“Fuck off, Lowe. Just fuck off. If you think I’m going to put my whole fucking face in the middle of this fucking clusterfuck, you’ve gone completely out of your fucking mind.

  "Do you even fucking hear yourself? You’re standing in my fucking office, with your fucking scruffy-ass face, asking me—me, of all fucking people—to go down to Restricted Records to dig up Cenorth’s fucking HR file like I’m some fucking intern looking to get a gold fucking star in treason. Like I don’t know exactly how that particular fucking suicide mission is going to end up. Like I don’t have enough actual fucking problems to deal with in this city, without your dumb fucking ‘theories’ adding another to the pile.

  "No, don’t you dare try to interrupt me, you fucking wanker.. I run Cuckoo House. I deal with shit on a level you can’t even fucking comprehend. I have Priests knocking down my fucking door all hours of the day, the fucking Council breathing down my neck, and enough fucking paperwork to build a fucking bonfire out of all the reasons I should’ve stayed retired. And now you—who is, let’s be real, only marginally fucking competent on a good day—are standing here asking me to personally sign my own fucking death warrant just so you can satisfy your fucking curiosity?

  "No. Fuck that. Fuck you. And fuck whatever fucked-up little paranoid delusion is rattling around in that fucking dented skull of yours.

  "Because let me tell you something about Cenorth’s fucking file. It’s not a file, Lowe. It’s a fucking black hole. It’s a fucking abyss with a department number stamped on the front. It’s a fuck-you written in official ink, tied up in so many redacted fucking layers you’d need a fucking war crime tribunal just to get a glimpse of his actual record.

  "And you think I’m gonna be the dumb fuck who goes in there, typing my nice little fucking clearance codes, knocking politely on the fucking Restricted Records door? You think I’m going to be the one who triggers every fucking alarm from here to whatever backroom cabal actually pulls this city’s strings? No, Lowe. No fucking way. Because I like my fucking job. And more importantly, I fucking like not getting fucking disappeared into a ditch.

  "So let me spell it out, real slow, using small fucking words. I Am. Not. Fucking. Doing. This. You want to die? Fine. Go do it on your own fucking time. But you don’t fucking drag me down with you, you absolute fucking lunatic.

  "And if you have any fucking brain cells left, you’ll let this entire fucking thing go. Because if the people who kept Cenorth’s leash even suspect you’re sniffing around again? There won’t even be a fucking body left for me to identify.”

  ***

  Lowe dropped the file down on his kitchen table.

  “She gave it to you?” Rook said. “Happily?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘happily’,” Lowe replied. “But the thing you have to remember with the Pernille Staffen is . . .”

  “Her bark’s worse than her bite?” Mylaf finished.

  “Oh my word, no. Her ‘bite’ is a million times worse than her ‘bark.’” Lowe said. “She has more registered kills than any Guardian of the Wall in Soar history. One of the medals she has on the wall is for slaying a Kraken, and I don’t believe they give those out just because you saw off a particularly inquisitive octopus. No, what I was going to say is that if there’s one thing she hates worse than, well, me, it’s the idea that someone in Cuckoo House was dirty.”

  “And she’s that pissed off at a dead ex-Commander for being on the take that she’s willing to risk pulling down all sorts of shit on her head?” Latham said, and then whistled. “Actually, tell you what, how about we trade her in for you? If we have to have someone from the Security Services on our team, the certifiable badass legend with an incredible sense of duty trumps . . . well, the guy who won’t be much use in a scrap, but will probably still be alive once the rest of us are wiped. Actually, do you know what? All things being equal, I’m thinking you being around is actually pretty made for morale. Like you’re the spectre at the feast, but you’re the one who actually does the catering.”

  “Hang on, how is he higher on the ‘being useful to team morale’ pecking order than me?” Lowe said, pointing at Rook. “He’s already dead!”

  “Actually, technically I’m not. Just very, very close. And, well, I have the whole supernatural speed and strength thing going for me. Did you miss the part of the story when I put down a whole Shimmerskin squad on my own? I mean, that probably gets me all sorts of brownie points, no? Oh, and didn’t one of them kill you kind of by accident? I mean, I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet here but, when push comes to shove, I’m probably not the one of us getting picked last in P.E here, mate.”

  “Fuck you very much, Rook. But you can stay. Surely, though, and no offence here Mylaf, but I’ve got to be more crucial to operations than she is.”

  “Who’s she? The cat’s mother?” Mylaf said. “And, sir, need I remind you that one of us has the ability to produce Legendary quality consumables which might be the be all and end all between living and dying and the other one . . . I’m sorry, sir, I’ve never quite been clear what it is you actually do. I mean, know I clean a lot of blood out of your shirts. Is it posssible you are some sort of, I don’t know, jousting dummy?”

  “Et tu, Mylaf? You’re a bad influence,” Lowe said to Latham, and then split up Cenorth’s file and threw equal parts to the giggling figures around him. “How about we all agree that each and every one of us is absolutely critical for the success of this operation and that any comparisons as to our differing talents are odious and unnecessary.”

  “Yes, why don’t we do that?” Latham said, flicking through the file. “By the gods, a lot of this shit is redacted!”

  “Indeed,” Mylaf said, dropping another round of a drink she was calling ‘Rapid Reader’ on the table between them. She said it would make them take on board written information at three times normal speed. Considering the size of Cenorth’s file, Lowe suspected they might well need it if they wanted to gather anything useful before the end of the world. “I would have thought something this difficult to get hold of might have been the unvarnished truth.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Both Rook and Lowe laughed at that. “There’s no such thing as ‘unvarnished truth’ as far as Cuckoo House is concerned,” Lowe said.

  “I doubt even Arkola has the clearance to see an unredacted file,” Rook said.

  That gave Lowe a moment’s pause. Although he’d shared the general details about the memory he’d seen courtesy of Grackle Nuroon, and the gist of his meeting with Arkola, he hadn’t told his friends everything. Especially about there being ways to keep things entirely beyond the reach of the First Floor. Some things were just too freaky to be widely known.

  “Sorry, remind me what I’m looking for here,” Mylaf said. “On the few pages that actually have anything I can read on them.”

  “We’re working on the theory that Cenorth was either working alongside or, more likely, directing the actions of the Black Knight,” Lowe said.

  “Based on a conversation over a game of chess,” Rook said neutrally. He raised his hands as Lowe shot him a look. “Hey, I’m not saying it’s the worst theory in the world. It’s just, speaking as a guy who got his heart blown out, I’d like a little more certainty around me blaming the boss for that happening. You weren’t the only one who respected him”

  Lowe shrugged. “If I had anything else, I’d run with it. But we are where we are. Now, as the boss had a shittier work/life balance than me, we’re exploring the idea that, if he was working with the Black Knight, he must have come across him via work. Considering we now know that the Black Knight was dropping off confidential packages to the Mayor six years ago, anything unusual Cenorth got up to around that time has to be worth exploring.”

  “He was the Commander of Cuckoo House. ‘Something unusual’ isn’t needle in a haystack territory. It’s looking for a needle in a needlestack. And a needlestack that has been heavily redacted at that. Fuck this is some weak sauce.” Latham said.

  “Well, if you have any better ideas, I’m happy to hear them,” Lowe said. “But as far as I can see, we’ve got a little under two days to locate Arkola’s missing statue and the only way we’re going to do that is if we find the Black Knight.”

  “Not strictly true, little man. We can always go out there and pluck ourselves another Shimmerskin off the street and ask him some questions. The guy who popped you in the head is still out there, isn’t he? Maybe he’ll know more about why his OOB squad is active in downtown Soar. Because that’s the bit I can’t figure. They’re not working for the Mayor. And I doubt they’re for the Warden, either. And I don’t think, considering their - you know - casual slaughter, they’re on the Black Knight’s payroll either. Someone put them in the bank either because they thought the Black Knight was going to make a move on the Vault and wanted the security - but how would they know that? - or they were after what the Mayor hid away and the Black Knight swooped in and took over. But either way, that doesn’t change the key question: who’s paying them?”

  “Good question. But we’ll call standing out there with a big sign saying ‘come get me’ Plan B. But considering those guys are also looking for the Black Knight, my shout is that we leave them to it right now. If this reading session gets us nowhere then I guess finding them and hoping they’ve already caught him isn’t a terrible secondary option,” Lowe said.

  They read in silence for a while. The only sound was the rustling of paper and the occasional slurps of ‘Rapid Reader.’

  “You know,” Rook said eventually, flipping a page, “if he hadn’t turned out to be, you know, a complete shitstain, some of the stuff Cenorth pulled off during his career was actually pretty impressive. And this is only the stuff not redacted.”

  “Tell me about it. It’s why I was so fucking psyched to finally get moved to his team. I idolised the stories about him.”

  Rook let out a low whistle. “Look at this—seven-year undercover infiltration of the Shadow Market. He managed to get himself appointed as one of the fucking arbiters of their internal disputes, and when he finally burned the whole operation to the ground, they had no idea it was him. The report says it took them months to even work out how they got dismantled, let alone who did it.”

  Lowe nodded. “That was the boss. Play every side until you’re the one pulling the strings. I remember hearing about that op—back then, they said it was some internal collapse. No one ever said a thing about it being us.”

  Mylaf, skimming through another section, gave a short laugh. “My word—look at this one! Six-man assault team tries to take him out while he’s - sorry is the term ‘deep cover’ - in Redhaven. They believed they had him cornered in a warehouse. The report says there was nowhere to run. No way to call for help.” She flicked the page. “Next note? They found him walking out an hour later, covered in their blood, missing a pinky finger, and somehow managing to be the only witness to the whole thing. No bodies left. No proof. No nothing. Just your man Cenorth, casually submitting his exit paperwork like he hadn’t just committed six perfect murders.”

  Rook shook his head. “Fuck me. No wonder the brass let him do whatever he wanted.”

  “They had to,” Lowe said. “He was too useful. If you needed something done quietly, you sent him in. If you needed something done loudly—well, you still sent him, because by the time the bodies hit the floor, he’d have an ironclad reason why it was all perfectly justified.” He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “I spent years wanting to be him. Wanting to be picked by him. And when I finally was? It felt like I’d made it. And now? Now I realise the only reason I ever made the cut… is because I was useful to him.”

  “To be fair, he does seem pretty keen on you, sir. I doubt he could have recommended you more times for Commendations if he’d tried,” Mylaf, said scanning another page.

  Lowe shot her a look, but Mylaf wasn’t paying attention. She turned a page, frowned, then turned it back again as if double-checking something. “Hmmm,” she said.

  “What?” Rook said.

  “Just something strange, is all.” Mylaf tapped the paper. “Did you know that, under him, Cuckoo House didn’t recruit any new operatives for years? Then all of a sudden, Cenorth pulled in five new recruits in no time at all.”

  Lowe’s spine straightened slightly. “Come again?”

  “This section, it’s a record of his personal notes on any and all applications made for transfer to his team. Year after year, he just writes the same sort of thing: ‘not suitable.’ ‘Insufficient aptitude.’ ‘No potential.’ Then, suddenly, in one single year, there’s five names he’s marked as ‘goers.’ And after those five are moved to his team? We’re back to nothing again.”

  “Goers?” Latham said. “What do you mean?”

  Mylaf turned the page around and held it out. “See for yourself. He draws little horses next to them.”

  Lowe took the paper, expecting… well, he didn’t know what he was expecting. But it wasn’t this. Rook leaned over his shoulder. “Horses?” His brow furrowed. “Wait. Fuck! Those aren’t horses.”

  Lowe realised it the exact same moment Rook did. His mouth went dry.

  “They’re knights,” Rook breathed. “Black Knights.”

  Lowe barely heard him. His eyes had locked instead onto the names beneath the scribbled drawings. Names he knew. Names that had shaped his life. Names that had fought beside him. Bled beside him. Died beside him.

  Arman

  Coda

  Rook

  Faulks

  … and Lowe.