Knights of the Borrowed Dark

by Dave Rudden

  “Experience, mostly,” Grey said. “If you decide to stay with us, we’ll start your physical training properly. Every one of us here is an expert at hand-to-hand and armed combat. Our prowess gives us the option not to use our power unless we really need to. Dropping a Helios Lance or an Apogee Circuit into a fight at the right moment ends it quick and dirty.

  “Then there are the Epithets, the Higher Cants—only used in a moment of life or death. The Art of Apertura, the Starlight Caul, the Snare of Thoth…Remember the Tenebrous we met on the road?”

  Denizen nodded.

  “There wasn’t time for subtlety, not out in the open. I needed to be quick, so I spoke Sunrise and paid the Cost. And, well…”

  “What?”

  Grey grinned. “I’ve never been much good at self-control.”

  “So…how long before I get to learn a Cant?” Denizen tried to keep the eagerness from his voice. The power coiled round his spine was eager too—it wanted out. It ached to be used, through the Cants or not.

  “When you’re ready,” Grey said. “And before you ask, I decide when you’re ready, not you.”

  They worked for hours. Denizen would let the power rise up through him and at Grey’s nod grudgingly let it go. The process was surprisingly exhausting. He practiced calling on the Tenebrae when standing up. He practiced it when sitting down. He practiced it while jogging round the Room of Swords. He practiced it until the inside of his head felt cracked and charred.

  Eventually, at six o’clock, Grey helped Denizen up. “That’s enough for today.”

  Denizen wasn’t sorry they’d finished. Those first twinges had evolved into a full-on headache, and he wanted nothing more than to push his face into a pillow, preferably one that had been left in a freezer for an hour. He did feel slightly cheated, though, and said so—six hours of work and he hadn’t even heard a Cant.

  “All right,” Grey said, laughing. “Pay close attention. Listen to how it sounds. And don’t go and attempt it yourself.” He raised his gloved hand, the fingers spread, and Denizen saw a flicker of light pass behind Grey’s eyes. He was drawing on his own power, just a trickle of it.

  And he spoke.

  It sounded like…no, sounded was the wrong word. What came from Grey’s mouth weren’t words. They were like nothing Denizen had ever heard before. He had studied French. He had seen German and Spanish on the page and could recognize Arabic if he saw it. When the Knights had talked about Cants or magic words, he had thought it was going to be some kind of secret language.

  This wasn’t language at all. It was more primal and elemental than that. It was the first taste of summer. It was the smell of grass cooking under sunlight.

  Light spun into being above the palm of Grey’s hand.

  First a spark, weak and flickering. Then, fed by the alien syllables that slipped from Grey’s lips, it swelled into a tiny captive star. The glow drove back the shadows, a whorl of amber that painted the blades on the walls a thousand shades of gold. Grey grinned at the shocked look on Denizen’s face.

  “Trust me,” he said. “I never get used to it either.” He turned his hand this way and that, the shadows lengthening and shortening. “The Cost for something like this is small. Barely noticeable. I could use it for years and hardly notice a difference. It’s when you build upon it, combine the Cants to create new effects—”

  He spoke again. This time the Cant was the vicious crackle of a wildfire—the light around his fingers sharpened, hardening into a gauntlet of seething flame so bright that Denizen had to look away. The flare of fire only lasted a moment before Grey let it die.

  “That’s when the Cost grows. You have to know when it’s worth it.”

  They left the Room of Swords and made their way down to the kitchen of Seraphim Row. Candles glimmered from wall sconces. Seeing Seraphim Row with the Intueor Lucidum almost made Denizen miss the dark.

  When he had first seen the house, the candles and shifting shadows made it mysterious and full of secrets, exactly the kind of place you’d imagine housing an order of mystic warriors. Now Denizen could see every patch of peeling wallpaper, every exposed wire and tarnished fitting. Clots of wax crunched underfoot.

  Seraphim Row had the air of an abandoned hotel—sagging, deflated, a place that should be full of people but was now depressingly empty. They’d already passed by half a dozen unused rooms. Denizen liked the bedroom he’d been assigned well enough, but he had the feeling there was nothing stopping him from picking another abandoned one, cleaning it, and using that.

  Only a handful of Knights made this place their home, like bats in a derelict cathedral. And me, Denizen thought, glancing at his reflection as he passed a cracked mirror. That didn’t make the place any more reassuring.

  Nowhere was the emptiness of Seraphim Row more apparent than in the kitchen. The sprawling room could have fed a hundred Knights. Maybe it had once; there were a dozen long trestle tables stacked against one wall and a line of stoves along the other.

  Denizen tried to imagine dozens of warriors here, resting between Breaches, sharing war stories or patching each other up after battle. Now only one table sat in the middle of the room, and all but two of the stoves were covered in dust.

  Jack was already there when they arrived, stirring a pot of stew. This was the only place in Seraphim Row that could make him look small.

  “Boys,” he said, and raised a ladle to them in salute, “how was school?”

  “All right,” Denizen said, blushing slightly. He still hadn’t gotten used to everyone’s easy camaraderie.

  They took seats at the table and soon were joined by Darcie and D’Aubigny. Jack ladled out bowls of thick stew. The Knights took turns cooking, and as soon as Denizen could be trusted with a spice rack, he would join them.

  That had worried him slightly, until he realized that none of the others were great chefs either; instead, the rule seemed to be simple food in great quantities. Food was fuel, and each Knight’s body was an engine. It had to be to keep up with their training.

  If Denizen decided to take the oath and stay, he would be trained not only in the Cants but in all the disciplines of a Knight of the Borrowed Dark. Armed and unarmed combat. As many languages as he could master, including several that only existed in history books. And more—studies that seemed to have nothing to do with sword fights in dark alleys: chemistry, law, military science, and psychology. After all that, there was the study of the Tenebrae itself.

  There was so much to learn. Before Denizen left Crosscaper, he had been having trouble with algebra. Was that more difficult than sword-fighting?

  He was lost in thought when Darcie nudged him. He turned to see her offering a tiny cupcake, its icing covered in so much glitter that you could have turned it upside down and used it as a disco ball.

  “Your birthday,” she said by way of explanation. “You didn’t really get one. So I thought…I mean, it’s small but—”

  “It’s lovely,” Denizen said, and meant it. “I’d totally forgotten. This is really sweet of you.” He blushed self-consciously. After three days of talking about total warfare, dread non-monsters, and the constant equation of bravery and iron, it was a relief to be surprised by something nice.

  He examined the miniature cake. Every square centimeter was covered in glitter. “Em…how am I going to eat this?”

  “Edible glitter,” Darcie said with pride. “Happy birthday.”

  He laid it gently beside his bowl, grinning sheepishly. However, as dinner continued, it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn back to darker things.

  “The London cadre was on the phone,” Grey said. “Three Breaches this week alone.”

  Jack let out a low whistle.

  “Is that a lot?” Denizen asked.

  Grey nodded. “They’re run pretty ragged. More than usual, that is. Something has the Tenebrae stirred up.”

  “It is winter,” D’Aubigny said grimly. “Things are always worse when the darkness is closer.�
��

  Grey poked at his stew with his spoon. “Last I spoke to the Malleus, she said she was going to stay with them for a few days, help them out. She took Abigail with her.”

  Denizen frowned. “Abigail?”

  “Oh, you haven’t met her yet,” Grey said. “Abigail’s great. She’s training as well, but has a little bit of a…head start, I guess. You’ll meet her when she gets back.”

  Denizen was suddenly aware of a slow fire crawling forth from that dark place in his mind. So there was another recruit. One that Vivian had taken on a personal errand. One with a head start.

  He shoved the thought away. There was nothing wrong with someone having a head start. He’d only been told about the Tenebrae three days ago. It was only natural for other people to be more up to speed. I mean, maybe if Vivian hadn’t left me in an orphanage…

  “Darcie,” he said quickly, before any more of his head caught fire, “are you still up for showing me the library this evening?”

  Telling Denizen a week ago that he’d ever leave Crosscaper would have prompted a whole orchestra of frowns, but now that he’d spent a few days away, certain strange thoughts had crept into his head.

  He missed Simon, of course—a moment rarely went by when he didn’t imagine how his glacially calm friend would have dealt with all this. He missed his books as well, and when at breakfast Darcie had offered to give him a tour of her library, it had meant a lot.

  “Ah,” said Darcie, her eyes suddenly wide behind her dark glasses. “Well, that’s…ah.”

  She darted a glance at Grey, who sighed.

  “Denizen, for the moment at least, you won’t be given access to the library.”

  “What? Why not?” Being kept out of a library wasn’t exactly the height of cruelty, at least not by normal teenage standards, but Denizen had never claimed to be normal and that was before he’d found out there was fire in his bloodstream.

  Anger flared again, and the feeling was so close to that of the Tenebrae coursing through him that he instinctively tamped it down. He let out a long breath.

  “Your aunt just thinks that—well, you haven’t chosen to stay yet. So showing you our histories might be a bit…premature.” Grey flashed Denizen a sympathetic smile, one that Denizen didn’t return.

  “I see,” he said stonily.

  They ate in silence for a few more minutes before Denizen spoke again.

  “So, my aunt?” he said suddenly. “Tell me some more about her.”

  Darcie cleared her throat, rising to take her plate to the sink. Jack was suddenly very interested in the contents of his bowl.

  “Vivian?” Grey said. “Well. She’s…uh…”

  Jack frowned. “She’s…”

  It was D’Aubigny who finally got out a sentence. “She is a Malleus.”

  Hammer. Denizen considered the weight of the word, the heft of it in his head. “And a Malleus is a commander, right?”

  “Each cadre is led by a Malleus,” Grey said. He seemed a lot more comfortable now that the conversation had shifted away from Vivian specifically. “They are the most experienced of us, the Knights who have fought the longest and hardest. The hammers they carry are our most powerful weapons.”

  On his second day in Seraphim Row, after spending an evening staring at the door of his room, hoping that his aunt would come and talk to him, Denizen had gone to look at the portraits of the Mallei in the foyer.

  Men and women with stern faces and old scars—each with the same iron hammer, each with the same pitiless look in their painted eyes.

  Had Vivian sat for hers yet? Maybe it’s only after they die, he thought, and then immediately felt ashamed.

  “Your aunt has been a Knight for nearly two decades,” D’Aubigny said. “She has a long and distinguished career.”

  There was something in the way she said it that made Denizen’s eyebrows rise. “OK. But what’s she like?”

  “She has a long and distinguished ca—”

  “Yes,” Denizen said, “I get that. Thanks. But what’s she like?” He struggled to keep his voice casual. “Off the clock. Out of the armor.” The false cheer faded from his voice, but he couldn’t keep the words from spilling out. “I mean, she takes this other Neophyte off with her, but she hasn’t said one word to me since that first day, and as she brought me all this way, I thought she’d want to talk to me about my parents or even just…just talk to me…at all?” His voice faltered. “You know. Like at some point.”

  None of the Knights said anything. Grey looked away, but not before Denizen saw a hint of pity in his eyes.

  It was a long walk back to his room.

  “GREY?”

  Denizen knocked on the door again. He had been here a week and a half, and a sort of routine had developed. Usually, by this time, the door to the Room of Swords was already open and Grey was inside with a cup of coffee in his hands and a cup of tea gently cooling on the desk. This morning the door was closed.

  Denizen had considered just opening it, but after the incident with D’Aubigny’s throwing knife, he had developed a nervous habit of announcing himself before he opened doors or turned corners. Dangers of being a Knight aside, he would be mortified if he ended up a casualty because he put his head in the wrong door.

  When he tried the handle, it was locked.

  Denizen was about to leave—maybe wander up to Vivian’s office to see if she or the mysterious Abigail had returned—when a polite cough made him turn. Darcie Wright stood there, her blue frock coat buttoned against the early-morning chill, her eyes as always hidden behind dark circles of glass. Delicately, she tucked a black curl behind one ear.

  “It occurred to me that you haven’t seen much of the city yet,” she said. “So I asked Grey if I could steal you for the day.” She smiled. “Shall we?”

  —

  DUBLIN SMELLED LIKE salt and smoke, and the Samuel Beckett Bridge rose like a harp for the fingers of a giant.

  “I was thirteen,” Darcie said, daintily nibbling at a chip. “But we’re always thirteen. That’s how it works.”

  Clouds chased each other across the sky, crashing against the horizon in steel-colored tides. Denizen and Darcie had bought chips and ambled down almost as far as the Docklands. The farther they walked, the more Dublin seemed to fade away—the crowds shrinking, the buildings becoming fewer, all retreating to gray sky and sea.

  The cold still nipped at his fingers through the mittens he wore. Grey had offered him a pair of black leather gloves the day before, but Denizen felt a bit weird about wearing them. All the Knights carried a pair, the closest the Order had to a uniform.

  Denizen imagined a warehouse somewhere—one pair of standard-issue black gloves, please, so as not to freak out the general public.

  Darcie flexed her gloved fingers in the cold.

  “In a way, I had it easier than most. My grandfather was a Knight, so we were always…prepared, I suppose? The night of my birthday, Granddad took me out into the forest behind my house and we waited together. He knew what he was doing—talked me through the Dawn of my power so I didn’t hurt myself or anyone else.”

  Denizen thought about his Dawn—the anger, the pain.

  “Your granddad sounds nice,” he said.

  Darcie smiled. “He was. I used to hear the best bedtime stories—they’re always better when you know the monsters are real. I remember Mum being so annoyed when she found out he was telling me about daring rooftop sword fights and dueling Tenebrous in dark caves. Called it brainwashing.”

  Her smile faded. “He died last summer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Denizen said. It seemed a pathetically small thing to say.

  “It’s all right,” Darcie said. “He died serving the Order. It’s what he would have wanted.”

  There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in her voice, as if she knew for certain that was what he had wanted. Denizen, who had never been certain about anything in his life, found that at once comforting and very strange.

  Chips fi
nished, they wandered through the city. After eleven years of living in the middle of nowhere, the hustle and bustle of so many people was almost overwhelming.

  He would have been totally lost if not for Darcie. She talked constantly as they wandered—pointing out her favorite cafés, or interesting shops, or little bits of history about the buildings they passed. She seemed to know a small fact about every corner and alley, as if there was a shifting map of stories in her head.

  They tagged along with a tour group walking through Trinity College, Darcie whispering a commentary on the guide’s commentary until a sharp look made them dissolve into giggles and bolt.

  Everywhere Denizen looked there was something new. Buskers serenaded them in Temple Bar. Clots of other teenagers dressed as Goths whooped and screamed outside Central Bank. Men painted like brass on Grafton Street nodded majestically at the people who threw them coins.

  He bought a birthday card for Simon at a newsstand. So much had happened in the last few days, and he wished he could just sit down with his best friend and let it all spill out.

  Thinking of Simon led to him telling Darcie about Crosscaper and his childhood. It was strange to describe the place to her now, to bring stories about Simon and the others to this place a country’s width away.

  He thought about the day he left—his plans to pry information out of this absentee aunt. They seemed ridiculous now. It had taken him five minutes to realize that if you wanted to pry anything out of Vivian Hardwick, you’d need a ten-man team and a diamond-tipped crowbar.

  It wasn’t long before the conversation turned to his parents, as he knew it would.

  “Do you remember anything about them?” Darcie asked. “I’d understand if you don’t want to talk—”

  “It’s OK,” Denizen said, “and no, I don’t remember a whole lot. There’s just one memory, really. I remember her being small. Leaning down to pick me up.” There was a lump in his throat. “She smelled like strawberries.”

  Darcie sighed. “I am so sorry, Denizen.”

  He shook his head furiously. “Please. Don’t. I’m—I’m fine.”

  The sky had darkened, and their breath frosted the air in streamers of white and silver. Street lights glowed golden but gave the night no warmth.