Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  I went back to Westerling. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  He did too. “I don’t think so.” I guess he was used to Westerling enough that he didn’t really care.

  I did, though.

  “The Smoke Hunt’s outside,” I said. “We don’t want to be on the street anyway, right? We’ll wait here. All of us. Once the Knights take care of the Smoke Hunt, I’ll go with you to BlackStone and see Faller. Peacefully.”

  And when those amped-on-God fuckers break in here and find, instead of some sleepy hostelers, an assload of heavily armed Actors, it’ll make me a shitty prophet, but a happy one.

  Not to mention that it wouldn’t exactly break my heart to have Tyrkilld and Kierendal—and, say, Angvasse Khlaylock—know I’d been hauled at gunpoint off to see the Wizard. But nobody ever wants to do things the easy way.

  Calm Guy shook his head. “We’re on a schedule. Once the Knights take care of the Smoke Hunt, it’ll be too late.”

  “Too late? For what?”

  “For you’ll find out, smart guy.”

  “I made a good offer. Think it over.”

  “Don’t have to.” I sighed. “Is your fucking schedule worth more than your life?”

  “Maybe not.” Calm Guy grinned up at me. “But it’s worth more than their lives. Hawk—?”

  “Hey.” A glossy white grin unfolded under the gunman’s glossy black hair. “Wanna see a trick?”

  “Not really.”

  Hawk’s right hand and arm became a blur that in less than an eyeblink resolved into a big black pistol leveled at arm’s length on Ytrrall Pratt’s pretty red head.

  Kravmik growled wordlessly and tried to pull her closer.

  “Go right on,” Hawk told him easily. “I’ll just shoot you first.”

  I sagged. “That’s a pretty good trick.”

  “Ain’t it just?”

  “You’re fast, kid.”

  “Fastest you’ll ever see.”

  “Fastest I ever saw was Berne. Saint Berne, they call him now. Maybe you heard what happened to him.” I nodded toward Calm Guy: the ex-Cat. “Or you could ask him. He’ll know. He might even have been there.”

  “Ancient history, old man. A whole different world ago.”

  I looked down at this grinning killer who’d been in short pants then. Who had maybe just been born when Black Knives ruled here. But only maybe. Ancient history. “I guess it was.”

  “Let’s see that hand,” Calm Guy said.

  “Yeah, whatever.” I showed them the Automag. Nobody looked impressed.

  “Put it on the stairs behind you and keep coming.” I didn’t move.

  “You said you know things about me.” Half a shrug half lifted the Automag. Not enough to get anybody tense. “Most of what you know about me is wrong.”

  “Let’s find out,” Calm Guy said. “Hawk: the grill. Leg first. Then the head. Then the girl.”

  “The leg?” Hawk sighed. “I hate when they yowl.”

  “Wait.” I scowled down at the blur of my reflection in the Automag’s chromed slide, tilting it like I wasn’t entirely sure what I was seeing. And I wasn’t. Not really.

  I was trying to decide exactly who I was right then.

  “Hawk.” I rolled the nickname around my mouth. “Hawk. Ever study at an abbey, Hawk?”

  “Hey—” Calm Guy began.

  “I’m talking to Hawk. I’ll talk to you again when I’m done with him.”

  The words came out slower and slower, like my spring was winding down.

  Slower and flatter and colder. “Ever do any Esoteric training?”

  Those glossy white teeth showed up again. He had a lot of them in that soft red mouth. “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m gonna ask you a riddle, Hawk. An Esoteric riddle.”

  “Do I give a shit?”

  “If you know the answer, Hawk,” I said, dead slow, dead flat, “I might let you live.”

  A dead cold silence.

  Calm Guy and Whistler exchanged a look like they were asking each other if either of them liked Hawk well enough to get in the way of whatever was about to happen without knowing what the fuck it was about to be. They each saw the same answer.

  Hawk saw those answers too. His pale cheeks flamed. “Screw this—”

  “What—” The riddle came out soft, gentle, quizzical, like I really wanted to know. “—is the sound of one hand clapping?”

  Hawk’s eyes narrowed, then widened, and then his extended arm and hand and pistol became again a blur, now in a quarter arc toward the stairs, but even that blur had to cover a meter and a half while the muzzle of my Automag had to twitch only a couple inches.

  Both pistols blasted flame. Hawk’s blasted once. Mine blasted three times: an autoburst, which is an accommodation for crappy shooters, which I am. The autoburst fired three of its caseless tristacks—a total of nine shatterslugs—in a brief sequence that kicked its muzzle through a short arc up and to the right. A couple of brief shrieks came from over by the dining hall door: Mrs. Pratt, maybe. Maybe Kravmik.

  Splinters burst from the bannister in line with my navel: Hawk’s round. A great shot, that kid—ten times the shooter I’ll ever be. For all the good it did him.

  Splinters also burst from the floorboards past Hawk’s right knee. As well as from his right thigh, right hip, spine, and the left side of his rib cage. A different kind of splinter.

  Shatterslugs break into tumbling needles after impact: full kinetic transfer and a shitload of internal shredding. Hawk went down like a sack of hamburger. He didn’t bounce when he hit the floor. It was more of a splat.

  He lay there making dying-fish popping noises, and his eyes stared beyond the world.

  “Good guess, kid. Too bad you can’t take a bow.”

  And that told me who I was. For now.

  I turned the Automag on Calm Guy. Calm Guy was backed off in a crouch, the snarl on his face distorted through what appeared to be a semisubstantial curve of shimmering glass that had sprung out of nowhere to enclose him and Whistler, along with the preternaturally calm Pratt.

  A Shield.

  “Hey, nice. You’re fast too.” I nodded a smile toward Whistler. “Was that on a trigger? Set on the first gunfire, I bet.”

  “Hawk—Hawk!” Calm Guy’s calm had evaporated.

  I shrugged down at them. “I was just kidding about letting him live.”

  I thumbed the Automag to single shot and squeezed off a tristack against the Shield. The three shatterslugs burst into flares of sparks that crawled over the half-real curve of energy. Whistler grunted like he’d been punched.

  “Feedback’s a bitch, huh? Think your Shield’ll hold against my whole clip?”

  “Take him, Whistler!” Calm Guy had become Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy. “Take him now—!”

  “I’ve got him.” Fast, smooth, professionally nerveless, Whistler reached into one of the pockets on his hunting vest. His other hand was busy keeping his gemstones spinning, and Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy had a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other and both eyes on the muzzle of the Automag and Lasser Pratt, without a word, a preparatory breath or so much as a flicker on his utterly serene expression, lifted the hurricane lamp and smashed it over Whistler’s head.

  Whistler’s face went blank. The shield went down.

  The lobby darkened.

  The Automag roared but only floorboards splintered because Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy was quicker than a cat and had already thrown himself sideways into a shoulder roll that brought him to his feet on the far side of Pratt and the lobby was brightening again now because Whistler had fallen to his knees and the lamp oil had wicked his vest and caught fire, and Whistler went down on his face, burning on the floor, and Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy smacked Pratt on the temple with the pommel of his knife and caught his sagging body under the arm with the same hand, so that he had a knife in front at the notch of Pratt’s collarbone and a pistol under Pratt’s jaw at the rear, and he snarled, “Drop it! Drop it
now!”

  I walked down the stairs.

  “I’ll cut his fucking head off! Drop your weapon!”

  I said, “Why should I?”

  Blood trickled along Pratt’s cheekbone. “Fuck this guy. He told that cock-sucker to kill my wife. Shoot him.”

  “Shut up!” Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy jabbed the muzzle up into Pratt’s jaw hard enough to make the hosteler grunt. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I thought,” I said, “you know who I am.”

  “After I kill him—” His eyes were bright and hard and slick: gemstones wet with spit. “—we’ll move on to the grill and the woman. And the kids.”

  “Why don’t we talk it over by the light of your burning spellbitch?”

  Pratt said through teeth forced shut by the pressure of the muzzle under his chin, “Shoot this fucker.”

  “Shut up!”

  “When you get back to Faller, tell him I said there’s more going on here than he knows. More than he can guess. Tell him I said it’s Caine’s Law, here. Ask him if he knows Rule Three.”

  “What the fuck are you talking—”

  “You let Pratt go.” I gestured at the flames on Whistler’s back. “We put out your spellbitch while he’s still breathing. Then you go out that door and I never change my mind about letting you two live.”

  “I don’t like this deal.”

  I lifted the Automag. “You think Pratt’s life means more to me than yours does to you?”

  Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy considered that. Not for very long.

  This is a perk of being me.

  He licked his lips. “Put him out first.”

  “Kravmik. The tablecloth.”

  The huge ogrillo reluctantly let go of Yttrall, pulled the tablecloth out from under the remaining lamp on the small lamp stand, and spread it over Whistler. The lobby darkened again.

  Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy started backing for the door, yanking Pratt along with him. “You can’t protect them, old man.”

  Old man. I felt every day of it. “Don’t forget to tell Faller what I said.”

  At the doorway, Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy shoved Pratt stumbling back into the lobby. “I’ll tell your mother,” he snarled from the shadows beyond. “I’ll tell her that you—”

  The Automag blasted another autoburst. From the night-shadowed street came another shredded-body splat.

  I watched a wisp of smoke curl back along the Automag’s muzzle. “Guess I’ll tell him myself.”

  I walked without hurry across the lobby. I thumbed the Automag again to single shot and put a tristack into the back of Whistler’s head as I passed. Whistler’s transition from man to corpse was marked by a single whiplash buck and a halo-splash of blood and bone splinters into the carpet.

  At the doorway I kept close beside the jamb, where the dim lamplight wouldn’t line me to the street outside. I looked down into the shadows off the boardwalk at the crumpled mess of Pretty Fucking Nervous Guy, who had now become Writhing and Struggling to Breathe as He Bleeds to Death Guy.

  “You—you said . . .”

  “I said—” I lifted the hem of my tunic and reholstered the Automag. “—I wasn’t gonna change my mind.”

  “You . . . you . . . don’t let me just . . . for the love of God . . .”

  “Which god?”

  I stood there and watched him die. It didn’t take long.

  I raised my head and called out into the night. Not loud. They’d be close enough to hear me. “Hey. You seeing this? Hawk and Whistler are dead too.”

  The night answered with echoes of distant gunfire.

  “Think you can do better? Take your best fucking shot. I’ll be right out.”

  When I turned back from the doorway, pale faces were peering down from the second-floor landing: other hostelry guests, clutching half-closed clothing around themselves and rubbing sleep from fearful eyes.

  “Get everybody up and anybody Armed, get armed,” I said. “The Smoke Hunt’s outside, bandits and looters are everywhere, and the Knights can’t protect you because they’ve got bigger problems. Get every weapon you can lay your hands on and get ready to fight for your fucking lives.”

  The faces stared blankly down at me. I pointed at Hawk and Whistler. “You want to be dead like them? Go!”

  The faces disappeared.

  I went back across the lobby. Whistler smelled like bad barbeque. Hawk smelled like roadkill.

  Kravmik was trembling all over. “You—the Knights—have to go to the parish—”

  I picked up Hawk’s pistol. “Can you shoot?”

  Kravmik’s face twisted doubtfully. “Never have.”

  “Hold it tight and keep your wrist locked. The safety’s here. Aim it like a handbow. Can you manage?”

  The pistol nearly disappeared inside his vast fist. “It’s a weapon. I’m an ogrillo,” he said with a deep breath. “I’ll manage.”

  Pratt was half crumpled in his wife’s arms, shaking with adrenaline collapse. “Got ’em—we got ’em, didn’t we?”

  “You hurt?”

  “I, ah—I dunno, I—”

  Yttrall shook her head without looking up. She stroked his thin sweat-damp hair. “He’s well as can be hoped, my lord. No harm beyond the shaking, I think. Though I feared much for my brave Lasser lad—”

  “No need, no need—they had me right where we wanted ’em,” Pratt said with a shaky laugh.

  “Yeah. How’d you slip the Charm?”

  “You should know,” his wife said.

  “I should?”

  “Wouldn’t be real successful here if every ass-mandrake and his buttsister could Charm me out of their bill, would I?” Pratt fished inside his blouse and pulled out a coin-size medal on a chain. “Proof against all forms of magickal compulsion.”

  I reached for the medal and turned it over in my hand. It was damp with the touch of Pratt’s skin, and of a warm pale metal, maybe white gold. On one side was stamped a representation of a pair of hands, both holding daggers; the forearms crossed at the wrists and were pinned together by the blade of a sword that stuck up between the angled dagger blades to bisect the angle they made. The opposite side was plain except for a phrase inscribed in simple Westerling script.

  My Will, or I Won’t.

  “Son of a bitch.” I dropped it like it had burned me and jerked to my feet. “Didn’t I tell you to get out of town?”

  “We—well . . .” He made a faint backhanded wave around the small lobby, which I only now registered was lined with baggage piled along the walls. “We can’t just go, not all at once, my lord—”

  “I’m not your lord.”

  “—I mean, please, you must understand, we have staff here, they’re family—and they have families of their own—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “And our guests . . .”

  “What about them?”

  Pratt cast a help me glance at Kravmik, who just shrugged and shambled over Whistler’s corpse toward the door, already holding Hawk’s pistol like he’d been born with it in his hand.

  Pratt gently disengaged himself from Ytrall’s arms. “It’s not that easy to explain.” “

  Nor so hard either,” his wife said. “A guest in our house has a claim on us, begging your lordship’s pardon. We’ll not be leaving while there’s danger they must face within our walls, or without. It’s a duty, your lordship. Not unlike your own.”

  I wasn’t going to debate my duty. Whatever the fuck it might be, which is something I’ve never been able to get entirely straight. “It’s worth more than your life?”

  Pratt shrugged helplessly. “It is our life.”

  “Then get them out of here too.”

  “That we shall,” Ytrall said. “When it may be done. Which is not this instant, begging your lordship’s pardon.”

  “Well—” I locked a snarl behind my teeth and stifled a sudden lust to slap the snot out of both of them. “—do it, that’s all. As soon as shit calms down enough t
hat you can hit the street.”

  “Not this street. Not anytime soon.” Kravmik turned back from the door.

  His eyes were empty yellow saucers. “We got Hunters outside. I think they’re coming this way.”

  From the front of Kravmik’s massive shoulder, the street looked empty.

  “I don’t see them.”

  “Me neither.” With the muzzle of Hawk’s pistol, Kravmik tapped his snout alongside one age-greyed tusk. “But they’re out there. And not far.”

  “Any idea how many?”

  I felt him shrug. “Thirty years ago, maybe I coulda. No stalker, these days.”

  “Don’t smell Tyrkilld anywhere, do you?”

  “Not if I don’t have to.” But he couldn’t even force a smile.

  I leaned into the doorway. “Hey,” I said, louder. “Hey, fuckers. Still there?Talk to me.”

  Blank storefronts and boardwalk for fifty yards to the river. The other way, just a long straight gloom, half-lit orange by fireglow reflected from low clouds.

  Indigo shadows still and sharp as the gaps between stars.

  “We got a mutual problem that can have a mutual solution,” I called.

  “Come on, fuckers. You want to be out there with the Smoke Hunt?”

  Nothing. Maybe I was wrong about the backup. Or maybe their nerves were just really, really good. One way to find out.

  I stepped through the door and bent over Calm Guy’s corpse to pry the gun out of his dead hand. Nobody shot at me.

  The weapon was Earth-make, not stonebender: a Smith & Wesson select-fire, loading thirty hypervee steel-tail aluminum tumblers in a double-stack extended clip. Old-fashioned, but these rounds could pick a lock at a hundred meters and body armor doesn’t even slow them down. Not that Smoke Hunters would be wearing any.

  It fit my right hand just fine.

  From out on the boardwalk, the street looked even more deserted. Shuttered storefronts stared back at me. A puddle left from last night’s rain rippled burnt orange in the breeze. And the gunfire sounded to be moving the other way.

  How good was Kravmik’s nose anyway?