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  Shadow Knight.

  A Novisarium Anthology.

  By

  OJ Lowe.

  Copyright.

  Text copyright © 2019 OJ Lowe

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods without prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  First Published as Shadow Knight. A Novisarium Anthology.

  Foreword.

  So, what was the thinking behind this collection? Well, there’s plenty of scope for other stories across the context of the Novisarium, not just what happens to the four (so far) main characters across the four series. There were extra stories to tell, stories that perhaps wouldn’t have fit into one of the main books. And as for who, well I thought about that for a long time.

  One of my beta readers (hey Gayle!) suggested Ronnie Frazer and I quite liked that idea, because well, Ronnie first appeared in the first Libby book, Family Tradition, but was mysteriously absent from the second. I mean, some of his story about being a knight for Queen Leanna of High Hall, I wanted to delve a bit more into that. High Hall’s probably going to be pretty important going forward, especially in Phase 2 and why not reveal a bit more about it, lay down some foundations. Besides, a character like that, they’re always going to be in the shadow of a main character, sometimes they need the time to have their moment in the spotlight. I always compare it mentally to when you had Angel and Spike on Buffy. Yeah, they were supernaturally strong, but they couldn’t look stronger than the titular heroine, so they had to be downplayed a little bit. Perhaps a better, more recent example being the portrayal of the Martian Manhunter on Supergirl. But yeah, so the Ronnie story was born. Plus, I wanted to explore how exactly one ends up as a knight for a fae queen. It’s not exactly the sort of thing that gets advertised down the job centre. The exact timing of this story is uncertain, just that it takes place around the time of Blessed Bullets, maybe a little before.

  The second story. Assassins always make good characters to a certain point, narrators not so much. So, why tell a story from the POV of Cassius Armitage, the leader of the Red Claw? Well, because people love a redemption story, so to speak. In Bullets, the Red Claw were shattered, they took on Paul Levitt and he, with the help of a few other characters, broke them, killed three of their five deadliest assassins personally. How do you come back from that? What drives someone to kill for money? And I think quite a bit of it comes from the idea of legacy, of how we’ll be remembered when our days come to an end. Plus, it builds on the exploration of magical society within the Novisarium, something that would be explored again in the Halston books. Also, Armitage is going to be quite a big player in future instalments of the Novisarium, so getting inside his psyche was an interesting appearance. At the time of this foreword, I’m writing Queen of Lions, the second Ophelia book and he’s made an appearance in there, there’s a discussion in the tale about who one of his future targets might be. Definitely takes place after the events of Blessed Bullets, but before the third story, Blood Knight and Beyond.

  After writing Spirit and Stone and the revelations about John de Souca in the pages of that book, I wanted to tell the story of how he ended up in that position, I wanted to figure out what drove a man at the peak of law enforcement to sell himself out to a vampire queen. Through the eyes of others, we always saw de Souca as someone calculating, he helps Ophelia in God of Lions because there was something in it for him, the whole falling out between him and Mark Halston was engineered, he’s not a nice man. Plus, the ending sets up some future events in Phase 2 and 3 quite nicely. This story takes place between the Armitage story but before Spirit and Stone.

  So yeah, enjoy.

  Contents.

  Foreword.

  Contents.

  Survivor’s Instinct.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Eleven.

  Fake It ‘Till You Make It.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Eleven.

  Twelve.

  Epilogue.

  Blood Knight and Beyond.

  Prologue.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Eleven.

  Twelve.

  Thirteen.

  Fourteen.

  Epilogue.

  A Note from the Author.

  Also, by the Author.

  Novisarium Reading Order.

  About the Author.

  Survivor’s Instinct.

  One.

  I fucking love living in High Hall. It’s the little things which give it charm. The sexually loose faelings who can be called on any time of the day to offer you the sort of gratification the poets who wrote about this place can only dream of. Hell, I like the sun. I spent most of my life living in eternal night, I didn’t realise growing up how nice it is to feel the rays of the sun touch your skin, kiss them like an amorous lover. If it wasn’t for the things in here that’d kill me in a heartbeat should I drop my guard, I’d spend a lot of my damn day sunbathing.

  Let’s talk a bit about me, my favourite subject. My name is Sir Ronald Frazer, esquire, mortal knight and enforcer to Queen Leanna of High Hall. Given that’s a bit of a mouthful, most people call me Ronnie. My best friend does, anyway. Most of the people in this dimension try to ignore me unless they’re currently the object of my aggression or vice versa. That happens more than you think.

  Let me tell you about the fae. Every story that you think you’ve ever heard about them, every black tale and tattling skit against their personality, it’s probably true and then some. They’re a bunch of savage bastards at heart, predators wearing the faces of refinement, they’ll shake your hand and offer you a bunch of flowery words before they stab you in the back, eat your guts. Those that prey on humans, they look at me like I’m a dessert cart with eight shelves of the best damn goodies they’ll ever see. Worse, I don’t know exactly what sort of reaction that would get from my boss, whether they’d feel her ire or if she’d simply find someone else very quickly. Someone better.

  They’re a lot about that. If there’s a better option out there, they’ll go for it and to hell with that which came before. It’s a society which values strength. Hell, it’s the reason Leanna sits on the throne and not Mab or Titania or Oberon, any of those characters you’ve likely heard so much about over time. She proved a better option. Those others, they were the protagonists of old in a drama which grew tiresome. There was a nasty war, families fighting family, though I refrain from using the word ‘civil’ as there was very much nothing civil about it. I didn’t see it, only some of the aftermath and to call it a horrible fucking mess is probably about right.

  “Sir Ronald.”

  I sat up on the grass, pulled my shirt towards me, the amulet warm against my skin as the v
oice of my batman called out to me. I say batman, there were probably other, better terms for her. Conscripting a wood nymph to act as my servant might look like a dick move on my part, but hey, Elionora turned out to be damn good at her job. And my favour is never entirely a bad thing. My word carries weight, even more so when it has my fist behind it to back it up.

  “Yeah, sweetheart?” I rose to my feet, stretched out my shoulders and gave her a grin. It hadn’t hurt her in the impromptu job interview that she was cute, her skin a dark grey-brown, her ears pointed and her nose button-like. Rough patches gave away the texture of said skin, hinted at the bark-like roughness. Fine black hair coursed down from her head to her arse, her most private areas covered only by a few strategically placed leaves. Hey, it wasn’t me that insisted on that uniform. I’d have been happy for her to go naked. The fae have ideas that seem strange to us but make absolute perfect sense in their jacked-up little brains. Perhaps the weirdest thing I’ve found about them, the thing that makes you realise that they’re not human, no matter how much they might look that way, is that they all only have four toes. Five fingers, four toes. Work that shit out.

  “The queen requests your presence,” she said. “At once.”

  My grin only grew. “Of course, she does, sweetheart. I’ll get on it. Thanks for relaying that message to me.”

  “I’m here to serve.”

  I’m not going to lie, that job interview wasn’t pleasant for her. It wasn’t a walk in the park for me, being honest. There’s only one way you get another to do your bidding in High Hall, regardless of position and that’s to completely and utterly subjugate them to your will. You break them like you’d break in a fucking horse. Make them realise who the boss is and how utterly helpless they are in the face of it.

  Might not be a problem for one of the higher ranking fae nobles. Those confrontations are often over before they’ve even begun. The nobs have that arrogance you only get with the super-wealthy and the super-entitled, and believe me, I know about that. My best friend happens to be both of those things, back in the Novisarium. I’ve not seen her for a while, not since she had a throwdown with an ancient vampire. I had to return to High Hall that same night, haven’t been back since. It’s not like I need to check in on her that she’s okay, she’s got a whole bunch of gifts courtesy of a deal her family made with an angel a couple of thousand years or something.

  But I digress. Some pissant kid from the Novisarium rocking up claiming to be a knight, demanding respect, no self-respecting fae is going to accept that, not without coercion of a violent kind. I’ve long since learned the best way to deal with the fae is to aim for the groin with the men, swift and decisive. No man, regardless of species, likes to be kicked in the baby makers. With the women, you often need to be a little more subtle.

  Maybe when I first started, I didn’t have that. I like to think in the years since then, I’ve honed my art. I’m not going to say I’ve learned to think like a fae, because that’s a whole other level of deception and trickery. I’d like to say that maybe they’ve started to realise that just because I’m a man, it doesn’t mean I’m a pushover.

  Queen Leanna was radiance.

  I’m not just saying that because she’s my boss, and because it’s an oft-repeated phrase through High Hall, but it’s very easy to take one look at her and think the sun shines out of her arse, or other orifices. Now that’s an image for you.

  I’d dressed in finery, suitable to move amongst the nobles of her court, my ruffled shirt and velvet jacket tight against my chest. I’ve not packed weight on since living here, quite the opposite. Wearing a vest of iron plate mail against my skin makes it hard to wear fitted gear, I’m not going to say hard to look good full-stop, but I’ll take practicality over presentation sometimes. More than one fae blade nearly caught me in the back and prevention is better than the cure. In battle, I wear summoned armour from the amulet around my neck, my badge of office if you will, but I can’t walk around wearing it all the time.

  Of course, I carried a sword at my waist. Iron, naturally. That shit is poisonous to the fae, as a mortal enforcer, i.e. not one of them, I could touch it and I was going to wield every advantage I could against them. One of them wanted to cross swords with me, they were going to regret it. Did it make them resent me? Absolutely. Did it make them respect me? I’d say so. It’s the sort of sneaky cunning they admire, having an advantage and choosing to utilise. I could blather about honour and chivalry and all that shit that knights are supposed to follow. Fuck that, I prefer to stay alive.

  Honour is a two-way street, after all. If these guys were willing to be straight and up-front with me about stuff, I’d go along with them. As they’re the sort of people who’d rather stab you in the back than settle a dispute man-to-man, they can hardly complain about me playing them at their own game. Most of them had magic. I, however, do not. Tell you. Level playing field. Give me it, we’ll talk.

  The queen sat on her throne, looked huge as I approached her. Not fat, rather the opposite to that, but tall, the best part of eight feet in fact, her features constantly giving the impression they’d been carved out of flesh coloured ice, such was the sharp paleness of them. Blue hair hung down her back, her eyes an irradiated green colour. She tapped her fingers against the arm of her throne, one leg crossed over the other. I stepped across the checkerboard floor, red and black squares, didn’t pay too much to the mildly Elizabethan décor. The design of the palace at High Hall often changed according to her whims, particularly the rooms she spent most of her time, constantly shifting to match her personality. Once, I’d seen her in a particular vile mood during an uprising of ogres and it’d best been described as slaughterhouse chic with an abundance of rusty, gore-spattered hooks.

  I didn’t say a word, kept my eyes low and dropped into a kneel in front of her, head down. “Arise, Sir Knight,” she said, her words like a thunderclap. “Arise and greet your queen.”

  “You wished to see me, your radiance,” I replied, carefully keeping my face neutral. I kept my position and a moderate estate in this demesne all at her pleasure, pissing her off was a very good way to ensure my life span went from ‘indeterminate length’ to ‘short and excruciating.’ “I’m here to serve at your convenience.”

  A titter rang out from her right hand, I didn’t have to look at Rasputin to know it was him. The right hand of the queen, another enforcer if the truth be told, a thug and a bully, the sort of figure you immediately hate on first sight. If that name sounds familiar, then it’s probably the one you’re thinking of. Some time ago, he buggered off from High Hall, left the Novisarium completely and gave up his fae heritage in aim of buggering up the human world. He wanted to prove he could be just as much of a mischief maker without his power as he was with it.

  I’m not much of a student of history, but by the way he holds himself, I think it was a success. Being cut off from his power all those years though, I think it left him mad, completely bat shit insane. And he’s now one of Queen Leanna’s main advisors. Yep. No wonder High Hall got very few visitors from the Novisarium.

  “Rasputin,” I said, nodding at him, a stout man with long black hair, and unusually for the fae, an even longer black beard. His eyes glittered like gemstones amidst his skin, strangely dead.

  “Knight,” he growled. I didn’t take it personally. He could be gruff.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Leanna said. “The outlands of my kingdom. Travel there. Investigate. There are rumours of invaders from the Untamed Lands there. Verify these whispers for the sounds of unrest are never healthy.”

  I nodded my own head, didn’t reply immediately, too deep in thought. The Untamed Lands shared a border with High Hall, invaders weren’t uncommon. However, it was unusual for her to send me out, rather than the royal guard.

  “You perhaps wonder why I select you for this task,” she said, her eyes glittering with barely restrained malice. “Your glories of recent days have faded, Sir Knight. You satisfy yourself
with lounging in the sun, you grow weak when you should be concerned with consolidating strength. It makes me wonder if perhaps your heart is truly in this any longer.”

  Still I said nothing, tried to ignore Rasputin’s tittering laugh of contentment, the way he wrung his hands together in an intricate pattern, like a bored child. His wrists jingled merrily when he moved, silver bracelets across them with a number of symbols I couldn’t even start to guess the meaning at.

  “When you look weak,” she hissed, “I look weak for selecting you to such an important position. You rest on your laurels when you should be growing stronger with every day. You malinger when you should seek glory. This is not befitting of your station.”

  At least she hadn’t given me this dressing down in front of the entire court. All fairness to the queen, that wasn’t her style in any way. She didn’t like an audience unless she needed to have the blessing of one. Sometimes I wondered about the circumstances that had thrust her onto the throne, she often gave the impression she didn’t much care for it. Or was that simply the face she presented to the kingdom? The notion that it was more trouble than it was worth? Nothing puts people off something more than the idea that what they desire isn’t going to be what they think it’ll be.

  Like I said. These people, if you want to call them that, they’re operating on a different level of paranoid cunning to the rest of us. We can’t match them for it. Maybe we shouldn’t even try.

  “You represent me,” she continued, her voice serpentine in its malice. “You look weak, you make me look weak. Your victories are mine; do you hear me?”

  I raised my eyes, met those brilliant green orbs. “Crystal, majesty,” I retorted. “I will not fail you.” Sometimes I even surprised myself by the iron certainty in my voice. “That is a sword I do not desire to fall upon.”

  A desire to succeed out of fear of failure is still a desire to succeed. Fear of failure can paralyze some, I’ve always seen it as a means of pushing on towards a goal. I’ve never failed before, not since this incredible gift was bestowed upon me and I don’t think I’m going to start now.