The Endless King

by Dave Rudden

  Simon fell over. Matt and Ed dropped their blades with a clatter of steel. Abigail had felt something like this before, when the Clockwork Three had flung misery at them in Crosscaper’s courtyard a year ago, but not this powerful, not this … this sharp.

  I want to hear you say it, Rout crooned. Say what my name means.

  ‘An overwhelming defeat.’

  The voice was crisp. Eyelids tore as the Tenebrous blinked.

  ‘Or the dispersal of a defeated force in complete disorder.’

  It wasn’t Ed. Or Matt, or Simon. Abigail didn’t know that from looking around; she couldn’t tear her gaze from the half-moon curve of monster looming over her. She just knew that calm and collected tone.

  The Tenebrous was peering at her. Maybe it didn’t know what a radio was. Maybe it thought she was speaking. Either way, it let out a delighted purr.

  Very good, girl. Very neat. Now –

  ‘A bit like your first recorded Breach.’

  Just for a second, the despair paralysing Abigail faltered and then, as the beast refocused, it returned tenfold. She saw her court martial. She saw two Hardwicks buried at once, and then her parents, because old age was a fight that nobody won –

  ‘1410 – the Hundred Years War. You sought to destabilize the Second Peace by masquerading as the border lord Henri Desson. This was before your ascension to the Forever Court, of course –’

  What are you –

  ‘And then you were hacked to pieces by a cadre of Knights led by Oliver Princeless. While fleeing, I believe.’

  Skin fissured as the Tenebrous bared its teeth, and, though Abigail still reeled beneath a slew of futures she had yet to let down, every time Rout focused on Darcie there was a little bit more space to think.

  You –

  ‘Resurfaced again in 1545 in the form of a pair of skeletal children, their hands bound in ribbon –’

  Stop –

  Falter turned as slowly as a sundial in Abigail’s hands. Rout didn’t see it. Faces were struggling under its skin. For an instant, there were two – hatefully young, hatefully thin – and then Rout’s botched-surgery features were back, but Darcie kept speaking and it could not turn away.

  ‘Before your schemes were both figuratively and literally torched by Malleus Caterina Segurana. You resurfaced again, much diminished –’

  Stop –

  ‘We did our research, Rout,’ the radio said softly. ‘We found you every time you raised your head, and every time you did we cut it off.’

  The blade was almost turned now, ready for a single upright stab. Rout stared down at her, as fascinated as a cat staring into the mirror.

  ‘What does that say about you, Rout? What does that say?’

  That … that …

  Rout’s eyes narrowed. That your pathetic Order will never stop me.

  ‘Oh,’ said Darcie. ‘Well, I suppose –’

  Abigail stabbed upwards just as Rout pulled away. Instead of skewering the creature’s throat, Falter slid between the bone of the jaw and the slick skin stretching across it. Flesh separated, an eye popping free like a pea from a pod, and half the Tenebrous’s face came away in gobbets of wax.

  Rout screamed.

  The blade clattered away, and Abigail dived after it. It spun under a rack of jars, but before her fingers could close on it a claw punched through the wood and pottery above her head, her hair suddenly matted with shards and oil.

  She fought it every step of the way, but it dragged her across the floor as if she were nothing, and though the flames of her heritage bayed to be used, there was oil squidging between her fingertips and dying in a fire was no victory at all.

  It raised its other claw –

  And Matt went high, Ed low and Simon just flung himself at the monster’s stomach like a rugby player. A terrible rugby player. The three Neophytes swung like streamers from Rout’s form, and either they were screaming or it was, but with a spasm it flung them all free … all except Ed, whom it gripped by the throat.

  Where’s the knife?

  Rout’s muscles rippled like water breaking over a shark’s back. Skin split as bones grew faster than muscles could surround them. It stepped up on to the pyre, crouching like it was about to take flight, face still steaming from the touch of Denizen’s blade.

  Where is it?

  Rooouuuuuuttttt, it growled, its voice reverberating in its new-made barrel of a chest. Rooooouuuuuuuttttt.

  Ed brought up a Costless hand to protect himself, but Rout nudged it aside with a talon, and drew another delicately from forehead to chin. Ed’s scream shook the windows, and Rout leaned into it as if searching for music in the pain.

  Matt was staggering to his feet. She had no idea where Simon was. And –

  Where is Falter, oh God, where is it?

  You’ve lost, child. The Order. Humanity. We will break everything you have built … and it starts with here.

  Ed stopped screaming. Abigail would never have described anything about the Neophyte as dangerous, but there was a sudden note in his voice all the same.

  ‘What?’

  Not one stone of Daybreak will remain. We will dismantle it. We will unmake it.

  The Tenebrous was enjoying itself now. The Neophyte had gone very still in its grasp.

  We will annihilate the very –

  Ed drove Falter into the side of Rout’s head.

  The Tenebrous squealed, flinging its head back. Ed spun away like a sycamore seed, Falter coming with him, and, pawing at its face, Rout fell to one knee … right on top of the pyre.

  The first jug shattered against its skull in a burst of golden oil, gumming its sickly white skin with folds of honey-thick liquid. It bellowed wetly, not understanding: … but Abigail did, and after Matt and Simon heaved the third amphora over its malformed skull it took barely a whisper to light it up.

  The metaphysics of the Order were Darcie’s department. All Abigail had ever wanted to be was on the front lines. She knew what candlewards were, she knew the job they did, how they pinned the sagging wallpaper of reality back to itself so that the damp couldn’t seep through … but the how was beyond her.

  She’d only had one day of school, after all.

  But you didn’t need to be a Lux to feel the holy heat of that sudden fire, breathe the smell of honey and wood washing over her, feel wrong become right, and if Rout tried to howl or plead she couldn’t hear it over the crackle of flame.

  Rout collapsed like a smoked-out wasps’ nest, and above them chimneys captured and tidied away the smoke. Abigail wouldn’t have minded it sticking around because the glow from the massive candleward had nearly blinded her.

  ‘Come on!’

  It was Simon. Abigail stumbled after him down the stairs to find Matt sitting with Ed outside Greaves’s office, holding a cloth to Ed’s face that was doing absolutely nothing to stem the bleeding.

  ‘Do you …’ Ed was murmuring. ‘Do you think it’ll scar?’

  Matt grinned. ‘Oh, you’ve no idea! And I cannot wait to tell everyone how you got it. You hero. You absolute hero.’

  Abigail left him half hugging, half holding on to the other Neophyte and turned to Simon.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the tall boy said. ‘I couldn’t think what to –’

  ‘No, no, you were brilliant,’ Abigail said. ‘I just can’t believe –’

  Her hand went to her hip. The radio clip was still affixed to her belt, but the radio had snapped clean off.

  ‘If Tenebrous are will-based, then reminding them of past defeats might eat into the self-belief that allows them to hold together in the hostile environment of our realm.’

  Abigail stared at him.

  ‘Is probably what Darcie would say,’ Simon finished. ‘I don’t know. Can we go and sit down?’

  They’d already broken so many rules that Abigail couldn’t even muster the slightest regret at sitting in the Palatine’s chair. It hadn’t even been looted by Tenebrous and for a moment she just sat, breathing in cl
ean and uncorrupted air.

  It was very nearly dawn. Ed had bound half his face with cloth so that he looked somewhere between Red Riding Hood and a very small pirate. Matt had pressed his head to one of the windows. Abigail could see the first blush of rising sun on the horizon, though the windows outside seemed clogged with swirling, matted smoke. It almost looked like …

  ‘Huh,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Simon asked, laying himself out flat on Greaves’s desk with a groan.

  ‘I was just wondering what happens when you light a candleward that big this close to Tenebrous who are only in this world because they found a hole to crawl through?’

  Simon sat up, staring at the dust. ‘Do you think …’

  Abigail craned her neck, suddenly assailed by a reverse of Rout’s coils of despair – hope, the foolish-and-yet-not-entirely-unbelievable notion that maybe they had somehow defeated the invading Tenebrous with a single act, that Greaves had been wrong and wars could be ended with decisive strokes.

  And then the last of the windows collapsed under something that was not a roar, not a bellow, but too loud to be either. For a single, swaying second, Abigail thought it was Daybreak finally collapsing, or the city itself punishing her for letting it down. And then realization crashed down on her, and she knew it was far worse.

  They hadn’t lit a candleward. They’d lit a beacon. A challenge.

  Do you feel you’re good enough, Abigail Falx?

  32

  The Endless King

  When Denizen was six years old, he had seen a shooting star.

  He’d been sitting at the lookout point on the cliffs at Benmore above Crosscaper. Simon was … somewhere else. The other children were somewhere else too. Denizen didn’t remember. He remembered very little of that day but the prickle of grass underfoot, the little stroke of light making its way across the heavens and the terror.

  Denizen had been a dinosaur kid. Most of the children in Crosscaper were. It was what had led him on to fantasy – these great and terrible creatures, separated by mist and time. So that evening, watching that star, Denizen hadn’t felt excitement or joy or a sense that the universe was full of amazing and wonderful things … He’d thought it was a meteorite, and that they were all going to die.

  And the thing was, for once in his life, Denizen hadn’t catastrophized. He hadn’t run to Simon, or cried for parents he didn’t have. He’d just sat there, watching the star inch towards the horizon, and waited for the end of the world.

  ‘Mercy,’ Denizen said slowly. ‘Did you come to me for help or … or did you use me to get rid of all your potential rivals?’

  The Tenebrous had gone still. Not human-still, where there were always movements if you knew where to look, but still as a photograph, her aura of lightning now a thousand static thorns.

  Her voice was smooth. Can’t it be both?

  The Endless King’s face was turned towards him now, mask slightly ajar. Grey’s sword lay on the ground halfway between them, and Denizen looked at it and Mercy did too.

  You don’t need that, Denizen.

  ‘You just … You just …’ Can’t it be both? He’d said those words long ago, when Vivian had caught him and Mercy about to kiss.

  She’s not a girl. She’s a monster.

  Can’t she be both?

  Yes.

  Mercy was very good at explaining things. She would justify herself any minute now. There was an explanation for what he had just seen, what he had just heard, and she just needed to say it.

  Denizen could see through his iron eye the darkness of her true form, soft and spinning droplets, planets in the galaxy of her. Was that sadness in the sharp, spare face of the King? Or accusation?

  ‘Answer me,’ he said. ‘Did you come to me for … for me, or did you just use me, use all of us, to take out your enemies?’

  She stared at him for a long time.

  ‘Answer me!’

  The Emissary would have come for the Order, she said, one hand, her injured hand, gracefully tracing the fall of ice dust through the air. He despises you, almost as much as he despised his King. You witnessed his humiliation, after all. Dragon was bound to this fate from its creation. And …

  ‘What are you talking about? Stop talking about fate and tell me the truth.’

  I AM TELLING YOU THE TRUTH.

  Denizen didn’t feel his feet leave the ground, but his shoulder-blades were kind enough to inform him when he landed. Breath steamed a contrail in the air. He staggered to his feet, every instinct, his training, his mother’s voice all screaming at him to attack –

  But Mercy hadn’t moved. That terrible solar bellow echoed out over the ocean, but the girl who had made it was just a bundle of delicate lines on the air.

  This is what it is to be a King, she said quietly. Everyone an enemy, everyone a piece to be moved. A King must be ruthless. Must think on a dozen planes at once, always working, always scheming just to stay in place. Ever since Crosscaper …

  ‘Ever since Crosscaper?’ Denizen couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You’re saying that this was a plan?’

  Plan? Mercy’s cackle was bitter, but it was still the most human noise he’d ever heard her make. Does this look like it might have been someone’s plan? You think I planned for the Clockwork Three? To be taken, to be captured, for my very existence to be used against the creature that had given me life?

  ‘But you just killed him!’

  No, Mercy said. I replaced him. Her face was still expressionless, her best approximation of the mask at her feet. What do … what do you think I am?

  For a moment, Denizen was back in the basement of Crosscaper, with a mother shot and an apocalypse impending, and Mercy asking him questions that sounded academic but were in fact the most important thing in the world.

  ‘I … I thought you were the daughter of the Endless King.’

  Tenebrous don’t have daughters, Denizen. We are mutable. Always mutable, held together only by will. It is our weakness and our strength. A Tenebrous stole fire from a faraway place and used the power of it, the symbol of it, to show a world that he should be King.

  She shook her head.

  And then the fire was taken, and, instead of adapting, evolving, he hardened, stung by pride and what he had lost. He had risen so far, and could not accept the thought of loosening his grip.

  ‘But he gave us the Cants –’

  You had the fire. What good were the Cants to him? Just another mark of shame for what he had lost. He turned away from you. Let them have their fire. Let them have their world. And when a voice told him that this was not enough, told him that he should help, told him he was wrong to let you live and die in unceasing war … he cut it out.

  ‘Some say he is the Tenebrae, and all the Tenebrous his stray and hungry thoughts, bleeding over into our terrified world.’

  My father has kept me a secret for a very long time.

  He called me Mercy, the Tenebrous whispered. He should have called me Hope.

  Denizen couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t wrap his head round it. Everything they had shared, everything that he had believed was a lie. Fiction. But that was what Tenebrous were, weren’t they? False shapes and wrongness.

  You have to understand –

  ‘Do I?’ Denizen yelled at her. ‘Because I don’t! You’re … you’re telling me that you’re some sort of … some sort of trick? You’re all his nice feelings scooped up and torn out and walking around and that’s why … that’s why …’

  You have to understand there wasn’t a plan. There never was. There are no prophecies, no guarantees … only what you can take. And every change brings opportunity.

  ‘Explain.’ The word came out cold and flat. ‘Explain exactly what you mean by that.’

  The Emissary and Dragon would have come for the Order, no matter whether I lived or died. Dragon was made of the King’s worst impulses, the Emissary a would-be King from an earlier, more brutal age. They would have always co
me. I gave you warning.

  ‘So we’d kill them.’ The coldness was spreading through his voice, through his mind, through his heart. He welcomed it. It was the only way he could find his voice. ‘So we’d remove your rivals.’

  Would you prefer them as King? Can you imagine them as King? Either of them?

  Denizen scowled, but she was already continuing.

  The Concilium served a similar purpose – throwing the Court off balance while opening talks with the Order, establishing myself as someone they could trust … at the same time offering any in the Court with divided loyalties a chance to make their move and expose themselves.

  ‘Did you … Did you know about the Croits? The Redemptress?’

  Do you remember what I told you in the garden? About my mother?

  My mother was only ever a story to me.

  If any event gave me life … it was her betrayal. But I did not know the scale of what she and the first Croit had built. Believe that.

  Believe that. Denizen could have laughed, if he thought himself ever capable of laughing again.

  ‘Anything else? Any other secret reasons?’

  Mercy’s eyes glittered. I wanted to see you.

  ‘How can …’ The sky above had settled back to his world’s dome of stars, but Denizen reeled as if their fall had never stopped. Everything that had happened between them, everything that had happened since leaving Crosscaper … and she had used it.

  Used everyone. Used him.

  Running through Dublin’s streets, her laughter music, ice-pure and warm at the same time.

  Teaching her Frowns No. 1–27, her fingers on his face to feel his skin.

  ‘I’ve heard about kissing.’

  The things they had done together. The things he had done for her.

  ‘What am I to you?’

  The drifting specks of ice seemed to slow at the words. Just five simple words, but they were the most important words he had ever said. More important than Cants. More important than peace. The only words he had left.

  You are all this moment has.

  ‘Stop saying that!’ It took him a moment to realize he was stalking towards her. No more walls, no more control – just a raging, howling inferno battering at his soul. Cants circled the blaze, and Denizen felt the shapes they could make if he let them, and he advanced on her as if he were going to attack, as if he were going to …