by Dave Rudden
Something colorful caught his eye.
There were three of them—bright blue-and-white boxes, laid neatly side by side. Simon’s eyes had long adjusted to the darkness that had invaded Crosscaper, and so it was with a minimum of effort that he read the printed labels on their lids.
GRACE COFFEY—10/19
SIMON HAYES—10/26
PATRICK MCCAFFREY—11/30
He’d completely forgotten about his birthday. The realization made him straighten suddenly, though no emotion accompanied it. What was a birthday in this maze of darkness and prowling monsters?
Simon had become far more focused on things like staying alive and less on the idea of parties and cards.
Maybe Denizen will be back.
No. Denizen was better off far away from here.
The boy’s sobbing drifted through the air as Simon gently lifted a stale loaf of bread from its shelf. He had been careful not to take too much, just in case one of the trio came down here and noticed. But from what he could see, they hadn’t so much as touched a grain of rice.
What did they eat? Did they eat? Simon clutched the bread to his chest and left the kitchen behind. Just one more strangeness.
Spending one’s days hiding in a cupboard, trying to soundlessly chew bread, gave a person a lot of time to think. Questions had bloomed like mushrooms in the dark, fed on scraps of knowledge he had learned, and as always, they came down to three.
What are they?
Because they weren’t people. Simon knew that much, if nothing else.
Why am I awake?
He checked on the other students sometimes, though listening to them tremble and being unable to help them was just about the most heartbreaking thing in the world.
It was an argument he came back to again and again. Was he better off because he somehow had been spared a moaning, twitching sleep? Was it better to be unconscious, trapped and submerged, or awake to wander this nightmare? Maybe Simon was asleep. Maybe this was the dream, and they all wandered the corridors alone.
And the tentative question, the crucial one, a question he couldn’t come close to answering…
Why are they here?
There was evidence of their passage everywhere. Windows had been put out, pane by pane, thorough and deliberate. Doors had been kicked in, lights smashed. Huge encyclopedias had been taken from teachers’ offices and pressed flat on the floor so the spines had split, pages drifting loose over the floor.
That had upset him.
It was obvious how they were spending their days, but it wasn’t obvious why. There was no point or pattern to the destruction, at least none that Simon could see. Occasionally, he heard laughter, usually followed by the sounds of something new being broken. It was as if they were amusing themselves, just as the woman had been when idly chewing lightbulbs.
Destruction for destruction’s sake.
The boy’s sobbing grew louder, and Simon immediately felt bad, even as he carefully peered round the corner to make sure his path was clear. It was silly to be worrying about ruined books and lightbulbs, not when…
When the other two became bored, they hurt the boy. They got bored easily and they got bored often, and on those nights the sobs turned into screams.
It was such a lonely sound, full of pain and fear, an eternity of it. Had the boy been human, Simon might have gone to help. As it stood, he had no idea what the etiquette was when you were dealing with a boy-shaped hole in the air. Besides, he hadn’t heard the other two for a full day and night now and the boy had made no effort to escape, though of course neither had Simon. He was too scared of what might happen if he were caught.
Perhaps the boy was the same.
But there had been something else in those sobs the last couple of nights. It had sounded like remorse.
He was just slipping through the door of the English classroom when he heard it—rising over the wind and the rain, a sound he hadn’t heard for weeks, something reassuringly human and outside—
An engine.
A car or a van, growling to itself, crunching gravel under its wheels. Simon darted to the window, kneeling with his nose pressed to the sill, desperate to see someone, anyone, outside this waking dream of dark corridors and bitter cold.
The paranoid, trapped-animal part of him whispered that it could be nothing, or even the visitors returned, but as his eyes adjusted to the glare of the headlights he saw that it might be his salvation after all.
Students in Crosscaper lived in a jar. An enclosed ecosystem, as their biology teacher liked to say. You knew every teacher. Or sort of—you didn’t know their first names, but you knew their Monday ties, or their entire range of facial expressions, and the one time they almost swore. And you knew what they drove. Mr. Gilligan, the science teacher. He had been on holiday. Simon had no idea where, because all Mr. Gilligan had said was “away from ye lot.” Mr. Gilligan liked to think he had a sense of humor.
And now he stood—tall and floppy-haired—staring up at the school in which he worked and lived, with no idea that he was going to save everyone’s lives.
Suddenly the hope guttered in Simon’s chest. What if he came into the orphanage and was struck low by the same sleep? What if the…the three found him?
Simon didn’t think. He just moved—bounding to his feet and slipping out of the door as quickly and quietly as he could. If he could only get down a floor, somehow reach Mr. Gilligan’s line of sight, wave or something—he wouldn’t dare shout.
Somewhere distant, the boy had stopped weeping.
Simon didn’t dare stop to check at each window he passed. He prayed instead that Mr. Gilligan had hesitated, was still in the courtyard, looking for his keys or just asking himself why the front door was open. Let him look up at the windows. Let him see me and stop—
Down a flight of stairs, swinging on a banister and wincing at the creak.
A door half opened, enough for a pair of skinny shoulders to squeeze through.
When Simon finally reached a second-floor window, Mr. Gilligan was still standing in front of his car and staring down at his phone, shoulders hunched against the rain.
Simon’s fingers trembled on the clasps, but opening it would be too loud. Instead, he waved his arms, fed all the nascent panic in his limbs into great sweeps, his mouth open and silently shouting—
See me.
Please see me.
Mr. Gilligan looked up, their eyes meeting for one long moment, and then his car exploded.
It looked exactly like explosions were supposed to—a sooty chrysanthemum of flame that scalded the rain as it fell. Mr. Gilligan tumbled forward to land in the dirt, a limp shape with one arm outstretched. The glow of his phone held for a moment, then blinked off as if it had never been.
Disbelief kept Simon standing. His ears rang. His night vision was shot; the air stank of burning, the courtyard a shifting morass of shapes and smoke.
And the man in the waistcoat laughed with joy.
Look what we made you do!
The voice oozed through the air, seeping slow and gleeful. Like the crying of the boy, it seemed everywhere at once, filling the orphanage to the brim. It felt as if he were whispering the words meant for Simon, and Simon alone.
He’s not, Simon told himself, already backing away from the window, or you’d already be…
The place needs work, admittedly, but here we are with time on our hands….
There was a long silence, as though the man was having a conversation with someone Simon couldn’t see or hear.
I wouldn’t fight it, little Knight. Worming into the heads of mortals is a talent of ours. Of course, the process isn’t perfect, flesh being what it is. There have been so many….Well, tools often break in the hand.
There was amusement in the man’s voice.
But is not every failure a chance to grow?
Simon could see him now, that jolly stance, that cruel curve of chubby lips.
We have failed, in our time. We have tas
ted fire. A touch of anger now. Who would have thought the boy— No matter. We will have him in time.
A shriek rang out, and Simon flinched. The sound was so pained, so desperate, and the worst thing was it didn’t reach his ears through the strange echoes of the intruders.
It was a person. They had someone, and they were hurting him.
The Clockwork Three have need of you, little Knight.
They had a name. The monsters had a name, and it fit them the way a scab fits a wound. The Clockwork Three.
We need you to build us a cage.
MOMENTS. LITTLE SCRAPS of moments and Denizen a piece of them, drifting.
Hands gathering him up off the pavement, a spot of blood falling from his nose.
“Don’t.”
He didn’t know who was speaking.
“Don’t be dead.”
There was blood on his hands too. Where had all of it come from?
Denizen had a vague sense of motion—of coiled power somewhere close by, the roaring of a great beast—but at least it was warm. He would have liked to stay there, feeling the vibration of the leather on his face, but suddenly hands were dragging him again out into the cold.
There was an arm under his shoulders. His feet scraped along the floor.
“Home now, Denizen. You’re home. Come on. Don’t fall asleep. You have to—”
And then there were blankets over him. A pillow against his back. Denizen blinked. Someone was staring down at him, cold and imperious, eyes as gray as his.
“Are you insane?”
Denizen could barely keep his head up. A handkerchief dabbed at his nose roughly—coming away red—and slowly his thoughts reassembled, memories stitching themselves together with each scrape of the cloth.
The village. The Higher Cant. The woman in white burned to clockwork.
Denizen groaned. He felt like someone had packed every bit of him in cotton wool and then beaten him with a hammer. Feeling returned in a rush of pins and needles, and part of him almost missed the disconnected numbness because now all his body wanted to do was torture him with all the pain he had been missing.
His hair hurt. How can hair hurt?
And through all the muzziness, Denizen knew the truth: this was only a prelude. The pain he was feeling now was just the extended trailer. Any moment now, he’d be getting the feature-length presentation.
His aunt was shouting at someone. He could vaguely hear it through the cotton wool filling his brain. Glad I’m not them, Denizen thought.
“Denizen.”
Oh. Right.
“What in the name of black terror possessed you?”
Vivian Hardwick stood above him, her voice thrumming with fury. Her scarred lips twisted, and he had the distinct feeling that if the desk hadn’t been too far away, she would have thumped it with a fist.
At least she’s not wearing the armor. I don’t think I could handle the armor.
“You could have been killed. Worse than killed,” she snarled, jamming both hands in the pockets of her trousers as if to take her mind off the lack of desk-thumping. The way Denizen felt, he might have offered his head as a substitute.
“Worse than dead?” he said in a faint voice. “Is that—”
Vivian’s eyes narrowed. People probably didn’t interrupt her rants very often, but Denizen was too out of it to care.
“Is that what?” she snapped.
“Is that not just a thing people say?” He was actively rooting for some cranial trauma now. Maybe even decapitation. The headache had cut through the cotton wool, and Denizen was certain his only hope of getting through the next few minutes was for his head to be as far away from his body as possible.
“Like when they say a fate worse than death. Is that not just a thing people say when they want to be dramatic? What’s worse than death?”
D’Aubigny, sitting cross-legged on the desk, gave Denizen a look made sharper by the crust of dried blood over one eye. The cut on her arm had reopened somewhere along the way and a sheet of red covered her from biceps to wrist.
Jack stood beside his wife as if he never intended to leave her side again, massive knuckles flexing and unflexing.
A girl Denizen had never seen before was rummaging through a first-aid kit, her dark hair tied back so she could work. She looked up and flashed Denizen a smile so bright it hurt his brain.
Who are— He shook his head, and then immediately regretted it. There were far too many things going on at once. With an effort, he turned his gaze back on Vivian. She looked furious.
Well, there’s a constant.
“Anyone who attempts one of the Higher Cants without the proper training is lucky if they only suffer the way you did,” Vivian said, her voice lowering the room temperature by twenty degrees.
“A Cant pulls power through a Knight like water through a pipe. Trying to use a Cant you’re not prepared for has deadly consequences.”
“Consequences?” repeated Denizen.
Still rummaging through the bag, the girl spoke without looking up. “Have you ever seen a burst pipe?”
“I’m sorry,” Denizen said, with as much viciousness as he could muster, “who are you?”
“You could have burned out your mind,” Vivian said, ignoring his outburst, “and lived the rest of your days as a useless husk. Or you could have drawn in too much power to control and ended up incinerating yourself and half the street. Or you could have channeled so much power that it created a whole new Breach. Innocents could have died.”
“Oh,” Denizen said faintly. “Worse than death. Right.”
The cotton-wool feeling was starting to fade, but he still felt hollow, scooped out and empty.
At least Vivian had stopped scrubbing his face—his skin raw and tingly where the cloth had scraped it. Maybe if he could survive the rest of her rant, then they’d leave his room and he could just sink under the duvet for a while.
He didn’t need long. A couple of centuries, perhaps. A moderately sized ice age.
The girl—something sparked in Denizen’s head, but the rest of him was too fried to make sense of it—was laying out medical supplies in a neat row on the desk. Her movements were sure and practiced. She barely looked at each package before setting it down.
Jack was dipping a sponge in a bowl of hot water and gently washing the blood from D’Aubigny’s face. Her eyes were closed, her lips set in a firm line. She didn’t wince, even when the sponge passed over the cut and Jack had to apply pressure to wash out the dirt.
A vague memory surfaced of that staggering run back to the car.
Don’t be dead. D’Aubigny’s voice soft in his ear, warmer than he had ever heard it before. Don’t be dead.
“Thank you,” he said, blushing. “D’Aubigny. You saved me.”
“You saved yourself,” she said, eyes still closed. “I just brought you home.”
She didn’t seem at all perturbed by how close they had all come to death, even with her arm laid open to the bone. Maybe after all the battles she’d seen, this qualified as a win. Makes sense, he thought, in a horrible way. At least they had all made it home—
“Wait,” Denizen said, sitting bolt upright in bed, despite the pain. “Where’s Grey?”
That made D’Aubigny open her eyes. The girl glanced at Vivian. Jack’s sponge paused, and then continued wiping the blood from D’Aubigny’s arm.
“Grey?” Denizen asked again, panic a hot little knife in his chest. “Where is he?”
D’Aubigny spoke. “The beast was clever—it separated, sending two of its forms away from us. We had to split up, stop them before they could find innocent prey. I did so—with difficulty—and was about to look for Grey when I felt you unleash the Higher Cant. In a way, it is almost fortunate. I do not know how I would have found you otherwise.”
Vivian shot her a disgusted look, as if to say do not encourage him, but D’Aubigny didn’t seem to notice. There was something like…respect in the warrior’s voice.
It w
as scant comfort.
“And you didn’t wait?” The pain in Denizen’s head was nothing compared to the sick dread in his stomach.
Grey had to be OK. Of all the Knights, it was Grey who had taken on Denizen’s training. It was Grey who’d brought him here, who talked to him like he was an adult, not a nuisance or something underfoot. He had to be OK.
“I needed to get you home,” D’Aubigny said coolly. “You were bleeding from your eyes and your nose. I could not leave you there to search for a comrade I know and trust to make it home by himself. Grey is a Knight. He will come back. Or—”
“Or?” Denizen snapped breathlessly. He didn’t want to hear the word or. There wasn’t an or in this situation. He had nothing against the word normally, but right now or had absolutely no place in the world.
D’Aubigny let out a sigh but left the sentence unfinished. “There is something else,” she said instead. “Malleus, we fought Pick-Up-the-Pieces tonight.”
Vivian’s eyebrows rose. “Pick-Up-the-Pieces? What brought that devil here?”
“It wasn’t brought; it was sent,” D’Aubigny said. “By the Endless King.”
That title cast a chill through the room, not something mystical or magical, but in the faces of those who heard it.
Jack dropped his sponge back into its bowl of hot water. The whoever-girl fumbled a set of bandages with a nervous jerk. Vivian’s lips thinned to blade edges. Even D’Aubigny looked uncomfortable.
The Endless King. Denizen shivered involuntarily.
“No,” said Jack. “It can’t be. Corinne, you’re—”
“I know what I heard, mon petit géant,” she replied. “Pick-Up-the-Pieces hunts in the name of the King. That is what the beast said.” She turned toward the open door. “Darcie?”
Denizen’s heart broke when he saw her.
Darcie seemed to have shrunk, lost in her coat, her arms folded across her chest. She didn’t look at Denizen. She didn’t look at any of them.
“I…” Her voice was so small. “I should have…”
“Darcie,” Vivian said, and there was no pity in her voice, only cold command. “This was not your fault. It takes a very experienced Lux to catch a thing as wily as Pick-Up-the-Pieces.”
