laughed and killed us all anyway. It was the right thing to do. It wasn’t because of … feelings.’

  On the last word, his voice splintered, not due to fear of Vivian, but fear that he had done this to her, that he had broken something he couldn’t fix, and from now on she would always look at him with that empty, pained exhaustion.

  ‘We don’t know what Greaves would have done,’ Vivian said quietly. ‘You don’t, and I don’t. We don’t know what help Mercy could have been to Daybreak, and removing her will have consequences that neither of us right now can fully see. And you bullied Grey into helping you. That will have consequences too. You will have to be ready for them.’

  ‘Bullied?’ Denizen said in a strangled tone. That wasn’t what he had done. That wasn’t a word he wanted anywhere near him. He’d just …

  ‘He’s not even angry, Denizen. He just doesn’t want to let anyone down any more.’ She shook her head. ‘As if it’s a choice.’ When she met his gaze again, there was that old Vivian anger … but muted, as if she didn’t think it would do any good. It terrified him, that look. Other people gave up. Not her. Not his mum.

  ‘But that’s not what I’m talking about either.’ She sighed. ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’

  Denizen’s eyes widened.

  ‘I understand, Denizen.’ Her lip twitched. ‘Not your loyalty to that thing, but … I have been reading a lot. About emotions. It has not … previously been a field of study for me. And I understand that you’re used to relying on yourself. You had to, when I left you behind.’

  Her voice did not crack when she said the words, and Denizen knew she was right. For a long time, mistrust hadn’t been a habit, it had been a survival mechanism.

  ‘We learn patterns of behaviour to serve us in wartime, and then, when peacetime comes, they are nigh-impossible to unlearn. We rely on ourselves at the cost of those who rely on us.’

  ‘But this is wartime,’ Denizen said in a helpless, hollow voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And we need all the help we can get.’

  They stood there for a long moment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Denizen said. ‘I’ll try harder. I will.’

  ‘Thank you. Now we need to –’

  ‘Would you have helped me?’ Denizen asked suddenly. ‘If I had come to you, instead of sneaking around behind your back?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vivian said. ‘But that was my choice to make. And you made it for me. Now we have to make the best of it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The mission hasn’t changed,’ Vivian said grimly. ‘We have to get beyond Adumbral before Daybreak falls. The Order need to be rallied.’

  ‘What about the Endless King?’ Denizen said. ‘Mercy said –’

  ‘Yes,’ Vivian said. ‘It’s been saying a lot of things. None of it specific. None of it useful. I don’t trust it, Denizen.’ She sighed. ‘But I trust you. And if you think there’s something to what it’s saying … I will hear it out.’

  And there it was, treacherous and tiny. A spark of hope.

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘There are other Knights who can lead the counter-attack.’ She bared her teeth. ‘I was never much of a team player anyway.’

  The fierce pride Denizen felt then was all too brief, as Grey shouted from downstairs. Vivian sprinted, Denizen not far behind, and they found the others clustered round the north-facing windows, straining against each other to see out.

  Mercy stood at a window on her own and – now that the damage was done – Denizen went and stood beside her
, Neophyte and princess, to stare out at where a lighthouse stood ablaze.

  Smoke cracked the robin’s-egg blue of the sky, light booming and flashing through the rents in Daybreak’s sides. Vivian flicked through the channels on her radio, but all that came forth were growls of static and something that could have been the crackling of flame.

  ‘We need to … We need to …’

  Grey was stammering, but the end of his sentence wouldn’t come. How could it? A hundred Knights was more firepower than Denizen could even imagine. What could a few children add to that?

  And then, just as it had with the Emissary, the Tenebrae gathered and deepened and pushed. The side of Daybreak bulged like a blister after a burn. Stone shrieked as something burst free, wreathed in smoke and the crashing fall of masonry, and Denizen realized that it wasn’t an explosion at all.

  It was a hatching.

  Denizen lived and breathed fantasy books. Their tropes had been the furniture of his childhood, and it had been a source of great frustration that joining the Knights had proved so many of them false. Magic wasn’t magical, swords had no names, heroes were just people, and monsters could be kind-hearted girls with the blood of their own people sizzling on their cheek.

  And what wormed its way out of Daybreak’s puckered wound was not a dragon. It couldn’t be. Dragons were supposed to be graceful, and majestic, and beautiful, in a strange way, so clever and bewitching that you were warned about their voice rather than their flame.

  The king lizards of fantasy, dominating every book from here to Crosscaper.

  But Tenebrous got bodies wrong, and this creature was no different. Its tail whipped in cramped, hinged angles, like a cheap toy, every bit of its sixteen-metre form laced with strange, stunted barbs. Its wings were pitted panels of stained glass – literally stained – cracked and shoddy, wet with mildew that Denizen could smell from here and …

  It was the Tenebrous from the Glimpse, the one that had tried to push its way through, the beautiful iron boy rising from a matted knot of bodies. But that had only been a fraction of the beast, sent through to … to mock them.