by Dave Rudden
Abigail Falx had trained with knives since she was eight years old—on her mother’s orders—and favored a 200-gram knife over distances of less than five meters.
“Heavier ones are more stable, but I just haven’t the wrist strength to do them justice,” she said at dinner, fanning out blades for D’Aubigny to examine. “Denizen, do you throw?”
“Em,” Denizen said, busying himself with taking plates from the cupboard. “No.”
It was apparently no surprise that Vivian had been taking Abigail out on certain missions, or that she knew her way round the inside of a first-aid kit. Abigail Falx’s family had been Knights for generations. There had been no mysterious notes and absentee aunts for her. Abigail had been raised to be a Knight. In fact, the more she talked, the more Denizen suspected that her entire life had been leading up to her thirteenth birthday.
When Jack and the others discussed the threat of the Endless King, Abigail didn’t have to interrupt constantly to have things explained. She took notes instead, or asked the kind of incisive questions that showed she really knew what she was talking about.
The one time Denizen did venture an opinion—that his aunt had recognized the Tenebrous woman from Rathláth—it was only Abigail who’d answered him.
“Oh, I’m not surprised the Malleus recognized the Tenebrous,” she said, smiling brightly. “Not with her career!”
Denizen had spent the rest of dinner thinking quite seriously about setting Abigail on fire.
He wasn’t the only person around the table feeling uncharitable. As soon as her plate was empty, D’Aubigny left without a word. Grey was his usual chatty self, but Denizen could see that it was mostly for Abigail’s benefit; whenever she was distracted, all the good cheer drained from his face and a dark, faraway look filled his eyes. Even Jack didn’t seem in the best form.
Darcie hadn’t come down for meals today at all.
“All right, hero,” Grey said, when everyone was done. “You’re on washing-up.”
“I thought I was recovering,” Denizen said hopefully. Jack snorted.
“Well, don’t use a Higher Cant to do them,” Grey responded lightly, already on his way out.
Denizen sighed and began collecting plates, stacking them by the side of the sink in preparation for washing. He pointedly didn’t look at Abigail, even when she picked up a cloth and began drying the plates that he had washed.
They worked in silence, Denizen staring fixedly at each plate in turn. Work was good. Work kept you busy. Washing plates gave you the chance to turn your back on a person without being rude, and if she did ask him something, he could turn the water up and pretend he hadn’t heard her.
If only there weren’t just five plates.
Denizen suddenly began to dread the end of the stack. Why couldn’t this have been a dinner party? Nothing major—the entire Order, perhaps. A nice fortress of plates between him and Abigail.
The last plate came too quickly, hot water splashing over his hands. Nothing good lasts forever. It went to Abigail to dry, Denizen glancing pleadingly back at the empty counter for something else to do. At least last night there had been the end of the world to talk about.
When finally he turned round, Abigail was staring at him.
“So,” she said, “everyone’s in a bit of a mood and I’ve only caught snippets. What exactly happened?” She smiled brightly. “Hero.”
Bright was a word that came easily when describing Abigail Falx. Her eyes were the bright blue of birthday wrapping paper or a child’s drawing of the sky. Her hair was black, sleek, and shining, framing her face like stray curls of night.
Denizen had heard the whole story at lunchtime. Her mother was from Iran, her father American, both Knights currently stationed in…Sumatra. No, Jakarta. A place from an odd end of the map with some sharp consonants in it. Denizen wasn’t sure.
“What?” said Denizen. “Oh, it was…I don’t know…We kind of…”
She had an odd way of staring—not rude exactly, but penetrating, as if everything you were saying was the most crucial thing that had ever been said. It put a lot of pressure on a person, a stare like that. The only consolation was that it was the way she looked at everything. It was the way she’d looked at the sandwiches they’d had for lunch.
She cocked her head. “Yes?”
He found himself fighting the urge to take a step backward. You’re being ridiculous, a voice in his head whispered. You’ve faced Tenebrous. Shrieking horrors from unlit skies. Why are you being weird now?
Because she’s standing really close. I’d be just as nervous if it was a Tenebrous. It’s the proximity. Nothing else. She’s in my personal space.
“Em…” He blushed.
The story came out, slowly at first, and with a lot more stumbling than when he had told Grey. She’d already heard the main parts—Pick-Up-the-Pieces, the Endless King and what he’d lost—but Denizen started from the beginning, cringing inwardly at certain parts.
Volunteering to go with D’Aubigny and Grey had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. He’d felt brave, like he was taking the initiative, finally doing something instead of just waiting for his aunt to give him the time of day. Looking back, it felt like the actions of a naive child.
“—and then D’Aubigny found me and brought me back here. My aunt wasn’t…Well, you saw her.”
Abigail stared at him for a long moment. “That,” she said, “was brilliant.”
Denizen blinked. “What?”
“Really, really brilliant,” Abigail said with no trace of sarcasm. “You’ve only been here a short time and you insist on accompanying the Knights into battle. And it wasn’t that you used the Epithet—Sunrise, by the way, wow—by accident or anything. You laid life and sanity on the line to save a little girl.”
“Well, that’s not what…” Denizen thought about it. “Well, it is what happened, I suppose, but that’s not—” Frown No. 2—Slow Realization. “Huh. Sorry. It just sounds different when you say it.”
“Different?”
“Good,” Denizen said. “It sounds good.”
Abigail flashed him a bright white smile.
—
IN BANDAGES AND bruises, the Knights hunted for answers. There was no such thing as recovery time when the threat of the Endless King loomed on the horizon like a great guillotine waiting to fall. The Order was on high alert. Pursuivants were slinking through the shadows, and Denizen flung himself back into his training with renewed determination.
Meals were spent poring over books in silence, searching for any mention of the dread master of the Tenebrous. Jack sharpened blades. D’Aubigny broke a punching bag and another had to be ordered. Grey was a dark shadow in the corridors, pacing ceaselessly from one end of Seraphim Row to the other, a bleak smile playing across his lips.
The tension rose as the nights grew colder still. Tempers were short. Even the strange phenomena that haunted Seraphim Row had become distant and muted.
Things were different now. The war was coming to them.
—
“REAL SWORDS?”
The back garden of Seraphim Row was a belligerent tangle of trees and bushes, stiff and prickly, hungry to grab at skin and sleeve. Denizen had no idea how far it stretched back beyond the circle cleared for training and the squat bulk of Jack’s forge. He found himself wondering if even the razor-sharp sword in Abigail’s hand would be able to part those black-green snarls.
She rolled her wrist, rapier blade slicing the air with a dry whop, stepping lightly between the flowerpots Grey had laid out to test her footwork. Despite the cold, she wore a light hoodie and a pair of tracksuit bottoms, breath fogging in the air before her.
Just looking at her made Denizen pull his woolly hat down lower. The old coat he had brought with him from Crosscaper was doing an admirable job keeping the weather out, but still the cold snaked round him, seeking entry through gaps and seams. He pulled it a little closer about himself as Grey lifted his own sword.
“Real swords,” Grey responded.
Grey’s vest left his arms bare, muscles shifting beneath a net of scars. He had a tattoo on one shoulder blade—a bird, Denizen thought, wings sharp as blades, orange and red and gold. Bandages still marred one arm and the side of his face.
“Shouldn’t we use practice swords?” Abigail asked. Against the bleached hues of the winter garden she stood out like the first flower of spring, twirling gently on the balls of her feet, her blade a shining ribbon of steel. “I mean, not that I—”
“You need to get used to the weight,” Grey said. His customary smile was nowhere to be seen, as if it had been stolen away by the cold. “And you’re not going to hit me.”
He lunged.
Denizen watched them spar with wide eyes. He’d often wanted to learn martial arts, which was probably a natural thing for all children, especially the smaller ones. Unfortunately, rural Ireland was a little short on dojos, and while books like The Lord of the Rings and The Magician had plenty of battles, they tended to be more about dramatic moments and less about numbered diagrams on where to put your feet. Luckily, it seemed like he’d found a very good teacher.
All the emotion had faded from Grey’s face, just as it had when he waited for Pick-Up-the-Pieces. It was as if he’d been emptied and something else had taken his place—instinct, perhaps, or training so ingrained it had become instinct. There were no hesitations, no moments where he seemed to be deciding on a strategy—just move after move after move.
In fairness to Abigail, she was also pretty impressive. Distressingly impressive, actually, considering Denizen—against the advice of his own brain—was already thinking about how good he might have been with Abigail’s head start.
Starting from scratch, learning an entire new world, wasn’t easy, and it was especially difficult watching Abigail move like she had been born with a sword in her hand. That was obviously why Vivian gave her the time of day, he thought a little bitterly. She’s good enough to keep up.
It was some consolation that, no matter how good she was, she still had some way to go. Abigail’s strikes were perfectly balanced, perfectly executed, and perfectly incapable of coming anywhere near Graham McCarron.
“Denizen?”
Denizen’s heart was in his mouth just watching them. Abigail didn’t hold back, and no matter how she stepped or twisted, no matter to what trajectory she fed her blade, Grey’s sword was always there to stop it.
It took Denizen a moment to realize that his name had come from somewhere within that maelstrom of flashing swords.
“What?”
Grey backhanded Abigail’s blade so hard she nearly lost her grip.
“How many cadres of Knights are there currently active in Europe?”
Denizen’s brow furrowed. I know this. “There’s…”
“Seventy-eight,” Abigail called out. “Same as the number of Cants. Symbolic. Though there are—”
“—roving cadres,” Denizen interrupted, shooting Abigail an annoyed look. She was too busy backpedaling as Grey suddenly went on the offensive, chopping his blade down in short, hard strokes. “The—”
“—Peregrines,” Abigail said breathlessly. “Started in 1457 in response to—”
“Next question!” Denizen said, and it took quite a lot of control not to snap.
Grey spun on a heel. “All right. The leader of the Order is called the…”
“Palatine,” Abigail and Denizen said together.
“Plural of Malleus.”
“Mallei.” Denizen was first on that, but mostly because Grey had taken advantage of Abigail’s distraction to knock her off balance, staggering left to scatter the flowerpots. She spun, chest heaving, and gave them both that bright, fascinated stare.
“What?” Denizen said.
She flicked her hair out of her eyes. “Isn’t this fun?”
—
AT LEAST READING was quiet. Mostly.
“I’ve decided we should study together.”
Denizen had opened his door to find Abigail barely visible behind precariously balanced books. She had placed her forehead against the stack to keep them from falling backward and kept weaving and sidestepping to prevent them from toppling sideways, and Denizen had nervously begun to copy her, so the overall effect—and the sight of books in peril—was making him slightly nauseated.
They eventually maneuvered the tower of volumes onto Denizen’s desk, and Abigail sank cross-legged to the floor, rummaging in a plastic bag.
“Do you mind?”
“No,” Denizen said, trying to keep his voice neutral. And it was true—he didn’t. Abigail was perfectly nice. It was just that when she was there, he was…aware she was there. It made it hard to concentrate.
“OK,” she said, holding up two brightly colored bags. “I have chocolate. And some things covered in chocolate. And…” She looked down. “This is actually completely all chocolate.”
She threw one of the bags to Denizen. It hit him in the face.
“Thank you,” he said, and buried his sore nose in a book.
—
THEY READ FOR hours, the silence occasionally broken—mostly by Abigail. She talked a lot, and Denizen wasn’t even sure she knew she was doing it. Part of him envied her being so easily comfortable with someone she had just met. He was trying, though. Occasionally, an interesting piece of knowledge would pop up in his book and he’d share it with her. That was sort of talking, wasn’t it?
“Look at this,” Denizen said. “ ‘Beware the Nation of Wasps, for obvious reasons.’ How is that helpful?”
Abigail shrugged. Untold centuries of literature spread across a dozen countries had provided some wildly differing approaches to describing the Tenebrous. The author Denizen was reading now had obviously assumed that other people knew as much about the Tenebrous as he did. Many sentences started with “As you know”—a phrase Denizen hated because most of the time he didn’t know. You couldn’t just go around assuming people knew things, or why write books at all?
In a way, the Tenebrae reminded him of the books he had read about the Middle Ages. Not just the names—which were somewhere between poetry and black humor—but the constantly shifting alliances and power struggles. The Tenebrous seemed to fight each other as much as they did the Order. Feuds between Warmfellow and the Widows of Victory, the love affair between Chirugeon and the Ahklut, were all made so much more confusing by the fact that the Knights only ever heard about them secondhand.
“So…em…”
Denizen glanced up to see Abigail staring fixedly at the wall. She was chewing her lip, possibly because it was so chocolate-stained.
“What?” he asked.
“My dad got hurt.”
She didn’t look at Denizen when she said it, just stared at the wall, pretty features blank and set.
“A clash with one of the Pursuivants. They don’t know which yet. Mum’s fine. Dad…got hurt. His leg.”
“Abigail, I’m really sorry—”
“No,” she said. “No. It’s fine. People get hurt. It happens. He’s not going to lose it or anything. So that’s something.”
Denizen realized with a chill that, yes, that was something. They were in a world where keeping your leg was a positive outcome.
Abigail took a long breath. “Thanks for being around tonight.”
All he could do was nod.
The girl shook her head as if letting the thought fall away.
“I can’t read anymore,” she said, and closed her book with a snap. “Sorry. I’m just not much of a book person.”
Denizen couldn’t help himself. He gave her the kind of look he’d normally reserve for someone who made puppies into jam. “I know. You mentioned it.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed. Then Abigail stood up and stretched. “I might give my parents a quick call.”
“Oh,” he said. “Cool.” That had been another source of awkwardness between him and Abigail, though he fe
lt awful thinking about it now. She’d shown him pictures of her family—a woman in a hijab whose smile was the image of Abigail’s, a man who looked like he could arm-wrestle Jack, and a tousle-haired little boy.
Denizen had been happy for her—she obviously loved them and they her; it practically glowed from the photo—but he couldn’t help looking at it and wondering about his own parents.
“Did they mind you coming here?” he asked suddenly. “To Dublin, I mean. It’s a long way.”
“I wanted to work under the best,” Abigail said, “and right now that’s your aunt. My parents have great respect for Malleus Hardwick.”
She paused. “Were…were your parents Knights?”
Denizen had been wondering how much she knew about his background. None of the Knights seemed to be gossips, but word would get around, and Abigail seemed the curious type.
“I don’t—” Denizen forced the words out. She’d hear about it sooner or later. He supposed it was better coming from him. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about my parents, actually.”
It hadn’t been for lack of trying. Long evenings had been spent searching the sprawl of Seraphim Row, hoping for a photo, a newspaper clipping, some indication that his parents might have stayed under the same roof he did now. He had found plenty of references to Hardwicks—the annals of the Order were full of them. Vivian’s pride wasn’t misplaced—the history of the Order was the history of the Hardwick family. It was just frustrating that there was a wealth of knowledge about Hardwicks from centuries past, yet a distance of eleven years was insurmountable.
He wasn’t sure exactly what reaction he expected from Abigail. Pity, maybe. Shock. Instead, she just frowned.
“Well, why don’t you check the Book of Rust?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s our…well. It’s our graveyard. Our memoriam. A list of all the Knights who have died in a particular garrison. If your parents were Knights and served here, then they’d be in the Book.”
Denizen stared at her. “OK,” he said finally. “Now I can forgive you for not being a book person.”
—
THE LIBRARY WAS the largest room in the house, and every available surface had been commandeered by books. At some point, all the great wooden shelves lining the walls had been filled and the books had broken free to march across the floor in great stacks.
