Knights of the Borrowed Dark

by Dave Rudden

  He stepped awkwardly onto the edge of a soft rubber mat and tried not to rub the end of his nose. He wasn’t sure if this was D’Aubigny’s bedroom or her gym; wooden racks lined a wall, holding weapons far more exotic than the ones in the Room of Swords. Training mats were spread over the floor. There was a cot in the corner. Arrayed in a neat line between it and the wall were more of the carvings Denizen had seen in Jack’s forge; these were finished and gleaming with varnish. Some were large; some were tiny and delicate. No two had the same shape.

  They were Tenebrous, Denizen realized. Trophies.

  “In a war,” she said, her French accent as delicate as cobwebs, “one never stops. One never leaves the job half done. There is a thing. It is called total warfare. You do not chase the enemy to his border and then go home and have a brandy. You understand?”

  There hadn’t been a whole lot about total warfare in his classes at Crosscaper. Perhaps it was more of an advanced subject.

  D’Aubigny turned to a rack, made a clicking noise with her tongue, and selected a katana—a long, curved Japanese sword. It parted the air with a hiss as she made a few practice cuts.

  “The Tenebrous, the Obscura, they come with little warning, but when they do, we are ready. Every time the shadow rears its head, we are there to—”

  Snick. The katana cut the air.

  “Pest control. You see?”

  She brought up her sword in a guard position, the blade held diagonally down across her chest. It moved and she moved with it, one position to the next, faster and faster until she was surrounded by a whickering cage of steel.

  Denizen tried to follow her movements, but D’Aubigny was a blur, bare feet flashing, the sword a silver tongue that cobra-flicked at imaginary opponents, slashing and thrusting and blocking avenues of attack that existed only in her head.

  It was terrifying, Denizen thought. And beautiful too, in a strange way.

  “That’s why this will never be over,” she said as she twirled. “We do not fight. We do not war. We react. We stamp on the ants when they appear. And we are very good at it.”

  The blade stopped, its point shivering in the air.

  “But we never burn out the nest.”

  Her blue eyes held his. He swallowed. “I understand.”

  Iron climbed D’Aubigny’s arms in jagged streaks, wrapping her muscles in filaments of black. She tossed her blade upward and slapped the hilt so it spun, carving a perfect circle in the air before her fingers darted out to catch it by the blade. She stared down the length of the quivering sword for a moment and then lowered it, the hilt pointing at Denizen.

  He took it from her. It was very heavy.

  “Do you plan to stay?” Her tone did not indicate any preference in the matter.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “My aunt…”

  “Do you know what Malleus means?”

  Denizen shook his head.

  “ ‘Hammer,’ ” D’Aubigny said. “Only the greatest of us carry such a weapon, such a title. Your aunt is…impressive.” Her accent made the word music. “If she led us to war, I would follow.

  “I am not saying it would be easy—we would need every Knight, every man and woman out there with the iron in their palms. But if any of the Mallei could do it…”

  She paused, thoughtful. Denizen felt his hand start to tremble from the weight of the sword.

  “This is not a war. There is no glory. We are…border guards. We are a watch with no end in sight. It is hard. She is hard.”

  Respect thrummed through her voice, as it did when anyone spoke of Vivian. No affection…but definite respect.

  D’Aubigny took the blade from him. “I suppose Jack told you how we met?”

  Denizen nodded.

  “They were only ghouls.” A smile played round D’Aubigny’s lips. “He could have taken them.”

  Denizen suppressed a smile and turned to leave. Just as he opened the door, she spoke again.

  “Would you like a piece of advice? This is important.”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  She looked from him to the throwing knife embedded in the door. Her smile disappeared.

  “Next time you come in here, knock.”

  —

  ON DENIZEN’S THIRD day in Seraphim Row, Grey took him for a walk in St. Stephen’s Green and told him that the Tenebrous were not monsters.

  “Monster is too easy a word,” Grey said, flicking some foam from the plastic lid of his coffee cup. “It’s too fairy tale. In stories, the monsters are big and hungry and stupid, and all you need be is small, quick, and smart. Or else they’re smart but chatty monsters, the ones who tie you up and then explain all their plans and weaknesses instead of doing the smart thing and biting your head off.” He snorted. “Fairy tales.”

  “So what are the Tenebrous, then?” Denizen asked.

  “Ask ten Knights and you’ll get ten different answers,” Grey said. “We know they cross over from the Tenebrae—our word, by the way. I don’t even know if they have a word for it, let alone one I’d be able to pronounce. We know they make a body from whatever’s on hand—hence your angel being concrete and asphalt.”

  “Why did it look like an angel?” Denizen asked. He still got shivers thinking about the thing, the…Tenebrous. The angel had been distortion itself—a strangeness like static that had made Denizen’s eyes hurt and his stomach twist.

  It had moved like a wound in the world.

  “It didn’t do a great job, did it?” Grey said thoughtfully. “They usually don’t. They look…wrong, even the really old ones that try to pass as human. It’s the little things. The face. The eyes.

  “Maybe it picked up the shape somewhere before, saw a statue of an angel and liked it. Who knows? We’ve written down every scrap of knowledge gained over centuries of war, and there are still some pretty serious gaps.”

  The afternoon was cold and bright. Frost hadn’t given up its grip on the grass and kids Denizen’s age crunched their way across it, laughing and chatting on their lunch break. Bundled in a coat, hat pulled down over his ears, Denizen envied the students their lessons in English and math. They didn’t have to juggle a whole new secret world full of monsters—not-monsters—only to find out that the experts didn’t know anything either.

  “The Tenebrous are…complicated,” Grey continued. “The one you saw? A low beast. A crazed, starved thing. There are many others. Thousands of them. Part of Darcie’s work is cataloging them for our Order. They have their own courts, their own nobles, even their own…”

  “What?” asked Denizen.

  Grey’s lip curled. “The Endless King. Not something you need to worry about right now. Some things are best kept dark.” He took a long pull of his coffee. “Point is, they’re not monsters. Monsters are simple. The Tenebrous are like us—complicated, ever-changing—and that makes them much worse. If you choose to take the oath and lift a blade…” Grey hesitated. “But you’re not sure yet, are you?”

  Denizen shook his head.

  “Well, if you decide to join us, that simple fact will keep you alive.”

  They watched the students in silence. A young couple giggled on a nearby bench. Birds flitted from branch to branch.

  “I was curious about something.”

  “Oh?”

  Denizen picked at his cup. “When you got the call about the angel, you could have told Darcie that you had me with you. If I hadn’t seen it and had turned out to be normal, Vivian mightn’t have bothered meeting me at all.”

  Grey gave a catlike shrug.

  “But you put her on the spot. She had to talk to me then. Right?”

  “Couldn’t say,” Grey said. “Maybe. Who knows? I certainly don’t.”

  His tone made Denizen smile. “Why, though?” he asked. “Why jeopardize the big secret?”

  Grey sighed. “OK. With regards to the secret, people have found out before. Werewolves, sea monsters, dybbuks, chimeras…and the stories get retold, but you’d be amaze
d at how hard it is to actually prove they exist. Tenebrous aren’t any easier on cameras than they are on the eyes.

  “Secondly—and don’t take this the wrong way—your story isn’t exactly unique. This is a dangerous calling, and orphans and war go hand in iron hand.” His voice was soft. “A lot of people never get the answers they’re looking for. Maybe I wanted to make sure you got yours.”

  “Thank you,” Denizen said. “Really.” His expression soured slightly. “Except my aunt doesn’t seem to want to talk to me at all.”

  “Well, there is that,” Grey offered. “But that’s what I get for trying to put Vivian Hardwick in a corner.”

  “Do you think she wants me to stay?”

  Grey shrugged. “I have no idea. The list of things I claim to know about—and that’s a long list, mind you—does not include your aunt. I’ve fought beside her. That’s as close to knowing her as anybody gets.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Denizen said a little bitterly. “She hasn’t spoken to me since the first day. Since she explained…well, whatever.” He played with the plastic lid of his cup. “I wanted to ask her about my parents. I don’t even…I don’t know if they were Knights, or how they died, or anything really.”

  Grey nodded. “I understand, kid. The Malleus is a hard woman to reach. She’ll tell you in time. This can’t be easy for her either.”

  That thought hadn’t occurred to Denizen, and he didn’t like thinking it; it was much easier sulking at someone when you didn’t stop to consider their point of view.

  “This isn’t about heroes and villains,” Grey said. “Blades flashing, fires roaring, a great sweep toward death or glory. It’s day after day of danger and fear. That changes a person. We live on borrowed time, Denizen. Our flesh turns to iron the longer we fight, but there’s a change on the inside too.”

  There was a quiet sadness in his voice. “I honestly don’t know which is worse.”

  He stared into the distance for a long moment and then sighed. “Laugh a minute, aren’t I? There are perks, though.”

  Grey lifted his cup high and, when he was sure Denizen was watching, whispered under his breath. A single coil of smoke began to rise from under the lid. Denizen’s eyes widened as a spot of scorched plastic spread like a bruise across the white lid. Grey’s lips moved again and light pulsed from somewhere inside the cup, the lid collapsing inward.

  Denizen inched backward on the bench—he could still feel the heat of the fire. If the couple sitting across from them looked in Grey’s direction, if someone happened to pass by…

  “Grey, what are you—Grey, someone will see.”

  Grey didn’t seem to hear. Reflected light flashed in his eyes as he whispered a third time and the cup crumpled, eaten from within by the flame. His wrist flicked and the cup spun away, exploding into cinders and smoke.

  The girl a bench away yelped in surprise, her boyfriend threw Grey a dirty look, and Grey turned to Denizen with a mad little smile.

  “Jack told you that this wasn’t magic. A great man, Fuller Jack, and a solid Knight, but he lacks imagination.” He shook ash from his fingers.

  “I’ll show you real magic.”

  “SEVENTY-EIGHT CANTS. SEVENTY-EIGHT ways to change the world.”

  The last time Denizen had made the journey to the Room of Swords, he’d made it blind—following the sounds of Grey’s footsteps through a murk of darkness and candlelight. Even now, at noon, the light didn’t reach far, choked out by winding corridors and dusty windows. But Denizen strode through the gloom as if under a summer sun. The iron in his palm had been the first change he’d seen in himself since his thirteenth birthday, but it hadn’t been the last.

  Denizen Hardwick could see in the dark.

  He’d only noticed one night when he had been woken by…he couldn’t remember what. A dream, a memory, some unknowable, unnameable thing that had jerked him out of sleep with his heart pounding and sweat on his brow. Eyes widened in the dark—though all the lights were out, the details of his room were perfectly clear, the colors washed out and dim as if he was looking at the world through moonlight. The bad dream had been instantly forgotten. For a long moment, Denizen had just sat up in bed, amazed, a wide smile on his face.

  Now he sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor of the Room of Swords, watching Grey go from torch to torch with matches.

  “Intueor Lucidum,” the Knight said. “The Shining Gaze.” He shrugged. “I think. My Latin’s woeful. And as superpowers go, it’s not flight or anything, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  “Why do you even need lights if our powers let us see in the dark?” Denizen asked.

  “Habit, mostly.” He frowned. “And I’d miss colors. Now pay attention—what did I just say?”

  “Seventy-eight…Cants? So magic words?”

  Grey winced. “Don’t let Vivian hear you say that. They’re phrases. Concepts. Words so powerful, they’re almost alive. They give shape to the fire within us. Like a flood channeled by the banks of a river. The power can be snapped without them…but it’s incredibly dangerous, requiring an almost impossible effort of will. The Cants are safer.” He frowned. “Moderately safer.”

  Denizen remembered the weakness and pain that had swept over him after he had first used his gift. He had absolutely no desire to feel it again.

  “And there are exactly seventy-eight of them? That’s pretty precise.”

  Grey turned from the torch he was lighting. “Any soldier should be able to tell you the number of arrows in his quiver or how many bullets are in his clip. These seventy-eight Cants are all we have to work with, and each Knight must know their strengths, their weaknesses, how they can be combined…and the Cost they’ll exact.”

  The torches glowed. Shadows twitched across stone.

  Removing his jacket and laying it across the table, Grey stretched. Denizen could see dark shadows of iron through his white shirt.

  He’d begun to notice that all the Knights moved in a certain way—careful but not stilted, thoughtful but not hesitant. D’Aubigny flowed like molten glass. Jack had the unstoppable momentum of a siege engine. Grey slipped from moment to moment as if he ran the world and everyone else was just a visitor. They all moved with their own particular type of grace.

  They moved like they knew a secret.

  “Most Knights focus on becoming proficient at a select number of Cants,” Grey said, sitting down opposite Denizen, “the way a warrior might choose the weapon best suited to their hand. Jack, Darcie, your aunt—they all have their specialties, their ways of making war. But it all starts with this.”

  He pushed his hair back from his face. “I want you to close your eyes.”

  Though he had seen as much in the last few days, this request still caused a skeptical look to flash over Denizen’s face before he complied. Next thing Grey would produce an old-fashioned watch on a chain and ask him to stare at it.

  “Can you feel your connection to the Tenebrae?”

  Denizen sat there, staring at the lights that played across the back of his eyelids, and waited. How did one feel a connection to the Tenebrae? There was the beginning of an ache in the back of his head, but that wasn’t it. His knees were already starting to hurt from being in the lotus position—not that Grey had told him to sit like that, but what other position were you supposed to sit in when channeling magic from a shadow realm?

  “Denizen?”

  He opened one eye.

  “Stop thinking so much.”

  “How can you tell I’m thinking?”

  “You have a this is stupid frown on your face.”

  That’s my normal expression, Denizen wanted to say. Instead, he tried to remember how it had felt the night of his birthday—the way the power had welled up in him, the irresistible heat of it.

  It had felt like the birth of a sun in his chest, like a dragon of fire spreading its wings through him until the power had spilled from his eyes and mouth and hands, unable to be contained by such a fragile mortal body.
He had felt transformed. A shiver went through Denizen at the memory.

  And that’s when it happened. A slow unfurling in his head. The power of the Tenebrae rose within him from some deep, dark place, winding its way up his spine. It felt at once powerful enough to crush his insides to powder yet gentle enough that he wasn’t sure he felt it at all. If he concentrated…yes. There it was.

  A heat.

  A hunger.

  A feeling that he could reach out and—

  “Wait,” Grey said. Denizen opened his eyes. His hands were trembling against his lap. He felt like he’d grasped a live current and he needed to do something, anything, with it or he would lose his grip and the power would burn him to ash. It cried out to be used. It wanted to be free.

  “Denizen. Focus.”

  Denizen did his best. The power didn’t want to be controlled. It despised the idea. It wanted to eat the world up, use it as fuel, burn its way across the sky.

  And Denizen wanted to let it. Seventy-eight Cants? He could do anything with this power! And yes, Jack had said something about paying a price, and he knew that there was a Cost, but surely once wouldn’t hurt; there were so many things he wanted to do. He’d only have to give up a finger, maybe even a hand—

  No. He pushed the inferno back down, doused it in cold reason. It retreated, slinking back to that dark place in his head. Had he really—just a finger, just a hand?

  Denizen shivered.

  “You see what I mean?” Grey reached over and patted Denizen’s knee. “That’s why there’s a Cost. The power of the Tenebrae is as wild and dangerous as the creatures that inhabit it. It’s a constant mental struggle for control.

  “The Cants aid us in that battle, channeling the power in the direction we want it to go. That’s a little bit down the line for you, though. Attempting a Cant you’re not ready for can have dire consequences. Today we’re just going to work on raising the power and holding it.”

  “How do you balance it?” Denizen said. “How do you know the right time to use it?”