by Dave Rudden
Vivian said nothing. She just walked across the courtyard—stepping wide round the flailing extremities of the Three—and the next thing Denizen knew she was standing in front of him. Her eyes glittered, bright and gray and sharp as nails, and there was a question in the look she gave him.
Denizen knelt, picking up the long shard of stone at his feet, and pressed it into Vivian’s hand. He nodded at her, watching as she strode back to where the Three mewled and thrashed.
The doomed Tenebrous fought to get out from under the Emissary’s boot, blade-limbs straining to lash out and kill the woman they’d hated for so long, thrashing and clacking and screaming fit to burst.
Vivian stood over them, waiting until their struggles died away and they just lay there, staring up through a multitude of hate-filled eyes.
And then she brought the shard down, over and over again.
It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t quiet. Maybe it would have been if the hammer had still been intact. Denizen didn’t know. Maybe Vivian just wasn’t taking any more chances. Either way, the impact of stone on metal went on for a very long time.
Finally, sweat-streaked and gasping, Denizen’s mother flung the chipped fragment aside.
“Consider us even” was all she said.
IT WAS A long walk to the mainland.
They found Grey still curled up on the ground where the Three had discarded him. Vivian, face expressionless, pulled him to his feet.
The madness seemed to have drained from him in the wake of the Three’s death, though there was little of the cavalier rogue Denizen had first encountered with suit and scars and a cat-burglar smile.
He still grinned, though—hollowly, through a shattered jaw. “I can’t hear it anymore,” he was mumbling. It had taken a while before Denizen could make out the words. “I can’t hear the ticking.”
They picked their way across the wreckage of the gates.
“Will the other children be all right?” Denizen asked.
Vivian nodded. “Nightmares rarely last after waking. They’ll have moments—faint memories—but in time they too will fade.” She shrugged her cloak round her shoulders.
“And…” He was almost afraid to ask. “And Grey?”
“I don’t know,” she said simply.
Denizen didn’t feel anything as he left the gates behind. There was nothing left for him here now, though he couldn’t help looking back at the grim stone face of the orphanage, scarred by fire and the touch of the Tenebrae.
They had that in common, at least.
As he stared up at the architecture of his childhood, a figure appeared in the doorway. Without thinking, Denizen called a Helios Lance to his palm and held it there—a streak of jagged flame ready to be unleashed.
It was Director Ackerby. The man was still swaying, half under the spell of the Three, but as moments passed his faculties seemed to return.
“Who…who—is that you, Hardwick?”
Denizen let the fire in his palm go out and met the man’s gaze with his own cool gray eyes.
Ackerby took a step backward.
“Go back inside, Director,” Denizen said quietly, and walked away.
The rain had stopped, and though it was still bitterly cold, it was actually turning into a nice night for a walk. The wind had died down. Everything felt sharp-edged and clear, and Denizen knew that, come the morning, the world would be painted with frost.
They had barely walked a hundred meters down the road before the wet grass began to shine and spark like a reflection of a clear night sky. Moisture in the air sizzled and crackled, swirling round a starburst point of blue that guttered and wavered as stray raindrops passed through it.
Vivian raised her hands wearily, her grip on Grey slipping, but Denizen waved her down.
Denizen Hardwick, Mercy said, stepping from thin air in a cascade of sparks and gemlight.
Denizen wasn’t sure what to do, so he just gave her an awkward, nodding bow. Was that how you greeted royalty?
The girl of storms drifted closer. Denizen could see the outline of the hills behind her, as if she were just an image projected from somewhere very far away. Lightning stabbed out from her lithe form, and Denizen blushed as he remembered its taste.
You’ll take care of what I gave you? she asked in a voice like a waterfall.
“Oh,” Denizen said, once again breaking new ground in the field of wit and charm. The Cants she had bestowed sizzled and danced in the back of his head. “Yes. No problem. Good.”
She raised a glowing hand. We will see each other again, Denizen Hardwick. A smile spread across her ethereal features, and she gave both Vivian and Abigail a perfect curtsy before coming apart in threads of light. Her final words hung in the air like raindrops.
Because someday I might need them back.
“What?” Denizen said. “Uh—” But she was already gone. He turned back to see Abigail and Vivian staring at him.
“What did that mean?” There was a slight note of panic in his voice.
Vivian gave an exhausted shrug. Abigail was still staring at him.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said, her gaze bright and sharp. “Why have you gone red?”
Denizen blushed harder. “I haven’t. I’m not. Shut up.”
Eventually, he found himself walking beside his mother. She was cleaning the blood off her face with a scrap of her cloak, her other hand gently steering Grey’s staggering footsteps.
“Hi,” he said awkwardly.
She let the scrap go, and an eddy of wind flicked it off into the night. They trudged in silence for a few moments.
“So,” Denizen said, “how…how are you?”
Instead of responding, his mother turned to Abigail a little way back up the road.
“Do you mind?” she said.
Abigail shook her head and took over from Vivian, sliding an arm round Grey’s waist. They walked on, leaving Denizen and his mother alone.
Vivian looked out over the bleak landscape—the cresting waves, the hills made silver and haunting by the moon. The view was as familiar to him as the sight of his own face in the mirror, and it was strange to see her be a part of it, though with ragged armor and sword the whole scene could have been something from a millennia-old war.
Which it was, now that he thought of it.
“What happens now?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She looked him up and down. “Does this change things? Knowing what you know? It doesn’t end here. This is just the beginning. There are years of training—for you and Simon, should he join us—there are your studies at Daybreak, a whole life of Knighthood. You could just…you could—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Denizen said firmly, and Vivian nodded.
They walked on a few more steps and then, abruptly, she spoke.
“I don’t feel any better.”
The words were raw with emotion.
“I didn’t…I mean, I never thought I would, but now…now I know.”
She swallowed. “The Clockwork Three are dead. A Malleus’s hammer, even a shard of it, would make sure of that. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. And it hasn’t changed anything. I don’t feel any better.”
She smiled bitterly. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Revenge doesn’t bring anyone back from the dead.”
“I don’t know about that,” Denizen said hesitantly. Over the horizon, the sun was rising. “I mean, we’re here, aren’t we?”
THE SECRET ABOUT WRITERS…
…is that very few of us live in a driftwood cave writing soul-rending poetry on our own feet and then washing it away with the morning’s first dew.
I’m not saying some don’t. What I am saying is that this book would not have happened without the support of a lot of beautiful and interesting people.
First, my parents for always putting a book in my hand. It cannot be easy when one’s firstborn son decides to be a writer (I could have been
something respectable, like a teacher, or a human), but their love and support have always been unconditional. Thank you.
My agents, Clare and Sheila, are rock-star super-novas. That is all. The Darley Anderson Children’s Book Agency has taken great care of me since the moment I was signed. Clare, Sheila, Mary, Emma—thank you.
My editors, Ben, Caroline, and Wendy, are also celestial beings of kindness and patience. To them, and everyone at Penguin Random House, thank you so much for making this happen. Onward and downward, to misery unending.
Graham Tugwell, Deirdre Sullivan, and Sarah Maria Griff—my Doomsburies. Writing is not so lonely a job when you have such fiendish and wonderful comrades-in-arms. This book would be much poorer without their advice and insight. The same goes for Sarah Jane Nangle, PhD; Arvind Ethan David; Melissa Jensen; Vanessa O’Loughlin; Roe McDermot; Kerrie O’Brien; the Arts Council of Ireland; and the staff of the Creative Writing masters program at UCD.
And to Rebecca. She read it first.
DAVE RUDDEN enjoys cats, adventure, and being cruel to fictional children. This is his first novel. Find him at daverudden.com and on Twitter at @d_ruddenwrites.
