Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  It might as well have never happened.

  This did nothing to improve his mood.

  He composed and dictated the press release right there in the techbooth, all the while keeping the red glowing emergency transfer switch in his peripheral vision. The huge curved POV screen now showed Caine hiking through the caverns beneath Ankhana under the guard of the Knights of Cant.

  Kollberg was pleased with himself, pleased that his press release flowed out smoothly. He let the public know Pallas Ril had been captured in a calm and level voice that held no hint of his fury within.

  In the very few minutes that had passed since the confrontation in the vault, his shock at Michaelson’s naked threats had transformed to cold rage. They were all after him, all of them: Caine, Lamorak, Pallas, Dole and Vilo, and the damned soapies behind him. But he didn’t have to lie down and take it.

  He wasn’t helpless, here.

  He resolved, right here and now, that Michaelson’s career was over. Two can play that It’s too late game. If given the slightest, faintest ghost of an excuse that would pacify the Board of Governors, he’d take away Michaelson’s whole life.

  Where would his arrogance be then? How tough would he sound, begging for work on a Temp netboard? Take away his money, his home, his friends . . . And, of course, the cut that Kollberg relished in imagination the most: he dreamed of being present, watching Michaelson’s face, while Pallas Ril slipped out of phase with Overworld and went to her hideous screaming death.

  He only hoped that Michaelson lived that long. It’d be a bloody shame if he died on Overworld before Kollberg got his chance to crush him.

  7

  IT’S A LONG climb up the mucker-shaft ladder from the caverns to the pissoir, and Tommie holds the door for me when I step out into the pale, cloud-filtered light.

  “On the sand,” he says curtly; it gives me a twinge. I’ve seen a couple Subjects called onto the sand for King’s Court. It ended badly for them, both times.

  “You sure you can’t tell me what this is about?”

  He shrugs and shakes his head grimly. “Would if I could. Sorry.”

  Tommie and the other Knights follow me down over the curving rows of weathered stone-cut benches, into the deep bowl of the Stadium.

  Majesty’s already there, up on what used to be the royal dais in the midst of the seats at the south end, on the comfortably overstuffed old armchair he calls his throne. Deofad’s on one side . . .

  On the other, in the place of the absent Abbal Paslava, sits Lamorak. His splinted leg—a splint that I bound to that leg with my own hands—is thrust out stiffly before him.

  I let my gaze skate off his surface. A lingering glance would yank me toward him, helplessly berserk: I’d go for his throat like a wolverine. As it is, I can feel him there, even with eyes averted, feel his presence as though he burns with a fierce actinic light that scorches my face.

  The Brass Stadium . . . It’s always unsettling to be here in daylight, to see its shabby disrepair under the unforgiving sun. My memories of this place are of bonfires and dancing, good food and endless drink, the backslapping fellowship that was the most powerful glue binding me to the men and women that use this place; memories of a sense of belonging, a sense of family—the family that I’ve never had.

  But the Kingdom of Cant is a night family; now here in the daylight, deprived of the seductive glamour of firelight and friendship, the house we shared is as depressing as a flop in a Temp slum. The rings of benches that rise above me are stained and broken. The sand in the arena is still damp from the rains—blackened here and there by the abandoned humps of bonfires and littered with mutton bones, apple cores, fish heads, cherry pits, and mounds of less identifiable detritus. A few large and tardy rats scavenge fearlessly in the growing light. They dodge the hooked beaks of squabbling gulls and the straight ones of crows that croak and hop aggressively at the gulls, the rats, and each other.

  The birds lift off in a parti-colored cloud as I vault the ragged arena wall and alight on the sand. One bloated rat that’s too fat to waddle out of my way gets a sharp kick that sends it rolling across the sand, writhing with a high thin squeal.

  The dozen or so Knights of Cant who brought me here follow me down onto the sand, and Tommie steps forward at a sloppy attention to begin the ceremony. He intones: “I bring before the assembled Court of Cant the Honorary Baron—”

  “Shut up,” I tell him, and enforce this advice with a sharp slap to the back of his head. He stumbles forward a step or two, then wheels on me, his face ablaze with embarrassed anger.

  “Caine, dammit, you can’t just—”

  I ignore him, lift my face to Majesty and the Court.

  “Save the horseshit, Majesty,” I say, full-voiced. “I’m here. Tell me what you want of me without the fucking make-believe.”

  From the Knights around me come the sharp steel-on-steel scrapes of blades being drawn, but Majesty lifts a restraining hand.

  “All right,” he says thickly. He leans forward, his face suffused with blood. “All right, you bastard. Where did you go the other night? When you left the warehouse, where did you go?”

  “None of your business.” Shit, I couldn’t tell him if I wanted to.

  I can see where this is leading. I glance around at the Knights who cage me, estimating my chances of fighting my way out.

  “I’ve made it my fucking business, you shit,” Majesty barks. “I think you went straight to the Cats.”

  “You’re out of your head.” I’d tell him who the traitor really is . . . but I can’t. Not yet. “Can you see me walking in to shake hands with Berne?”

  He comes up out of the chair with a snarl of rage and raises his fist as though he would smite me with a thunderbolt if only he could.

  “I know you work for Ma’elKoth, you pigfucker! You hear me? I know!”

  In the silence that follows his shout can be heard the wings of the gulls, startled off again, and faint street sounds from the Warrens beyond the walls. The Knights around me look away, wincing.

  They might not ever have seen Majesty this far out of control; I never have. But I’ve been bellowed at by bigger voices than he can command, and it takes more than rage to impress me.

  “Yeah?” I answer quietly. “Maybe you might want to explain here who it was that would’ve told you that?”

  His eyes bulge, and he makes a faint choking sound in the back of his throat. He sure as death doesn’t want to let gruff old Deofad and these Knights hear how he’s been in bed with the King’s Eyes.

  Lamorak murmurs something in a voice too low for me to hear; my lipreading skills are pretty rudimentary, but I catch the words question and answer. Majesty doesn’t seem to hear him, but now he says, “I’m asking the questions, Caine. You’re answering them. You got that?”

  I pause for one calculated second to make sure he knows I’ve heard and understood him, then I say, “Is Pallas alive?”

  Majesty says through his teeth, “Maybe I’m not making myself clear—”

  “Tommie, here, says Pallas was shot yesterday, and taken by the Cats. Is she alive?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Screw the games, Majesty. You and I, we both know how you should know. You want me to spell it out?”

  He wavers for a second, and I wonder if he’s about to just say fuck this noise and have the Knights cut me down. He looks away.

  “Yeah. She’s alive.”

  All right, all right, huh. I can breathe again, and some of those days that burden my shoulders brighten and relax. Now I only need to figure out something to do about it.

  “What are you doing to rescue her?”

  Now he looks startled, as though the thought of a rescue had never entered his head. What in hell has happened to that Charm of hers? Has it worn off already? “Well, I, ah, I mean, the word is Ma’elKoth’s holding her himself, interrogating . . .”

  I let a little of the furnace in my chest leak into my voice. “You son of a wh
ore, you’re more interested in pinning this horseshit on me than in saving her life! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Y’know, come to think of it, that’s a good question . . . This isn’t like him, Charm or no Charm. If nothing else, Majesty is a reasonable man, pragmatic, a planner. And he’s known me for years. He knows goddamn well I’d cut off my own balls with a rusty knife before I’d do anything like what he’s accusing me of.

  Another question slowly filters through the solid bone that I use for a brain: if he really wants the answers he’s going after, why doesn’t he turn Lamorak loose on me with that Dominate of his, try to force the truth out of me?

  Lamorak murmurs something else. I catch trust and business first, and Majesty says, “I can’t trust you with any plans until we settle this business first.”

  Son of a motherfucking shit . . .

  I get it.

  I understand now.

  Lamorak hasn’t turned that Dominate on me because he can only do one spell at a time.

  So much for the voice of reason.

  Okay, maybe I don’t have to solve every problem with my fists . . . but every once in a while, a situation arises that is substantially improved by the judicious application of force.

  Majesty was saying something that I missed, and now everyone’s looking at me like they’re waiting for an answer. I shake my head and say, “Sorry—my mind was wandering. What was that?”

  He begins, “I said—” I miss the rest of it again, because as soon as everyone looks back at him for his reply I whip into a spinning kick that brings my heel against the cheekbone of the Knight at my right rear flank hard enough to snap bone and flip him into the air. He lands half against the Knight beside him, and they both go down.

  Ten more to go.

  But I don’t need to drop them all to escape the arena. For half a second nobody moves while they comprehend what it is I’ve just done. Tommie recovers faster than the others, but he’s also the only one who doesn’t have a sword in hand. I jump him as he claws at its hilt and get one hand on his wrist. A sharp twist and a blow from the other hand breaks the bones of his forearm. It’s a more difficult technique than breaking the elbow, but I like Tommie, and I don’t want to cripple him.

  He howls as jagged bone rips through his flesh, and his knees go slack. I shift my weight and slam my forearm up into his armpit, then twist like a tennis champion delivering a backhand smash. Tommie tumbles into the other Knight right in front of me, spraying blood into his face from that forearm. They fall in a tangled heap.

  The other Knights hesitate. Nobody wants to be the first one to get within my reach, and I don’t blame them. I take advantage of their eyeblink of indecision to run like hell.

  A quick leap over Tommie and the guy he’s struggling with, and I’ve got a straight shot right at the dais. My wounded right knee snarls at me as I sprint. When I get to the nine-foot-high arena wall, the knee makes its displeasure fully felt by buckling exactly when I need it to leap.

  I barely manage to avoid braining myself when I crash into the wall. I don’t have time for another attempt: the Knights are right on my ass.

  The lead Knight tries to slow his headlong charge when he sees me whirl back toward him, but it’s too late. I skip out to meet him and foot-sweep his ankle while slapping a backfist into the nape of his neck. He goes headfirst into the pockmarked limestone wall and collapses to his knees.

  The other Knights fan out to try to come at me from a couple directions at once. The stunned Knight shakes his head dazedly. He’s on his hands and knees at the base of the wall, so I use him like a footstool: I jump up onto his back, and before he understands what’s happened I jump off again. The two-foot advantage this gives me is more than enough to let me catch the rim of the wall and haul myself smoothly over.

  “Get him kill him!” Lamorak shouts, and the edge of panic in his voice brings my blood up like the surge of a tidal bore.

  I gain my feet in the lowest ring of benches. Deofad towers over me, his enchanted blade Luthen upraised and glowing like a bar of steel white-hot from the forge.

  I have no desire to try conclusions with this tough old bastard, so I throw myself sideways into a shoulder roll as his blade descends to strike searing sparks from the stone. I come to my feet out of swordreach and bound up the bleachers toward Majesty and Lamorak. Majesty comes down to meet me, foolishly: he customarily goes unarmed, and if Lamorak wasn’t controlling him, he’d know better than to come at me barehanded.

  When he closes with me, I let my knees bend and drop my shoulder to catch him under the ribs, letting his momentum flip him off his feet and over my back. He tumbles down the steps, and I keep moving.

  While he’s trying to rise behind me with the anxious help of Deofad, I reach my objective.

  Lamorak’s face is as white as a toadstool.

  “Caine . . .” he whispers, and that thousand-yard stare of mindview steals into his eyes. “Don’t—”

  “Shut up.”

  My right hook catches him precisely on the hinge of the jaw, just in front of his ear, and the joint breaks under my knuckle with a deeply satisfying crunch.

  “Stay with me, Lamorak.” I shake some light back into his eyes by a handful of his shirtfront. “I’m not through with you yet. Try another spell. Go on. Try.”

  He puts his arms up to shield his head and averts his eyes so he won’t see it come. “No . . .” he says though his numb mouth. “No, pleass—y’broche m’zhaw, shit.”

  I raise my fist and give myself a slow count of ten to think up one reason why I should let him live.

  I’m up to eight when Majesty bellows, “Caine, stop! Everybody stop! Nobody fucking move!”

  In the long silence that follows, I keep my eyes on Lamorak. If he starts to summon mindview, I’m gonna pop him.

  Behind and below me, men curse in low voices as they pick themselves up and gingerly explore the extent of their wounds. Lamorak cups his broken face with both hands and avoids my eyes.

  Majesty says, low and close behind my shoulder, “You mind telling me what the fuck just went on here?”

  Lamorak flinches back from what he glimpses in my eyes. I mutter, “How much do you remember?”

  “All of it, Caine, shit. I just couldn’t stop—and, you know, it made perfect sense at the time. Fucking creepy, is what it was.”

  He steps around to where I can see him and lowers himself onto the bench beside Lamorak, staring into his face with aggressive concentration. “You wouldn’t mind borrowing me one of those big knives of yours, would you?”

  I shake my head; I’ve come to a sudden decision. It’s a hunch, a feeling, irrational but powerful. “Let him live.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Please. As a favor to me.”

  “I don’t get it,” Majesty says. “I thought you guys were friends. Why would he want to do this to you? And why are you gonna let him get away with it?”

  I look down at Lamorak, and now he looks back at me. I give him a faint lift of my brows, a minute nod toward Majesty, a Do you want me to tell him? kind of look. His eyes plead with me, and I shrug carelessly.

  “The other night, remember we had that long talk?” I say slowly. “Pallas told him she’s coming back to me. He took it badly.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  Lamorak’s eyes bulge in disbelief. “You . . .” he sputters. “A lie! Thazz a lie! He, he—”

  I say, “Thought I told you to shut up.” My swift side kick spreads his nose with a crackle of smashing cartilage and bounces his head off the front edge of the stone bench behind him. His eyes roll up and he sags, blowing blood bubbles through his open lips, out cold.

  Great Grey God, that felt good. For one long moment I struggle with a nearly overwhelming lust to just go ahead and finish him, but I master it. Barely.

  “Do me this favor. Hold him for me. Lock him in that apartment where you met us after we came out of the Donjon—but make sure no Subjects are within the
sound of his voice.”

  “No shit. All right. But when you’re done with him, he’s mine.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Majesty grunts and pushes himself to his feet. “What are we gonna do about Pallas?”

  “That’s the attitude I’ve been waiting for.” No way to tell if this question comes from Majesty’s own heart or if Pallas’ Charm is still operating. Y’know, in the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter. “I think it’s time for you to come open.”

  He squints at me warily. “What do you mean?”

  “I know what you want, Majesty. It’s not here in the stadium. It’s not in the Warrens. You’re playing for higher stakes than that.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Horseshit. You didn’t risk the whole Kingdom of Cant to support Pallas’ Simon Jester act out of the goodness of your heart. You don’t give a rat’s ass, one way or the other, about the Aktiri or any of the rest.”

  He doesn’t answer me, just stares grimly down upon his wounded Knights in the arena.

  “I know what you had in mind,” I tell him. “I know that you planned to roll up Simon Jester’s network and sell them to the King’s Eyes. What were you playing for, a title? Or just orders from Toa-Sytell for the Eyes and the Constabulary to look the other way while you operate in the city? Maybe some covert Imperial action against the other Warrengangs?”

  When he turns to me, his eyes are bugged as though my hand’s around his neck. His mouth works, and only a strangled croak of denial can come up his throat.

  He flinches away from the hand I put on his shoulder, but all I give him is a friendly squeeze. “It’s all right, Majesty. I’m not mad.”

  “I, I, Caine, I swear, she said she dumped you—I thought you’d thank me . . .”

  “Yeah, well, shit’s never quite that simple, is it?”

  “But it’s different now,” he insists. “After I got to know her . . . Shit, Caine, I’d never do anything to hurt her. Never.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to help her. You help her, and I’ll help you. You get it? I’ll outbid Toa-Sytell. You’ll get more from helping Pallas than you ever could from betraying her. You do this for me,” I say slowly, convincingly, “and I’ll put Ankhana into your hands.”