by Dave Rudden
It was why they had killed Denizen’s father, all those years ago.
“I’m not angry,” Denizen said. This lie came more easily. It was one he’d been telling himself a lot. “I did what needed to be done. That’s all.”
Fire thrashed in the pit of his stomach. There had always been an eagerness to the power, but in the last few months that eagerness had grown teeth. Maybe it was the same for all Knights, but Denizen’s education had been ... different.
“Your ability with the Cants is far more advanced than your training should allow. That’s dangerous. Whatever Mercy did to you—”
“She helped me,” Denizen said, more sharply than he intended. “We never would have survived without her.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures, wasn’t that the phrase? And times had been extremely desperate six months ago. The chaos of the Three’s attack and the imminent wrath of the Endless King had left the Order scattered, Vivian wounded, and Denizen alone—an untutored Neophyte yet to master a single Cant, the eldritch words used to channel the Tenebrae’s power. Without the Cants, using that power was an act of sheer willpower for a Knight—one that more often than not resulted in said Knight being scraped off the walls.
And then Mercy had ... spoken to him. The Cants had originally come from her father, apparently—there was another revelation for the pile—and she had breathed an unparalleled understanding of them into Denizen so they both could survive.
“Mercy made me fluent,” Denizen said, forcing calmness into his voice. “It would have taken me years to learn them all. I know them now. I can feel them in my head.”
Every hour. Every minute. I can feel them. A bead of sweat ran down Denizen’s forehead. He fought the urge to brush it away.
“I know,” Vivian interrupted. “I know. But you have to be careful. Most Knights only learn as many Cants as they need, because with knowledge comes desire. The fire wants to be used. Power carries—”
“A Cost,” Denizen said. It had once been small, just a crushed bud of dark metal in his left palm, but six months of Cants and battle had made that flower bloom. Now it spread over both palms, lapping at the veins of his wrists as if aching to spill over. “I know.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Vivian said tiredly. “There are ... other prices a Knight can pay.” She turned the car part over and over in her hands. She’d been obsessed with restoring everything damaged by the Clockwork Three, as if killing them hadn’t been enough and she wanted to erase any trace of their existence.
It was one of the few things about his mother that Denizen really understood.
“I just want you to be careful,” she said.
“I know.”
Denizen’s cheeks were burning, but whether it was from anger, embarrassment, or his power he didn’t know. The irritating and unglamorous side effect to being a Knight: drawing deep on the power made light spill from their every pore, a halo of warrior intent ... that manifested most of the time as a low-level blush.
He awkwardly shrugged in the direction of the door. “Can I…?”
Vivian gave a single, silent nod. The scrape of a scouring pad followed Denizen as he disappeared into the candlelit dark of Seraphim Row, and her words echoed in his head.
I just want you to be careful.
Power crackled and hissed within him. It felt like it disagreed.
SERAPHIM ROW LOOMED OVER every other building on the street like the tumbledown bones of a giant. Gargoyles keened silently from its roof, baring long stone fangs. At first glance, they were terrifying— asymmetrical tangles of claws and wings, the worst parts of serpents crossed with nightmares of birds. Only close inspection would reveal that each gargoyle was not roaring but cowering, limbs bent as if to ward off a blow.
This was a place, the unseen message went, of which monsters should be afraid.
Simon and the others had gone outside to try to soak up the last of the evening’s sunlight, and Denizen found them lounging in the back garden, dappled in the patchwork shadows of trees.
He took a seat beside Darcie and she nudged him with a shoulder. “I’m glad you’re OK. All of you.”
“Thanks,” he said, flashing her a halfhearted smile.
“You idiots,” she added reprovingly. Darcie Wright had a very good reproving voice—clipped and precise. It didn’t hurt that at sixteen years old she was the smartest person in the room—any room—and when she spoke, even Vivian Hardwick listened.
“Well, that’s everybody,” Simon said, and Denizen grinned. “Are we idiots because we got distracted or for going off assignment in the first place?”
“Pick one,” she said. “I don’t approve of needless danger.”
“Sorry,” Denizen said, and meant it. Away from Vivian’s searching gaze, some of his anger had leaked away.
Abigail was looking at him with her arms folded.
“What?”
“Did you talk?” Abigail pressed. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” Denizen said. “Or—I don’t know. Terrible. Something.”
“Well, you’ve covered all the bases there.”
“Simon,” Darcie said. “Be nice.” Dark glasses did little to hide her mock-serious expression, her mass of black curls bouncing as she turned to Denizen. “But did you talk?”
Denizen threw up his hands.
“We talked. We didn’t talk talk. We never talk talk. We don’t have anything to talk talk about.”
“ ’Course not,” Simon said. “I mean, she’s only the estranged mother who left you in an orphanage eleven years ago to pursue a suicidal revenge mission. Why would you need to talk about that?”
Had anyone else summed up the great, tragic, and extremely melodramatic story of the Hardwick family in one sentence, Denizen might have been annoyed. Simon had earned the right to flippancy, though, because so much of Denizen’s story was also his own. He had been in the orphanage every lonely night of Denizen’s life, just one bed across. He had shared the same violent awakening of Tenebraic power on his thirteenth birthday. In fact, pretty much the only part of the whole debacle Simon hadn’t also experienced was having one of his parents mysteriously reappear.
Denizen was very glad Simon was here at Seraphim Row. It made it seem slightly more like home. A lot more than having his mother there did, which was basically the entire problem.
Vivian and Denizen didn’t talk, in general. Well…they talked about training, the correct usage of Cants, or the right direction to run a whetstone down a blade. They had once had an extremely long conversation about the appropriate amount of grout for retiling the bathroom after the Tenebraic assault.
What they hadn’t talked about was why, after the Clockwork Three had murdered Denizen’s father eleven years ago, his mother had chosen to seek revenge instead of being…well…his mother.
“We talked about what we always talk about,” Denizen said, shoulders hunching as if he were trying to fold into himself and disappear. “She’s afraid that having all the Cants in my head is going to have some ... ill effect. She wants to talk about restraint. Which I totally understand. It’s her area of expertise.”
That came out a little harsher than he’d expected, but Denizen didn’t care. “It took a very-nearly-apocalypse for her to open up to me last time about my father, and now that the world isn’t in grave peril she’s clammed up again.”
“You could try bringing it up with her,” Darcie said gently. “Meet her halfway?”
“But why should I?” Denizen said hotly. “Why can’t she talk to me? She spent years running away from me and now I’m just supposed to what—forgive and forget? Even thinking about it makes my head want to explode. And she keeps bringing up Mercy and staring at me like I’m a time bomb. Like there’s something wrong with me just because I ...”
Denizen’s lip tingled where lightning had once touched it. He hastily cleared his throat.
“Just because I was helped by a Tenebrous.” He sighed. “Look, I can tal
k to you guys about it, that’s ... that’s easy. You all understand.”
He looked around at the expressions on their faces.
“You do understand, right?”
Abigail held up a hand. “Well ... No. You’re right. We do what has to be done.”
Simon shrugged. “I’m generally in favor of not-apocalypses.”
Darcie frowned. “I want to understand,” she said gently. “But are you all right? Because you told us what happened with Mercy, but we haven’t discussed it. Not really.”
The Cants shifted uneasily in Denizen’s head. It took the barest thought to set them off, like birds spooked from a wire. And when they moved, spiraling round his head, making it hard to concentrate or think…sometimes he saw a pattern, the way a language can almost be heard in the crackling of flame.
It took him a moment to realize he hadn’t answered Darcie’s question. “I’m fine. I am. And, besides, I needed her help. It was the only way to survive.”
“I know,” Darcie said quietly. “I’m sure Mercy did what it had to do.”
Her choice of pronoun wasn’t lost on Denizen, and so he turtled behind a noncommittal phrase.
“I’m sure everything will sort itself out in the end.”
“Things aren’t just going to sort themselves out with Vivian, Denizen,” said Abigail, turning gracefully on a bare heel. “If she can’t start the conversation, you should. Honestly, lay it all out on the table—”
“I can’t lay things out on the table. The table would collapse,” Denizen said, with a bit more acid than he had intended, and then sighed. “Sorry. I will. When I’m ready.”
He knew his friends were right. He just wasn’t particularly good at opening up about his feelings. It wasn’t a skill that had been very useful up until now. Eleven years of believing his parents to be dead had left Denizen with a fairly straightforward coping strategy:
Avoid feeling anything. Box it up. Shove it somewhere deep, unlabeled and unmarked, in the vaults of your head.
He could feel those boxes there now—stack upon stack—teetering at the slightest breath.
Pull one out and they might all come crashing down.
When Denizen’s father had been killed by the Three, Vivian had gone looking for vengeance, fully believing that she would die in the attempt. Had she not proven herself tenaciously unkillable, Denizen would never have known her at all.
How did you even start to process that?
No. It was far easier to ignore emotion, push it away, run from it, or feed it to the flames. And the worst thing of all was the question in his head—
Was that what Vivian was doing too?
URIEL WONDERED SOMETIMES WHAT life would be like without certainty.
For every Favored Croit, there were a dozen un-Favored. Unblessed by fire, they were the ones who dealt with provisioning Eloquence and managing all Outside concerns—watched over, of course, by Grandfather. Then, obviously, there were other people— mundane irrelevances, swarming over the world like ants. Grandfather spoke of them with disgust, when he acknowledged them at all.
To Uriel, their existence was hearsay. Only the Favored could walk this sacred ground. And yet…Uriel had always wondered.
What was it like not being a Croit?
How did you know what you wanted to be? How did you find your purpose? Did you just randomly pick things to do? How did you know if you were right or not?
Insanity.
The Croits were certain because the Croits were chosen, and Uriel thanked the Redemptress that his life was not left to such wanton chance.
“Tell me the story,” Grandfather said, his voice echoing round the Shrine.
“It’s not a story,” Uriel and Ambrel said together, and he could feel the fire thrashing inside her, just as he knew she could feel his.
“Then tell me the Truth.”
The warriors filling the Shrine wore armor, not that it had done them much good. Every one of them had perished here, eyes wide with fear and hate. Uriel’s practiced eye made out myriad different styles of armor and weapons—this was not an army but an attack of individuals, bound together by a single cause. They had only two characteristics in common: first, not one had faced death with anything less than fury.
Second, they were all made of iron.
The Truth.
Uriel began, just as they had practiced. “There was a man. A great man. The First Croit. He walked the world, and darkness was no barrier to his sight.”
“Darkness was no barrier to his sight,” Grandfather and Ambrel repeated, hands ghosting over their eyes. Though there was no light in the Shrine, Uriel now saw perfectly, every detail outlined in cold silver.
The Luster. Thank you, my Redemptress.
Ambrel stepped over a woman in her death throes, eyes wide behind the grille of her helm. A man’s hands were raised as if shaping something in the air, mouth open in a vicious snarl.
“He heard a voice,” his sister continued, weaving through the statues, “a darkness in the shape of a girl.” A radiant smile lit her features. “They fell in love.”
It seemed like such a small thing. Such a tiny word, to be so important, and so when Uriel thought of love, of that love, he thought of the Favor in his chest—the incandescent heat of it. It longed to be used, to spill out and light the dark, but Uriel tamped it down, using the words that Grandfather had taught him.
It is not mine to use.
It is Hers.
Eloquence swarmed with wires, but it was here that they came together, an elegant snarl of serrated black. Round and round they built, winding and twining until they formed a wide skirt, then the slimness of a waist.
The Redemptress of the Croits—a sculpture of a thousand filaments, splaying to form limbs and chest and head. A goddess in wire frame.
She was beautiful.
Not beautiful in the way a human could be beautiful. No, this was a sparse and terrible kind of beauty, a beauty like that of the island, the kind of beauty that wanted you dead.
“They fell in love,” Grandfather repeated, and there was a strange new sadness in his voice. Uriel had never considered it before, but the tremor in Grandfather’s words made Uriel consider just how lonely the old man’s life must be. It had been so long since Grandmother had died.
“She wore the light of a world as a bridal veil.” Grandfather’s right hand clasped the gaping sleeve of his left. “And the fire of that Favor bloomed in his chest.”
It was a simple catechism. Easy to remember, as these things should be. The words all Croits knew.
SHE LOVED.
SHE STOLE.
AND WE KNEW FIRE.
All their certainty came from here.
Ambrel’s hand found Uriel’s. Her voice was low. Reverent.
“She’s perfect. Isn’t She?”
Wires split and wove to create the suggestion of cheeks, eye sockets, and a cruelly imperious nose. Her hair trailed down the skeletal jag of Her spine, or maybe became Her spine—with the black on black, it was hard to tell. In places, Uriel could see through the gaps of Her, and in others She was opaque.
Filaments poured from Her body in jagged cascades, binding the statues’ limbs, throttling, slashing, and pinning, like a thousand sword blades all wielded at once.
Uriel’s heart ached with it. This was his Family’s history—his history, right in front of him. Uriel knew mundane people had their own beliefs—beliefs born of uncertainty, of fear, of hope. Idiots. How could you believe something you couldn’t see?
His goddess was right in front of his eyes. She was Truth. Compared to Her, it was Uriel who felt unreal, a flimsy paper lantern barely containing Her flame.
“Now tell me of the Adversary.”
Grandfather was already in the center of the chamber, having weaved his way in between the frozen warriors like they weren’t there.
They weren’t statues. Uriel would have known that even if there wasn’t now a spot of black iron in his own palm. Statues did
n’t have the same painfully frozen vitality these metal warriors had. Statues didn’t have eyelashes.
Uriel’s voice didn’t shake. More than Eloquence itself, this tale was the architecture of their childhood. “The Adversary came for them in a hundred iron bodies, their hearts hard and cold. They hated the love She had for the First Croit, and the battle was so great it shook Eloquence from its perch, tumbling it to the valley below. And, wounded gravely, our Redemptress sank into a deep, dark sleep.”
Their eyes were so angry. So afraid.
“We failed Her that day. We survived when She fell. And from then on we were cursed to wear the iron of the Adversary. Our Transgression. Until, as the First Croit promised ...”
“She rises again,” Ambrel finished. “And forgives us our sins.”
“That is why we serve Her,” Grandfather said quietly. “Our fire must be a Prayer to Her because only She can save us from the iron. Only She can save us from ourselves.”
Uriel’s hand hurt from where Ambrel was clutching it. He turned, and she was crying, tears spilling down her cheeks. It was very disconcerting to see his twin smiling and sobbing at the same time, but that was nothing compared to the horror he felt at the thought of her lost to the iron, just one more statue in the dark.
The Redemptress’s hatred of the Adversary radiated from Her, even in stillness, and Uriel vowed to carry that hate with him wherever he went. For his sister, so that one day she might be saved.
A single wire arced across the chamber, scribing jagged words on one wall. The language was ancient and outdated, but Uriel’s training pierced history the way his eyes pierced the dark.
Her last message to her Family.
I LOVE Y
Tears were welling in Uriel’s eyes now.
I love you too.
He was certain of it.
THEY FOUGHT BY CANDLELIGHT.
Denizen had learned many hard lessons under the grim eaves of Seraphim Row, but first and foremost was this: Knights of the Borrowed Dark didn’t march into battle flinging Cants like bad-tempered firework displays. Cants were used sparingly, as last resorts and dirty tricks, spoken only when you had no other choice. The first rule of Knighthood: you only have so much skin to give.
