Broken Quill [2] (30 page)

“Oh. Oh that is... my boy, I’m
sorry. I know how much you cared for her.” He blinked and looked around as if
seeing where he was for the first time. “But that was some time ago, wasn’t it?
Before this awful business, before that brother of yours locked me away...”

“What do you know about the
Everlasting, Grandfather?” I don’t know why I asked that question—only that it
felt right to do so.

Aloysius blinked. “The Everlasting?
Nothing concrete, lad. Only the old fairy tales, as you know.” He shook his
head. “They’re not real.”

“Blessed Scion on his pale throne,”
Annie said, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. “The Younger God...”

“...sits all alone,” my grandfather
muttered. He shook his head. “Who’s this, Declan? She’s pretty.”

“This is Annie,” I said. “We’re
running short on time—bad guys doing bad things, do you ken? As Chief
Librarian, was there anything you ever found or read among the catalogues of
the Library that spoke of the Everlasting?”

“Night’s bite repels the blight,” he
said, and grasped at his forehead as if the words pained him. When he focused
on me again, I thought perhaps he didn’t quite know me. “The old tales, yes?
They devoured human hearts for strength. Declan? Yes, Declan, come with me.
Something to show you.”

He strolled off toward one of the
hills shining in the sun, marble headstones thrust toward the sky as if they
were the teeth of some monumental, subterranean beast. Vrail kept pace with him,
ready to catch him if he fell. Starhold had not been kind. Already an old man
when sentenced, my grandfather had been robbed of his mind by the orbital
prison.

“When was he released?” I asked
Vrail quietly.

“After your last jaunt through
Forget, three months ago.” Vrail’s brow was set in a hard frown. “As you can
see, he’s no threat to anyone. Your brother, for what it’s worth, saw fit to
find him a position tending to the cemetery.”

On the crest of the hill was a
scattering of cherry blossom trees—what had once been Tal’s favorite and now
grew wild throughout the dust-strewn streets of Atlantis—and a circle of
headstones, peppered with light shining through the trees. A storm of tiny pink
petals danced between the graves, piled up in little flurries against the
marble.

My grandfather came to a stop in
front of one of the markers. He bowed his head as I joined his side. The earth
under my feet hadn’t quite had time to grow a coat of fresh grass. Reading the
inscription on the headstone, I released a long, shuddering breath.

Clare
Valentine

A
Sentinel of the

Knights
Infernal

1988
- 2012

The wind whistling through the
petals of the cherry blossoms became a dull yet insistent roar. On the edge of
my vision, I saw Vrail lead my grandfather away, but I kept my eyes glued to
Clare’s epitaph. The Knights had centuries of records beyond those of True
Earth’s civilizations, but it was to the calendar of that blue marble we kept
time. Annie had stayed at my side. I could sense the tension in her shoulders.

“Oh, Clare...” I whispered. “Same
old mistakes, sweet thing.”

Clare Valentine, Clare of the
ever-changing eyes, had died for me on the Plains of Perdition. We’d had
something, years ago. Something almost lovely. I’d been young and stupid and
looking for some fucking human connection against the cold and the dark of the
Tome Wars. My skill and proficiency in battle ensured a swift rise through the
ranks of the Knights Infernal. We’re active soldiers by the time we’re
fifteen—earlier, in some cases—and I became one of the youngest field
commanders in history on my eighteenth birthday. Through blood, bone, and
steel, I was granted command of a full Cascade contingent—eternity class
cruisers, squadrons of hardened men and women, access to some of the most
destructive spell and enchantment books forged in ancient runes.

Clare had been there for all of that
nonsense.

And there also when I was groomed
for a place among the ruling class of Ascension City—a Lord of the Knights
Infernal and then an Arbiter—granted a legitimate claim to the throne in the
event of King Morrow’s death.

Well, die he did. His command ship
had been destroyed in the Tome Wars, at the Fall of Voraskel, and I had been
left near alone, what remained of my contingent scattered across the length and
breadth of the Story Thread, fighting Renegades and monsters pulled from the
most nightmarish worlds in existence.

“I was a soldier, Annie.” Clare’s
tombstone was cool, even under the warm light from on high. “That’s all I can
really say, I guess. I was a soldier, and I was good at it.”

“You... you’ve had to kill people
and lose people.”

“Oh yes.”

“How do you live with it?” she
whispered, wiping away a few tears with her sleeve. “I can’t stop thinking
about the men I’ve killed. Or of poor Sam.”

I shrugged, almost envious of how
easily her tears fell. If I had the answer to that, I’d have part of the
equation for making peace with my past and learning to be happy. But happiness
was more of an outlook on life, wasn’t it? Think positive, and all that jazz.
There were men like me amongst the Knights—and the Renegades, no doubt—who had
fought bloody and hard. Ruthless soldiers in a hopelessly inept forever-war.
I’d seen people do terrible things to each other, little cruelties and big
cruelties. Necessary cruelties and all-too-unnecessary cruelties.

None of them could have been happy
after that, could they?

But then we all had something to
fall back on at the end of the day, to stave away such thoughts on happiness or
lack thereof. When the battle was over and those unfortunate enough to still
have the strength to fight another day had gone home... I’d fallen quite
eagerly into a bottle of something amber and aged.
How do you live with it,
Annie?
As best you could, while feeling so much pain that the only facade
you can show the world is a wearied, numb sort of sarcastic indifference.

A
not
-emotion buried and
drowned—to the best of my ability—in scotch and red wine.

“You scream on the inside,” I said.
“Always. All the time. I... I don’t even know why, anymore.”

“God, what happened to you, Declan?”
Annie read Clare’s epitaph once more. “Who was she?”

I fell to my knees and quivered,
clawing at the confusion inside, wanting it all to stop and go away. My hands
grasped the edges of Clare’s tombstone as if I could wrench it from the earth
and make it undone. Make it
never-have-been
. Still, the tears did not
fall.

I’d never been the crying sort. I
couldn’t recall the last time I’d shed a single tear in anger, sadness,
happiness, or any blasted real-world emotion. Life in this world—indeed, all
worlds—was good at one thing. It could dry out even the most luscious of souls
and leave a ragged, comatose husk incapable of expressing just how loud he was
screaming on the inside. A
yūgen of misery.

Clare’s tombstone was immovable—cold
and unremarkable in a sea of similar, unyielding stone.

We were all screaming, yes, but
never loud enough to wake the dead.

Well, after that impromptu visit to
the World Cemetery just on the corner of Misery Way and Regret Lane, it was
time to face King Faraday, Arbiter Drax, and all those other scheming and
plotting bastards.

I stormed into the Throne Room
bristling with a quiet, cold anger and a desire to cast out this so-called
ruling class. Not just into exile, as they had done to me, but into the Void
itself. Scatter them far and wide and
take
what was mine—the Dragon
Throne. For five long years after the Tome Wars, the throne had never strayed
far from my thoughts. King Morrow, Faraday’s predecessor, had all but endorsed
me as the rightful heir before his command ship was lost to the Void.

But True Earth had bigger problems
than my overthrowing Faraday.
One day, perhaps...
whispered a smooth
voice in the back of my mind.
One day soon.
I couldn’t let the attack on
my life, and all manner of other nonsense, sway me from the quest to destroy
Emissary. To do that, I needed help. To do that, I needed these smirking
bastards.

Again, the vast chamber was empty
save for the core of the Knights Infernal gathered around my ruined brother on
his mighty dais. Tia was here as well, seated on the first row of pews before
the throne. She offered me a kind smile, which I did not return, not now, not
with such bitter anger inside of me. I feared what she was about to see of
me—Tia and Annie both.

Drax, the arrogant son of a bitch,
stood calmly alongside Delia, Fenton, and a few other lords and ladies I
couldn’t name, around a long wooden table. It was covered in scrolls,
holographic datapads, and maps of Renegade-controlled worlds, as well as
platters of fine food and tall glasses of colorful wines.

Annie and I strolled up and onto the
dais, inserting ourselves among the mighty and powerful. I stayed just at her
back, off to the side, as we had planned. She held her hands on her hips,
jacket thrust back, revealing the dark handle of her service weapon.

“Declan, good evening,” Delia said,
staring at me strangely. Perhaps she read something in my body language. “We’re
glad you decided to return—”

“Save the sentiment, Helen,” Drax
snapped, and clicked his fingers in my direction. “Well, have you reached a
decision, boy?”

“I most certainly have,” I said, and
before any of them could react, I stepped behind Annie and, in one quick draw,
pulled her gun from its holster as I moved around the table, twirling on my
heel. The movement was swift and fluid, and it ended with me pressing the cold,
smooth barrel of the weapon against Drax’s forehead, right between his eyes.

The chamber froze.

Annie stepped back off the dais as
Tia gasped and jumped to her feet. Delia and Fenton looked shocked but
recovered quickly. The handful of other lords and ladies, some Knights, some
not, gave startled grunts and cries. My brother, half-asleep and half-dead on
his damned throne, wheezed a rough chuckle.

“Don’t talk; just listen. I was
attacked tonight by four men—not Knights, but certainly Willful—and at least
one of them has known allegiance to you, Petey Drax.” I twisted the barrel
around his brow. “Care to explain that?”

Drax, to his credit, actually
smirked and offered me a condescending laugh. It’s probably what I would’ve
done, if it were me with the gun to my head. “What was done tonight was done in
the best interest of this court and Ascension City.”

“So you don’t deny it?” Annie said,
a fire in her eyes.

“What’s all this?” Delia asked.
“What have you done, Arbiter Drax?”

“He sent three men to their deaths,”
I said and gently squeezed the trigger just a fraction. “Want to make it four?”

Faraday groaned and all eyes, save
mine and Drax’s, gazed his way. “We were...” he began, strained and pained. “We
were... testing your immortality, brother.”

Those words hung in the air for a
moment, and then I actually laughed. A few more pieces of the puzzle fell into
place. “You sent the gunman in Perth,” I said. “Of course you did. The gunman,
Annie, at the university. They sent him to see if I could still bleed.”

Annie looked furious. “You are an
elected official. A
minister
! If I ever see you in Perth—”

“You’ll do what, Detective Brie?”
Drax snorted and smacked the gun aside. “Mind your tone with me, girl. You
forget I’m a Minister in the Australian Cabinet. I could have you discredited
and tossed out of the police force on your ear.”

I cleared my throat and didn’t raise
the gun again—I didn’t need a weapon for this; my word was law. “You harm Miss
Brie in any way, shape, or form, Drax,” I said quietly, “and I will turn my
sole attention on you. I will not rest until I’ve utterly destroyed you and all
you’ve built.” I clenched my fist. “The
only
reason I’m not exacting a
cost for trying to kill me—twice—is that I’ve bigger enemies to deal with just
now, or have you forgotten,
Minister
? Your country—your world—is under
siege. A siege you so-called rulers and leaders turned tail and ran from the
moment things got a little bloody.”

“We’re not equipped to deal with
something as ancient and powerful as the Everlasting,” Drax said. “We had to
fall back, regroup our strength, and fortify Ascension City against attack by
these creatures. You stirred them up, Hale, you brought this latest travesty
down on our heads in Atlantis.”

I almost gaped. “Damned if I do,
damned if I bloody don’t... I gave you
five
years to prepare for war
against these creatures. The Degradation sealed Oblivion away, as much as it
did Atlantis and the Infernal Clock. I told you all, back then, of the
threat—of what I found lurking in the ruins of the Lost City. But you were too
busy exiling me and scrabbling for power to listen.” I shook my head, dazzled by
their idiocy. “You’ve been jacking off for five years with no payoff and you
want to blame
me
?”