The Reminiscent Exile Series, Books 1-3: Distant Star, Broken Quill, Knight Fall

by Joe Ducie

  Too many questions. Perhaps I should have just been thankful to be alive when so many weren’t. I had failed Clare, as I had failed Tal. Marcus had been right all along, and on some level, I’d known that for the truth.

  Only the guilty understand the cost of true power, Aaron had said. He’d got that right.

  I headed upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes. The shirt and waistcoat I wore felt as though they belonged to a dead man. I spent a good hour under the scalding hot water, trying very hard not to beat my head against the tiled wall.

  In my closet was a row of fresh shirts and trousers. I selected a black waistcoat and, given the torn and bloodied state of my grey one, bestowed the coat with the dubious honor of “favorite”. I shrugged into it carefully, being careful to not pull too much at the taut, hard skin across my stomach.

  Now what?

  Being alive… it didn’t feel real, somehow. I felt as though I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yawning, I sat down on the edge of my bed and thought of Clare. I remembered her, just a week ago, getting dressed here in a shaft of sunlight. She had been beautiful.

  Distantly, I heard the bell above my door downstairs chime as someone let themselves in. I hadn’t locked it behind me, and the wards weren’t up. Was it someone come to hurt me, or just a customer?

  I grabbed a copy of Figley’s Assassin, the very same Jeffrey Brade had tried to use against me, and headed downstairs.

  The shop was quiet. I couldn’t see anyone.

  Barefooted, I stepped lightly along the floorboards. “Who’s here?” I asked, my voice a harsh whisper. “Show your—”

  Sophie barreled into me at top speed when I rounded the edge of the shelves. Her tiny weight almost sent me tumbling over a stack of fiction, but I caught myself against the wall. “Well, hello there, ‘Phie.”

  “I thought you were dead, you idiot!”

  “I… was.”

  Sophie swatted me on the chest. “Where’ve you been? What happened? I’m sorry we couldn’t help you—Marcus, he pulled us back across to Ascension City and then here. He burned Tales of Atlantis, Declan. Without it we—”

  “It’s okay. I know. He did what he thought was right and probably saved your lives.” Selling me out to Renegade and plunging Forget back into war as well, but that was revenge for another time. “Are you okay? Is Ethan?”

  “Ethan? Yes, he’s fine. He’s at university.” Sophie looked at me. Really looked at me. “God, you look so unwell. Come and sit down.”

  I didn’t argue. She led me over to my comfortable window alcove and sat me down in front of the typewriter. A half-written page hung in its teeth. Writing was the farthest thing from my mind.

  “Declan, please, what happened?”

  I looked into Sophie’s face and shrugged. She deserved to know that I saw Tal again, if nothing else. I told her everything. She sat and listened, with her legs tucked underneath her on the leather sofa. She listened quietly, scared, and I could see a thousand questions blazing behind her eyes. I finished and reached for a bottle of scotch.

  “You were dead,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw Tal.”

  “Oh yes.”

  Sophie looked down and bit her lip.

  “Were you expecting something else? Something more?” I chuckled, but it hurt. “For all of us to live happily ever after?”

  “Is that silly?”

  “No. A touch naïve, perhaps, but in the best way.” I stood, joined Sophie on the sofa, and slipped an arm around her shoulders to pull her close. “Perfect endings… they don’t exist, ‘Phie. Only in stories, where nothing ever really changes. Here, right now, isn’t a story. There is no happy ending, because it’s not the end. Do you understand?”

  Sophie sniffed and placed her hand on my knee. “I miss Tal.”

  Me too.

  *~*~*~*

  A day later, the bell above my door chimed and heavy, somber boots clipped a steady beat on the floorboards. Someone slowly but surely was navigating my maze of books, and he or she was not a customer, unless I’d lost my wits entirely somewhere between Atlantis and the land of the dead. I didn’t bother to lift my head from the unedited pages of my novel on the counter.

  Honestly, I didn’t care.

  “So this is the afterlife?” asked a deep baritone voice.

  “Haven’t you heard?” I reached below the counter, fetched another glass. “I’m immortal these days, Your Majesty.”

  I poured Jon Faraday two fingers’ worth of Glenlivet 12. He didn’t get the spicy 15. Not after his piss poor performance on the Plains of Perdition and the whole exile under pain of death affair. He took the glass with a nod of thanks.

  “Yes. That’s a rumor spreading faster than wildfire through Forget. Declan Hale, the Immortal King of Atlantis.” Faraday chuckled and took a sip. “Certainly not a part of the plan, to feed your legend, but even the very wise cannot see all ends, hmm.”

  “You let this happen, Gandalf.” With a few sad days to think on it, such a miserable conclusion was the only thing that made sense. “What do you want now?”

  “You know what I want, Hale.” Faraday stroked the rough stubble coating his chin. “The Renegades destroyed, Forget united, and your head on a pike paraded through the streets of Ascension City, amidst the sounds of imperial trumpet calls and wild, mindless ovation.”

  “Well…” I had to choose my words carefully. “Click your heels three times, Dorothy, and wish real hard.”

  “I suppose I owe you thanks, in a way. If not for you and your penchant for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, Renegade may well have seized the Infernal Clock and used it to destroy us all.”

  “You let me escape the Fae Palace, didn’t you? You let Clare and Ethan think they’d been so clever in their rescue and let me seek Atlantis and undo the Degradation… You played me.”

  “Let us be honest, Declan. Can we be that, just this once? You wanted to be played.” He looked around at my dusty old shop with a sneer of distaste. “Sitting on the bench was insulting for you, wasn’t it? After the Tome Wars? You were chewing at the bit to be tagged back in.”

  “People were hurt. Clare Valentine suffered, Jon. She died afraid.” Goddamn it, she died without knowing how much I cared. I pressed my thumb and forefinger against my eyelids. “True love never saves the damn day, does it?”

  “Her death was a regrettable loss, but look at the outcome—the Degradation undone, Morpheus Renegade, our greatest adversary, dead. His legions are in disarray and treasures lost ten millennia ago are being retrieved from the ruins of Atlantis as we speak. Small regions of Renegade-controlled Forget are rebelling, as word of his death spreads, but that is manageable. This was a win for the home team.”

  “Emily, his queen, is still out there. She has at least a half-dozen petals from the Infernal Clock as well as the Roseblade.”

  “And all the reason in the world to want you dead.” Faraday chuckled. “I fear she will be your problem before mine. But then who can blame her? You’ve always made better enemies than friends.”

  “What if I’d failed? What if the Everlasting had barred my path? If Morpheus had killed me before I reached the Infernal Clock and undid the Degradation? If what’s left of Tal stopped my heart?” I threw my hands up. “Or a thousand other things that could have gone wrong.”

  Faraday nodded. “All taken into consideration. If you’d been killed, then that was one less treasonous madman to deal with. Your death would have solidified my powerbase beyond question. It still will, one day—and soon, no doubt. I don’t believe your immortality for a moment.”

  “I’m alive. I was dead. That should give you pause.”

  A cheap romance novel caught his eye, and Faraday pocketed the paperback. “However, you didn’t die, did you? Well, not until it didn’t matter anymore. But even that didn’t keep you down for long. No, you saved the day. And now I’m the king that recovered Atlantis for the people, and the king that
destroyed Morpheus Renegade. All roads, Declan… fortune and glory.”

  “Did you come to gloat?”

  “Partly.” Faraday helped himself to another splash of scotch. “And partly to make sure you understand that this changes nothing. Your exile stands. Return to Forget and a cell on Starhold will be the least of your concerns.”

  So, I’d returned to the start of all this, in a way. I let a carefree grin spread across my face. “I’m going to burn your kingdom to the ground and piss on the ashes.”

  King Faraday finished his drink and shrugged. “Perhaps you will. Take care, little brother.”

  My fists unclenched as Faraday saw himself out. The desire to fight, to unleash the Will within… was damn near overwhelming. A ripple of tension shuddered through my arm and an impossible door swung wide open in my mind, away in the ether and the Void beyond.

  I looked down. The words on the page were glowing.

  *~*~*~*

  The End of

  Book One

  Broken

  Quill

  The Reminiscent Exile: Book Two

  Joe Ducie

  THE FIRST ACT

  No direction home

  … the world is rudderless.

  ~Alan Moore

  Chapter One

  I Don’t Like Mondays

  “Are you sure you want to see this, son?” Detective Grey asked. He held up a strip of yellow police tape. Flashing blue and red lights played tricks with the shadows beneath the tall trees that lined the street running through the heart of Kings Park.

  I stifled a yawn and nodded. “Your boys pulled me out of a perfectly good drunken stupor at two in the morning and dragged me down here. Let’s be having it, Detective.”

  Grey shrugged and motioned me under the cordon past two uniformed officers standing guard. The grass underfoot was soft and wet, and a low fog hung in pale wisps a few inches above the ground, mixed with the taste of lavender and wildflowers. Kings Park at night was well lit, but that only served to ignite the mist with an eerie glow.

  I followed Grey along a meandering path next to rows of native flora, banksias and bottlebrush, planted as a natural barrier against the steep fall away to our left onto Mounts Bay Road. Built on a ridge a few hundred feet above Perth, Kings Park was the largest inner-city park in the world. The Swan River disappeared into the night far below, bordered by the Kwinana Freeway and a steady stream of headlights, even at this early hour.

  All in all, a very odd spot for a bit of late-night murder.

  Digital camera flashes fought a war with the red and blue emergency lights for the shadows. I was always mindful of the dark and what could be hiding in its inky folds. The police had set up tall halogen lamps along the path, bathing the grass in bright, artificial light. Detective Grey’s shadow cut away from his body behind him and to the right, across the ground.

  I looked at my feet, at something that wasn’t there. It was not something other people generally noticed, but I cast no shadow. I’d traded it for some magic beans and a jar of snake oil some five years ago.

  Past shenanigans...

  Grey stopped me at a desk set up on the path. He made me put on latex gloves and, over my leather shoes, disposable booties.

  “Do not touch anything,” he said.

  Ahead, a group of people were kneeling around what I assumed was a corpse lying under the boughs of a massive, gnarled oak tree. Or from the scant details I’d gleaned on the ride over, what was left of a corpse. The forensic folk were geared out head-to-toe in white bodysuits and facemasks, but one woman stood apart, in just gloves and booties like Grey and myself.

  The senior detective cut a careful path between two sets of small yellow cones—what I assumed was a cleared area, safe to walk.

  “Declan Hale, this is my partner, Detective Annie Brie. She’s in charge of this investigation. Annie, Declan Hale.”

  I met her eyes and felt something wonderful shiver through me—ice trickling down my spine, a touch of ecstasy for the soul—and for a moment was at a loss for words. My Will, a font in my mind that tapped a deep ocean of universal power, surged through my being and reached toward this woman.

  I stifled a gasp and shuddered, putting a tight leash on the power threatening to explode through every pore in my body. I’d only ever felt like this once before—as the Everlasting Oblivion tore my shadow away in Atlantis. The feeling dissipated, and I regained my focus, twice as hungover.

  Brie was a tall woman with a sharp jaw and straight black hair that framed her face. A young face—I’d put her in her late twenties, just a few years older than me. She was Asian but perhaps on only one side of the family. Her skin was pale, and the puffiness around her light green eyes suggested she had been fast asleep not too long ago.

  She offered me her hand. “Nice waistcoat, Declan Hale.”

  We shook. “Thank you, Detective Annie Brie. I think I’m going to like you.”

  “Where are we at, Annie?” Grey asked.

  Brie held my gaze another few moments before turning to her partner. “Forensics confirmed just the one victim, Sam, but given the mess, it was hard to tell. Are we sure he should be seeing this?” She shrugged a thumb my way.

  “It’s got his name written all over it,” Grey muttered. His smile looked skeletal and grim in the artificial light. “Show him.”

  Brie took a gentle hold of my wrist. “Step where I step, Mr. Hale.”

  She led me through a throng of faceless men and women, masked and clinically clean, and to the edge of the pathway that veered around the mighty oak tree. Scrawled in blood and entrails along one of the large concrete slabs was a message.

  :) The game is afoot, Declan Hale. Get it?

  A FOOT! Ha-ha-haar… LONG LIVE THE IMMORTAL KING! :(

  Well, that settled it. This murder was tied to Forget, to the mythical realms of story, possibly to Ascension City itself, and my life as an exiled Knight Infernal. The problem with that, of course, was that it didn’t narrow down the field of possible suspects one bit. No. Instead of one world to hide in, whoever—or whatever—had done this had millions. Next to the message was a human foot, ivory-blue, severed raggedly at the ankle. A sharp shaft of white bone, snapped at the shin, protruded from the break. The game is a foot, indeed.

  I looked away from the message and back at Detective Brie. “That’s my name.”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it I’m the only Declan Hale in Perth, which is why you pulled me out of bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s the rest of the body?”

  Sam Grey clapped me on the shoulder. “Look up, son.”

  I looked up. Various floodlights were positioned under the long, reaching boughs of the oak tree, illuminating the dark canopy. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, I spotted something gruesome.

  A head, eyes gouged and mouth caught in a final scream, hung pierced through the neck on one of the low-hanging branches.

  “Huh…” I said.

  Now that I saw it, I couldn’t look away. Brutally severed and bloody pieces of a man hung in the tree, as if he had exploded and the many branches had played catch. His torso, bruised and slick with blood, had been forced open and excavated. Whoever this poor bastard had been, someone—something?—had removed his heart.

  The missing heart rang a bell in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t place the chime, and I was being watched far too closely to conduct any Willful forensics.

  “You think I did this?” Nothing human did this.

  The detectives stared at me, faces blank.

  “What?”

  “Have you seen a lot of dead bodies before, Mr. Hale?” Brie asked.

  Did that deserve a lie? What was “a lot”? Crimson fields littered with enough dead that not even fire could cleanse the earth? A forest of bamboo that grew red because of all the blood the ground had absorbed? Oceans of innocents cut down in a war that spanned not only worlds but universes? A war I’d ended at the
bloody, genocidal point of a crystal sword. The Roseblade.

  I shrugged. “Declan, please. And one or two. You know, at funerals.”

  Grey grunted and gestured at the remains in the tree. “Only this didn’t seem to bother you very much. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so calm at a murder scene, especially one this ghastly.”

  “I’m doing my best to ward off a well-earned but inevitable hangover, Detective.” I pressed my fingers against my eyelids. “And trying very hard not to throw up the delicious steak I had at Paddy’s Pub last night, on Sugar Lane near Riverwood Plaza, where I was until closing time at midnight—drinking and not committing murder.”

  Brie jotted all that down in a little blue notebook. “No one’s accusing you of anything, Mr. Hale.” Yet. “We’ll check your alibi, of course, but I guess you know why we called you out here tonight.”

  “You’re the only Declan Hale in town,” Grey said. “And we were worried that this—” he gestured to the mess of blood and guts. “—was perhaps all that was left of you.”

  “You have any enemies, Mr. Hale?” Brie asked.

  Well… “Declan, please. No, not that I know of, Detective. I just run a bookshop and keep to myself, mostly.” An untrue truth. A deceptive truth, Detective.

  “Hmm…” She placed a hand on her hip and offered me half a smile. “You sure? Nothing I should know about? Have you received any threatening letters or text messages recently? Things like that could be related.”

  “Nope.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a battered old smartphone. Sophie had given it to me when she had upgraded to something flashier. “Only had a phone about a month.”

  Brie touched my forearm. I suppressed another shiver. Something about this woman was… troublesome. Images of Clare and, worse, Tal, flashed through my mind. Both women I had lost to the fires of Forget. Same old mistakes, brand new ways. Seconds become aeons. I thought of the Infernal Clock and rubbed at the crescent scar on my palm.