Tag: Koru

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 38

Rewritten 8/9/2023
Rewritten again 8/19/2023

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Chapter 38

I sat down.

Having drawn one of several chairs to the desk, I eased myself into. The chair itself was a big thing with a high back and fixed arm rests. It cradled my back.

Priam poured me a drink of a black, acidic fluid that tasted vaguely earthy. It soothed. He also spoke to the pattern spiders about the hole in the wall. Several small ones appeared and when he asked them to fix the hole, they went to work. We didn’t talk while they did. I read my folder.

When the spiders had fixed the wall and we could talk, Priam did.

“You’re associated with and for a while used to work for Koru, Lord of Rats. What do you know of him?”

“You tell me,” I said.

Priam shrugged. “The Lord of Rats is an unpopular, nasty old god who thinks he should be very popular. He believes he deserves to be loved and respected. He isn’t, and he’s been ruminating over this for decades. Perhaps obsessing is a better word.

“Aepoch, the Thunder Eagle, is the highest of the flight gods. He is great in the halls of the Titans, and Mallens speaks with him at length. Aepoch is not just a flight god, though. He’s also the highest god of song. You weren’t alive then, but in the old days, rats could sing like birds. When Aepoch told Koru that his children weren’t allowed to fly because they couldn’t sing, he was wrong. Which is why Koru challenged him.

“But Aepoch is a great god. He stole the voices of the rats and bound their songs in an old basket kept in his mansion. Only little squeaks escaped, and that’s all rats can say. So all the gods laughed at Koru, and they threw him out of Attarkus. They literally threw him out. He fell down the mountain, beat and battered himself against rocks, and fled to caves in the mountains. That’s also why rats are scared of birds.

“How much of that did you know?”

Trying to be cagey while truthful, I said, “Koru tells it somewhat differently.”

The cracked man nodded. “He would. That’s a reasonably objective if abbreviated version of the story. For the sake of argument, let’s treat it as what happened.

“Koru did not take it well. He’d long had some agreement with Aph, the Drowning River–”

“The Drowning River?” I interrupted.

“Yes. That’s what he was called long ago. There’s some form of dark magic, sorcery, I don’t know, where Aph takes the power of anything that drowns in his waters. He is much stronger than he should be.”

The old man repeated for emphasis, “Much stronger than he should be.”

When the silence stretched out and my rockblood glass ran empty, I admitted, “I feel like I’m missing a key piece.”

“Oh, you’ve got the pieces. You just haven’t quite put them together. What did you shout during the fight?”

“Raln?” I said calmly. I didn’t shout it now; I said it quietly so my fingers didn’t cut through the chair’s armrests. Words of power need power. They need to be yelled with enthusiasm.

“Exactly. One of Northshore’s words of power,” said Priam.

I made a get-rolling gesture.

He sighed. “Speech is the first part of power. Koru gave rats the gift of speech many years ago, when the Clockwork Gods had just made the world. But he is not a kind or benevolent god. He made a deal with Aph, where he fed his children to Aph’s waters. There are many, many rats, and Aph got great power by drowning them.”

“That’s…horrible,” I said quietly.

“Yes. And if we could prove it, we would Sanction them both.”

Good, I thought. I didn’t say anything, but I had a hard time keeping my face blank.

“But Aepoch took the gift of speech from Koru’s children. Aph’s power began to fade. He’s still strong. Very strong. But he spent himself extravagantly. His star moved from ascendance in House of Ajaxos to descent in the House of the Wastrel.”

Ajaxos was a great king of old. He had conquered the Worms of Meru, leashed them, and made them build Mount Attarkus for which Mallens had given him great riches.

I nodded slowly, waiting.

Priam said, “Aph’s star has moved back into ascendance in Axajos, and now another star is with him. The new star is red and glitters. Our greatest astrologamages do not know what it is or where it came from, but they worry it may be many stars all standing close together. We sent good agents across the Firmament to explore it, but the mountains around Axajos are tall and the Worms of Meru live there, piling up the cliffs and peaks. I pulled my agents back. Koru himself has a dog star. He has no fixed place in the heavens and defies astrology. We don’t know what he’s up to.”

Coming to a decision, he took the gun out of his lap and hid it in a jacket pocket. Priam wasn’t a big guy and that .43 was a hammer, yet he hid it without a trace. I couldn’t see an outline. He had poured himself a drink at the start of our conversation and noticing my glass was empty, his half full, topped us both up.

He moved well. With the white in his hair and cracked features, I expected him to move gingerly, but he surprised me. He handled the iron with one hand and moved the decanter of rockblood around smoothly. It was a big jar. He didn’t slosh or spill.

Since he seemed to be getting his own thoughts in order, I looked around the office. The room was amber and sandstone. The carpet was maroon and tan, and the ceiling and walls were a subdued desert pattern. Priam’s desk was a huge glass thing without drawers, but behind him stood filing cabinets as tall as a man. One wall was windows that faced mountains and the dark sky. It was daytime, not yet lunch. There were other furnishings like small chairs, a simple table, bookshelves, and a drinks cabinet that did little but enhance the feeling of space. My apartment was significantly smaller than his office.

Who was the judicial director? I didn’t see any power totems, no signs of worship, but I doubted he was a mortal. Glancing around, I did see pictures and awards from centuries back. He’d gotten an award for ‘Best Junior Investigator’ two hundred and forty years ago. Several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves held legal books, but they seemed more practical than theoretical. Keeping Abreast of Criminal Justice Theory and The Search for Evidence seemed worn.

“What’s your domain?” I asked. “What are you god of?”

“I’m not a god. I’m just a spirit.”

“How did a mere spirit become a Judicial Director?”

“Oh, I was born high,” he said and seeing my frown, explained, “I don’t claim divinity. I’m a monotheist.”

I squinted at him. “Really?”

“Yes. There’s a fair number of us in Fate. Maybe more here than elsewhere.”

I kept squinting.

Looking defensive, he said, “The reason you don’t notice us is that it doesn’t come up in conversation that much. When it does come up in conversation, it’s with someone you knew was a monotheist already. So you think there’re only a few of us, all like that.”

Suddenly realizing he was justifying himself, he changed topics.

“I’ve been investigating Koru for some time, since long before he and Aepoch had their confrontation. Mass murder of anything, even rats, is something I take a very dim view on. The great mysteries of Fate are mostly why it takes us so long to get anything done, and the only thing I’ll say in our defense is we know it takes too long and we’re working on it.

“This was a little different. Things that should have gone through didn’t. Paperwork that should have been filed wasn’t. Investigations get bogged down in permissions and fiefdoms. They don’t usually break up because an evidenciary writ gets filed incorrectly five times. We’re Fate. We can do paperwork fairly well. I still don’t have investigatory authority to look into Koru’s dealings.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk. I waited.

Priam said, “Koru is a nasty, vile, selfish spirit. He’s powerful; there are many rats. No one likes him, but someone in Fate is protecting him.”

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Names

I think I’m going to change Koru’s name to Toru, just to avoid confusion with Kog.

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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

Previous Chapter

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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