Knights of the Borrowed Dark Read online

  He didn’t recognize this flag at all.

  It was white—whiter than snow or milk or any of those comparisons people use for describing colors. It was the white of a flag—the kind of white that people fight for.

  In the center of the white there was a hand, palm outward, as if to stop or ward off. It was the deep black of an unstarred sky. Behind it were two crossed hammers in the same funereal shade.

  Denizen looked closer. The hammer was a symbol too—an important symbol. Hammers were just about the oldest tools humanity had. They built things. They raised up homes. These looked a little like sledgehammers—long-handled, with blunt, massive heads.

  There was an iron plaque beside the door marked with the same hand-and-hammers symbol. Underneath were the words EMBASSY OF THE KINGDOM OF ADUMBRAL in flowing golden script.

  “Adumbral,” Denizen said. “Where’s Adumbral? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “I’d be very surprised if you had. The whole country’s about four kilometers across.” Grey was rummaging in his pocket. “Nice place, though. Maybe you’ll see it someday.”

  He slid a long iron key into the lock. It turned with a rough click.

  “So my aunt lives in an embassy?” Denizen said, the No. 13 Questioning Frown making a brief appearance.

  “Well, this isn’t really an embassy. Not exactly. Not at all, in fact.”

  “So what happens if someone from Adumbral comes here looking for help?”

  Grey paused. “You know, it’s never come up.”

  The door swung open, and they stepped into candlelight.

  Heat washed over Denizen. There were candles everywhere—arrayed over the mantelpiece, on plinths by the walls, even on the floor—carving the carpet into geometric lines. A massive chandelier hung overhead, lit with so many little fires that it glowed like a composite sun.

  Grey stepped over the lines of candles as if they weren’t there, and Denizen followed, picking his way carefully. He squinted, but between the winking, dancing flames there was only darkness. It was like standing in the middle of a constellation.

  Denizen had never really thought about the difference between electric light and candlelight. Electric light was stark. It was constant. It forced the dark back with a snap of a switch—one state or another, on or off. This was true of even Crosscaper’s dim bulbs, which didn’t so much light up a room as show off its dirt better.

  Candlelight was something different. It grew from the head of a match like something alive, pushing back the darkness in fits and starts, luring it in and burning it away. It breathed and it danced and it ate what you fed it.

  Grey appeared utterly at home in the gloom. He tossed his bag into a corner—it disappeared, black-on-swallowing-black—and beckoned Denizen to follow him up a great set of marble stairs that suddenly loomed out of the darkness, a candle glowing on each step.

  As his eyes adjusted, Denizen could make out maps on the walls, old charts in gilded frames, banners and shields that looked like they belonged in a museum. Each one was marked with the hand-and-hammers.

  They passed portraits. Denizen looked at them as he went by, the briefest glance before moving on.

  An old man in armor with a beard like a rain cloud, one eyebrow raised as if daring you to comment. A hammer hung at his waist, twin to the ones on the flag outside, and the plaque below the painting read:

  MALLEUS EDWIN ROOK 1765–1811

  Another man in the same armor, this one with a great mass of scars down one side of his face. Denizen couldn’t tell if he was grinning or if the scars had just pulled his face that way. He wore a hammer too.

  MALLEUS CASTOR GILHANE 1780–1832

  Next, an ancient woman with a hard jaw and silver hair. She held her hammer close, gauntlets resting on its battered iron head. Maybe it was the same weapon, handed down from warrior to warrior, from century to century.

  MALLEUS SOROPHINA DEVRENY 1810–1900

  “Grey?”

  There was someone waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

  Candles painted the girl out of the darkness, turning her round, tinted spectacles into dazzling mirrors. Denizen saw her dark blue frock coat, her mass of unfettered black curls, and finally her white teeth, bright against skin the color of milkless tea.

  “Are you all right?” Her accent was British, the words clipped and precise, yet softened by worry. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Denizen—fifteen or sixteen at most. “Should I have rung D’Aubigny? I had to—”

  “Not at all,” Grey said. “I was in the area—you did the right thing. And I sorted it. So it’s fine.” He smiled brightly.

  The girl still looked concerned. “Could you identify it? For my notes. Anything you can tell me would be useful.”

  Grey shrugged. “How am I supposed to know what it was?”

  “You’re not,” she said. “I am. While it’s fresh in your head, Grey. Any and all details would be helpful.”

  “Sorry, Darcie,” Grey said, gracefully stepping round her. “It was a thing. I killed the thing. I don’t know what else to tell you. Besides, more important things are afoot. Denizen Hardwick, may I introduce Darcie Wright, our resident genius.”

  The barest of smiles flitted across her face. “I have asked you before not to introduce me that way.”

  She and Denizen shook hands, and then her expression changed from polite to hawkish interest. “Wait. Denizen Hardwick?”

  “Vivian’s nephew,” said Grey.

  “Oh,” Darcie said. She was still staring at Denizen like he was a particularly interesting laboratory specimen. “I wasn’t aware she had a nephew.”

  “That’s all right,” Denizen said, feeling vaguely silly. “I didn’t know either.”

  “So a new recruit, then?” Darcie said to Grey.

  “That’s what we’ve brought him here to find out.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “So he’s not…Grey, if I had known—”

  “Darcie,” Grey said firmly. “It’s fine. I think his aunt would like to speak with him herself.”

  She nodded. “Of course. Of course she would. Carry on, then. Denizen, it was nice to meet you.”

  Denizen forced a smile past a No. 8 frown. He hadn’t understood half of what they’d said, but it was probably rude to cut in and ask for an explanation. Grey had said all would become clear in time, and if his aunt was somewhere around, he didn’t have much longer to wait.

  He looked back at Darcie. Just before the darkness swallowed her, she mouthed something at him.

  It looked like good luck.

  “You’ll like Darcie,” Grey said as they walked. “She’s our…librarian. Sort of. This way, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  They made their way through shadowy corridors. Candles were everywhere—placed in hanging lanterns, jammed crookedly in wall sconces, sitting on saucers on the floor. There seemed to be no pattern to their placement. One corridor had so many candles that Denizen could make out every detail of the wall hangings that decorated it. Others were lit with so few that all he could do was step blindly after the sound of Grey’s footsteps.

  There were more portraits in some of the hallways they passed, but Denizen didn’t get a chance to look at them. The air was thick with the smell of dust and melting wax.

  They passed through a huge room lit by a single candle so it seemed like the darkness fell away forever on both sides. Denizen thought he heard footsteps mirroring his, just for a moment, but when he listened harder they faded away.

  Thoughts bit and thieved at him. What am I going to say to her?

  Up until earlier, Denizen had been quite proud of his plan. He’d been sure his aunt was only contacting him because she wanted some connection to his parents, or to get rid of the guilt of not being around eleven years ago when he’d really needed a next of kin.

  She would be upset. She’d be looking for some kind of forgiveness, and he’d grant it—no skin off his nose—but in return he’d want every single thing she
knew about his parents. After that, he didn’t particularly mind if she wanted him to live with her or not. All he wanted to know was where he came from.

  But the bad-dream angel had changed all that. Denizen’s plan had existed in a world where there weren’t strange shadow-creatures or mansions full of candles. They changed things. They certainly put him off trying to figure out what was going on just in case more horrors emerged from the woodwork.

  If his aunt had come to him instead of sending her…colleague…he would have had whole hours to talk to her. Instead, he’d been dragged from place to place, was nearly killed, and was now tramping through darkened corridors because she didn’t even have the courtesy to meet him at the front door.

  “Wait.” Denizen leaned against a wall and folded his arms. “I’ve had enough. Sorry.”

  Grey turned to face him and blinked. “Come again?”

  “The rushing about. The I’ll tell you laters. It’s like you’re enjoying all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Very little of today has made sense, and I want you to actually explain what’s going on. What this is. All of it.”

  “And you’ll get an explanation, Denizen. I’ve told you. Your aunt will—”

  Denizen fought to keep the anger out of his voice. “My aunt didn’t even bother to collect me herself. She wouldn’t have brought me here had something not pulled itself out of the concrete and tried to kill me. Sorry if I’d rather know what’s happening.” He took a deep breath. “So shove your mystery. I’ll wait here.”

  Grey stared at him for a long moment, and then his eyes flicked to something behind Denizen. His voice was wry. “You Hardwicks are all alike.”

  Denizen turned round.

  She wore armor. Real armor, the kind that Denizen had only ever seen in the black-and-white illustrations in history books. A cloak as white as snowfall was pinned to her shoulder guards—Pauldrons, Denizen’s memory offered, they’re called pauldrons—which gleamed above a chest plate of polished steel. Its center was worked with the same hand-and-hammers symbol Denizen had seen everywhere since coming to Seraphim Row. The backs of her massive gauntlets were carved with it too. A hammer hung from her waist—blunt and brutal and utterly inelegant. A tool of war. Of breaking and death.

  It was the softest thing about her.

  Her steel-gray hair was scraped back from her skull in a painfully tight knot. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut glass; her lips twisted in disapproval below a long nose and eyes of the palest, coldest gray.

  Eyes, he realized, not dissimilar to his.

  Vivian Hardwick stared at him and said nothing at all.

  DENIZEN WITHERED BENEATH her gaze. It was like being ice under a blowtorch. Butter under a red-hot sword. Vivian’s eyes were the shade and softness of a castle wall, and they fell on Denizen with the same unforgiving weight.

  After roughly a hundred million years, her gaze shifted back to Grey. It didn’t look like the stare was having the same effect on him. Instead, he stepped forward and gave a swift and courtly bow.

  “Malleus, I—”

  She cut him off with the wave of a gauntlet. “You were to observe him at the hotel.”

  Grey looked slightly sheepish. “There was little point in keeping up a pretense, Malleus. Darcie caught a Breach coming into the city, and I was the closest to deal with it. Denizen saw everything. I thought it best to bring him straight to you.”

  “Why?” she snapped.

  Grey’s brows knitted. “Well…you’re family. He should hear it from you.”

  “Hear what?” Denizen asked. Neither Grey nor his aunt seemed to notice he’d spoken.

  “The best course would have been to wait until after we were sure,” she said coldly.

  “My apologies, Malleus,” Grey said, his tone excessively formal. “I won’t—”

  She ignored him. “Denizen. Follow me.”

  She turned on her heel and strode back the way she’d come. Denizen and Grey followed.

  Denizen couldn’t take his eyes off her. Vivian Hardwick was tall, towering over even Grey, and her voice was hoarse as if not used to speaking above a growl. And that had been the second time someone had mentioned a kind of test or condition to his being here.

  His fists clenched. So, what—there was something he had to do, and if he failed, they’d just send him home? They expected him to ignore everything he’d seen? And Grey had called her Malleus, the same title as the old people in the portraits.

  What was this place?

  Grey and Vivian were talking quietly. Denizen tried his best to listen without it looking like he was eavesdropping.

  “Is Director Carsing still at Crosscaper?”

  “No. A man named Ackerby. Dreadful human. Very nervous. Eager to get Denizen out of the door.”

  A strange expression darted across her face before she frowned again. “Eager? You didn’t think that odd?”

  “I just thought you’d paid him a visit. With respect, Malleus.”

  “Hrmph. And the Breach?”

  “Happened when we were coming into the tunnel. Darcie was going to send Jack, but it just fell into my lap. Couldn’t have avoided it.”

  “And the creature?”

  “Shrapnel.”

  “Good.”

  She pushed open a set of double doors and disappeared into the room beyond.

  Torches—real torches, like something from a haunted castle—cast puddles of light across a great wooden desk. It dominated the room like the jutting prow of an ancient ship. One wall was lined with cabinets, another with three cloth-and-plastic mannequins. The floor was polished planks.

  More paintings and charts hung on the walls, but they were not what grabbed Denizen’s attention. Instead, he stared at a galaxy of swords.

  Some were long, graceful curves of steel—the kind that a samurai might carry into war. Others were the classic type of sword you saw in fantasy stories—wide-bladed, single-edged, the hilts topped with a ball of steel. Single-edged swords barely longer than kitchen knives rested beside massive two-handed glaives that looked like they’d hammer rather than cut. There were slender blades that seemed barely strong enough to hold an edge, and flat, wide swords like butchers’ cleavers with backswept hooks at their points.

  For Denizen, swords were swords. He knew, in a vague sort of way, that for a couple of thousand years the sword was the highest form of military hardware in the world. He knew there were different types. He just hadn’t thought there were so many.

  They reflected the light like a declaration of war.

  Vivian swept into the middle of the room and unclipped her cloak from her shoulders, folding it over one arm. The armor whispered as she moved, steel on leather on steel.

  “How was the meeting?” Grey said, taking the cloak from her and hanging it on a hook on the wall. He stepped behind her and undid a strap on her armor, sliding the pauldron free with a practiced motion and putting it on one of the mannequins.

  Vivian shrugged a curve of metal from her other shoulder and handed it to Grey. “Long. And boring. And I look like an idiot.”

  She didn’t. She looked like a long war in silver. The armor was unpainted, though subtle carvings swept across its surface. Denizen had read about knights in finery; they wore their colors proudly, heraldry painted bright on their shields and armor so that everyone knew who they were. This wasn’t armor to look at. This was armor to keep you alive while someone tried to kill you.

  “Any news from the Palatine?” Grey said. Vivian glanced at Denizen and her mouth pursed.

  Grey sighed. “The cat’s out of the bag now, Malleus. Even if we tell him nothing else, he’s seen one of them. It can’t do any more harm.”

  She said nothing as Grey undid more of the fastenings on her armor. There was a padded jacket under her chest plate, and she dragged out its laces with short jerks until the whole garment hung loose. Her vest underneath was dark with sweat.

  “So you do plan to tell me what’s happening?” Denizen blurted out,
and then paled as that blowtorch stare fell on him again.

  His aunt slipped the hammer free from her belt and held it up in the air. It was nothing like Grey’s blade or the swords that hung on the wall. Those were beautiful—elegance rendered in cold and shining steel. Whether it was a hilt worked to look like a snarling wolf’s head or even just a scrap of tied ribbon, each weapon had a hint of art to soften its killing edge.

  The hammer had none of that. Its haft was thick oak, the head a cruel lump of black iron. There were dents and nicks in its surface. It drank the light instead of reflecting it. Whoever forged it had made no attempt to lessen its brutal functionality. Its haft must have been the width of Denizen’s wrist, but his aunt held it one-handed. How strong is she?

  “What do you think is happening?” Vivian said, turning the hammer this way and that. The way she said it made anger flicker dully in his stomach. She spoke as if she were talking to a small child or to no one at all.

  “Sorophina Devreny.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “The hammer,” he responded. “I’ve seen it before. In her portrait on the staircase.”

  “Sharp eyes,” his aunt said without a trace of approval.

  “I think,” Denizen began, “that when things come through from…this other place, you fight them. And kill them. I think Grey used something impossible to do it. He used magic—”

  “I hate that word.”

  “Well, whatever, but something that shouldn’t exist.” Denizen was sweating now. He felt like he had just before the bad-dream angel pushed its way into the world—sick, like nothing fit together the way it should. It made his words come out slowly or wrong, made him feel frantic, out of his depth. Angry. He wanted to show her that he wasn’t some stupid kid they’d dragged out of an orphanage. He wanted to prove himself, and he didn’t know why.

  “I think you’re both soldiers. You definitely act like one,” he said to his aunt. “But he doesn’t.” At this, Grey gave an idly mocking salute. “And soldiers don’t wear armor and carry war hammers. Not anymore.”