Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  She looked up from the book. “The one you used to unleash the river.”

  I shook my head, uncomprehending. “I used the bladewand.”

  “No. Here it is: a hand and a half blade, polished blue-black, chased with silver runes—”

  “I’m telling you, I used the bladewand. It’s the only reason I lived through it—through any kind of material weapon, feedback would have killed me—”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Let me see that—”

  “The original report is at Garthan Hold, of course. But I have read it, and my memory is, I believe, flawless. You came across the blade in the chamber of the Tear of Panchasell—”

  “Your memory is fucked.”

  She cocked her head. “Though it is a curious coincidence—a black blade with silver runes—Kosall was a silver blade, and were the runes on it not black—?”

  “Will you stop?”

  But of course she wouldn’t, and the harder I argued the less sure I got, because pretty soon I discovered that I just couldn’t really remember if I had used the bladewand or if I’d found some motherfucking reversed-color image of Kosall, and my head was pounding like something was alive in there and chipping its way out with a ten-pound hammer and a railroad spike, so I just left.

  Which is how I ended up in the foyer of the Pratt & Redhorn in a dripping-wet foul mood, jamming my hand down on the service bell like it was the top of t’Passe’s pointy fucking head.

  After a moment a thin, pale, tired-looking man with a few scraps of hair plastered sideways over his sweat-dripping scalp slipped around the sign. He was drying his hands on a brown apron, which then went up to mop clean a swath across his face as he came forward, shaking his head. “I wish I could offer you welcome, my friend.” His accent was Ankhanan. “We’re full up for the night, and I’m afraid—”

  “Why does everybody around here want to be my friend?”

  The thin, pale man stopped, blinking. “Why, I—I don’t mean anything by it, goodman—”

  “Forget about it. It’s not goodman, it’s freeman. I’m Dominic Shade. Somebody delivered my trunk.”

  The man’s face cleared. “Oh, Freeman Shade! Welcome! I’m Lasser Pratt. Always good to welcome a countryman. Oh, this is fine. I’d become afraid you might’n’t make it. Lord Tarkanen’s order—and your trunk—got here just in time for us to get you into our last room tonight—it’s on the top floor, I hope you don’t—”

  “As long as it’s dry.” I nodded toward the raucous dining hall. “Look, I can see you’re busy with the party. You think I can just get a plate of something hot to take up to my room?”

  “Oh, not at all, no no no, not at all. Please, Freeman Shade, you’re welcome at the party—”

  “I am?”

  Pratt gave a nod that was half shake of his head. “Oh, yes, very much so—and not only because you are a guest of Lord Tarkanen. They, ah—customs on the Battleground—are . . . well, I’m Ankhanan by birth myself, y’know, from New Bend, d’you know it? Just three days downriver—”

  “Yeah, I’ve been there. Skip the blowjob, huh? I just want some dry clothes and a hot meal.”

  “I, ah, well . . .” Pratt’s grin deflated. He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  “Forget it. I know what it’s like to work for a living.”

  “But you really are invited to the party—”

  “Maybe later. I have to go right out again.”

  “On a night like this? You have business that won’t wait till morning?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know if that Tyrkilld character spends his nights in the vigilry, would you?”

  “Knight Aedharr?” Pratt nodded toward the smoke billowing through the dining-hall door. “He’s right in there.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “If only I were,” he sighed. “My eldest went Khryllian—he’s an armsman of this very parish, still has hopes of Knighthood some day. One of the fingers in his own fist was killed this morning. Braehew, his name was.”

  “Yeah.” My too-empty stomach suddenly knotted, and a phantom stab brought my hand to my right side. “I was there.”

  “I know you were.” Pratt made ushering gestures toward the doorway. “That’s why you’re invited.”

  I stared.

  Pratt spread his palms. “Like I was saying: On the Battleground, customs are . . . different.”

  I went to the half door and looked in.

  The party must have been going on for a while already.

  Tables and chairs had been shoved aside from half the dining hall’s floor, to make room for what looked like some cross between square-dancing and jujitsu. Other tables were piled with meats and bread and loaves of cheese, and everywhere were steel cups and tankards and schooners, most lying empty, tumbled and forgotten on tabletop or chair seat or kicked out of the way of the dancers.

  “They don’t look too broken up about it.”

  Pratt was at my shoulder now, looking past me into the dining hall. “It’s a celebration. A victory party.”

  “Come again?”

  The hosteler shrugged. “Braehew was killed in battle, discharging the lawful command of his superior. Falling with honor, he goes to join Khryl’s Own. From the Khryllian point of view, what greater victory can he hope for?”

  I cocked my head. “Living through it?”

  Pratt chuckled. “And that’s why Ankhanans never quite fit in around here. Well, from my angle, I’m told you played no more than the part Khryl wrote for you, if you know what I mean. They’ll be happy to make you welcome.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Customs are customs—but the laughter was too loud and too sharp, the singing was too hoarse, and the smiles on too many lips left too many eyes too blank. Looked like there had been too many of these victory parties lately. I stared over the half door and let the loudest and sharpest of the laughter and the hoarsest of the singing draw my eye.

  Dimly through the smoke I could make out the barrel shape of Tyrkilld, Knight Aeddhar, seated in the far corner on a vast chair set atop a table like a mockery of a throne. He was out of uniform for the second time that day, wearing only the wool-woven vest-over-belted-sweater, sheepskin breeches and boots of a Jheledi shepherd. In one hand he held a vast bucket of a cup, big enough he could have worn it as a helmet; the other hand was occupied by keeping a giggling twenty-something redheaded girl firmly attached to his knee. She was the only woman in the room not wearing the Khryllian crewcut and armsman colors; she had a slightly-too-short-for-modesty print dress gathered around trim thighs, and a somewhat longer apron belted too tightly around an also-trim waist.

  “Pretty waitress. Jheledi?” I said sidelong. “Should know better than to turn her loose around Tyrkilld.”

  “As if I have a choice,” Pratt said sourly. “She’s my wife.”

  “Really? And you have a kid old enough to be an—oh, I get it. Married the serving girl, huh?” I glanced over my shoulder. “No wonder you look tired.”

  The hosteler sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “They all are, buddy.”

  Pratt snorted half a laugh. “Now you’re the one who wants to be friends.”

  I chuckled. “Fair enough. Listen, I need to talk with Tyrkilld, but I really don’t want to walk into that party. Is there any place here where he and I can sit down and have a quiet drink?”

  “Well—” Pratt frowned. “There’s the grill side—I closed it down for the night—”

  “Grill side? You serve ogrilloi here?” I blinked. “Is that legal?”

  Pratt’s tired face took on a flush of red. “I may live on the Battleground, but I’m still Ankhanan—I’m no damned bigot, and if you—”

  “Easy. I’m just asking.”

  “I—uh. Sorry.” He passed a hand over his face and used the sweat from his forehead to slick back his thinning hair. “Long night. Sorry. Yes, it’s
legal. We do very good trade among the eligibles, especially at daymeal. We just have to keep the dining areas separate.” He waved a hand toward a door under the stairs. “We can set a table for you on the grill side. It won’t be anything fancy.”

  “As long as it’s quiet.”

  “Oh, I can guarantee that. Give us a moment or two—”

  “No problem. I need a chance to get into some dry clothes and warm up a little. Set me a plate of something hot, huh? I don’t care what, so long as there’s meat and a lot of it. I’ll make it worth your trouble.”

  “Don’t think of it. Really. It’s no trouble at all.”

  “You’re a goddamn liar.”

  “Truth is flexible in this line of work,” Pratt said easily. “Oh, and—it won’t be a problem for you to be served by an ogrillo, will it?”

  “Why would it?” I smiled faintly. “Aren’t I Ankhanan too?”

  The meal turned out to be half a roast duckling with black cherry sauce and glazed walnuts over duck sausage dressing, and a peppered baked apple stuffed with pulled-pork confit. The ogrillo server turned out to also be the head cook and kitchen manager, an immense pudding-waisted eligible named Kravmik Red Horn: Lazzevget.

  The junior partner.

  Seemed Pratt took his Ankhanan principles seriously.

  “Good man, good as they get,” Kravmik proudly proclaimed in a voice deep enough to vibrate the tabletop as he spun a steel cup of water and a mug of his own iced homebrew into place around the plate. “And I’m not talking flavor, either, hrk!”

  “Mm-mmm.” I was too busy chewing to give a civil answer. There was a smoky tang to the limpid crust of fat under the skin of the duck breast that twisted my heart with unexpected, entirely astonishing longing for something I couldn’t quite recall . . . something in the beer, too . . . something dark, burnt-chocolate on the nose but fading and dry on the tongue . . .

  Gods, it was good. My eyes stung. What was that flavor . . . ?

  Kravmik was more than capable of holding up both ends of the conversation. Before the half duckling was half gone, he had roughed out the highlights of the Pratt & Redhorn’s history, including thumbnail sketches of the more colorful members of the staff, the notables who’d stayed there, the luminaries who made a point of dining there, and, of course, the ongoing kitchen-sink romance of Lasser Pratt and his wild young Jheledi bride, even wilder now that she’d stopped nursing their infant twins and had a bit of freedom and got herself a pair of respectable tits in the bargain, not to mention the inappropriate amount of attention she was receiving from the Younger Pratt, who had a new bride of his own, y’know, and a child soon to be along as well—

  Finally I stopped chewing long enough to stem the flood with a raised hand and a thoughtful “You speak better Westerling than any ogrillo I’ve ever met. Better than the Ankhanan ones, in fact.”

  Kravmik opened hands the size of saucepans. “Want to get ahead, you gotta talk the talk, that’s what Pratt always says. He works with me. Helps me be presentable. Pratt says pretty soon my Westerling will be good as his. Good as yours.”

  “Huh. In Ankhana, grills talk different on purpose. They’re proud of it.”

  Kravmik nodded. “Pratt says that too. And he says they’re mostly thugs. Best jobs they can get is strongarm stuff, and they mostly die young. Me, I got stuff to live for.” He swung one of those hands at the kitchen. “Sure, I’m eligible, but I got staff here, they’re my family—ellie, human, whatever. Cubs ain’t everything in the world, y’know. Just bein’ alive’s worth something. Worth a lot.”

  “Yeah.” I stared down at my plate. “I have a friend I’m hoping I can convince of that.”

  “Hey, you’re not eatin’—it’s all right? That stuffing get cold?”

  “No—no, it’s great. I just ran out of appetite.” I pushed the plate away, picked up the water cup, set it down again, and shoved aside the mug of iced beer. “Got anything to drink? I mean drink.”

  “We do a little freeze-wine, from last winter—crack off the water-ice, and what’s left is—”

  I made a face. “Real drink.”

  Kravmik shook his head dolefully. “Can’t make fortified stuff. Nobody does—brandy’s illegal. And the import duty’s just impossible.”

  “Shit. I’d start a revolution too.” I waved a hand. “All right. More of the beer, then. And ask Pratt if he can tell Tyrkilld I’m over here now.”

  “Knight Aeddhar?” Astonishment tinged with suspicion flickered across the huge ogrillo’s face. “What’s he got to do with you? Why would he care you’re here?”

  “He’ll care. That beer, huh?”

  Kravmik’s professionalism overcame his skepticism enough that he only ducked his head and cleared away the remains of the meal. The beer arrived shortly before Tyrkilld did.

  The Jheledi Knight moved around the empty tables in the gloom with the slow, dignified zags of a three-master tacking into the wind, one vast fist still wrapped around the stem of the bucket-size flagon. When he got to the table, he blinked down at the grease stains on the wadded napkin beside the mug of iced beer.

  “You,” he said with ponderous precision. “Are not here. For the party.”

  “Got that right. Sit down before you fall down.”

  “While I am indebted. To you, master Monassbite Esoterassbite assassassassbite, for your kind hospitassitude. I would prefer to stand, fuck you very much.” Tyrkilld blinked again. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your buddy Markham got me a room. By no fucking coincidence at all. Quite a sense of humor, that sonofabitch.”

  “While I freely admit. To a catalogue of sins innumerable. Mortal, venial, and merely cheerful.” He swayed, and swung the flagon in a violent circle that managed to spill not a drop. “Accuse me but once more of being friend to Lord Tarkanen, sir, and we shall again. Make trial. Of Khryl’s Justice.”

  He unleashed a belch that rattled the windows and seemed to unstring his knees, and he delicately settled the flagon on the tabletop and himself into the waiting chair. “A room, you say? Perhaps I may assay your Monassbite hospitassitude after all—a scrap of floor makes bed enow betimes—”

  “I thought you had a call to make tonight—the Widow Braehew—?”

  “And from whence gather’st thou requisite testicle to lecture a Knight of House Aeddhar upon the obligations of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, ring of dog’s piss, goatherd and a sling, you told me already.” I squinted at him. For Khryllians, the obligations of command are absolute . . . though there may be certain details of some obligations which no one could blame him for failing to fulfill, should the failure arise of incapacity due to doing a bit too much honor to the memory of a departed liegeman . . . “All right, goddammit. What’s in the flagon?”

  Tyrkilld blinked. “Your pardon?”

  I leaned forward. “There is no possible way in Home or Hell you got completely pisseyed just on this crapass beer. I want to know what you’re drinking, and I want some.”

  Tyrkilld’s face took on the sly cast of a man who’s drunk so much he thinks he’s sober, and he leaned far enough backward that he was in danger of toppling over. “First you share this issue of such. Staggering import that it warrants. Coming between a poor thirsty Knight and his much-deserved imbibulation. Then perhaps the matter of the contents of my flagon might arise, as it were, willy-nilly.”

  He was bringing back my headache. “Do any other Jheledi talk like you, or is this just something you put on to aggravate people?”

  Tyrkilld lifted the flagon and took such a long, slow sip that the studded steel rim of the cup strategically covered what might have otherwise looked like a long, slow wink. “And is that a matter of any great import at this dire hour?”

  “Since when do Jheledi nobility go Khryllian, anyway? Last I heard, the noble houses of Jheled considered Lipke an occupying power up until Ankhana took you away from them in the Plains War, thousand years or not.”

  Tyrkilld made another exp
ansive whirl of the flagon. “There is not a blessed thing wrong with the service of Khryl, my lad. Saving only the company.”

  “Yeah.” The iced beer in my hand got real interesting all of a sudden. “I talked with the lady in question. Thanks for delivering my message.”

  He assayed what he undoubtedly thought was a subtle glance around the empty dining hall. “And no harm it did me. Thus far, as it were.”

  I nodded. “We were going to talk about how I spotted you.”

  He held up one of those hands that I was still too overly familiar with. “Nay, that I have determined. ’Twas my amateurish questioning, was it not? That I started with Freedom’s Face, and my foolish reference to elven magicks foiling Khryllian truthsense, and moving on too easily once I found you might have knowledge enough to do damage . . .”

  “So you’re not quite an idiot.”

  “In my own defense, Master Monassbite, let me aver that your estimable self was to be loaded in pieces back onto the afternoon steamboat and sent south to heal over the course of some months. Or years. In which case my minor slips would have signified not at all.”

  I nodded into my beer. “Shit just never quite goes the way we plan, though, huh?”

  “Never quite, my lad. Never quite.”

  “You and I need to talk about what Our Mutual Slag is really up to, here. And what we’re gonna do about it.”

  “Do we now?” He unleashed another window-rattling belch. “That is to say: now? You’d be hard put to argue this as the best time for such news.”

  “There’s never a good time.” I pushed my chair back from the sagging table and leaned on my knees. I picked at the ridges of callus across my knuckles. “Shit never happens when you’re ready for it. When you’re healthy and full of beans and spoiling to take on the world, the world leaves you the fuck alone. It always waits till you’ve got the flu and your dog’s sick and the mortgage is late and y’know, whatever. That’s when it gets you up the ass.”

  Tyrkilld nodded, his sloppy grin fading to half a faint smile. “You speak with the air of a man having some small experience of planetary buggery.”

  I tried for a smile and missed. “Funny thing is, before all this started, I was pretty goddamn close to happy. Happier than I think I’ve ever been. I was free. Really free, for I think the first time ever. I had the whole world open in front of me. I was happy. And now I’ve jumped into this shitpool with both feet.”