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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 37

Rewritten 8/9/2023

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Chapter 37

Death on Osret too. I grabbed a sheaf papers from one of the files Hoarfast had been reading, spoke Raln, and threw the papers. They cut through flesh like butter, nearly amputating Osret’s arm. The folders in his hand dropped, his arm fell limp, and it dangled from the shoulder on rope of flesh.

He screamed.

I grabbed a stapler, spoke Raln again, and prepared to spike Hoarfast’s head to the floor.

In the moment I paused, he took an opening and threw a short hook into my side, hitting the cold bane with unerring precision. That felt like explosions, freezing cold explosions, that reached up to send icicles through my eyes, chills through my brain, and frost through my veins. I crumpled, rolled over and gasped.

He tried to get up and couldn’t. He barely flailed over sideways to put his back toward me, and wiggled and squirmed the other way. His arms and legs spasmed.

I stood, fell, hit a chair, and pulled off the cushion. Priam had fully upholstered chairs, and this one had patterns of thick yarn. I could cut someone in half with something like that. Hoarfast got up again and fell sideways against a wall.

Osret grabbed him. The Celestial assassin tried to get his wits back, to clear his head enough to fight, but Osret hadn’t been rattled like he had. Osret shoved Hoarfast toward the dumbwaiter hatch.

“You do not fight crazy-guy!”

Hoarfast looked like he wanted to argue, but he wasn’t steady enough on his feet. Instead he grabbed the folders and let the Hemlin push him through the forgotten door.

I tried to get up, fell, and my legs didn’t work. That didn’t make any sense. I slapped them, grabbed Priam’s glass desk for balance, but my fingers didn’t close. I stood up, but my upper body didn’t stay over my feet. I slumped to the side, more upright than not, but leaning. When I tried to counterbalance torso and legs, I couldn’t get things going in the same direction, and my body made a wobbly S.

Osret looked back at me and dove through the dumbwaiter hatch.

I fell over.

It had only been one punch! And it wasn’t even a head shot. He’d gotten one body shot on me, and I felt like this.

The door slammed open. Someone put their shoulder behind it as they shoved, but with no one on the other side, the door banged against the doorstop.

In the doorway stood a suited man with salt-and-pepper hair and skin of cracked porcelain. He was a little taller than me, a little thinner, with a beard still black under the ears and nose but white around the chin. Long fine cracks ran over his face, hiding under his hair, and branching like the veins in marble. His hands had those same cracks, but they were pitted with tiny pieces missing. He wore a crisp gray suit with a emerald tie, and around the collar and cuffs, his suit had started cracking as well.

I grabbed the desk, heaved myself up, and stood there for a few breaths. I was going to have to fight this old guy. I could take him.

He stepped through the door and called over his shoulder, “Nevermind! It’s nothing.” He shut the door behind him.

I could still take him. I was standing up now. Admittedly, I needed a desk to do it, but I was standing up at least.

“Hroth Urmain.” Judicial Director Priam read my name tag as he moved to his chair. Keeping the desk between us, he sat down. “You do not look Tarsant.”

“I take after my father.”

“Over the summer we had a mentorship program, and I was assigned Hroth Urmain. I get about a third of the summer interns. Hroth was having problems because he didn’t show up to work on time, so I talked about motivation, discipline, and the importance of consistency for thirty minutes every other week, trying to find new and exciting ways to say, ‘Show up to work on time.’ He never did.”

“I grew a lot over the winter.”

“Let’s see. There’s blood by the door, but you’re not bleeding. Someone in here yelled Raln, so that must have been you.” He leaned sideways in his chair, looking around the desk. “I see my reading table has been destroyed, and there’s a hole in the wall. Splinters and rubble inside, but the boards are bent outward. People have gone through in both directions. There are no folders over there, but–” He looked down.

Just aside the doorway was a pile of papers, mildly blood splattered. I’d thrown them at Osret and nearly cut off his arm. Now they remained.

Priam picked them up, glanced at the title page, and looked up at me.

“So you must be Kog,” he said, and turned around the folder to show me my file.

It was the treason addendum.

Did I want to initiate on him and take the file right now?

Priam put the folder on the desk and put his hands on the arm rests of his office chair. A .43 Testament lay in his lap now, and that was a serious gun. He didn’t move toward it. He didn’t move toward the folder. He watched me.

Reading the room had been a cop thing to do. Guessing my identity had been a cop thing. Putting the file between us, showing me a gun, but sitting back and waiting was not a cop thing to do. I didn’t know what to make of this.

“I want that folder,” I said.

“I will let you have it. I’ll even give you a glass of rockblood. It soothes injuries.”

“If?” I asked.

“If you sit down and listen to me for a little bit.”

“Why would I do that?” I asked.

“Because, Mr. Kog, of the many unwise things I think you’ve done and the many poor decisions I think you make, I don’t think breeding dragons is one of them.”

I stammered. “I didn’t know breeding dragons was an option.”

“It isn’t. It’s treason.”

“I didn’t know that was a treason you could commit.”

“You are scheduled for an administrative hearing for it,” said Priam. He leaned back in the chair. The gun lay in his lap. It was a black steel thing that looked like a sledgehammer on a pistol grip. “I am scheduling the hearing. I was out trying to arrange one this morning.”

“And?”

“We didn’t have a quorum. The chairman had a dentist’s appointment.”

“So… the meeting was delayed?”

“Maybe. Next time I might have a dentist’s appointment.”

And there it was.

I hate thinking in slow motion.

I could just take the folder and run, and I’d no sooner considered it than Priam said, “No one went out this door. There’s blood on the floor, so the fight was no mere distraction. None of the windows are broken. That means whomever you fought probably escaped through that little hatch. Now you can go chasing them in the dark with your injury.” He pointed at my side. “But Mr. Kog, does that sound like a good idea to you?”

“And you’ve already read the folder anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t see what you can do for me. If you’ve read the file, other people have. There’s a whole committee that went over it. And–”

Priam interjected, “Because, Mr. Kog, they didn’t read your file. We didn’t have quorum. No one reads unnecessarily around here. And this is your file. This specific one. If you were to take this to the roof and burn it with all the other strands of destiny that never happened, it would be gone. Your main file can be sealed.”

“But who compiled the file?”

“I did. Now, Mr. Kog, why don’t you take a seat and let me pour you a drink.”

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 25

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Part 3: Fate
Chapter 25

Those were bad hours, alone under the building, filled with with pain.

I had never done anything like that before. Not fighting the dragon, though I never had. I’d never had to endure when there was no technique to execute, no condition to find victory, no skill to use. I couldn’t beat anything, I couldn’t win, I couldn’t even try. I lay under broken walls and breathed.

And it was miserable. Once everything began to hurt, it was like my whole body was screaming for help, and there was nothing I could do.

And it went on, and on, and on until I realized I could die down here.

The dragon didn’t come for me, so I assumed it was dead. I had won. And I might bleed to death under a building anyway. Winning hadn’t saved me.

A pain in my hips grew, and I shimmied to satiate it. The rubble overhead shifted. I shimmied again. A beam lay across my chest, and it constricted me on the left. I wiggled right, but the whole beam settled. Now I still couldn’t breathe well, and there was a rock digging into my right. I wiggled again. Something began to slide. I pressed it away and down. I wiggled my head.

I began to crawl like a worm, the least of things. Even insects have legs. The worm is deprived of everything, yet it moves underground. So moved I, heading up.
Hours passed. I felt every one of them. Never did time speed up or pass in absence. They went on as I grew weaker. I began to rest between shakes. I thought constantly, ‘Self, we can’t do this.’ I fought the thought, slithered away from it, shouted at it, but it remained in the dark with me.

And yet the hours still passed. Sleep was down there with me. She caressed me in the dark. She loved me, and I refused her. I rested and shimmied, slithering upward.

I was just another figure in someone else’s rumor. ‘I hear the building fell on someone, and he was trapped down there for days before he died. Glad it wasn’t anyone we know.’

And a child would ask, ‘Could it happen to me?’

‘No, loved one. It happened to someone else.’

With those clouds over the sky, there was no dawn. I slithered and crawled around huge building stones up into bricks.

Bricks were easier than great stones. I could crawl through bricks. I did, to lay gasping in dirty, dusty air.

I lay in broken plates, sheets of parchment paper, and a roll of towels, impregnated with soup and then flash-dried when the building caught fire. The smell defied comprehension. The perfumed aromas of Hyperion were gone. The gardens of sycamore and roses, the smell of lavender and sage didn’t make it down here. The air smelled of forge smoke, glazed with dragonfire. I smelled sweat and mud, my blood, the lumber of Hasso’s yards, his building supplies, and his parking lots.

But underneath all those smells, the free air that carried them smelled beautiful. It wasn’t a smell itself, just air. Thick, free, moving air blew around rocks, between the rubble piles, and over the wreckage. I looked out and saw one chimney still venting smoke. I could smell the smoke where I’d cremated Hasso and his kin, his works, and nearly been cremated myself. The smoke turned in circles as the winds changed.

The lights found me there.

Four glowing men and three fluorescent women walked through the center of Hasso’s courtyard.

All of them were tall and luminal, glowing in a mix of lights that seemed to emerge from hands, hair, eyes, and feet. Each had a general aura, a complex but distinct mix of colors that tended toward one shade, but that seemed to be controlled by the individual intensities of their individual glowing parts. Eyes glowed blue, hands green, hair white, and feet yellow for all, but the mix varied.

A woman stepped forward wrapped in vermilion and ruby. Her hands were brighter than any of the others, too bright to make out fingers clearly, and she seemed to have balls of steam on the end of her wrists. The red seemed to come from everywhere at first, but as she talked, I realized that all of them had a redness about the body and brownness about the legs and arms.

“Who are you?” asked the red and green woman.

“Help me,” I begged.

“What happened here?” asked a man wrapped in light-trails of brown and blue. When he moved, he left after-images behind him like the kind you get if you glance at the Sun.

“Bad things. I’m terribly hurt. Can you help me?” I said.

They obviously didn’t want to, but they did. Two, a man mostly blue, and a woman grayish and yellow, came over and went to work, obviously medics of some kind. The rest dispersed, picking through the building and searching.

I got a look at my two carers up close, and while they looked vaguely androgynous and naked, they were actually wearing white and prismatic clothing. It seemed to be of two layers, a heavier skin-tight one, and a looser outer layer. The base-layer muted the red and brown light, leaving only exposed areas to brightly glitter.
But those bright areas did shine. The man’s eyes were blue as the sea, not just his irises. From the top of his cheekbones to the hairs of his eyebrows, his eyes radiated.

I’d seen something like this before. The lady with the dragon-sword had had red eyes that dribbled fire, but nothing on her had been this polychroma.
The others found the dead dragon under the rubble. It had burned and boiled, reduced itself to a foul-smelling heap of slag. It looked like rusty iron or old submerged wood, recognizable in shape but utterly transformed. One man in gold and green climbed onto the dead snout, wrapped his hands around something, and yanked a heap of misshapen, ruined iron free.

If you knew exactly what you were looking at, it looked like a broken sword.

The man tossed it aside.

The woman was checking my hip area and announced, “You have metal splinters through your pelvis. It is a miracle you aren’t dead.”

“Oh.” What do you say to that?

The man, who was also examining me, asked, “No, you should be dead. Who protects you?”

“Nice gods?”

“I don’t think anyone likes mortals that much,” said the woman. She peeled the wrappings off my feet and whispered, “Dear Maya.”

“Ho! Stranger! Come forward into the light!” yelled someone else, and for a moment I thought they meant me.

But I was already in the light. The two glowing figures tending me made sure of that.

And shortly thereafter another figure did come into the light. It was Hoarfast.

He looked exactly the same. He wore another bluish-gray suit with a subdued tie. The jacket wrapped his shoulders and chest like a bit of towel thrown over a statue. He was immense, quiet, and when he walked into the main area from a side pathway among Hasso’s buildings, he still seemed to be the center of all attention.

The moment I saw him, he saw me, and we both stared at each other with such surprise no one missed it.

My two medics looked at me. They looked at Hoarfast. The various illuminated figures looking at Hoarfast looked at me. Hoarfast tore his eyes away and looked at the glowing people, and I made myself look down.

Every single thing I’d done to make Koru’s group think I was dead was now ruined.

The glowing figures considered the two of us. They looked over the ruins of Hasso’s compound. The fires had died down, and where the radiance of the seven touched the sick burning, the dragon fire burned itself out. But the buildings stayed collapsed, and the charred earth remained violated.

“You are both invited to the Halls of Fate for discussion, medical assistance, and a friendly talk,” said the first glowing figure, smiling at me and Hoarfast in turn.

That’s a tricky matter for a Celestial. Hoarfast might decline. But Fate had a way of getting what it wanted.

None of that mattered for me.

“Please help me,” I whispered.

The two working on me bent their heads down, and lights began to arc between them. Long streamers of fire climbed their hands and heads, reaching from one to the other like the flares that dance on Horochron’s head.

The other five figures of light turned to Hoarfast, and the gears inside his head turned furiously. He smiled faintly.

He said, “I accept.”

The agents of Fate nodded and called down the lightning. It came in the form of quicksilver dragons, too bright to look at, saddled with leather and silk. They didn’t tie my hands or feet, but assisted me with mounting. A large, competent looking woman sat behind me, and I lay against her. An equally large, equally competent looked man sat in front. Had I an interest in throwing myself off, I doubted I would succeed.

Yet I might. There is usually only one way to escape Fate.

But from the beginning, I’d only known one thing, and that one thing kept me in the saddle. The quicksilver dragon flew upwards, through the clouds of Attarckus’s veil, and to the stars beyond the sky. It took a zigzag path faster than a hawk can dive, and soon we had slipped the bounds of Pallas and approached the dome of the sky. The glittering constellations rose from darkness, huge lanterns on the mountains of the Firmament. The flow of galaxies that are the sky’s rivers flowed between hills and and forests on the dark country.

I looked back. The lady behind me smiled firmly, but I wasn’t looking at her. In the center of the sphere, Pallas, Horochron the Sun, and Tiptites the Moon circled each other. They had been joined by a vast white disk that must be Tollos and another, silver and blue, that I guessed was her sister Lumina. The green and blue orb of Pallas drew my attention, though, as it dwindled and shrank.

I turned back around and faced the growing blackness of the onrushing sky.

We approached the massive, bulbous office-building of Fate’s headquarters in the Mask. It was such an ugly, useless building, and the basement leaked.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 21

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Chapter 21

I took him to Doctor Lammet and hid in the bushes after I knocked on the door. Lammet was a dryad, associated with some form of willow, and the bushes were dumb hyacinth. Most people don’t realize dryads can’t talk to all plants. Lammet saw Jermaine in a pile before his door and reacted immediately, pulling Koru’s son inside. He’d be distracted. I snuck out and went south.

Hyperion was too grand, too magnificent, to perfect for factories, warehouses, and smelly places to pile up the horse dung that the divine stables created. The gods pushed all that stuff south.

I’d fought Osret and the two from Fate almost due south. The tower had stood at the mouth of a small ravine that cut into a sandstone headland. On the other side of that headland, toward the sea, and even further south, Hasso lived.

I’d been there a few times. He’d made things that weren’t precisely legal. He didn’t break the law, of course. That was impossible. But he’d manipulated it in his forge. Five buildings gathered around a small courtyard, two of which contained furnaces. High brick chimneys had risen far above slate rooves to carry smoke and embers away. I’d seen piles of pig iron, fine steel, gold, and silver, among them, as well as baskets full of loose stars and more treasured ingredients in jars and sealed pots. He had escape hatches in case his heavily enchanted firewood ignited. Every stack of lumber had been wrapped in expensive fire blankets. His forge had been splendid.

Had.

Scattered rubble lay in piles, the rooves of buildings had crumpled, and Hasso lay in the courtyard. He’d been beaten to death, and his corpse was frozen, broken, and shattered. The impacts of terrible fists had ruined him. Nothing else moved.

Hoarfast had been here.

Cracks reft the first chimney, and the dead embers held no heat. The other chimney had been broken, but its base still stood. The forge was dozens of feet across, made of blocks of speckled gray stone. Its embers still glittered. This was the forge where the blades had been made. Unmaking things in the place of their creation had a way of undoing them. It was more final than mere breaking.

But if someone knew that, they would watch this place. The smokestacks would tell anyone with eyes that Hasso’s forge was active, and someone, Hoarfast, would know there should be no Hasso to be active.

I thought as long as Jermaine had, and that had seemed a long time. I bet it had felt very swift to him. My hesitation certainly seemed to take no time at all to me.

I dropped the counterfeit blades on the work table and started heaving staves of mahogany and dragonwood into the furnace. Hasso’s woodpiles were almost full. Soon the chimneys burped smoke and sparks.

The overcast remained. The little smoke I was making would be hard to see.

I snorted a bitter, quiet laugh and kept building heat.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

Koru’s palace, Shang Du, stood on a tower of white granite, the Hakan. Behind it the folded Mountains of Tsme rose in jagged peaks, divided by deep, round valleys where the worms of Meru had crawled. The Hakan rose at the center of a bowl valley. At one time the spire had been joined to the greater peak Mt Nonac by a high wall of the same white granite, but the river Alph had cut a path through the junction. Now the crest of the rock formed a white bridge between Shang Du and the mountain, ornamented with lanterns and a wide path. The Alph entered the valley via a waterfall, the Hundred Ribbons, and circled the valley lazily until it passed underground. Koru’s palace up top was opulent and magnificent, horribly furnished, and carried a viewing deck that overlooked the valley and stood above the Tsme Peaks.

I stared at the other seven. Most of them stared at me. I wanted to think, but my mind struggled to comprehend Astras’s suggestion. No one quite moved. No one wanted this.

Maybe Astras did.

She kept talking.

“With the assassins gone, they will tell no secrets,” she said. “Nor will their remains be recognized. But they carried replicas of All Things Ending, and Kog had those replicas made. If Kog was gone, there would be nothing that connected any of us to him, and if we could all keep our secrets like the dead, we’d live.”

And if none of them said anything, they began to move.

“Take your hand out of your shirt,” I told Mithrak.

He’d reached under his jacket where I’m sure he carried a gun.

“I’m just scratching,” he said.

“Stop.”

Hoarfast shifted his feet. Somehow, he seemed closer.

I faced seven of them. Seraphine wouldn’t fight nor Astras, Koru would have others fight for him, and Dr Simmons looked irrelevant. That left Mithrak, Cole, Agammae, and the terrible Hoarfast.

I wanted to fight Mithrak, but not him and Cole at the same time. Not if they had help. I never wanted to fight Hoarfast.

Who was this Astras who suddenly had so much to say? What was she even doing? She was a trophy wife. She needed to shut up, look sexy, and be kept. Now she seemed content to wait, but some noise kept building. Maybe the waterfall of Alph was getting louder.

Mithrak scratched himself again. His hand moved toward his armpit.

“Stop that,” I told him.

“I’m just scratching.”

“I told you to-”

Mithrak’s hand shot under his shirt, and I hard initiated on the lot of them.

He grabbed his gun, my fist met his face, and I followed through his head. His whole face wrapped around my fist with jaws and jowls moved in opposite directions, until I finished the strike and launched him a dozen feet away.

Agammae went on me. She threw her chair, I blocked, but the chair was a big thing. It filled a lot of space. She came in behind and kicked out my legs. I dropped.

Cole jumped at me and missed. Hoarfast went wide around behind the rest of the group. I had two seconds before he got here. Agammae spun around and jammed her leg between mine. I tried to leap from my back, but she got herself tangled up with me.

Hoarfast passed the spare chairs and drinks table, four steps away.

“Overe!” I shot my legs skyward again as I slip-broke from Agammae’s grip. My body moved like a wave, and I ended on my feet. Cole tried to tackle me. I retreated, Agammae sprawled out to snatch my feet, I retreated again, and Hoarfast arrived.

His parentage showed. Lines of gray followed his veins. His knuckles had turned to steel.

He feinted, threw two shots, and somehow, he’d gotten between me and the door. His assault was beyond the rest of them combined. I countered low, he blocked, and we exchanged strikes that didn’t connect. Mithrak got up, leaning like the deck was pitching and he’d lost his sea legs. Cole kept trying to grab me. Agammae’s hands appeared with knives. I slipped around Hoarfast’s jab as his off-hand tagged me, and my side went cold.

I dove off the balcony as flashing knives flew overhead.

Shang Du’s balcony overlooked the deep forest. At the bottom of the granite pillar, Alph passed into a dark cavern. Fog and froth filled the pit, and sometimes Koru’s children fell in. None of them ever emerged, and rats are strong swimmers.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

I stood on Koru’s balcony. Eight of us, the King of Rats, his daughter Seraphine, wife Astras, facilitator Hoarfast, wife’s counselor Dr Simmons, worthless-imbecile-chasing-Seraphine Mithrak, worthless-imbecile’s-friend Cole, security consultant Agammae, and emissary Kog, me, had just watched our attempt on the life of Mallens, King of the Gods and Lord of Creation, fail. Jermaine, Koru’s son, must now be dead. No one spoke yet. The roar of the river Alph as it fell off Mt Monac and plunged underground provided pleasant background noise.

All of Meru would have been so much better if Mallens had died. I’d long since left prayer behind, given up my wishes, and taken action to make things better. I’d done everything for them. I had found out who could be bribed and bribed them. I’d figured out how Death’s scepter could be stolen and stolen it. I had found heretical blacksmiths who would make replicas of All Things Ending and had titan-killing weapons made. I had done everything to make things better.

I had even volunteered to go with Jermaine. I offered. I had been the first to step up when he’d asked among our group. Sickness and death on anyone who said I sat out because I was a coward. Even when Jermaine refused, I hadn’t gotten angry, and I’d put aside my resentments for the greater good. While the angels prepared their killing party, I’d been in the streets, learning where Mallens would go, how he went there, who came with, and how we could use it. I had done everything for them!

And we had failed, and the world would fall to darkness.

If I had been there, we would have made it.

Something made a scrape and clatter.

Koru kicked his couch back. Seraphine looked startled to see herself casually pushed aside. “Everyone stay still. We need to decide what we’re going to do before anyone goes anywhere or says anything.”

Koru possessed age and power out of proportion with his standing as a lesser god. King of Rats was such a minor title, other pantheons might not claim it. Yet a lesser god had this mansion of Shang Du. In this house they did not even put out plates for manna but feasted on honeydew. Normally a hundred servants filled the polished halls, but he’d sent them away for First Light. We had miles of corridors and rooms to ourselves.

His eyes were dull red, his nose was long and too big, and his mustache looked like whiskers. I think he greased it. All of his proportions were wrong. His arms were as long as his legs, being tall and thin drew attention to the slouch of his spine, and normally, like now, he wore furs to cover up his strange form. I don’t know how he and Seraphine were related.

“What do you want to discuss?” asked Hoarfast. “Our mutual endeavor has come to a definite end.”

“It has,” agreed Koru, “but we are now bound by a mutual secret. No one leaves this house. No one talks to anyone outside this house. We need to decide exactly what we are going to do.”

“I still don’t see what we have to talk about,” said Hoarfast. “We share a secret. We keep it.”

“The concern is someone running to Mallens and telling all, hoping for a reward,” said Mithrak. “Or at least mercy.”

“Mallens isn’t the sort to grant rewards or mercy,” said Agammae.

“Which is an excellent point,” Koru said to her. “Someone might panic and forget that.”

“Then again, we have nothing to talk about.” Hoarfast squeezed his knuckles. He didn’t crack them; he only pressed each fist within the other huge, calloused hand.

Hoarfast was the biggest of all of us and, quite frighteningly, the quickest. He was an old man in a career full of treachery: the arrangement and facilitation of killings. But he dreamed little dreams: money, fine houses, expensive clothes, and fast cars. He didn’t desire Seraphine, the most beautiful of women, but rather wanted women to come and go through his life, themselves impressed by his money, houses, and things.

I don’t know how Koru came to know him. They certainly didn’t move in the same circles. Mallens’s third sister Androche was made of iron and had born one hundred children of alloys. One, Kobold, was a fine steel with a pattern like snowflakes on his skin, and he had sired a line of Celestials in the climes of Theony, a northern range of mountains where the ice lies deep and hard enough to be smelted as metal. Hoarfast carried Kobold’s blood. He had a coarse black beard like iron filings stuck to a lodestone, gray eyes, and dark hair. He wore gray suits, bespoke shoes, and steel pins in his collar to clasp his tie. I’ve never seen him carry a gun, but I’d never seen him use his fists either. I’d made sure he’d never mean me harm.

“I am concerned someone might not keep their secrets well enough,” said Koru.

Hoarfast looked up at him through his coarse eyebrows. “Then either you take our mere promises or start killing people, King of Rats.”

King of Rats met the lesser Celestial’s eyes. Even as a lesser god, Koru stood high above Hoarfast’s station, but Hoarfast killed gods for a living.

“Let’s not go there,” said Astras, breaking her own silence. “Once that starts, it does not end. Besides, I have a better idea.”

When no one reacted, she pressed.

“Look at me. I can help you both.”

After a longer pause Hoarfast said, “Lady of the House,” like she wanted to pull his teeth. He turned and nodded.

Koru let Hoarfast look away first before turning to Astras as well.

She had sat back down but didn’t recline. The chairs would have made it uncomfortable anyway. “No one knows we had anything to do with it. All of the agents died. They are martyrs for a better world, and we will get them their better world. We have time. But we won’t if we turn on each other.”

Everyone considered this. I scowled.

“You mean to try again?” asked Hoarfast, raising one coarse eyebrow.

“Of course,” said Koru. Hoarfast may have been answering Astras, but the King of Rats answered. “Mallens killed my son.”

“Of course,” said Astras. She smiled. “Remember, no one outside Shang Du knows any of us had anything to do with it.”

She looked magnificent. On credentials alone, I understood why Koru chose her. The Sylph of the River Alph had given up her domain to marry Koru and now wore a deep-cut dress with high slits on either side. She’d crossed her legs, trapping the narrow front-panel of fabric between her thighs and exposing her long, naked leg to the seat of the couch. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

“Except for one,” said Astras, pointing at me. “Him.”

I had done everything for them.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 1

Prologue: Shang Du
Chapter 1

The assassination went poorly.

I, Kog, had gathered with my seven comrades on the viewing deck of Shang Du. We’d arranged the couches to face east, and Seraphine sat at the center. Technically, she sat at her daddy Koru’s side, but no one had come to this party to look at the King of Rats. She had pulled her long, beautiful legs onto the seat beside her, cocking her hips so she leaned toward her father. He hunched forward, elbows on knees, the only one of us watching the killing with hard eyes.

There was a drink with him. He didn’t touch it. Everyone else was putting champagne away.

Mithrak sat as close to her as he could, one couch over. He sprawled, open legged, with his shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum. His face needed my fist.

On Koru’s other side sat Astras, Koru’s wife and not Seraphine’s mother. I’ve wondered about Astras as long as I’ve known her. Did Koru simply have a list of appropriate credentials for a trophy wife and marry the first woman who passed the checklist? Or was there anything more to her than appeared? She had the credentials.

Those three couches held the center of the group I’d been allowed to attend. On Mithrak’s right, Cole lounged in a deep seated, high-armed chair. His hands and forearms rested up above his shoulders, almost level with his eyes. By him sat Agammae; she shaved her head, wore a suit, and carried knives. Her chair was the same deep-seated thing that looked like it was swallowing Mithrak, so she perched on the edge of her seat and looked like she didn’t belong here.

On a cushioned bench on Astras’s other side sat Dr Simmons with a huge head on a tiny neck. He drank too much, talked too loudly, and laughed in a tense, shrill way even when things were going well. It was always hard to wrap my head around how that guy could be that smart.

With him sat Hoarfast. Hoarfast looked like a killer. He had the black suit, black shirt, black tie, and a bull’s head on bull’s neck. Hoarfast’s main job this morning was serve the doctor questions. About five words in, Simmons would decide what Hoarfast meant to ask, answer it at length and volume, and laugh at his own jokes while the big man sipped champagne and waited.

Koru loathed Simmons. Astras claimed to enjoy his presence. No one else paid him much mind save Mithrak, who occasionally took questions himself so he could throw out self-flattering compliments.

I tried to ignore them all. Simmons’s voice made my jaw clench; Mithrak’s made my knuckles itch. I sat next to Agammae on a divan. There was a chair open, but those things were horrible. The cushions sat in deep trenches, and the front of the chair formed a hard bar under woven wicker. Agammae must feel like she was sitting on an iron rod. This position put me slightly closer to Seraphine, and when Mithrak spoke to her, as he usually did, he faced away from me so I didn’t hear him as much. I was ignoring Koru’s daughter entirely.

I’d only come here because it let me see her, but since I didn’t want to act like an idiotic puppy, I’d been polite but otherwise avoided her. She knew. I think she found me funny.

What I wanted to do was sit behind everyone, maybe toward the center, but Koru didn’t want anyone behind him so we spread out in this absurd line. Simmons’s tittering and giggling sounded shrill, Hoarfast’s low, deep voice sounded like bodies being dragged through gravel, and Mithrak talked in the other direction. Agammae and I had nothing in common, nothing, and even if we did, Koru hated sidebar conversations around him. It made him think he was missing something.

I drank my champagne. Koru’s other children ran across the ground, squeaking, and climbed over my feet. I hate rats.

The eastern sky began to warm. At first the high trees of Koru’s estate blocked much of the sky. The palace stood on a huge granite spire, but the mountains to the east rose higher. Redwoods and sequoias rose above us. We saw hints of dawn through their branches. Morning over the ocean reached above the trees and started washing out the stars. The horizon turned red and blue. Three tall shadows stood like pillars of night, but these had heads and shoulders.

“Three of them,” said Hoarfast. Whatever stupid joke Simmons was laughing at died. Koru might have been the only one focused on the horizon, but all of us were watching.

“Who?” asked Astras.

“So he brought friends with him,” said Mithrak. He sounded angry. “It won’t matter.”

“But who did he bring?” asked Astras, and suddenly everyone had something to say.

“Probably Lumina and Tollos,” said Agammae, leaning forward on her unpleasant seat. It had to be digging into her behind.

“No, no, no!” Simmons laughed, high and loudly. “He’d bring his brothers, not his sisters. If he brought his sisters, why wouldn’t he have brought them all?”

Mithrak nodded. “It would be his sisters if there were four of them.”

Agammae ground her teeth. She leaned forward even further and stabbed her finger out. “That’s Tollos because she puts her hair back in a braid.”

I couldn’t tell.

Mithrak argued loudly with Agammae, saying she couldn’t make out if one of the shadows wore her hair back. He turned his head toward her to shout, and now I got the brunt of his unpleasant presence. Agammae insisted. She kept pointing at the silhouette of the one on the right, the shorter of the three, and waving at it like she wanted to punch the air with just one finger. Simmons laughed like a screaming rabbit.

The three shadows stood above the peaks, and only titans stood taller than the mountains. Before them the sky’s faint gray on black began to dilute into oranges, yellows, and hints of blue. The Sun himself hadn’t broken the horizon yet, but his cloak appeared before him.

“Just be patient,” said Astras. “We’ll see soon enough. We’ll be able to tell if they’re wearing dresses before we can see their hair.”

Mithrak and Agammae stopped arguing. They looked at her.

“What if the brothers are wearing capes?” asked Cole. “How will we tell?”

“I’ll be able to tell a cape from a dress,” said Astras.

Dr Simmons burst into loud, high-pitched giggling. Everyone but Koru stared at him, and that only made him giggle louder. I wanted to strangle him.

“We planned for this,” said Koru softly.

Dr Simmons gagged. He might very well have shoved his fist in his mouth to make himself stop laughing.

Koru continued. “We planned out what to do if other titans came with Mallens. They just die too.”

Everyone nodded, even me, but Koru lied. We’d planned for one other titan with Mallens: his brother Otomo. At First Light last year and the First Light three years prior, Otomo had joined Mallens when the Lord of Creation had greeted the Sun.

But Otomo couldn’t see well at night. That’s why he delighted in the coming of the Sun after winter. We’d planned for one other titan and that he wouldn’t be able to see in the dark. Mallens had never brought his sisters.

Dawn bled into the sky. Pink and orange seeped into the eastern horizon, but before the sky had turned any single color, the stars went out in the east. Low over the mountains behind us, a few glittered, but the rest faded even before the light seemed bright enough to wash them out. Koru leaned even further forward in his chair to hunch on the little bar at the front of the cushion.

Mithrak picked up his champagne and called, “To us!” Everyone but the King of Rats drank. I did too, but it galled me.

After the hurrah of his toast, a weight descended, and we stared at a bland, washed out bit of sky where dawn had washed out the stars, but the constellation of the Mask had always been dim. A black spot appeared like an ink droplet in water. Four of us called it out at once. Its nexus swung east, moving fast and against the procession of daylight. But it was so little.

No one could see the little speck of darkness who didn’t already know it was coming, no matter how well they saw at night.

The earlier speed of the coming sunrise froze, and now every moment stretched out. The speck of darkness passed the Gull and the Tower. It rose to the zenith of the sky and began to fall, diving swiftly to the east.

We looked at tall Mallens’s head. He and the other two tall shadows looked east, where the coming of the dawn was so very, very far away.

Dr Simmons made some cheer, but no one followed him. His toast thudded like dead weight into silence.

Everything was going according to plan. The Sun’s painters created the first and most beautiful sunrise of the new year. There was no reason any titan should look back, no way they could have seen Jermaine’s Sunset Group on black horses of laurel, and no way they could have seen it as anything but a fleck of off-colored cloud if they did. I clenched my teeth. Koru stopped breathing in anything but hisses. Dr Simmons giggled a hysteric whispered noise, and Hoarfast grabbed his shoulder, squeezing enough to drag the fabric into tight folds. The black speck dove like a comet. Jermaine rode for Mallens.

The little titan on Mallens’s left turned to say something to the King. Her shadow wore a thick braid. I could see hints of her form, a bit of hip and breast. Mallens had brought his sisters. She paused, raised her arm, and pointed at the sky behind them.

Mallens turned as well, and Lumina did too on the far side. The Sun outlined the front of her long dress. The King of Titans turned the rest of the way, and his eyes lit up the sky.

The eyes of the King of Titans burned as two white crosses, suddenly brilliant, brighter than the coming dawn, brighter than any of the stars had been, and bolts of fire and light leaped up to the sky. The black speck swerved, Mallens’s lightning missed, and the spot of darkness, so small I could barely see it even knowing it was there, hesitated. I stopped breathing.

Everyone on the patio stopped breathing.

Jermaine went. The spot of darkness charged. The laurel horses rode on, and ink drops splattered the pale milk of the sky. I don’t know who started it, but everyone on the patio was cheering. The assassins of Sunset Group fell on Mallens, their hoof prints were black splashes, and they left a trail of streaking shadow.

Mallens swung one hand and knocked them from the sky.

Another black spot, vivid against the dawn, leaped from behind him. Sunrise Group charged Mallens’s back. Their blades moved, leaving streaks through Mallens like the butt of the hand drawn through handwriting before the ink has dried. The King of Titans burned. Plumes of smoke and fire rose from his back; splatters of blood splashed the heavens. The splotches of darkness overcame the coming dawn and turned the sky dark again. Mallens whirled on Sunrise, but Sunset had merely fallen. They’d not yet been destroyed, and now they spread out. Many black dots rode for Mallens.

Little Tollos, taller than mountains but the smallest of the titans, turned and fled. Lumina ran too. They left their king alone.

Mallens lurched sideways. We saw flickers of his eyes looking this way and that, now crosses, now three-bar hexes, always burning, as Sunrise and Sunset caught him between them.

The Sun crested the horizon and put forth all of his power. Mallens lurched to the east and stood silhouetted. He swatted Sunrise Group from the sky, and they fell as Sunset had. The King of Titans was bleeding.

Sunset tried to circle, but Mallens struck again. He smashed something. The remainder moved left and right. Mallens flailed, stomped his feet, slammed his fists into the ground. The earth buckled. Splashes of water or liquefied soil shot upwards.

The riders of Sunrise split up too. They looped and soared, black flecks around the King’s head. He struck at them as they cut him as wounds and blowthroughs erupted from his hands and fingers. Blood splattered his face; black on black even by daylight. I tried to count the assassins, and got less than half of them. They must have been moving too quickly for my mortal eyes.

Mallens caught something and struck it down. He caught another. Several of the riders tried to coordinate, but he caught one group and threw them down. The other group dove, either for cover or to flee, and Mallens leaped at them. His feet crushed the earth.

For a while he danced like a madman, all stomps and violence without music. And then suddenly he went still, leaning on his knees. His body shook.

We waited. My rear-end hurt. I looked down. I’d moved forward to hunch on the edge of the divan, and it was jutting into my legs.

I hated Koru’s furniture. I stood up.

Mallens was black as mountain stuff, black as the rock underneath the oceans, rough hewn and poorly constructed. In him the early craft of the Clockwork Gods showed their initial inexperience. His face had no curves, just blocks and planes. He wasn’t even a person yet.

And yet he lifted his arms, shook his fists, and screamed at the Sun itself. He scattered blood in all directions and turned the skies black and cloudy. He roared.

As only happened once every hundred years, Horochron closed his eyes before his son. The face of the old Lord of Creation appeared, even more rough-hewn than Mallens’s, ringed by a dancing white crown, and between his closed eyelids raged the sunlight. Now Horochron was just a head circling Pallas. He who had been king hid his face but for once a century when he closed his eyes.

I looked around. Koru stood with his arms crossed. Seraphine touched him on the side, but when he didn’t react she moved away, crossing her own arms and hunching her shoulders behind them. Astras had one arm pressed against her chest and scratched her elbow with the other. Mithrak had a butterfly knife in hand and did slow tricks without looking. Hoarfast squeezed Dr Simmons’s arm through the sleeves of his jacket. The good doctor was biting a knuckle. Agammae stood with wide legs, hands on hips with thumbs behind, and stared forward. The muscles in her jaw bulged. I just stood there and realized I’d become aware of my arms. I didn’t know what I’d been doing with them. The rats were fleeing the balcony.

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