Caine's Law

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  The words Smoke Hunt surfaced from muddy depths inside his head. He couldn’t remember what they meant. All he had was silence and smoke and the taste of blood.

  And the smoke was full of ogrilloi.

  Six or seven at least, red-flaming specters pacing among the armored bodies with careful, methodical, deliberate intent, stopping here and there to smash a skull with huge mockeries of the Khryllian weapon.

  And the dead girl reached the nearest of them and turned him with one hand on his huge grey arm and her other hand blurred and his huge grey chest folded inward around her fist and blood burst from his mouth in a spray that trailed behind him as he flew backward from her as though yanked by some invisible god.

  Now the other ogrilloi stopped and turned and saw her.

  They converged on her and she staggered to meet them and the first one to reach her died and so did the second but they closed around her and now they had her, because after all she was broken and dead.

  Well, mostly.

  Pretty soon to be all the way, because they had her now.

  A grill held one of her arms and another held the other and a third swung back a huge steel morningstar like a golf pro in a morphine nightmare.

  And one particular hard lump on which he lay—like a hunk of steel jamming into his right kidney—his hand slid toward without any prompting from his consciousness; his fingers closed around it and his arm pulled it out from under him and he discovered, to his mild astonishment, that his hand was full of big fucking gun.

  He pointed it and the barrel fountained silent flame.

  The ogrillo who’d lifted the morningstar spun and sprayed everyone around him with blood and shreds of flesh and bone that burst from sudden craters opening in his chest and the stump of his severed arm.

  The others now turned. And looked his way.

  A new burst unzipped another from balls to breakfast, and the girl yanked free and from there it was a settled question. She swung and stepped and swung again, and he reached out with streaks of silent metal that hit almost as hard as her fists: pelvis, knee, shoulder, spine. Shatter the bones to bring them down. Between his metal and her bone, every one of them died. More than died. Dismantled. Shredded.

  None even tried to run away.

  Each squeeze of the trigger pumped memory back into him. When it was over, he knew where he was, and how he had gotten here, and why.

  He knew who she was.

  And so when it was over, when she came back to him there among the broken rock and stood above him, her face blackened and solemn, her form a drench of clotting crimson, he held the muzzle centered between those vivid indigo eyes.

  He needed both hands.

  She didn’t even look at it. She was looking at him.

  Their eyes met over the sights of his gun, and her reserve dissolved. In her eyes, on her lips, in the angle of her head was some bleak shivering despair. How could he shoot that?

  After a moment, her face swept itself blank, and she held out her hand for the pistol.

  Ahh, Christ. He really was getting old.

  He let her take it.

  She cradled the weapon as though it were some exotic songbird that had died in her hand. When she spoke, he could hear only a thin singing whine that slowly strengthened as his stunned ears began to awaken. But he could read her lips.

  Dominic Shade, she said, you are under arrest.

  “When the gods would punish us, they answer our prayers.”

  — ARTSN. TAN’ELKOTH (FORMERLY MA’ELKOTH, 1ST ANKHANAN EMPEROR AND PATRIARCH OF THE ELKOTHAN CHURCH), QUOTING DUNCAN MICHAELSON

  Blade of Tyshalle

  When he had washed her blood from his face and hair and hands, an armsman came to his cell to take the bowl and its rusty water away. “And the towel.”

  Beside him on the camp bed: thick bleached shag smeared clay-red, specked with clots—

  He passed the towel through the bars, and the armsman folded it carefully, reverentially, then laid it into the water, soaking. He turned to go.

  “Hey—”

  The armsman stopped.

  “My clothes, huh? It’s freezing in here.”

  “Take it up with the Champion.”

  The armsman bore the bowl away in both hands as though it held something sacred. Maybe it did. His blood once had saved this world. Whatever they were hoping hers might save, he was pretty sure they were shit out of luck.

  He watched the armsman leave, his tongue thoughtfully exploring the small flat pick and tension bar tucked back in his cheek along his gums; he’d coughed them up from his magician’s half swallow after the Knights had finished their brutally thorough body-cavity search. He could go through the cell door without breaking stride, but he wouldn’t get far running naked through streets full of angry Khryllians.

  Besides, he was pretty sure the Champion would be along anytime now, and it might be worth his trouble to have another word with her.

  No bones seemed to be broken, and he retained enough Control Discipline to induce reabsorption of serous fluid from his bruises. Most of the pain went with it. The rest he could handle with natural endorphins and dopamine. He’d pay for this later—glandular exhaustion is not to be lightly fucked with—but for now he had to be able to move.

  He passed the time idly picking the locks on his leg irons, relocking them and picking them again: a fair-to-middling thumb-twiddle. Naked on the cot, he was mostly paying attention to the pictures in his head. Like the splintered knobs that had stuck out from her back.

  Shrapnel. Wet bone shrapnel.

  No petro-volatile stink. Not even the burnt-toast-and-bean-fart of gunpowder. Just overcooked duck. Not a bomb. Not chemical, anyway.

  Magickal.

  That’s why with the eye of his mind he had seen energy gather around the dead Smoke Hunters. Each corpse thrown on the pile had brought the explosion a step closer. Magickal critical mass. An improvised timing device, to make sure the maximum number of Knights and armsmen would be nearby.

  Worked, too.

  Still, something was off. He couldn’t quite spike it. No surprise—he didn’t have much in the way of sharps after being blown up and all. Not to mention the whole fucking timeline thing. Funny: the guy whose wrist he’d sprained had been right. He should have left the square. For his own safety.

  If Angvasse had been standing a foot to either side, he would have seen those splintered knobs sticking out from his own chest.

  Luck. That’s all. Lucky old man.

  The man who’d become the god behind his eyes had sometimes said “Luck is a word the ignorant use to define their ignorance. They are blind to the patterns of force that drive the universe, and they name their blindness science, or clearheadedness, or pragmatism; when they stumble into walls or off cliffs, they name their clumsiness luck.”

  But with the eye of his mind, what he saw was exactly those patterns of force. And luck was still the only word he had.

  Lucky old man.

  • • •

  Stripes of noonish sun slanted through the bars of the skylight. His cell was above the stable of a small subgarrison. The quiet here had an empty, echoic feel as though the place had been deserted for years. Most of the armsmen assigned to this particular subgarrison had been in Weaver’s Square.

  He was the only prisoner.

  The street outside rustled with hushed activity. Resting his forehead on the bars of the cell’s little window, black iron rough and cool against his skin, he watched armsmen drape open carriages in shimmering white silk chased with thread of gold, and harness carriage traces to immense thick-muscled warhorses. He watched a single white-clad drummer summon citizens from the houses and shops around with a slow bleak cadence.

  Witnesses for the Last March.

  One dead Knight lay alone in each carriage, hung on a mortuary board by large blunt hooks at armpit and groin. Their visors had been removed to display the blood-pudding remains of their faces. As the drummer rolled a solemn flourish, the
mortuary boards were raised to vertical and fastened in place. Fallen Knights are borne standing from the field.

  Slain armsmen rode in plain, practical wagons, six to a bed. They too wore their armor. They too displayed their death wounds.

  He’d seen Last Marches before: here, twenty-five years ago, and in Ankhana, after Ceraeno. The Last March would wind through the streets of the city. The drummer’s slow rhythm would stop traffic and trade, and line the streets with solemn silent witnesses. Citizens under the protection of Khryl are never allowed to forget the price of their safety.

  Blood from the floor of the carriages and carts would be allowed to trail onto the streets over which they passed: a baptism, reaffirming the sanctity of this land. The living would march behind, in the blood of the fallen, leaving footprints of red dust and sand.

  Blood prints in the Boedecken Waste. In what Khryllians called the Battleground, and ogrilloi called Our Place.

  He watched her too.

  Draped in white. A loose cowl over her hair and a veil erasing her face. He knew her by the square of her shoulders. By the angle of her head. By the deference of the armsmen as she moved among them with a word here and a touch there. By the way her presence alone seemed to give them whatever strength they needed.

  While he watched her, inside his head he watched the bloody swamp that had been the back of her head uncrumple. He wondered in passing how long it had been since she’d last bothered to put on her helm. Khryllians stand to pray. She hadn’t stood. She hadn’t prayed.

  Just as well he hadn’t shot her. Probably would have only pissed her off.

  Simon Faller had told him—would tell him, on Earth, in the Buke, a few days from now—that no one had seen Angvasse since the Smoke Hunt. That she never showed up to face Orbek for Khryl’s Justice. And it might have gone that way too, if he hadn’t started shooting Smoke Hunters.

  Maybe it had nothing to do with him. Maybe it would unhappen. Sure. It was possible.

  When one eliminates the impossible …

  Hey, wait.

  There was the other line his father had liked to quote, the one about the mystery of the dog who didn’t bark in the night. Shanna used to say the toughest thing to spot is what should be there …

  And that was it. That’s what had been bothering him. What should have been there.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered. “Literally.”

  Assumption Day on God’s Way in Ankhana. Ma’elKoth Incarnate, sliced shoulder to hip …

  The man-god wasn’t full of shit after all.

  Neither were the Smoke Hunters.

  Later she came to him, all in white as he’d seen her on the street: cape and tunic and skirted pants of bleached linen, gloves, cowl shrouding her hair and a semi-sheer veil softening the harsh planes of her face. She carried his clothing, laundered, still damp, folded; she laid them on the plain plank table outside the cell. On the floor beside it she set his freshly buffed suede boots.

  He watched her silently. She didn’t seem inclined to pass any of them through the bars. She wanted to do this with his dick hanging out? He didn’t mind. He’d never been what anybody’d call shy.

  She showed not an inch of skin from hair to toenail. He sucked on the inside of his cheek. Pretty clear which of them had something to hide.

  She also carried a flat-folded wrap of smooth brown leather like a cook’s cutlery-bundle; she drew the table across the splinter-scuffed floor and unfolded the leather on top beside his clothes, opening it like a map, smoothing it out with abstracted care, as though it were the setting cloth for a table she was dressing while her mind was on the far side of the world.

  The soft brown leather did indeed hold knives. And not just knives. She lifted his Automag and weighed it in her hand.

  After a moment, she said distantly, “I have seen only one other firearm of this design.”

  His Automag was a big brother to Orbek’s. “Is that what this is about? What you’re holding me on? A goddamn weapons charge?”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “Nor have I seen a pistol that will knock down an ogrillo.”

  He sighed. “The rounds are tristacks. Sequenced bullets, three per shot.” He flicked a hint of backhand. “Knocking things down is what they’re designed for.”

  “And of these bullets, only splinters remain.”

  “They’re called shatterslugs.”

  She nodded. “No overpenetration.”

  “Full kinetic transfer. What you might call maximum thump.”

  “Yes.” She held it admiringly in the striped shaft of sunlight through the outer bars. “And against armor?”

  “Dunno.”

  Her veiled eyes searched his. “Do you not?”

  “I guess Orbek’s did well enough.” He shrugged and looked away. “Depends on the armor, probably.”

  “No doubt.” She turned her gaze back to the gun. “Impressive.”

  “Like it? It’s yours.”

  “Yes.” She laid it back among his knives on the spread of leather. “As are all of these now. An astonishing array of prohibited weapons.”

  That didn’t require an answer, so he simply sat.

  She lowered her head as though the veil were not enough to hide her eyes. She picked up the telescoping baton. “And this,” she said distantly. “Lovely. Perhaps not even illegal.” She pressed the release stud and the baton snapped to its full length. “Effective against small bones, or thin. Fingers and wrist. Collarbone. Even the temple. To a cervical vertebra, perhaps a killing blow.”

  “You didn’t come here to talk about my gear.”

  “Yes.” She put the baton back onto the leather. She looked down for a moment, and her hands became fists, and her breath hitched. She turned farther away, and stepped to the bars of the window. “I find myself in a difficult position. As Khryl’s Own Fist, my first duty is to His Law.”

  “And here I was hoping we could get through the day without another lecture on your fucking duty.”

  The shadow of her face shifted with the slow ripple of her veil. “I myself Invested you with Khryl’s Authority.”

  “Um, yeah. About that—”

  “I am sworn to defend the Battleground and its people with my hand, my heart, and my sacred honor.”

  “We need to talk about you and Orbek. About Khryl’s Justice.”

  “Have you crushed the Black Knife insurrection? Have you secured Orbek’s submission?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then there is nothing to be said.”

  “I’m not going to make a lot of progress on either as long as my naked ass is locked in this cell.”

  “We both know you’ll walk out of here seconds after I depart for the Ring of Justice. Setting men to guard you would result only in needless bloodshed.”

  “Likely be some anyway.”

  “And I will be helpless to prevent it, as I was last night. As I was this morning. As it seems I will always be.”

  “Except it’s about to get worse.”

  “Peace. I did not come here to listen to you expound upon the obvious.”

  “Then why the fuck did you come here?”

  “After … Weaver’s Square … I sought my uncle’s counsel,” she said softly. “I could not find him. Eventually I … persuaded … Lord Tarkanen to reveal my uncle’s fate.”

  “Uh …”

  “Are you the man?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Are you?”

  He sighed. “Yes. Close enough, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, ‘why’ isn’t gonna tell you anything you need to know.”

  “Tell me.”

  She wanted it straight? He could do that. “It was the job.”

  “The job? Our deal? In pursuit of the outcome with which I tasked you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And your weapon … the Hand of Light? The Authority of Khryl with which I myself Invested you?”

  “It was all I had.”
/>   She nodded solemnly, and left her head down. “A harsh judgment upon my uncle’s life. I had believed better of him.”

  “Well, hey, I mean—he was an asshole, sure, but I think he was trying to do the best he could with the job he’d been given. If that means anything.”

  “It doesn’t. This will stain his Legend until the end of time.” Her voice went even softer. “As Khryl has decreed, His Will has been done. You were only His vessel, as am I.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far—”

  “You have gone too far already. But my uncle’s dishonor is not what has brought me to you now. I only … I wish you might …”

  She finally moved: a slow twisting half collapse that she caught against the table’s edge. She held herself there, shapeless silhouette haloed by the sun. One hand came up along the front of her gown, and it trembled as it slipped within her veil.

  “I want you to tell me—” Her breathing hitched. “I only want to know … need to know …”

  “Yeah?”

  She lifted her head, and her hand came from her face, and with it came her veil. Her vivid eyes were smeared with red, and tears tracked the curves of her cheeks.

  “Why didn’t you shoot me?”

  It was his turn to go still. Silence yawned between them.

  Her hand slid behind her head to massage the back of her neck, and she returned to the window.

  He watched her. Only watched. Without blinking. Without breathing. Without even thought.

  “That was your intention, wasn’t it? To shoot me dead.” She spoke to the clear sparkling sunlight between the bars. “That was why you came to Weaver’s Square this morning. Why you carry this formidable pistol. Why you aimed it at my face.”

  “I was …” He shook his head as though he were only now awakening. “… kinda foggy. The blast—well, you know. When I woke up I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

  “This is no answer.” She turned back toward the cell and leaned on the edge of the table. Wood groaned in her grip. There was a shimmer to her stillness: a suggestion of trembling ruthlessly suppressed. “Speak truth.”

  “What truth do you have in mind?”