Lost Grace (The Reminiscent Exile Book 4)

by Joe Ducie

  “Hey there, Clare. You look… well.” Alive. I sat down in front of her, crossing my legs beneath me. The day was bright and I could taste spring on the air, fresh and vital. If this were a dream, it was a darn good one.

  “You’re running out of time,” she said and plucked another sunflower from the soil around her grave. “And you’re not paying attention. You’re missing the obvious.” She showed me the flower. “Nine petals. Well, eight now, after Astoria’s death.”

  I’ve got nothing but time… I nodded. “Sounds like me. Business as usual.”

  Clare smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. She stood and pressed the head of the sunflower into my palm, over the scars of promises made a long time ago. Wicked marks from the Tome Wars. “The game is more dangerous than ever. Why can’t you see it?”

  “I’m tired, Clare.” And, seeing as this was a dream, I told the truth. “I could have brought you back with a petal of the Infernal Clock. I didn’t. Annie, she… I didn’t.”

  “The dead should stay that way.” Clare cupped my cheek. “You’re a bleeding wound on the face of the world, Declan. You wonder why you attract such chaos? You died and were resurrected in violence. It’s all you know.”

  “Are you asking me not to fight?” I managed half a smirk. “Because I’ve already had that conversation today, Miss Valentine.”

  “No, you must fight.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m asking you to see.” She stressed the word, thumped me on the chest, and threw up her hands as if I were beyond salvation. “To wake up and see!”

  Clare kissed me then—and I woke up.

  A cool sweat prickled at my skin. I lay shirtless, tangled in bed sheets, gazing out at the night sky of Atlantis through the tall windows along the edge of the room. Thousands of stars and a plump blue moon about to sink over the distant mountains to the west. It must have been about halfway between midnight and dawn. I could hear shuffling in the next room. Tal. And gentle weeping.

  With a sigh I sat up and rubbed at my face. Something fell from my hand and landed between my legs. The head of a sunflower, squished and… pulled from a dream.

  A cold, sinking sensation settled in my gut—something between weary resignation and actual fear. What the hell? I’d seen enough in my twenty six years to know I knew next to nothing of the universe. But this was strange. This was… troublesome.

  I stared at the flower and gently plucked a single yellow petal from the seeds. “She loves me,” I said, as Tal wept in the next room. “But, oh dear, she loves me not.”

  My mouth was hangover-dry and my head a little fuzzy. I stumbled to the bathroom, sat down to pee as I wasn’t in any condition to operate heavy machinery, and when I was done stuck my head under the tap in the sink and drank about two litres of water. Sated for now, I fell back into bed, brushed the nightmare flower from the sheets, and returned to a fitful, dreamless sleep.

  *~*~*~*

  The next morning I fiddled with my eye patch, placing it down gently over my hard boiled left eye, which had been cooked during a firebomb attack on Tia Moreau’s bar in Meadow Gate. The eye wasn’t entirely useless, and my body’s natural resistance and healing factor as a Willful Knight seemed to be slowly repairing the damage. I could make out sort of a white haze, which was an improvement over red nothing. Still, the eye and the skin around it was ugly, scarred, and the patch hid the damage while adding a certain level of piracy and intimidation to my demeanour.

  I shrugged into my pants, shirt, and waistcoat, which had been mended since my arrival and were enchanted against dust, dirt, and sweat. Blood was a bit trickier, as Will light flowed in my veins. Blood resisted enchantment, spells and charms of all kinds, which came in handy against enemy practitioners, but not so much with dry-cleaning. I’d been offered clothes in the local fashion, somewhat tropical getups in the streets and more formal robes and suits in the style of the Vale Atlantia itself, but declined.

  The shabby waistcoat was kind of my thing.

  Tal was at the table in the living area when I emerged, wearing a silk nightgown and white woolly socks. She was eating fruit from a platter of breakfast that had appeared as if by magic sometime in the early morning. Arrayed on the table were all manner of decadent pastries, sourced no doubt from a dozen different worlds, as well as breakfast meats, fried and poached eggs, milk, breads, and freshly chopped fruit of an exotic nature. A glass of Tia’s honeyberry juice would go down a treat right about now… The honeyberries that grew around Meadow Gate were unrivalled when it came to curing hangovers. At a glance, Tal and I were guests of the High Lords, and kept in comfort. I think they didn’t quite know what to do with us, and were perhaps a touch afraid of what our very presence meant for their future.

  The future was grim, and I’d told them as much.

  In my short time here in Atlantis, I’d seen that the society lived in something approaching peace. At least, as far as I had been able to tell, True Earth was peaceful in this time period. If they knew anything of the Everlasting, my enemies, then they weren’t telling. I hadn’t seen any signs of war, which I knew all too well. The skies were clear, free of battleships, and I’d only ever seen handfuls of Wardens patrolling in the streets. Local police, more than a military, and most of the folk I’d met, the general population, had been kind and generous with their time and liquor.

  The city was at peace.

  I’m asking you to see.

  Asking or telling? Requesting or demanding, sweet Clare? What was I missing? Were my dreams trying to tell me something? Every instinct I had was nudging me into action, but there was no enemy. No one had died. Hell, no one had even tried to kill me in two weeks. Save for my time in exile, that was a new record. Had it just become my nature to expect a knife in the back?

  “Good morning, Declan,” Tal said and smiled. She looked lovely when she smiled. Lovelier. Loveliest. Beams of sunlight through the open windows turned her hair to glossy gold. “How did you sleep?”

  “Time lag is an awful thing,” I said. “It’s like a constant hangover.”

  “Half a crate of that gin-wine doesn’t help matters, I’m sure,” she replied. “Lay off the drink a few days and you may feel better. Your liver will thank you.” Her smile turned distant. “Try six years as slave to Oblivion and then we’ll talk headaches, Shadowless.”

  I joined her at the table and squeezed her hand. Talk of her unmaking, the fierce bands shackled to her very soul at the hands of Lord Oblivion, nastiest of the four Everlasting I had met, was best avoided. I’d discovered that the hard way. She’d chewed me out quite severely last week when I’d suggested we talk about it. Worse, she had cried.

  I was powerless against tears.

  “What are we doing today then?” I asked. “Pub?”

  Tal rolled her eyes. “Need you showered and shaved. We’re meeting the High Lords again, according to Trey. They wish to discuss… matters.”

  “Who’s Trey?”

  She grinned. “Vatrey. My tall and handsome minder.”

  “Oh, he was here earlier, was he?” Not that it bothered me.

  “Yes, yes he was. Showered and shaved, Hale.”

  I mumbled a rough agreement and helped myself to a plate of warm lean ham, toast, fried eggs, and some mango pieces. Always best to feed a hangover. As I ate, I let my mind drift along the connection I felt to Annie Brie—ten thousand years away. I wondered if she could feel me, if she knew that I was still alive, but was unable to reach or talk to me. More than likely, which meant the future knew to expect me. The link wasn’t anything I could physically see or touch. Instead I simply focused my thoughts on Annie, her straight black hair and jade-green eyes. Although the image in my mind was hazy, I saw her strolling along a beach in a black bikini, her toes digging into the sand and the warm West Australian sun shining on her skin.

  Diablo Beach on True Earth, not a five-minute walk from my haunted old bookshop. I missed that little shop and all its drunken corners. We had fought and defea
ted Scion on Diablo beach—and beheaded an Emissary dragon. Annie had been killed for her part, her trouble, in saving the world. I’d brought her back with a petal of the Infernal Clock, gifted from lost Emily Grace, the mother of my infant son. I’d given the child to Annie, to make the boy disappear into a normal life, where his father wasn’t the Shadowless Arbiter, infamous across a million worlds and considered something of a douchebag on a million more.

  In my vision from the link, Annie held hands with a young man, tanned, wearing a pair of Oakley wraparound sunglasses. Her fiancé, I guessed, although I’d never met the fellow. He was talking fast, gesturing fiercely with his free hand. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but he was certainly trying to get his point across. Annie bit her lip as he spoke and shook her head. I snapped out of the vision to find my hand in the air, drawing slow circles. A point of soft light hovered around my index finger and I realised, with a start, that I’d almost carved a path into the Void.

  A path to follow back to Annie and find my way home.

  Could I follow it back here, to Atlantis? Could I forge a path through time that could be traversed both ways? That would be useful. I thought, perhaps, I could. Getting home was easy, getting back to Atlantis… maybe possible.

  There was a war to be fought, after all, and I’d unleashed an arsenal in the ruins of this city for the Everlasting to use. I wasn’t certain just what advantage Oblivion had gained, but I imagined legions of warships, ancient artefacts and weapons from, well, the age I found myself in now. At the very least, the Knights were in the dark. Many of them did not even accept the Everlasting as real. Myths and fancy, the whole debacle, but I knew better.

  They’d been pulling my strings since before I was born. Any victory, such as releasing Tal from Oblivion’s grasp, had only come at a cost so high that it may as well have been defeat. No war’s end without the Degradation. Happiness without sadness. Day without night. Scotch without hangover.

  “Nothing’s free except for you and me,” I muttered and Tal looked at me sharply. I shook my head, cleared away the future prospect, and bit into a slice of toast and a perfectly fried egg—panacea to the regretful dregs at the bottom of far too many bottles.

  Half an hour later found me showered and kind of shaved. I’d used a fine razor but done a bit of a hack job around the chin and sideburns. What with the one eye, I sometimes messed up close quarter jobs—also I didn’t care. A bit of stubble worked for my dangerous and Knightly image, I supposed.

  “Showered and somewhat shaved,” I told Tal. She rolled her eyes but held my hand, which mattered a great deal to me.

  Tal and I were led up the Vale Atlantia by our minders, three women and one man—that unlikable handsome bastard Trey— wearing silver robes with charcoal grey lapels, towards the seat of power and governance in Atlantis. From the way our minders carried themselves, I guessed they carried short swords or plasma weapons under the robes, though I’d never seen either. I’d first been in the spire of the Vale Atlantia six years ago and ten thousand years from now. Back then I’d noted the resemblance to the Fae Palace in Ascension City, even though the Voidflood had decimated and disintegrated a lot of the finery. The design had to be more than coincidence. Ascension, my old stomping ground and home of the Knights Infernal, had been modelled on Atlantis.

  We walked past hundreds of workers and staff, most of whom offered us curious glances.

  We were known, of course, as word of our arrival had spread like wildfire. Some, a handful, knew the full truth, most others knew only pieces. The rumours were far more useful than the truth, to be honest. However peaceful this utopian city looked on the surface, people were people. I’m sure Tal and I were already a part of games and schemes, political and otherwise, of which we knew nothing.

  We were also Will users, magic folk, of unknown strength and talent. I could wrestle with the best of them, heavyweight and then some, and Tal had been no lightweight back in her day. She may have picked up a few tricks from Oblivion, as well. But we weren’t talking about that. No, not at all. That bastard will bleed for her one day.

  As far as Tal’s talents and capabilities went, however, her father had been Admiral Mathias Levy—he had adopted both Tal and Sophie with his wife, Serah, from the slew of urchins and refugees in Ascension City during the Tome Wars. Most enlisted families were ordered to take in at least two orphans. I’d never known my mother and my father had died young, but the Infernal Academy had cared for me. Mathias Levy had been a kind man, but firm and not to be crossed. He had awarded me with my command, the Dawnstar, after King Morrow was lost to the Void during the final months of the war. I would have become king, not long after, but instead I’d walked away… having lost Tal to Oblivion.

  Sophie lost her mother, an Arbiter of the Knights Infernal, not long before she lost her father, to a skirmish in the outer territories defending the peace accords, and then her sister, all within the year. All of it I’d had a hand in, one indirect way or another. All save Tal, where I may as well have pulled the trigger myself and damned her to Oblivion’s service.

  A few months ago, lost in the Dream Worlds with Annie, I’d been shown a memory of my time on the Dawnstar. Admiral Levy had learnt of my… association with Tal, and had demanded a high price from me in return. The memory was of a skirmish above the alien world of Adena, against a contingent of Marauders—against the mercenary forces for the mercenary nation of Renegades.

  “It looks pretty real,” Annie said, squinting against the snow-glare and the sun streaming in through the windows of the Dawnstar.

  “Engage the eastern quadrant,” my younger self said from his chair, watching the battle on a heads-up display that tracked ships and weapons fire and generated tactical advantages. “Targets marked on my visor in order of priority.”

  The Dawnstar swerved through the sky, and the display reeled through more mountains and turned up. We hung to the edge of space, as the Marauder ships tried to get behind us. I grinned as my young self grinned, dressed in his battle uniform—the enchanted armour of a Knight Infernal.

  “Oh my,” Annie said. “Those are spaceships.”

  “Yes.”

  The Marauder vessels were pirate ships, scrapped together from a thousand bastardized cruisers. No match for the Dawnstar or the rest of the fleet. Overhead, static burst through the communications speakers, and a familiar, lost voice spoke directly to me.

  “Commander Hale,” Admiral Levy said. “There’s a tradition in my homeland, no longer greatly observed, but nevertheless… When a young man wanted his prospective father-in-law’s blessing, he would go out into the wild and return with the biggest buck he could find as a gesture of respect. The larger the horns, the greater the respect.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Commander Hale, I see a mighty big pair of horns on that enemy ship.” The radio fell into static for a long moment. “Bring me those horns.”

  Admiral Mathias Levy had been a kind-hearted son of a bitch, and he’d passed his talent and resolve onto his daughter. Daughters. Tal and Sophie were both forces to be reckoned with because of the Admiral’s influence, their hard hours put in at the Academy, and the Tome Wars.

  “Who were they?” Annie asked. “Flying those ugly ships?”

  “Renegades, but of a different sort—more like pirates. Men and women who sail the seas of the Story Thread, looting other worlds and running a trade in stolen and illegal goods across Forget. They’re rich and ruthless, and it was the blow you just saw me about to strike, more than anything, that undermined their entire structure and allowed the Knights to get a foothold on Voraskel—the Renegade home world.”

  Annie shook her head. “You’ve led an… interesting life, Declan.”

  A grand staircase, white and shining, rose in a wide, lazy spiral through the heart of the top floors of the Vale Atlantia. As we walked the thousand or so steps, my hangover fighting every step, I worked the translation charm as best I could. It was a mix of augmented hearing and mind
magic—although I hated the word ‘magic’, quite often nothing else seemed to fit. The weaves and bands of invisible Will settled on my mind and translated Atlanean into sort of English. Tal did the same, doing a much better job than me. Her charm was like spinning the dial on the radio and landing on a station. Mine was a few clicks short, picking up a bit of static.

  It was a rough translation enchantment. By no means was it perfect, and it skipped the odd word even when tuned to perfection, but it was functional over stylish, which was all I needed. Function over style has been your modus operandi for years. The languages were close, anyway, from what I’d seen and heard. Some words were the same in English, or Latin and Ascensionish, or the myriad variants thereof. Rather incestuous, the Story Thread, when you thought about it. We could be understood, which was the important thing. In terms of language, I guess time didn’t dilute the pool that much. It gave me hope that if certain words and traditions had survived into my future, to real time as I knew it, then perhaps a great deal of people in this city survived the cataclysm to come.

  Our minders led us into the council chambers just below the final few floors and the throne room of the Vale Atlantia. In another life, another time, I’d walked these abandoned halls, caked with millenniums of dust, all alone and found the Infernal Clock abandoned alongside the Roseblade. If we kept heading up a few more levels, I’d find the same again now, though far better protected.

  Not so much abandoned, but those two pieces of celestial illusion, crafted for entirely different purposes, were mighty tempting for an ambitious young chap like myself. The crystal petals of the Clock could grant life, the sword could unmake worlds. Absolute power over life and death. Been down that road before, boss, Ethan Reilly, my wayward apprentice whispered in the back of my mind. How’d it work out for ya?

  Recklessly.

  The council chambers were opulent and vast, tiered seating rising to the cheap seats, and centred around a circular table in the heart of the room. At this table sat just three of the Atlantean ruling class. It seemed a full session of the council, as had been gathered upon our arrival, was no longer needed. Apart from the council folk, the chamber was empty. We were old news, apparently, this far up the chain of command.