Blackheart Knights

by Laure Eve

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy; Sword & Sorcery

Synopsis

Power always wins.

Imagine Camelot but in Gotham: a city where Arthurian knights are the celebrities of the day, riding on motorbikes instead of horses and competing in televised fights for fame and money.

'Arthurian legend meets urban fantasy in a brilliant, bloody wild ride' Jay Kristoff, Sunday Times bestselling author of Aurora Burning

Imagine a city where a young, magic-touched bastard astonishes everyone by becoming king - albeit with extreme reluctance - and a girl with a secret past trains to become a knight for the sole purpose of vengeance.

The boldest, smartest, most adventurous fantasy I've read in ages' Krystal Sutherland, author of Our Chemical Hearts

Imagine a city where magic is illegal but everywhere, in its underground bars, its back-alley soothsayers - and in the people who have to hide what they are for fear of being tattooed and persecuted.

Imagine a city where electricity is money, power the only game worth playing, and violence the most fervently worshipped religion.


'King Arthur as you've never seen him before. The coolest thing you'll read this year' Samantha Shannon, author of The Bone Season and The Priory of the Orange Tree

In this dark, chaotic, alluring place, any dream can come true if you want it hard enough - and if you are prepared to do some very, very bad things to get it . . .

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Release date: May 27, 2021

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 463

Sample

Knight-in-training Lillath o’Senzatown scrapes her foot backwards across the ground, gravel piling up in a mound against her heel.

The sounds of those shifting stones are lost in the quiet hum of the desiccated building behind her. The building houses a power relay, a simmering electricity monster caged in thick stone. It is one of hundreds that sit in miniature wastelands like this one, strewn far and wide across the depth and breadth of London.

Lillath’s lean calf visibly tightens as she shifts her weight downwards and raises her other foot inch by painstaking inch into the air. Next to her stands Lucan, another knight-in-training, his arms folded and his face creased in a tutorial frown. Their best friend Art is sprawled out in a chair in front of them both, watching with an amused look on his face.

‘What is this?’ he says. ‘You look like you’re fighting under water.’

‘That’s actually the best way to practise.’ Lucan holds a finger aloft. ‘Our trainer makes us do these movements over and over in the salt pool every morning. My muscles scream for hours afterwards.’ He turns back to Lillath, paused with her leg in the air, striking a crooked balance. ‘Lower and shift forwards on to front foot, bring right arm round to describe an arc, palm edge first.’

‘It’s like you swallowed the instruction manual whole,’ Lillath mutters as her movements follow Lucan’s dictation, limbs-in-treacle slow.

Lucan ignores this. He has a prodigious memory. It is highly likely he read said manual cover to cover and now leafs through it in his head as if the real book exists on a shelf in his brain.

Art draws on his sicalo, breathing out blue-tinged smoke in a long plume while he watches his friends, noting the shapes their bodies describe against the stone-and-cement backdrop. A tutor once told him that he made a habit of surrounding himself with oddities rather than more obviously useful allies. It was said at the time with some measure of disapproval, but Art had decided to take it as a compliment. After all, in his opinion his friends are quite spectacular.

Lillath has the kind of confidence most only dream of and enough charm to file down its sharper edges. Her most constant trait is that she always seems to know what anyone is thinking, enforcing a level of honesty around her both annoying and admirable in equal measure.

Lucan’s careful studiousness extends into the way he approaches life. He anticipates two steps ahead of all the people who underestimate him due to his diminutive size and unobtrusive nature. He has a few very particular requirements to be at ease in life, but it is a small price to pay for the talent he brings to the world.

‘At this rate, your demo is going to last until past evemeal,’ Art says. ‘You’ll both be striped for lateness and I’ll get a bitching from Hektor. You know how well he does that.’

Lucan frowns. ‘First of all, “striped”? It’s a Caballaria training ground, not a prison. No striping goes on.’

‘Really? Not even a swift thwack across the legs with a practice sabre to teach you your place?’

Lucan looks irritated. ‘Art, our trainer is Si Vergo. Remember, Vergo the Valiant? The incredibly famous ex-Caballaria knight? He’s a great man—’

‘Even great men can make errors of judgement.’

Art watches his two friends pause in their demonstration. He knows what they’re thinking. It skitters across both their faces, and for a moment he fancies he can actually see the thin thread of thought that unites them against him.

Must be nice, he thinks, not to feel alone.

‘It’s not like we’re working directly for him, you know,’ Lillath says.

Art smiles humourlessly. ‘You’re both training to be knights,’ he points out. ‘Knights serve the King.’

‘Knights serve London before they serve the King.’

‘There’s no difference. The King is London. London is the King.’

They trade back and forth, but the words have lost their meaning with repetition. It is a mountains-old argument between them.

Art flicks the end of his sicalo into the dirt, shifting on his chair. He found the chair in the small dump sat in the scrub behind the power relay building, along with the rest of the four-set it belongs to. The set is well moulded, carved out of expensive slicker wood, but one leg has been severely chipped, presumably enough to displease, and the whole lot has been thrown. Doubtless another set was bought the very next day. The imperfect ones have been left here, where the unwanted gather dirt.

He knows how they feel.

As the most northwestern of the seven districts that make up the sprawling city-state of London, inner Senzatown is relatively easy for Art to travel to from the country estate he calls home. He and his friends don’t meet very often, but when they can, they come to this little dump. They found it in their wanderings just over a year ago, realised how non-existent its security was and henceforth claimed it as their territory. Security is always non-existent around the wilder areas of London.

If Si Hektor, Art’s guardian, found out that he went city dump-diving in his spare time, he’d likely have the world’s calmest aneurysm and threaten to lock Art up in the country forever – a hell he is reluctant to risk. It’s not that he dislikes the country, exactly, it’s just that it’s so saintsforsaken dull. Nature is too pretty and jewel-like for his taste, but stark, sharply formed places like this have a kind of dark, grim beauty that stirs his soul. Spindly weeds poke through the cracks in the cement, those most hardy of urban plants. There is a loneliness here, yes, but also a tenacity that he admires. Power relay buildings might be ugly to look at, but they function as the insides of the body – vital carriers of the life spark that keeps everyone alive.

These are the city’s haunted places, areas often claimed by the encampments of the homeless, their makeshift tent-towns nestled in between buildings still tumbledown and crumbling from the last civil war. Street foxes, orphans whose numbers far outstrip what few hostel beds the district has scraped together, do a meagre trade in frisking the unwary.

Yes, Art knows the risks, and he knows what Hektor would say about it, but no one around here would ever recognise his face. Besides, he never comes here alone. He has his friends.

A rippling rattle interrupts the training demonstration. The chain-link fence ringing their private little Kingdom for the afternoon sounds off like a metallic alarm. Lillath and Lucan pause, their gazes seeking the source of the noise, but Art doesn’t move.

Later, analysing every moment and thought of that day, burned as they are on his brain, he will wonder why. Why he doesn’t turn. Why he doesn’t even look up.

Did you already know, somehow? Did you feel it?

‘T’chores, Garad,’ Lucan calls. ‘You’re unforgivably late.’

The fourth member of their group, who was supposed to have been here an hour ago, darts through the fence’s battered gate and comes to a stop before them, cheeks ugly-flushed. The sound of dragging breath carries over the power relay’s constant hum.

Garad is a huge cat of a human, a full head taller than the other three. Only sixteen but already a beautiful fighter, their most fervent wish is to enter the Caballaria, competing in the arena for justice, fame and glory. Most hopefuls fail the notoriously brutal training, but the group’s tacit agreement is that Garad is most likely of them all to become a knight.

‘Sprinted all . . . the way . . .’ comes a tight gasp. ‘They’re right . . . behind me.’

Then something happens to stop Art’s heart.

Garad sinks to one knee on the dirt ground in front of his chair.

‘You churl, what are you doing?’ Lucan says, astonished.

Art knows, but the knot in his chest is too heavy to let his voice out.

‘Art,’ Garad says, and then halts. ‘Sire—’

The air roars, drowning out any further words. Outside the dump, just beyond the chain-link fence, gravel spits and runs underneath the tyres of two enormous bikes. They are show machines, their hinds glossy-polished, their engines cut to give out growling revs instead of quiet purrs, chosen for ceremonial occasions when their riders wish to be both seen and heard.

The riders themselves drop their kickstands, plant their feet on the ground and stride through the chain-link fence, which vibrates gently with their passing. They are in full black cycle gear, their leathers sporting a silver sword emblem on each shoulder that only more fully draws the eye due to its coy size. If that were not enough to dissuade any casual threat – and it should be, touch the royal guard the wrong way and risk execution – the bulky swell of gun holsters at their hips would do the job.

Their arms rise. They lift off their helmets to reveal the gently sweat-sheened faces of a man and a woman Art has never laid eyes on before. An ebony scabbard arrows heavily downwards against the woman’s leg.

‘Your father,’ Garad hisses, rising hastily as the two riders approach the group. ‘He’s—’

‘Dead.’ The word is choked out through Art’s protesting throat.

Lucan sharply inhales.

‘Oh fuck,’ whispers Lillath.

‘Artorias Dracones,’ pronounces the man when he is close enough to hear. His gaze passes briefly over Art’s friends, eyes having to slide up a little to accommodate Garad’s height into his line of sight.

Art is stuck to the chair. He is made of it and it is made of him.

‘Yes,’ he says. His voice sounds steady to his ears. Later, he’ll be grateful for it. Later, it will develop into a skill he’ll come to rely on, that his body automatically delivers such outward calm in moments of high stress.

Echoing Garad, both riders sink to one knee.

The woman undoes her belt as her head hangs low, popping open the scabbard and withdrawing a slender sword. It has been made to look good on display, set high on some opulent wall in the royal palace. In the bright, flat air of some nameless urban scrubland, it looks cheap and glittery.

‘Your father,’ the woman begins in a carefully formal voice. ‘Marvol has taken him into his arms, and he now passes the heavy burden of his life’s task to you.’ She pauses. ‘Do you accept?’

Marvol. The Death Saint.

All his life, this awful potential has been lurking in the dark, surfacing in the smallest part of the night to curl the depths of Art’s stomach . . . but still, it was never supposed to happen. His father is – was – a strong, healthy man. He also has – had – his young wife, the Lady Orcade. He wasn’t supposed to die before she could give him a legitimate child. That had been the entire point of their marriage.

Art is the product of a scandalous, illegally conceived union. He might be innocent of the crime, but the shame of it has followed him all his life, staining his soul before he’d even had a chance to tarnish it himself. It should not be possible for him to take over from his father – and yet here it is, the impossible possibility, kneeling in front of him in the dirt.

Art could say no. He could tell them to toss their glittery sword in the nearest hydropower lake and watch the shine eaten eagerly away by the grime floating on its surface. Unfortunately, there is no other path for him. He is rich and he is safe, but he has never known the giddy terror of choice, and he has nowhere else to go.

Sat in his rejected chair beside a small city dump, with the electric hum of a crumbling power relay and the smell of mildewing furniture in the air, seventeen-year-old Artorias Dracones becomes the new King of London.

And he is really fucken unhappy about it.

The challenger has their head covered in a black face-hood, a ragged strip torn out for their eyes and another for their mouth.

They wear engineer’s tape wrapped around their knuckles, and it goes in careful overlaps again and again all the way up to their wrists. A raggedy, oversized jumper hangs from their slender frame, stretched enough to expose collarbone to the air. Black, nondescript trousers. Boots that look too heavy to give them much speed but might pack a heft if they smacked you in the face with their foot.

A cheap, cobbled-together look, but then challengers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are kitted out like rock stars already, their rich families providing. Some are desperateers off the streets, starving and ready to take a beating if it means they might get in a stable for a few nights, even a fourth-rate stable. A lot of them think they’re hot shit. Most of them are scared.

Not this one, though, not so much. They have no visible shakes in their outline, and they walk well. The simple light board showing each fighter’s information pronounces their name to be ‘Red’. Nothing more, nor less. If they have no family or district name then they’re an orphan, a street fox. They show none of the fear that must be coiling uneasily inside their guts, which in itself is a good sign. It indicates that they’re good at acting, and showmanship is half the battle in becoming a Caballaria knight.

The small arena should be half empty, should only be filled with those mad fans who come to all their local bouts, rain or shine – but today the arena is packed out, because today is special. No one was even supposed to know about why today is special, but the whisper somehow got out and made its way around all the local bars faster than the take-up on a round of free drinks.

The audience shifts and grunts and brays in the stalls, protected from the spitting rain by tattered canvas overhangs. They wince whenever a challenger gets beaten down, but it’s a wince of greed, of expectation, of dark pleasure. They wince through sharp grins and bared teeth.

The scouts are up there too, checking out new talent for their stable owners. One or two of the biggest stables are usually represented at outer district challenger bouts such as this one by a greener scout hoping to score big with a brand-new find.

They huddle in the private box, surrounded by opaque walls and the best view of the arena pit below, sipping on cheap whisky more like hot engine grease and making buys from the winners of each fight. Sometimes from the losers, if they see potential and are working to a low budget. They’re hoping maybe there’s a glimmer of talent there that could be coaxed out with a bit of training. If not, each pick is out in two weeks. Some stables offer more of a trial period than that, but most don’t.

The challenger is stamping on the damp arena ground in the cold, waiting for their opponent to make his grand entrance. Entrances are always important, even in a shit-tin challenger bout like this, and the Sorcerer Knight must know that better than anyone.

He is the reason those without tickets are pressed up to the fence three-deep outside, braving the wrath of the arena guards to get a glimpse of the most famous Caballaria knight in London, and perhaps all Seven Kingdoms. He is the reason the seats are sold out, even the drenched ones outside of the overhangs. People around here wouldn’t be able to afford tickets for the big, important tournaments that he normally fights in. Those they have to watch on the glow screens in their local bar like everyone else, yelling and cussing and throwing their trick coins at the betting agents.

They always pick this apart in the pre-fight talks – why the Sorcerer Knight sometimes fights in a routine, new-blood tourney like this one. Some of them think it’s because he’s bored. It must get dull, knowing no one can beat you – maybe he’s looking for a surprise. Others say that it’s because he’s done something to hack off his stable and this is his punishment, downgraded for the day in bouts that are so beneath him they aren’t even mud on his boots.

Neither of those reasons is the truth. The real reason that he chooses to fight in places like this is because he’s looking for other people like him. It’s an open secret, what he’s up to. A rumour never officially confirmed but known all the same.

The doors at the end of the little arena slam open. The crowd roars, their multi-voice crescendoing, pummelling the air for a mile around. They’ve seen him fight twice already today but they’re still not tired of it – and neither is he, by the looks of things.

The challenger known only as Red stops pacing and stands, waiting. They are still, very still, as the beautiful monster approaches them.

The Sorcerer Knight. Scourge of the Godless. London’s Left Hand. He has a few names, and he has earned them all. It is a cool, wet autumn day outside but he wears only trousers, his bronze skin picking up a sheen from the falling rain. His boots are soft, not the clumpy style of the challenger’s, undoubtedly made from the finest of materials. Light but fully waterproof, and lined with the tiny needle knives that he favours to make his kicks deadlier. He has the best weapon-makers in London falling over themselves to give him their pieces of art. Their names get up on the glow screens when he fights in the big, showy dispute bouts that draw watching audiences in their millions, and then the weapon-makers can hang a sign in their shop saying ‘as worn by the Sorcerer Knight’. They make very good trick off his fame.

As they near each other, you can see the challenger is tall – at least enough to not look like a scrawny child in comparison like most do – though they’re a little too rangy to stack up against the solid, loping wall of muscle heading their way.

They stand, facing each other. There are no fancy light shows or music intros – no wasting it on a bout that won’t even make it to the glows. An electric whistle sounds through the arena’s tinny speakers, and that’s it.

It begins.

It is careful, at first. The shouts of the crowd die down as they watch the circling. The challenger isn’t a show-off, and the Sorcerer Knight is going to give them every chance to shine in order to be fair to such a mismatch. In a real fight, with heavy stakes, it might already be over.

Then they clash.

The first surprise is that the challenger isn’t down. The hooded figure backs off fast, wary. Still, as they meet again the crowd beast knows it’ll be done soon, and it begins to shuffle, rustle, mutter. The challenger is not bad enough to be entertaining and not good enough to be interesting.

Except if you know what to look for.

They clash again, and every time they do the challenger looks less like they’re going down. It’s not until at least three minutes in that people start to work out what they’re doing.

They’re testing.

Silence rolls across the crowd. Everyone has their eyes trained on the pair and their mouths glued shut.

Then just like that, it stops being a dance.

The pair are going at it, now. The challenger is fast – and damn, thinks the crowd, they’re good. They whirl like a dirt demon across the sanded concrete. No one has ever lasted this long against the Sorcerer Knight in a bout like this. The challenger has unusual moves, odd spins and slides. Excitement blooms, thickening the air. Surely this street fox can’t be the one to beat the unbeatable—?

No, they can’t.

The Sorcerer Knight lands a punch so fast and savage that it can barely be clocked before the challenger is down against the far wall. Usually that would be enough for them to stay put, but this challenger staggers upright, still fighting. The Sorcerer Knight wraps a hand around their throat to keep them still.

Give up, the crowd thinks.

No one is supposed to die. A heavy, painful world of legal and financial chaos would rain down on the stable owner if one of their knights killed another, especially in a tourney shown on the glows where the world can see. They might even cut the knight loose as punishment. In no-glows bouts like this it would at least get the killing fighter some major fines, and it can be a career-ruiner.

It happens, though. In the raw heat of a clash it’s hard to tell between stopping someone for a minute or stopping them for good.

The challenger is still fighting. Their leg comes up and their knee slams against the Sorcerer Knight’s side, again and again – but nothing budges. They are struggling, getting weaker, one palm braced on the Sorcerer Knight’s chest. The crowd mutters, satisfied they can see the end.

Then that strip of exposed mouth moves and they choke out—

something

Their hand bunches into a sudden, tight fist and their lips form silent sounds that are lost in the arena noise – but what happens next needs no translation. The Sorcerer Knight reels back as if violently shoved, pitching on his feet and collapsing on the ground behind him, gloved palms bracing his impact. The challenger hasn’t even touched him.

It takes a couple of seconds for the crowd to work out what has happened, and by the time it reaches them it has faded to no more than a cold, wet gust of air. But it is there, undeniable.

Magic.

The whole arena is frozen.

In the midst of the crushing silence, the Sorcerer Knight levers himself back up to standing, takes two loping strides to the challenger and pulls off their home-made face-hood.

Out tumbles a fall of long, tangled black hair that drips down past the challenger’s shoulders. Though her admission form says she is eighteen years old, she only just about looks it. Her skin is a creamy brown and her eyes are hard black coins set in a pointed face that could look good enough for the glows with the right kind of paint. She is graceful, clearly talented. She has everything the Caballaria could possibly want in a potential fighter knight.

Except for the magic, of course.

This challenger girl is playing a very dangerous game, and she knows it. You can see the fear in her shivering frame, now, even as her expression hardens in defiance. She raises her hand as if to try a move. It gets halfway up before the Sorcerer Knight whips out a knife from the belt on his thigh and slams it into the challenger’s shoulder, leaning into her like a lover, the knife pinning her flesh against the crumbling wall behind. The challenger lets out a guttural, infuriated scream.

The Sorcerer Knight turns his back on her and faces the scout box.

‘Magic,’ he says, addressing the group huddled within the box’s depths. ‘You saw it.’

Nothing.

Then a voice like a sputtering, revving cycle rolls out from the dimness. ‘I didn’t know she was a godchild.’

It’s the unmistakable voice of Faraday, one of the oldest Caballaria scouts around. Only those closest to the box will have heard it, but it moves through the crowd like a forest fire.

The canniest of the fans will realise that this was never destined to be an ordinary challenger bout. The most famous knight and one of the most famous scouts in London, both coincidentally in nowhere-town together?

Faraday could have had his pick of the richest stables, but he seems to prefer working in the down-and-dirty grime of the streets. He said in a rare interview that it’s more exciting, spotting dark-horse talent from the outer-city dregs. Originally from some prim, shiny northern Kingdom, he defected to London when he was young. The nastiest commentators like to bring his northern roots up when one of his finds isn’t doing so well in a bout.

Ah, well, comes from a shithole, all he’s going to scout is shit, right? they joke.

‘She’s mine,’ says the Sorcerer Knight.

Protests float out from inside the box, but they die down in the face of his unrelenting stare.

‘Fine,’ says the sputtering-cycle voice of Faraday, eventually. ‘Sold.’

Faraday was the one who sponsored the godchild challenger’s entry. He is the one who gets to sell her.

The other scouts’ voices rise in protest.

‘You can’t do that!’

‘The rules!’

‘It’s in the very Code of the Caballaria!’

‘Fuck the Code,’ says the Sorcerer Knight.

This blasphemy hits them hard. He is well known for not pandering to procedure – it’s one reason he’s so popular – but this might just lose him some favour.

The challenger is trying her hardest not to make a noise, but her strained panting fills the little arena. The knife juts out of her shoulder. The crowd neither shifts nor breathes, trying to catch every sound of the argument.

‘The godchild is illegal,’ splutters another scout. ‘She should be arrested.’

Those closest to the box register the misstep before the scout does. There are muffled gasps.

‘I wasn’t aware that the mere existence of godchildren is against the law,’ the Sorcerer Knight says in a tone of flat calm.

The scout flounders. No one dares help him.

‘Not illegal for being a godchild, of course not, but the magic she used is – it’s the law. It’s . . . the law.’

A colder voice joins in. ‘Can someone just lock the girl up so we can move on to the next fight, please?’

‘She won’t be arrested,’ the Sorcerer Knight replies. ‘She’s still underage. That means her magical transgression only counts against me, and I’m entirely uninterested in opening a dispute. I’m only interested in sponsoring her entry into training.’

Silence.

‘No fighter can sponsor another fighter,’ the cold voice states.

‘My stable owner will arrange it on my behalf.’

My stable owner, he says, as if there is anyone left in the Seven Kingdoms who isn’t aware of just who it is the Sorcerer Knight fights for.

‘Are there any other bids?’ asks Faraday.

The box is silent. They are afraid of the Sorcerer Knight, and of the power he wields. No one in their right mind would bid against him.

‘We will have to verify this with your stable owner’s seneschal,’ comes the cold voice.

‘Then do it,’ replies the Sorcerer Knight, unconcerned, ‘but at the same time as someone does something for the challenger bleeding out behind me. I’m not interested in damaged stock.’

The Sorcerer Knight turns to the panting challenger. She looks as though the only thing stopping her from falling on the ground is the knife in her shoulder pinning her up. Her mouth gives a sour twist as she hawks deep in her throat and spits at him.

The arena is silent, lost in admiring horror.

The Sorcerer Knight regards her for two or three long seconds. The crowd holds its breath – but all that happens is that he turns and lopes away, disappearing back through the doors.

Medics trundle into the pit and swarm around the sagging, grey-faced girl. The crowd cranes its collective neck. The knife tip is slid snug between two bricks. It might not be good to move her, but they don’t have much of a choice. One medic brushes the knife handle with the tips of his fingers, but his gentleness likely comes from fear of touching something that belongs to the Sorcerer Knight, as if it is either sacred or cursed – people never seem to be too sure which it is they believe more. Even that soft barely-a-touch sets the challenger wincing, her face streaked with sweat.

‘Just pull it out!’ calls someone from the crowd.

And like that, the silence breaks. The noise fumbles, swells.

‘Go on.’

‘Hurry up!’

‘Pull it out!’

Pull

it

out

Pull

it

out

chants the crowd beast.

The medics try to ignore it, try to be professional. The set of their shoulders means they know best, but the trouble is, they probably don’t. Tournament medics are different – the best in the land – but outer-city arena medics are another tale.

Anxiety is a thick, clotted taste in the mouth of the crowd. Now the Sorcerer Knight wants her, they’re all for the risky little street fox. They need her to be all right. The medics can feel it too. If they screw this up, not only will they incur the displeasure of the Sorcerer Knight, but – more importantly in London – the crowd.

In the end, one medic has to put a foot up the wall next to the knife in order to clip the tip with an evil-looking pair of industrial shears, while two more hold the challenger up tight in case she faints and tears her shoulder open from the downward weight. Awful seconds tick past while the medic wrestles the shear points in between brick and flesh, scrabbling as gently as they can to gain purchase, the air filled with the challenger’s hoarse cries.

Then, all of a sudden, it is done. The challenger sags, passing out, and the medics catch her before she hits the dust, laying her out on a stretcher to the backdrop of the excited muttering that fills the air.

Red. She only came in with one name, but it will be everywhere by morning. It will be the most famous name in the whole of London.

She’d better be ready for this.

Not long behind the two riders with their glittery sword comes a whole transport fleet from Cair Lleon, the palace of London’s King.

They arrive to spirit Art away from the lot and towards the life that he never wanted. Garad, Lucan and Lillath, his friends, his lifeline, are left behind. He is too dazed to protest, bundled into a slick black quad, the two riders who first broke the news accompanying him on the back seats in silence.

A numbed Art tracks the outside world sleeting past through the smoked glass. Dazzle-blind riots of emerald green and electric blue light stripe his face as the quad moves through the ups of Senzatown, its richest and flashiest area – and only two streets over from its downs, its poorest and most notorious.

The streets are empty, cleared moments before by the bikes that precede them like a shoal of leathered sharks herding a ponderous whale. Even though the official news of the King’s dea