Chapter Text
Look.
And listen.
This is Gotham City.
A river city, with her face turned ever toward the water, cupped in the wide mouth of her river valley where it yawns into the sea, and spilling up over its stone shoulders as if she were no more than a gray and spiky sort of stole that the land has shrugged on in an unfriendly mood.
Cold, always a few degrees colder than she should be, and dim, as if even in the daylight it is night, here. Dark stone, mullioned glass. Narrow side-streets and deep, twisting tunnels, echoing with chilly wind. A vague yearning toward past glories that never quite were. Gargoyles by the legion leer down from her rooftops and perch in crevices and cornices, like patient demons waiting for you to notice they have been in your life all along.
But she is not a ghost town, or a necropolis, or Pandemonium at the heart of Hell. She is a real, living city, filled with tiny, vital beings that are quite as real as she, and very present, pinning her to now and this in all their hopes and butterfly-fragile dreams, in all their petty frustrations and deep sorrows.
Listen. You can hear her breathing.
She has brooded here beside the wind-tossed sea for—not for always. There is no city on the Earth that has stood always, or even for long at all, as the mountains count time. And she is younger than many: the first oaken beams that would become part of her were raised less than four centuries ago, and for less time even than that has she had any real claim to the dignity of ‘city.’ Earlier still, the valley dimly remembers other houses, wood-woven; strong, but never meant to stand for the ages—but these were not Gotham. They were some other thing, one she has displaced, devoured, and would not mourn for even if she had a heart that could encompass unselfish grief.
Counted in human heartbeats, however, she is old enough. Old enough to have come into herself, to sit between wind and sea, jealously hoarding the lives without which she is nothing, merely a heap of tumbled stone; old enough to brood lovingly over the stories without which she is no more than a warren of two-legged mice.
It is said that she is cruel, and this is so. It is said that she is evil, but this cannot be—to be good or evil one must choose, and Gotham simply is.
It is said that she is a place of madness, and this is certain, but whether that speaks well or ill of her is harder to say, since the same flame that leaps into the rafters and burns the hall down around the warriors at their feasting was first kindled in the hearth, to keep back the cold.
Mankind would, after all, be very different—would be so much less—without that piled rubble of outrageous notions that worked, and became commonplaces, and laid the brick of what are called now civilizations. Without the irrational, reckless bravery of heroes, and the courage they spark in other hearts even as mere stories, long after their bones are dust. It would be a grave misfortune if ever men and women ceased to be just mad enough.
Gotham knows. She knows humankind as she knows herself.
And in this time, in this place, this is the story she tells:
In the city, there is a Court which has no King.
There is a man who lives and breathes darkness, and the will to power.
There is a long, dark gallery where forty-nine figures in heavy cloaks stand ranked, staring down through round, pale masks at one lone figure that stands, unbidden, in the heart of their shadowed hall.
The figure is young, yet, but an observer could tell this only from the lack of lines in its face. By stance, by the breadth of the shoulders, by the deep smooth roll of its voice, by the reality-twisting certainty that hums through every inch of it, it could be thirty or thirty thousand years old.
“The owl,” says the young man in the long dark coat, “is said to gather in a parliament. But if this is a court…then you should have a king.”
A voice emerges from under one of the identical staring masks, the sibilance of a loud whisper bleaching it of distinctiveness, as though the words might be formed by a confluence of all the rustling feathers. “And are you here to seek an audience with that king?”
“No,” the young man says. Amused. “He does not exist. I am here to become him.”
Laughter broken by low hooting ripples through the room—mocking, but less malicious than it might be. Almost there seems to be an indulgent note, as of adults at a dinner party interrupted by a small, outrageous child, risen from his bed without permission and demanding a place be laid among their number, a glass of wine filled to the brim for a tiny throat.
It is in this mood that an undisguised voice finally speaks, from the center of the narrow end of the long hall. “Now, Bruce,” begins the Speaker for the Court.
Speaker, in this place, is a position passed on not quite by appointment, and not quite by election, but more by a kind of silent understanding—and when there is some disagreement about what is understood, or one chairman dies without having indicated an acceptable successor, factions scrabble and flourish and occasionally remove competitors from play.
This system might have torn the whole edifice apart many decades ago, if it were not that the position of Speaker comes with only a few official powers, and accomplishing anything in it requires that one’s authority be accepted by the whole of the Court. It is a role taken more often in acknowledgment of the power already held, than in hopes of gaining more—and always when no one with the influence to interfere would not rather see the successful candidate in the role, than any other Courtier.
This is—has always been—the nature of the Court. A machine of blindingly self-interested parts, each contributing to the common advantage because the others can be counted on to maintain solidarity with them in turn. And because any who seeks to put himself too far above the rest, or turn his back on their conspiracy, will have the weight of the collective judgment cast upon them—and the Court’s judgment carries the sharpest of knives.
(There are those who would say that this is only a description of human society at its core, that the Court is merely more self-aware, more conscious of its own ebb and flow, that it is society without petty distractions, or the pretense that the rabble have any control over their fate, any more place in the processes of civilization than serfs or cattle. Enlightened self-interest, they say. The core of all human effort, they say, and smile.)
((There are those who say that darkness contains the only truth. That everything else is phantasms of reflection and wishful self-delusion.))
(((There are those that sip heart’s blood from tiny cups—no, it is pomegranate wine—no, it is nectar, dyed red by the setting sun—who sip and say, we understand the way things really are, and smile.)))
This Speaker’s voice, even through the echoing effect of his mask, is deeper than most, and deliberate in a way that shows he is not young, though age has not yet cracked it. “Bruce,” he says again, cajoling. “The Waynes have always been a fine old family. Don’t imagine we do not recognize that. And it’s impressive that you’ve found your way here. If you wish to apply for membership I cannot imagine the Court would fail to ratify you.”
“I have no use for membership, Colonel Kane,” the young intruder retorts, an edge of impatience creeping into his voice. His use of the man’s real name halts the titters, this time. There is silence, but for the rustling of cloaks. Satisfaction curls into the corner of the man’s mouth. The lower hem of his coat swings, as his stance shifts forward. “I do not come to you as a supplicant. I come because I think you may be of use to me.”
The members of the Court finally seem to reflect on the fact that this upstart did find his way here, and make his way to their meeting hall unnoticed and unchallenged. One of them turns a masked face to a particular point, and makes a sign with one hand.
The lofty room is deep in shadow, and what light there is falls disproportionately on the ranks of Owls, marching up the margins of the hall toward the ceiling. The unoccupied wall into which the baroque entryway is set receives no direct light, and it is in the darkness by the door that a single shadow now sways into movement. It slides forward, along the base of the stands—it is behind the visitor, and need not fear his notice unless he turns, but it slinks anyway. If any Owls on the far side of the hall notice, they make no obvious gesture. Their expressions are hidden without need of effort on their part.
“Colonel,” the unwelcome visitor repeats, staring into the masked eyes of the spokesman, “I was surprised to learn you hold your family’s seat, when you have cousins that are never assigned away from Gotham.” He breaks eye contact, but without a grain of submission; more as though Colonel Kane is not worth his time.
“And Mr. Powers, you’ve been taking too much advantage of your access to Talon; those murders may not have been traceable to you but you were the obvious beneficiary. Mrs. Stratton, this is a change from all those evening soirees, even if the guest list hasn’t changed much. And Mr. Thomas, and Nigel St. Cloud…”
He rakes his eyes over all the company, slowly, naming each Owl in certainty as his sharp blue eyes seem to stare through their masks, and they rustle uneasily until he comes to the end, looks them all over again and makes a sharp, dismissive sound behind his teeth. “There is not a single one of you,” he states, “who does not have some power in the world. And yet it is not enough, is it? If any of you could rest content with what you have, you would not be here, in your masks and cloaks, playing games of intrigue. Let me be clear: what I propose is not a game.”
“Nothing we do is a game, young man,” declares the Owl addressed as Mrs. Stratton, and the voice is indeed that of an older woman, tones round and precise and just lightly stretched by age.
“Did it not occur to you,” the Speaker for the Owls says, “that we might be called a Court because we sit in judgment?” As he says this he gives the slightest nod, and the shadow-in-the-shadows moves.
So does the young man.
His hand flies up, knocking aside the knife aimed at his throat; seizes the wrist attached to it and whirls, slamming his opposite hand into captured bone with a crack. The broken arm isn’t enough to make the attacker falter; the flat line of his mouth below his mask does not even tighten, and he pivots around the fixed point of his captured, damaged wrist to come in close. The wings of his heavy, feather-patterned cloak spread with the spin, exposing a heavy torso made barrel-like by armor, tapering to a waist that hints at chronic hunger. And a left hand holding a second, longer knife.
But the man who would be king has reached into his own coat and come out armed, his already impressive reach extended by the long brutal line of a machete.
He deflects Talon’s drive toward his gut, weaves out of the way of a powerful stab from the broken arm as it escapes his grasp, and kicks the silent assassin in his concave lower abdomen. He swoops into the opening this leaves, as Talon must first lean and then step backward to keep his feet, and excellent though the guard the masked shadow maintains with his two weapons is, the posture is still a vulnerable one.
The intruder knows just how to take advantage of that, lands a blow to the hip and then to one elbow, shattering a momentary hole in his opponent’s defense.
Brings the machete around with an easy, unconcerned grace that almost makes the blurring motion seem leisurely until, with a sharp schluk, it severs Talon’s head at the neck.
Blood castoff scatters in a perfect arc, and the young man called Bruce brings a second heavy kick smoothly into the center of the armored chest, knocking head and body apart. Even as the bloodied blade is still in motion, a column of fire blooms from a small nozzle concealed just below his left palm, searing the flesh from the severed head as it rolls to a halt beside his feet, and then after the smell of scorched bone has had time to rise turns on the collapsed torso, bathing first the stump of the neck and then the whole fallen body in a flame more blue than yellow, until the flesh is itself on fire, cells burning away faster than even Talon’s healing could hope to repair them.
He shuts off the flame. Waits, in the smell of scorching hair and charring flesh, in the utter silence of a Court shocked past speech, until the flame has died down. Watches the remnant for long seconds, waiting for any sign of recovery, and then turns away. Almost, he seems disappointed.
Bruce Wayne bends, grasps the dark strigiform mask by one edge and lifts it, with its attached cape. Tips the still-smoking head out as if it were a spider in his shoe, and ignores the faintly crunching thud it makes when it hits the ground, though several courtiers flinch.
“So much,” he says, “for your ultimate assassin.”
He throws the scorched feather-patterned cape around his shoulders, and what was a mantle of equal parts terror and subservience on Talon seems to grow and spread, until it seems as though the young man has wrapped all the shadows in the dark underground hall around himself, a royal mantle of night. His voice is still even, perfectly controlled and unbroken by exertion, but now a banked rage thrums beneath it for everyone to hear. From behind his new, charred-flesh-scented mask, he rakes the company with a look of scorn.
“I made my invitation to you once already tonight: Peaceably, courteously, as if you were my equals. Let me now be more clear. Gotham is mine. There will be no negotiation. And while you can be useful to me, make no mistake: it would not upset my plans unduly to destroy you. Nor would it take any great effort.
“You know who I am. I can buy and sell each and every one of you, at the stock exchange or on some underworld flesh-dealer’s block, and I will not hesitate to do so. I know your petty secrets and your terrible ones. I can destroy anything you send against me.
“And I so swear,” he says, the picture of certitude, “that if you follow me in good faith, we will rule the world.”
The Court sits still, silent. Stunned. Half of them still expecting Talon to rise to his feet again and cut the interloper’s throat, but the more seconds draw on as the corpse lies smoking, the fewer expect it, and the more of them turn their full attention to the invader, the young man who is clearly no child.
“Well?” he asks, arch and confident, standing over the corpse of something they had thought could not be killed. “Shall the Court have its King?”
It is an Owl on the left who bends first. One of the few against whom he twisted no knife, leveled no threat. (Others will whisper, later, that this was prearranged, that it was through the treachery of this and perhaps some few others that their order was humbled at the feet of the last of the Waynes, the one great family of Gotham that had never been one of them before, the family they had struggled against for generations. But nothing is ever proven.)
One by one, the Courtiers bow, the Owls cast their eyes to the ground, the Court gives its allegiance.
Gotham’s king has his crown.