Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  “Frankly speaking, they’re a major embarrassment.”

  “Huh.” I shook out my sleeve and squinted down at its drape along my arm. “You should try it from my side.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking—” Tourann wheeled the chair over to the grate and fed the papers one at a time to the flames. “—what’s the Emperor’s interest in this Orbek?”

  I slid the knives, one at a time, each into its own sheath sewn within my clothing. “I don’t work for the Emperor.”

  “You don’t? But—I, uh—I mean, everybody knows—”

  “We’re friends. Maybe even family. That’s all.” I untied the thong on the leather pouch and inspected its contents: an array of spring-steel lockpicks and tension bars. “He doesn’t tell me what to do.”

  “This is personal?”

  “Everything’s personal.” I retied the pack and slid it into the same purse with the spare clips, then tucked the wrapped-up garrotte into the top of my boot.

  Tourann’s frown gathered toward a scowl. “I would not be happy to risk exposure of this post just because somebody owes you a favor.”

  “This is plenty official. Your better half’d think so, anyway.” I made one last check, seating knives and gun securely in their places, shifting and twisting to make sure the tunic draped without binding.

  “He would?”

  “Yeah. I’m on a mission from God.”

  “Oh, sure. Very funny.”

  “Not to me.”

  “You—” The bishop blinked, and blinked again. “You’re serious? You’re working for—” He rolled his eyes significantly. “What does He want you to do?”

  “If you find out, be sure you let me know.”

  Tourann cocked his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “He doesn’t tell people what to do. He might as well take on an Aspect and do it Himself, which starts the kinds of problems the Covenant of Pirichanthe was designed to prevent. And He sure as screaming fuck wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

  “No?”

  “We have history. Some of which your better half would call gospel.” I scratched at the lattice of scar and callus that padded my knuckles. “So I make my own plans, and if He doesn’t like them, He should stay the fuck out of my head.”

  “Uh.”

  I flexed my hands to flush the scars white and then red again. Here I was, being an asshole. Again. As usual. It wasn’t Tourann’s fault that the god he served had murdered my wife, and my father, mind-raped my daughter, and made my best friend into His immortal zombie meatpuppet. Gods are like that.

  And what the hell: He’s my god too.

  I sighed. “He told me once I have a gift for breaking things in useful ways. So sometimes He pushes me toward things He thinks need breaking.”

  “What needs breaking here?”

  “Shit, what doesn’t?” I waved us toward a new subject. “What do you have on the Artans?”

  “Please, my lor—er, Caine—”

  “Shade.”

  “We really don’t need any of your kind of—are you certain that Our Beloved Father has sent you here—?”

  “I’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

  Tourann sighed. “Does the name Simon Faller strike any sparks?”

  A shake of my head. “Sounds Artan, though.”

  “Transdeian papers. Rolled into town about ten months after the Assumption. Rolled literally: on his own private train.”

  “You have rail?”

  “We do now. Faller came complete with two hundred stonebenders and a pair of rockmagi laying track ahead of him.”

  “Money.”

  “Plenty. He bought BlackStone Mining, and he could afford to operate at a loss for almost two years.”

  “Knights soft on him?”

  “They’d bear his children. Faller’s connected in Transdeia. Where do you think the Khryllians get those fancy guns?”

  I frowned. “Diamondwell?”

  “Show a stonebender a machine and he’ll come back the next day with one that works twice as well and is ten times as pretty.”

  “They don’t do autoloaders? All I saw was pump-lever stuff.”

  “They’re Khryllians. They’re not interested in a gun unless it can double as a mace in hand-to-hand. Anyway, Faller made the deal for them. He’s a sharp operator.”

  “All he’s got going is this mining company?”

  “BlackStone’s not just mining. Some precious metals, but primarily it’s a griffinstone producer. These past few months they’ve moved serious weight. Low-end stuff—mostly bled out—but a lot of it, and he seems to be making money now. Uses grills for the labor, but his managers and overseers are human. Probably Artan. Forty-two, all told.”

  “Forty-two? Holy crap. What’re they really after?”

  Tourann shrugged. “Besides money and power? You tell me.”

  I rubbed my eyes. The headache was coming back. “Let me give it to you in small words. This whole bloody continent—shit, probably the world—is lousy with Aktiri and Overworld Company goons stranded here on Assumption Day. Most of them are kind of like me: we don’t play well with others. Now you’re telling me there’s more than forty of them, all together in one place at one time. Something fucking serious is going on here, and I don’t feel like getting my ass shot off while I’m trying to figure out what.”

  “Well—” Tourann shifted his weight uncomfortably. “—this is strictly conjectural, based on an . . . unreliable resource we have inside Freedom’s Face. This resource is, well, Folk—you know how they are; might be true, and it might just be a funny story—”

  “Yeah, spare me. Give.”

  “There’s supposed to be a dil to the Quiet Land here in the Battleground. In Hell, actually—somewhere back inside the bluff. The story is that Black-Stone’s looking for it.”

  My eyes drifted closed. One hand came up, fell again, reached for the edge of the desk, and missed. I lurched drunkenly.

  “Caine? Caine, are you unwell?”

  By the time I opened my eyes again, Tourann was half out of his chair. I waved him back into it. “I’m all right. I’m all right, I just—wow. Just—this has been a kinda rough day. Shit, I gotta sit down.”

  I took a faltering step and half fell into the horseshoe chair in front of the fire.

  “Caine—seriously, I don’t wield the full range of Ule-Tourann’s powers, but if you’re sick, Our Beloved Father does grant me—”

  “Nothing that’ll help.”

  I shoved myself forward and from somewhere found the strength to hold my head up and look the bishop in the eye. “That story’s not a story, that’s all. You need to get on your Artan Mirror tonight. Now. You need to tell Ankhana. There really is a dil, and BlackStone’s not just looking for it. They’ve found it.”

  “Really? Well, that’s certainly interesting, if true, but it’s hardly urgent, is it? It’s not like they’ll ever be able to open it, after all.”

  “They have. More than once.”

  “Impossible. Even the power of Our Beloved Father—”

  “You need to get a message to the Duke right now. The Emperor needs to know the dil T’llan has been breached again, probably from our side.”

  “But it’s not possible—”

  “Fuck not possible.”

  “Please—you must understand—communications of this type are out of policy, and without a very good reason. . . . I mean, you didn’t even know about the dil until I brought it up—”

  The headache chiseled gouges along the inside of my temple. My hand went to my eyes again. “Know about it?”

  —darkness stinking of shit and fear and human breath, naked and hot and cold and slime-wet until shivers ripple like shockwaves from flesh to clinging flesh, rune-carved rose quartz shimmering in the blue nonlight of the blade-wand—

  My hand came away from my eyes and my mind leaped twenty-five years in a single bound. “Know about it?” I said again. “I’ve been there.”

  “Ca
ine—”

  “Tell them I saw it in a fucking dream.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, huh?”

  “Really, Caine, consider: the Emperor is also the Mithondionne, after all. Adopted grandson of the bloody elf-king who magicked up the dil T’llan and closed them all however many centuries ago. If there were a dil in Purthin’s Ford, don’t you think he’d have mentioned it?”

  “Unless he had good reason not to.”

  I looked down at my hands. I spend a lot of time staring at my hands.

  “You know why I was up here in the first place? I was covert for the Monasteries, working an exoteric identity as a Boedecken scout and ogrillo expert for a half-private expedition. They were after a magickal artifact—this giant fucking runecut blush diamond, big as my head. A Legendary artifact, ramping up on True Relic. If they found it, my job was to backdoor an Esoteric strike team. If it was what the partners thought it was, the Monasteries were fucking sure gonna swallow it at one bite no matter who got chewed up.”

  “So?”

  “So it was the Tear of Panchasell.”

  “Panchasell—?”

  I nodded. “That bloody elf-king you were talking about.”

  “But—but—the Tear of Panchasell—that’s just a legend—”

  “Or something.”

  “It was never found—”

  “It was never recovered.” My lips curled under. I couldn’t fit that many teeth into a smile.

  “Well, I—still, I wouldn’t give it too much thought. Even if these Artans manage to find a dil, it’s not like they can open it; even the power of Our Beloved Father is barely—”

  “Will you shut up about Our Beloved Fucking Father? What do you have on the BlackStone compound and operations?”

  “Not much. Just what we’ve been able to bribe out of a couple ellie delivery grills.”

  “No scry on them, either? You’ve never even had an Eye inside?”

  “Caine, BlackStone’s a griffinstone producer. They don’t want us to know what’s going on in there, and they have power to burn.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Write another fucking report, will you?” I lurched to my feet and dragged my sorry butt back over to the window.

  Hell stared back at me. “Son of a fuck-my-ass bitch. They already know I’m here, too.”

  “They do?” Tourann sounded more surprised than skeptical.

  “Faller will have had somebody over in Riverdock, watching the steamers unload.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “It’s what I’d do. Not that he’s expecting me—though he might be, shit, I hadn’t even thought of that—but on general principle. He’ll want to know who’s coming and going.” I shook my head and tried to unclench my jaw. “Any Artan would recognize me. Any. I’m amazed the fucker didn’t buttonhole me for an autograph.”

  I swung back around toward Tourann. “What do you have for resources on the ground here?”

  “I don’t have authority to talk to you about that.” He shifted uncomfortably again. “I will tell you it’s not a lot.”

  I waved a hand. “Never mind. I haven’t even been here a day and I know more than you mopes already.”

  “More of what?”

  “Don’t bother mirroring the Duke. It’s a waste of time.”

  Tourann blinked. “I—what?”

  “Forget about it. They already know. Deliann does, anyway. Son of a bitch.”

  “He does?”

  “Listen, this Khlaylock girl—three years is a long damn time to be Champion, isn’t it?”

  “That’s part of why they call her Khrylget.”

  “Three years, though. . . . She stand for Champion before the Assumption? Or after?”

  Tourann coughed, frowning. “You mean the Assumption, right?”

  “Yeah. The one your better half doesn’t like to talk about much. The one where I cut Our Beloved Fucking Father in half and jammed a foot of sword through His Beloved Fucking Brain.”

  Tourann coughed hard enough that he had to wipe spit off his chin. “I don’t actually know—I could look it up for you, but I don’t have the records handy—”

  “Make a note to check it out. Because if she never stepped up till after the Assumption, well . . . it might be significant.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “It has to do with the Covenant of Pirichanthe, and Ma’elKoth and Assumption Day, and it’s . . . complicated.”

  I found myself staring at the scars on my hands again. “Just find out.”

  It was all I could say.

  “There’s a cold-post board in Weaver’s Square. The date’ll be posted in numerics on a note that says, ‘Rod, here’s your box number.’ You have that?”

  “Yeah. Rod here’s your box.” I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, I got it. All right, last thing before I get out of your station. I need some eyeball with the Monastic agent-in-place.”

  “I don’t have any official—”

  “But you know who it is. You have to. Give.”

  Tourann took a deep breath. “You know the Monasteries are decidedly unwelcome on the Battleground.”

  “Yeah, I heard. And there’s no way in any given variety of Hell the Council of Brothers would let a whole nation of Khryllians go unmonitored.”

  “Well, yes. So—” The bishop tilted his head with a sort of preparatory flinch. “—sometimes the best way to hide a really illegal activity is inside a mildly illegal activity, you follow?”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re warming me up for something I’m not gonna like?”

  “Remember what I told you about the Cainists?”

  “Oh.” I rubbed my eyes again; this couldn’t be good. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “It gets worse.”

  “Worse than that?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Tourann nodded sympathetically. “You know her.”

  I stopped rubbing my eyes; if I kept going, I just might jam my fingers into the sockets up to the second knuckle. “You have got to be motherfucking kidding me—”

  “If only I were. I’ve had to deal with her myself once or twice.”

  He wrote an address on a scrap of paper and passed it to me. I crumpled it in my fist. “Fuck me inside out.”

  “I’m sorry. I truly am.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.” I sighed and let my fist fall. Out the window, the fat bitch lolled in the firelight on the ledge. I took a deep breath, sighed it out, then turned back to Tourann and began, “The chalice with the palace—”

  He held up a hand. “I’ll put myself away, if you don’t mind. I’m usually out only after midnight.” He made a half-apologetic wave toward the window. “It’s been a year since I could have a brandy and watch the evenfires.”

  “What about the Bishop?”

  “He’ll remember a perfectly ordinary Rite of Atonement.” He produced an earthenware jug and a pair of cordials. “Care to join me? It’s Tinnaran.”

  “Another time.”

  As I turned to go, Tourann said, “It must be a, erm, peculiar feeling . . .”

  I stopped. “Yeah?”

  Tourann waved the jug in a little circle. “This. All this. Being here.”

  “Peculiar is one word for it.”

  “I mean, you did this. If not for you, none of this would be here.”

  “It wasn’t just me.

  Lots of people—”

  “Lots of people, sure.” Tourann splashed a cordial full of brandy. “Any of them still alive?”

  I took that without a blink. “Purthin Khlaylock.”

  “Sure, sure. The city’s called Purthin’s Ford, but it’s the river that makes all this possible; it changed this whole corner of the continent into a garden. You know what they call the river, up here?”

  I looked down at my hands while I tried to breathe past the brick in my guts. “The Caineway.”

  “That’s right. The Caineway. I can’t imagine how that must feel.”

  “Me neithe
r,” I said, and left.

  Night had swallowed the vertical city.

  By the time I dragged my exhausted ass down the steps of the cathedral, the streets of Purthin’s Ford were buried already in the horizon’s shadow; the sinking sun had levered darkness upward to erase each tier of Hell in turn. The cliffs and the city reflected enough firelight that the street I walked shimmered with blood-colored gloom.

  if not for you, none of this would be here

  I sagged into a polished stone bench and let my head hang.

  Slave culture. Intacts and eligibles.

  turned this whole corner of the continent into a garden

  I had to look sometime. I was fresh out of excuses to wait.

  black knives don’t kneel

  I lifted my head and opened the eye of my mind.

  Twists of night knotted around me: vast braided cables of interstellar black frayed into strands that tied me to the river, to the Spire, to Hell above and every breath of the damned and their masters: a fractal arterial network pumping shadow from all this place had been to all I was, from all I had been to what it was.

  The night smeared and writhed and wrapped itself around me, swallowing me, entering me, oozing like oil into eyes and mouth and nose and ears. I shook my head. A humorless chuckle rattled in my throat. This was what I’d been avoiding? This had had me running scared? It didn’t seem possible.

  Since when am I afraid of the dark?

  FOREVER AND A MEN

  RETREAT FROM THE BOEDECKEN (partial)

  You are CAINE (featured Actor: Pfnl. Hari Michaelson)

  MASTER: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

  © 2187 Adventures Unlimited Inc. All rights reserved.

  Sffrins a lxry. Heerz manser.

  Here.

  Is my.

  Answer.

  Maxmum bad.

  Snot nough.

  Not.

  Enough.

  Hav topen meyes.

  Have to.

  Fuh kk kk k—

  Fuck.

  Me.

  God.

  Hrrr.

  Air. Air is all.

  Air’s everything but—

  So . . .

  Tired . . .

  But.

  Don’t need air to talk to you.

  Technology is a wonderful fucking thing.