The Endless King

by Dave Rudden

  Now they were seeing it in full.

  The dragon was made of bodies. Iron bodies. Knightly bodies, all braided together, melted like taffy into a sinuous, feline shape. The spurs protruding from it were arms, or legs, or heads, bristling out as if trying to escape.

  No wonder one of its minions had gone straight for the Asphodel Path.

  They were … they were collecting.

  That’s not what I’m going to use your bones for.

  The thing began to chuckle, low and deep and black, and Denizen, who had once obsessed over how fantasy authors designed their dragons – four-legged, bat-like, snouts smooth or crocodilian – found himself baring his own teeth in disgust because its head opened outwards like a flower, like a lamprey, like a hand.

  It couldn’t even get the voice right.

  ‘Edifice,’ Grey whispered in the terrible silence, and he was halfway to the door before Vivian’s voice rang out.

  ‘What. Are. You. Going. To. Do?’

  He didn’t turn. She had to physically grab him to stop him. For a second, Denizen thought Grey was going to strike her. His chest was heaving, his blades half out of their sheaths … but Vivian made no move to guard herself. She just stared him down instead.

  ‘He gave you an order, Graham,’ she whispered. ‘And he can’t do his job if we don’t do ours. Now, are you going to disobey him or not?’

  Grey shrugged her off, slamming both his blades back into their sheaths. Tension hummed between them, the temperature rising as two caged suns fought for dominance. Eventually, he shook his head.

  ‘It’s easy for you, isn’t it? To put duty down and then pick it up again? Like it’s a goddamn sword.’

  Vivian didn’t reply. Instead, she turned to the gathered Neophytes.

  ‘Nothing has changed.’

  Behind them, the Usurper still circled, riding the thermals of Daybreak’s death. Its chuckle was wet and obscene.

  Meeeeerrccccyyyy.

  21

  Trajectory

  ‘So … how are you?’

  Candlewards winked from the basilica’s ceiling like the eyes of a thousand roosting bats. Once, Abigail had imagined them as an army at her back. Now all they did was remind her of fallen soldiers.

  And the more soldiers that fall, the more that are likely to.

  Her mother had taught her that you fought when you had to. You didn’t waste skin or blood, not just because Knightly blood was precious but because an army survived on morale and the more you lost, the more you were likely to lose.

  How many candlewards would it take? Was there a tipping point? It wasn’t like the Order had ever experimented. You generally didn’t take chances when it came to bits of the world falling out of the world. Abigail didn’t even know what that would look like. Would the shadows spread like an oil slick, polluting everything they touched? Would the whole country begin to sink like storied Atlantis? Or would the sun simply go down one day and never rise again?

  It was a moment before she realized Matt had spoken. ‘What?’

  He shrugged. ‘How … how are you? Finding everything, I mean. You know. Before all this happened. Being a Neophyte and … stuff.’

  She frowned. The wan candlelight had got tangled in his long blond hair, pouring shadows into the hollows of his cheeks. For a second, his face didn’t look capable of the arrogant sneer it had worn since the moment they’d met.

  Wrong-footed, Abigail didn’t respond immediately. It wasn’t something she had often considered. She was in the place she was supposed to be. Not this sepulchre of marble and dust, but here, first in Seraphim Row and then in Daybreak. Losing focus was what stopped you running that last two hundred metres, doing that last stomach crunch or sit-up.

  ‘It’s where I’m meant to be.’

  Matt nodded. ‘Yeah. Must be pretty par for the course. You are a Falx, after all.’

  ‘Oh, now you remember my name,’ Abigail said, with a half-hearted grin.

  ‘Well … I read up on people before I got here.’ Matt looked down at his hands. ‘Falxes. Been Knights pretty much since … what, the tenth century?’

  ‘How did you …’

  ‘And then Ed’s family … even longer? If that’s possible. Same with Stefan, Patricio, Ulver … Your family trees must look like nervous systems. I don’t … I don’t know how you all keep track.’

  He still hadn’t looked at her.

  ‘Man, you should see our garrison. The Fourth Vault of Edinburgh – all oak and polished stone. You hear ‘underground’ and you think it’ll be cold and damp, but every bit of the place is covered in rugs and cushions and tapestries. And on one wall we have this board. Every Knight’s lineage from the first moment their first ancestor Dawned. It’s … it’s really something.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Abigail.

  She should have said more – this was one of those moments. It wasn’t that Abigail was bad with people, it was just that they were complicated and she … wasn’t. It was energy conservation – don’t sweat the small stuff. It was a nice contrast to Denizen, who was extremely sweaty about small stuff, and Simon, who had arrived at her philosophy from the opposite direction.

  She didn’t panic about little things because of what might happen, and Simon didn’t panic because of what already had.

  Say something. Pick something safe.

  ‘What about your fa–’

  ‘We should get going,’ Matt said, suddenly slipping on his shoe and standing. ‘Daybreak isn’t far, right?’

  ‘No,’ Abigail said, mystified by his sudden change of topic. So far, the one thing she knew about Matt for certain was that his favourite subject was himself.

  Daybreak stood out against the skyline, no matter where you were in Adumbral. Finding it had been easy – it was reaching it that had proved exhausting. They’d stopped here to get their breath back, nominally because good soldiers paced themselves, but also because they’d soon have to appear before Greaves, and he’d probably take them a lot more seriously if they weren’t gasping for breath.

  Of course he’ll take you seriously. You’re delivering valuable tactical information. He knows you.

  And another voice, weary with spite.

  But does he know you abandoned your comrades? How are you going to explain that?

  And it wasn’t even Greaves she was worried about. She’d been debriefed by her Malleus more times than she could count, and not once had there been a hint of disappointment in Vivian’s eyes.

  How do I tell her?

  There Daybreak swelled, the triumphant spire briefly quelling her doubt, even though …

  ‘Is that smoke?’ said Matt. Thin trails of black and grey slunk from arrow-slits, creasing the sky.

  ‘It looks like –’

  The end of his sentence was swallowed by a groan so earth-shatteringly loud it rattled her organs, arriving nausea-deep in the pit of her stomach, and then the ground heaved and suddenly she was on her back.

  When had that happened? She was on her back and there were rocks in the sky. Abigail stared at them, utterly confused. Dust-trailed, slow as clouds, they tumbled –

  Some had windows in them. They began to fall.

  The first boulder obliterated a shopfront six metres from Abigail’s supine form, showering her in grit and dust. No. Not obliterated – replaced. That was how big they were. The shard rocked a little as it settled, as unsteady as Abigail climbing to her feet, and she tore her gaze away from it to stare at Daybreak – cross-sectioned like a shattered skull, vaults exposed, staircases truncated like severed veins.

  It was horrifying. It dragged awe from her like vomit. It was … it was an insult. Daybreak was the Order. In a world that didn’t know they existed, it was the one place a sect of wanderers could call home.

  A huge piece of the castle still spun upwards like a comet in reverse, as if it were desperately trying to escape what was happening beneath it.

  Abigail thought in trajectories. That was how she’d been trained.
A bowstring had been drawn back eleven hundred years ago by the first Falx to come here, and she was the point of the arrow they had loosed.

  But everything that went up came down. Gravity was always waiting. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. And now gravity pulled meteors down on her, trailing tapestries like feathers from a murdered bird.

  Larger, and larger, and –

  Something hit her from the side, and Abigail was almost delighted as her brain registered something she could hurt. She got in a couple of good punches before the debris impacted in a spray of cobbles that would have torn her to pieces had she not been flattened first.

  There was an arm across her waist. She stared at it uncomprehendingly for a long moment before its owner pulled away.

  ‘You saved me,’ she said.

  ‘I did,’ Matt responded, seemingly as surprised as her. ‘I really did.’

  Dust rained down, painting them Pompeii-grey. Matt took her hand, or maybe she took his, and they dragged each other into cover, as from the massive wound in Daybreak’s flank came a noise, clear and cold and radioactive with glee.

  MEEEERRCCCYY …

  The Neophytes cowered as its shadow crossed them, and now Abigail sweated, clammy and cold, as a single violent wing-beat flung them on their backs. It didn’t see them, even as its passage washed filthy air over them, even as they were both suddenly drenched in cascades of brittle threads, like blackened straw.

  She shuddered as they dissolved on her skin. They looked like …

  Eyelashes.

  MEEEERRCCCYY …

  ‘Please. Please. Please.’

  Abigail didn’t know which of them was whispering, or how long they lay there, almost praying for another rock to come down. Dead and buried in one fell swoop, hidden from the horror in the sky.

  Abigail could see the Neophytes’ Solar – a honeycomb of cells exposed to the air. The Breaching monstrosity had squirmed through the castle like a larva, chewing its way free, and, lying there, all Abigail could feel as its umbra receded was embarrassment, as if she’d accidentally walked in on someone in the shower. Castles were taken. They changed hands.

  They weren’t torn apart.

  ‘We’ve got survivors! Survivors, here!’

  The voice was so gloriously, mundanely human that Abigail could have wept. She clung to it like a lifeline before hands found hers and pulled her up. And then she saw the Knight’s face, and that fleeting reassurance disappeared.

  Bruises were storm-clouds round her eye socket, a laceration red and weeping on her cheek. There wasn’t a piece of skin without soot or dust or blood in varying states of dryness, but none of her wounds shook her so deeply as the tears staining her cheek.

  ‘What … what is happening?’

  Her voice was small, scratchy with confusion and dust. The Knight spoke, but not to her.

  ‘Get them to the Palatine. Now.’

  It had been a chapel, though to which god or goddess Abigail couldn’t say. The Palatine, surrounded by Knights, did not look up as she and Matt were marched in.

  Greaves was a blur, giving orders in a ceaseless murmur, the Knights peeling off almost before the words left his mouth. Others were being bandaged, or sorting through weapons, or spreading maps out on the floor.

  Something had cracked Edifice Greaves’s left arm off at the elbow, leaving behind a splintered stump of black and scarred white. He paid it no mind at all.

  ‘Sir?’

  A Malleus with a shock of white hair cascading across her dark scalp turned to acknowledge their escort. Normally, a look of disapproval from a Malleus would have made Abigail jump to attention, but she was so very tired, and instead just stared through eyes grainy from exhaustion and dust.

  ‘Not now, Middlehurst. We –’

  ‘I found two survivors. Two Neophytes.’

  Abigail hadn’t thought Greaves knew they were there, but the circle suddenly flexed apart as he stepped through. Muscle memory dragged her to attention, even as Matt gave a weary, lopsided salute.

  ‘Palatine, I have to report –’

  ‘Vivian,’ Greaves snapped. ‘Did she get out? Why did you split up? Is Mercy still –’

  ‘We weren’t with Vivian,’ Abigail interrupted. ‘We …’

  Coiled coming apart against the wall.

  Do you feel you’re good enough –

  ‘We were separated,’ she said. ‘Is … is Vivian not here?’

  Her Malleus. Her Malleus was gone, and Abigail was not with her.

  Frustration twisted Greaves’s face. ‘No, Abigail Falx, she is not.’ His gaze flicked to Middlehurst. ‘Arm them.’

  He bent to scribble something on a note held out to him and the circle closed as if the Neophytes didn’t exist. Middlehurst placed hands on their shoulders, but Abigail twisted free.

  ‘Greaves! You need to listen – the Emissary is destroying candlewards. He’s trying to let the whole Tenebrae in. You have to listen –’

  Greaves just shook his head.

  ‘The Emissary hasn’t been seen since it Breached. Daybreak has fallen. We’re tested on a dozen different –’ He caught himself, suddenly aware of all the eyes on them both, and nodded at Middlehurst.

  ‘Get them out of here.’

  ‘What’s more important than the candlewards? If they – Palatine!’

  But the circle had already closed.

  22

  Prey Animals

  Its name was Dragon.

  Wing-beats like thunderclaps, each impact of iron on air deafeningly, ear-poppingly loud. Dust wheezed down streets, stinging eyes and scraping throats, before being rasped back up as if determined to hurt twice – breath from an infected, struggling lung.

  Just Dragon. That was all.

  It rattled its talons against rooftops as it flew, and Denizen, creeping from doorway to doorway, couldn’t help but picture the damage that must be doing to the bodies it had stolen for its claws – just one more insult to throw in their faces.

  Dragon. A monstrous name for a monstrous thing.

  I can smell you, Mercy. Just a trace, beneath the stink of candlewax.

  Its snarl burrowed right into Denizen’s bones. Vivian led them in a trembling procession, flinching back into cover every time its shape darkened the sky. Addled with terror and the Tenebrae, to Denizen it began to feel like they were following it – waiting for that serpent’s shadow to pass over their heads so they could scuttle behind … until it banked round again, and they hid like mice in the shadow of a tiger.

  You’re here, aren’t you? You couldn’t bear to leave them. You’ve bound your banner to theirs. Pathetic. You and your hope, the Emissary and his vengeance …

  Yes, there was another Tenebrous somewhere in the city, wasn’t there? Denizen had forgotten. There was the Emissary, and Greaves, and Abigail and Darcie – they got out, they had to get out, they’ve been two steps ahead of everyone since the day we met – but right now Denizen’s entire consciousness was reduced to the clenched fist Vivian held high.

  How un-regal.

  Any minute, Dragon would blast across them like a whip between the shoulder-blades, and that fist would jerk forward – giving the order to desperately sprint to the next scrap of cover.

  Why bother, little girl? Is humanity that hard a habit to break?

  It had broken free of Daybreak an hour ago, circling, mocking; sometimes just calling Mercy’s name as if it expected her to rush out and face it. Denizen had never thought there were so many ways to say the same word. An insult, a promise, a vindictive, desperate plea –

  Meeeeerrrcccccyyy. Do you … do you even have a choice?

  There was no way to get used to a Tenebrous’s voice. Whenever you thought you had a handle on it, it squirmed out and away, evolving like a virus to attack you twice as strongly. Denizen had thought he was almost immune to its viciousness, and now it suddenly sounded … sad.

  Did either of us?

  Twenty-odd teenagers flattened against the wall of a c
ollapsed granary, trying to make themselves as small as they possibly could. Grey and Vivian were ahead, Simon behind, and the rest were just sensory data to Denizen, obstacles he had to traverse or avoid. Scurrying like rats towards the Aurelian Gate, and it said something as to how frightened Denizen was that he couldn’t even feel relieved that Mercy was no longer everyone’s concern.

  Oh, she was still there – flitting along beside them like a dream unknit by sunlight – but it would take either bravery or insanity to breathe a question now. Denizen had ended up huddled beside two of Stefan’s friends earlier, and though tears still streamed freely from their eyes their faces were blank and resolute.

  The monster skirled overhead, and Vivian’s fist flung them forward, panting and heaving into the shadow of a shopfront. Denizen was really gaining an education as to how many teenagers you could comfortably fit in a small space, and he dug his feet in to avoid being popped out by the elbows mutinously climbing his spine.

  JUST FACE ME!

  The words became a shriek, then a dive, and then a detonation that banged Denizen’s heart against the roof of his mouth. The knot of Neophytes became a single organism – wretched, fighting itself – and then they spilled into the darkness of an abandoned shop.

  Landing on people who had gone through Order training was only marginally less painful than landing on stone, which, coincidentally, was also what Denizen had landed on. A building, he thought with dreamy horror, it dived down on a building. Not the one they were in, but, like a cockroach paralysed by the kitchen light, Denizen realized that the illusion of safety that had been keeping him sane was exactly that.

  ‘Get up,’ Vivian hissed. She was lifting great stringy clumps of dust from the floor and roughly smearing it over the Neophytes’ faces. Camouflage. Or an excuse to gently slap sense into them – and it was working, teenagers dully lining up to follow her once more.

  With slow, deliberate strokes, Hagen brushed grey dust over his dark skin, his eyes burning from a nest of scars. Denizen met them once, and then looked away fast.