Knights of the Borrowed Dark Read online

  “We do if our war predates guns,” said Vivian.

  Denizen felt a laugh bubble up within him, a laugh born of panic, and he knew if he didn’t swallow it back, it would never stop.

  “I think that if a war had been going on that long, I’d know about it.”

  Another piece clattered to the desktop. Vivian still wore her gauntlets and somehow they looked like they belonged there—blunt, clutching things at the ends of her arms, devoid of warmth or humanity.

  Grey hung the last of the armor on the mannequin, his eyes never leaving Denizen’s face. Vivian was staring up at the swords as though answers were to be found in the play of light on blades.

  “Would you?” she said. “Would you know? If I, and men and women like me, had spent our entire lives preventing it?” She steepled her fingers with a rasp of steel. “Has today not been a sharp lesson in what you don’t know?”

  “You’ve never heard of our war,” Grey said quietly. “There are no big battles, no flags held proudly, no poems, and no heroes. We don’t give speeches. We don’t hold parades. We die alone, or we die in twos and threes, but we always, always die in shadow. Unseen. Unmourned. If our war got into the history books…well, that’s how we’d know we’d lost.”

  Swords shimmered in the firelight.

  Denizen’s head hurt. Just for a moment, his vision swam, the torches smearing until he blinked furiously. “Who’s the enemy?” he said. “Who are you fighting?”

  “You met one tonight,” Vivian said. “What was it?”

  A monster. An aberration. The air tearing with every move it made. A sense of wrong, a feeling that the world was sick—

  Denizen thought of darkness, of a tunnel like the mouth of an eel, pitch-black and writhing. That was the enemy. That had been the heart of the thing.

  “Darkness,” he said. “Living darkness.”

  “As good a name as any,” Vivian said, still looking at the swords. “What’s the time?”

  Grey checked his watch. “Twenty-one minutes past midnight, Malleus.”

  “Malleus,” Denizen said. “Like the portraits on the stairs.”

  “My title,” Vivian said. “My weapon. My duty.”

  Denizen felt as though he was standing in the middle of a storm—the kind that reached down and rearranged the landscape, the kind that tore air from your throat with a hurricane shriek. He just needed a moment. That was all. He just needed a moment to breathe.

  “Twenty-one and a half, Malleus.”

  “Why does the time matter?” Denizen’s fingers clenched into fists. “Somebody. Answer. Me.”

  Vivian lifted her chin. “At twenty-three minutes past midnight, you turn thirteen.”

  Denizen laughed once, a hard laugh with no warmth in it. “My birthday was months ago. Of course, you can’t be expected to know that. I mean, the fact that all of you are clearly insane means that these small details might escape—”

  “Shut up,” Vivian snapped.

  There was a long silence. Grey looked away.

  “I do not need this,” she said. “I don’t have time to deal with a surly, untrained teenager. Do you think I like this situation any more than you do? Of course I don’t. This isn’t a game, and right now you are worse than useless. You are dangerous. And I do not have time for this.”

  “Twenty-two minutes past.”

  Denizen shook with rage. His fists were balls of pain from squeezing them so hard. How dare she? Hadn’t he held himself together this far? Eleven years on his own and not even the memory of a family to give him something to cling to.

  He’d been doing fine. In five years, he could have left Crosscaper, and no matter what he did or where he went, at least he’d be doing it himself. He was his own family. No one else mattered.

  “Are you even listening?” Vivian’s voice was frozen iron. “You think that just because you’d prefer to ignore all of this, it won’t affect you? How blind are you? How—”

  There was a ringing in his ears, the pain was spiking right behind his eyes, and still her voice berating him, calling him useless. All he wanted to do was make her stop—

  Twenty-three minutes past.

  The torches went out. Another light took their place.

  Denizen’s mouth opened in a snarl. Not speech—words were useless—this was rage, pure and potent, an animal roar, and light spilled from his eyes, his hands, his open mouth.

  You couldn’t have called it flame. It was too bright for that. The air writhed round his fingers and ignited with a sound like shattering glass, lancing out to split the dark. In that moment, every shadow in the room wailed and died. Power flashed from Denizen’s hands like a hole had been torn between here and the heart of the sun.

  Vivian doused the fire with a sweep of her hand.

  Stillness descended. The air tasted of soot. The torches flickered back to life awkwardly, as if unable to explain where they’d gone. Swaying, Denizen’s vision filled with stars. He felt like something had been broken, as if a part of him had snapped and could never be repaired. He staggered.

  Weakness swept over him, like every flu or cold he’d ever suffered had just hit him all at once and the last thing he saw before the floor rushed up to meet him was Vivian’s bitter smile.

  “Welcome to the family.”

  THE WOMAN IN white was eating lightbulbs.

  Simon couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was horrible. She had found a cupboard on the third-floor corridor—six meters from the closet in which Simon was hiding—and had begun rifling through its contents.

  Linens had been experimentally sniffed and idly tossed aside, forming lonely snowdrifts on the floor. A first-aid kit had been emptied out, its contents separated with a toe and then methodically stamped apart. Now she was opening boxes of lightbulbs, shaking the spheres out into her palm and peering into them before closing her teeth round their fragile domes.

  Crunch.

  It was dawning on Simon that she hadn’t been searching the cupboard; she was just destroying whatever she found. There was no urgency in her movements, and a strange look of amusement creased her skin. Unfortunately, that meant Simon had no idea how long she might stay there, blocking the corridor—his only access to the classroom wing.

  It was pure luck she hadn’t seen him. An unexplainable feeling of dread had made him seek refuge in a broom cupboard, cracking the door open a hair just in time to see her appear at the top of the stairs.

  Maybe he had heard her without even realizing it. Maybe he’d felt her presence or the air her movements displaced. Maybe the animal part of his brain was taking over—all the prehistoric instincts you didn’t use in the modern world.

  Simon didn’t know or care. All that mattered was that he hadn’t been caught.

  Suddenly, the woman’s head jerked to one side, as if she smelled his relief. She spat out a dry clot of glass and carefully closed the cupboard door, head cocked like a hound’s.

  Simon froze, taking his hand off the door so it settled back against the jamb, hiding her from view. His heart pounded, louder and louder—Stop, stop, she’ll hear it!—and the floor creaked as she took a step toward him.

  Don’t panic.

  With the door closed, she was more of a collection of sounds than a physical presence, sounds that Simon had to assemble in his head—a process that wasn’t doing anything for his heart rate.

  Periodic creaks. Steps. She doesn’t care about being quiet—why would she? A drawling rasp—breathing roughened by glass. A cascade of stiff, mechanical pops that Simon realized in horror were her fingers clenching and unclenching. Had he not seen her with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it was a person out there at all—just a machine, gaunt and terrible, bearing down upon him.

  More terrifying than that, though, were the silences. Silence meant he had no idea

  Simon closed his eyes and then opened them, and cursed the sound of both. Everything became magnified. His heartbeat was thunder, his breathing a storm. The moment str
etched maddeningly, and Simon became convinced that he could hear the bzzt of his nervous system, the hoosh of his sweating skin, and finally, beneath it all, the tink of the future becoming the present one second at a time.

  Silence.

  The door handle began to turn. Simon felt his stomach go concave at the thought of being that close to the woman’s hand. Somehow, magically, he didn’t scream. Entire agencies of fictional detectives would be proud. Most of them would have screamed by now. He was sure of it.

  Creeeeaaaaakk—

  Maybe just a little scream. It couldn’t hurt—

  And then she was gone. The handle was released, and footsteps as swift and light as the ticks of a clock rose suddenly and then faded. Simon waited a hundred hammering beats of his heart before allowing himself a single long sigh.

  Well, that was horrifying.

  It took more effort than Simon had ever expended to touch the handle and open the door, and more still to step into the corridor and expose himself to the night. He wanted to throw himself down the corridor at a flat run, lose himself in flailing limbs and the hot burn of adrenaline. Instead, he walked as slowly and carefully as before. Years in Crosscaper had taught him which floorboards creaked, which doors could be opened silently and which had to be eased open one hair at a time.

  An observer might have found his movements strange—hopping left and right, freezing in place, then setting a bare foot down as lightly as possible on a single floorboard before lunging heavily across three more—but Simon was a veteran of nighttime wanderings. In these corridors, he knew exactly where to put his feet. The floorboards hadn’t so much as sighed.

  Glances into the dormitories he’d passed had told him what he’d already begun to suspect: every other boy and girl in the orphanage was asleep. Some had moaned to themselves in pain or fear; others twitched under their blankets as if jerked by invisible strings.

  A bad dream had come to Crosscaper.

  But not to me, he thought. I’m still awake. Simon wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing, or if at any moment he’d keel over himself. Until then, though, he had a responsibility to try to escape and bring back help.

  The door at the end of the third-floor corridor led to the classrooms, which had their own staircase down to the ground floor. The familiar shapes of the desks and cabinets had been made new and strange by the dark. He almost wanted the lightning to strike again just so he could see. Twice he had to navigate the blackness with both arms outstretched, tapping the backs of chairs, blindly reaching with the tips of his fingers.

  The storm still raged outside, his steps quickening every time the sounds of the rain and wind became louder, slowing each time they faded away. Simon focused on the careful mechanics of where to place his feet, freezing every time a noise, real or imaginary, reached his ears.

  One more floor to go. And then…Simon had been trying not to think about what came next. There were only two ways out of Crosscaper: the tradesmen’s entrance at the back, which was always locked from the outside, or the front gates. He could get outside; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting out.

  He would have to cross the courtyard.

  Simon crept to a window, pressing his face to the glass as close as he dared. It looked deserted but for the rain hopping off the gravel. The porch light was still on—the warm yellow glow melting the knot in his stomach a little—and for a second Simon thought he was being silly.

  He was half-dressed…he wasn’t going to rush out into the night, was he? Maybe the others were awake; maybe this was a misunderstanding; maybe this was nothing at all—

  Lightning then, the thunder half a beat behind.

  The storm must have been right over Crosscaper. There was no other explanation for the thunder being that loud, the lightning so bright. The whole world lit up in sickly green, and Simon flinched from the window as he saw the man in the waistcoat floating in the center of the courtyard—short little legs dangling off the ground, chubby arms lifted to the rain, hair soaked to rats’ tails across his scalp. His eyes were closed, a wide smile on his face. The rain didn’t fall on him anymore—it swirled round his body, dragged by some invisible current to orbit the man as though he possessed his own gravitational pull.

  It was the most frightening thing Simon had ever seen.

  The man spoke, the words whispered but perfectly audible, as if the storm were afraid to drown them out.

  Too long have we been wanderers. And this place…the misery of it…

  The words slithered through the windows. They poisoned the rain.

  We can be strong here. We can grow fat here.

  The gates began to swing shut with the same palsied jerkiness with which they had opened, tortured metal squealing as it tried to resist. They closed with a final, dreadful clang.

  Simon stepped away from the window. His only escape route was gone and he was alone and—panic never solved anything.

  Slowly, painstakingly, Simon built a wall of rationality between himself and his fear. That was what Crosscaper did. It taught you that the worst had already happened and all you could do was adapt.

  A detective would stay. A detective would take notes, observe, and wait for that perfect moment to save the day. He’d record what he saw of the strangers, look for a weakness, something he could use.

  Denizen will come back. I need to be here to warn him when he does.

  There was a cupboard on the other side of the classroom. Simon found a pen on a shelf and then squeezed himself in underneath. If he wrapped his arms round his knees, then he just about fit.

  Somewhere distant, the storm raged. Simon pulled the door shut, and there in the darkness, he scratched on the cheap wood of the cupboard:

  Day 1

  DENIZEN WOKE, AND it was like his eyes were new.

  The winter sun shone through the blinds like no other sun had shone before. Denizen contemplated it for as long as he could, resolutely ignoring the question of whether he was going to sit up.

  No. Moving wasn’t an option. Moving would tell his body—mistakenly, obviously—that he was awake and then the world would start up again, with its stress and pain and unexplainable situations.

  He was just going to stay still. Right here. For the rest of his life.

  The peace lasted until he blinked. It felt like someone had dropped a brick between his eyes. Denizen whimpered. That didn’t feel good either.

  Encouraged by the pain, memories began to flood back into his poor, abused head. Just scraps of things—arguing with his aunt, being angry, angrier than he’d ever been…

  Fire. There had been fire.

  Sweat soaked him suddenly, as if he’d just broken the back of a fever, and with it came a ghost of the rage he had felt, the nuclear strength of it, how it had flowed out of him the night before in a tide of white-hot light.

  It had felt…good. All the worries that had plagued him since getting Ackerby’s note had been gathered up and fed to the flames. In that moment, light leaking from his eyes and mouth, Denizen had felt…

  Pure. Powerful.

  Slowly, wincing, he raised his head off the pillow and looked around. Window blinds cut the sun to slants. An old pockmarked desk stood in the corner with an equally ancient chair tucked underneath it. There was a bookshelf against one wall—Denizen immediately logged it for future examination—and a candle sconce on the wall. Aside from the latter, the room was almost aggressively normal. He could have been in Crosscaper.

  That was good. Normal was good. There was solace in a room this boring. Nothing exciting could happen somewhere like this.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Well, it was nice while it lasted. Denizen pulled the covers up over his thin chest. Someone—his aunt? Argh!—had removed his T-shirt and jeans before putting him to bed. The knock came again, and Denizen looked around the room, trying to savor the boringness before it was taken away.

  “Can I come in?” It was his aunt.

  I could say no.
He had a mental image of Vivian simply booting the door open and sighed. “Sure.”

  She entered, dressed in a shirt and a pair of dark trousers, carrying a tray in her gloved hands.

  Staring at her, Denizen couldn’t help noticing the way she moved. It wasn’t grace, not exactly, but a sort of mechanical elegance, like the scissoring of gears or the slow sweep of a crane. She moved as if she knew exactly where each part of her was at all times, fully aware of the measurements of the world and how she fit into them. There would never be an iota of wasted effort, nor a finger out of place.

  An old burn scar dribbled colorless flesh down the side of her neck. He hadn’t noticed it last night. It started behind her ear and swept all the way to her collarbone before disappearing beneath her shirt collar. Another scar—a thin pale line—bisected her lower lip.

  Vivian didn’t look at him at all. She set the tray on the desk, and it was only when the smell of bacon, toast, and tea drifted over to him that he pulled his gaze away from her scars.

  His stomach woke and began to insistently remind him that he had not eaten since the Middle Ages, and emotional trauma made a person hungry, and everything he had gone through so far was nothing compared to what would happen if he did not immediately eat his own weight in toast.

  He barely noticed Grey come in—his eyes were fixed on the plate and cup, the faint steam rising from both. This was how they used to torture prisoners. He’d read about it. The guards would leave delicious, beautiful, captivating food just out of reach, and eventually you’d tell them anything for one moldy crust. It made sense, in an evil way. Why waste time pulling out fingernails and putting thumbs in vises when all you had to do was let the smell of fried bacon do all the work for you?

  “I’m sorry,” Vivian said.

  She still hadn’t looked at him. She pulled the chair out from under the desk and sat, staring down at her hands. “I have not…” She seemed to be drawing the words from a great depth. “I have not dealt with this as well as I should.”