Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Stover

  Ahhh, shit. Son of a bitch.

  Should have picked up my goddamn knife, first.

  LORD RIGHTEOUS

  Light found me on something soft and knobbly that rose along my side and under my head and feet: a brocaded sofa, maybe.

  I discovered I could open my eyes.

  The plaster ceiling my blank stare found had been painted a tasteful ivory not long ago, and somebody had come by with a feather plume within the last day; the deep curls of the ornate crown molding showed no hint of dust. A cobweb would have died of loneliness.

  I tried to sit up, but my gut spasmed and wouldn’t lift me. No pain, just weakness: like I’d trained past muscle failure. Way past.

  But no bandages. No blood.

  Somebody had dressed me in a plain linen tunic and pants. My hand shook a little as I pawed back the right-side hem of the tunic and rolled my head over to find four ragged pink coins of fresh scar pocking my side, neatly bracketing the flattened diamond of age-browned keloid where an Ankhanan Household Knight had put a broadsword through my liver about fifteen years ago.

  I fingered the fresh ones. Big enough to be something in the range of 00 buck—maybe 7mm, maybe bigger. Who knows what Khryllians load? Lucky I didn’t take it in the face. Lucky old man.

  Lucky to be getting older.

  There was another new scar, long and thin and curving from my short ribs up toward my nipple, too smooth to be a wound.

  Surgery.

  Rubber-band muscles shivering with echoes of trauma, I managed to roll myself onto my side. Then I had to rest.

  Seated in a severe chair by a severe window was a severe man in severe armor.

  The chair was no more than a stool with a back. The window was an arch in the wall, plaster giving way to white stonework open to the westering sun beyond. The man was thin, even in armor, with the long narrow head and extravagantly arched nose and cheekbones of Lipkan nobility. His hair was the color of his armor and cropped to the uniform length of a fingerbreadth. His armor was starkly brushed and oiled carbon steel, lacking entirely the ostentation of polish and design that is the hallmark of the Khryllian Knight. Its sole ornament was a stylized hand—the symbol of Dal’Kannith, Lipkan god of war and father to Khryl—inlaid in electrum upon the upper left of his cuirass, fingers open and palm facing forward, and on that palm the golden Sunburst of Khryl.“

  Freeman Shade.” He inclined his head fractionally. “I am Markham, Lord Tarkanen—Lord Righteous in service to the Champion of Khryl.”

  “And I am—” I strangled a groan as I forced my legs over the edge of the sofa and sat up. “—almost impressed. Where are we?”

  “This is the invaliddarium of the Riverdock Parish vigilry, freeman.”

  “Knight Whatsisdick’s place? Is that a good idea?”

  Markham’s lips thinned. “Khryl’s Love has Healed your wounds—”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Get all the slugs?”

  “The single pellet still in your body was successfully extracted, freeman. And your ribs have been renewed through Khryl’s Love.”

  “Thanks for taking care of it while I was out. Khryl’s Love, I recall, feels a lot like having a handful of red-hot barbwire shoved up my ass.”

  The Lord Righteous didn’t seem to hear. “Your clothing is being laundered and will be repaired, should you wish; otherwise, it will be destroyed for rags, and we will replace it without cost to you.”

  “You do this for everybody you beat the shit out of?”

  His eyes were the color of his armor. “Only the innocent.”

  “So that means mostly yes, huh?”

  Those lips thinned more. “Freeman Shade—”

  “Y’know, I’m liking the sound of that more and more. Freeman. Free man. Because that’s, y’know, what I am, right? By right of—what do you call it in Lipkan?—Terranhidhal zhan Dhalleig? The Declaration of Valor, something like that? Khryl Himself has declared you have no right to hold me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then keep my fucking clothes. I’m out of here.”

  “Your other wounds, freeman—”

  “I feel great.”

  “Khryl’s Love treats only wounds taken in battle. There may be internal injuries—”

  “From what?”

  “From the—” Markham’s lips went even thinner. “From Knight Aeddharr’s inappropriate, unlawful, and despicable abuse of your person, freeman.”

  I found myself smiling. “Now, that I like. Inappropriate, unlawful, and despicable abuse of my person. Must sting, huh? Just saying that.”

  Those lips disappeared altogether. “You are owed an apology on behalf of the Order of Khryl, the Civility of the Battleground, the Riverdock Parish, and Tyrkilld, Knight Aeddharr.”

  “Fucking right.”

  “Knight Aeddharr is unable to proffer formal apologies at this time—”

  “What, did I kill him?” My sigh would have been more convincing without the grin. “Shit, in the old days Knights were tough.”

  “He lives.” Markham’s face was stiff as his cuirass. A subtle flick of his finger directed my gaze toward another door. “Your use of the armsman’s weapon destroyed a section of his thighbone, which must be reconstructed if he is to walk properly again—”

  “So all he gets out of this is a limp? My heart’s pumping pisswater for him.”

  Markham’s amazing vanishing lips took with them all the color from his cheekbones and around his eyes. “Should you wish to make another attempt upon his life, Knight Aeddharr has assured me that he will place himself at your convenience as soon as Khryl’s Love completes his Healing.”

  “Huh. Easy to be brave when you’ve got Khryl to kiss away your boo-boos.”

  Muscle rippled along the Lord Righteous’s jaw. “The apology, freeman—”

  “What about that poor bastard armsman? Khryl’s Love won’t do much for what’s left of his spinal cord.”

  “Armsman Braehew,” he ground out around his locked-down jaw, “perished of his wounds.”

  I stared at the Lord Righteous. The Lord Righteous stared back. Neither of us blinked.

  “Braehew.” Another name on a damn long list. “Braehew.” Hadn’t meant to kill him. Didn’t even know him. Didn’t matter. Wrong place, wrong time, with a shotgun aimed at the wrong guy’s balls. End of story.

  I have a lot of those stories crowding the back of my head. “What, all the Knights around there had something better to do?”

  “The armsman refused Healing.”

  “He what?”

  “Armsman Braehew is survived by a wife and two young daughters. As you said: Khryl’s Love would save only his life. He would have required specialized care for the remainder of his days. The pension from the Order will be better spent providing for the comfort of his family than for the care of a cripple.”

  I carry a scar just below my navel that matches one in the small of my back. I also carry a device implanted along my spine near that scar. That device—along with some specialized powers of concentration, and a bit of magick, that have become habit over the past three years—is the main reason I can now walk. For some years I had done without it; for some years it had worked only intermittently, if at all.

  I said, “That’s fucked.”

  Markham sat at attention, as though the Justiciar himself was in the room.

  “He died with honor. You would not understand.”

  “Does his wife understand? Did anybody ask his daughters whether they’d rather have money than a father?”

  “It is not our way to burden a Soldier’s loved ones with such decisions.”

  “And I bet right now they’re crying tears of gratitude for your thoughtfulness and consideration.”

  “I suspect,” Markham said, “that they weep only with pride that Armsman Braehew fell in battle, as all Khryllians fondly hope.”

  “Yeah, all right. Whatever.” I looked around for my boots. “Are we done here?”

  “There is still the matter
of the apology, freeman.”

  “I’m not much for forgiveness. Let me out of here. I gotta line up a place to sleep.”

  “Lodgings have been secured for you at the Pratt & Redhorn; it is a small hostelry in this parish.”

  “Maybe I want to stay somewhere else.”

  “You will stay in the Pratt & Redhorn.”

  “Will I?”

  “To disobey the lawful order of a Knight of Khryl is a serious offense; it is an offense to Khryl Himself. Am I entirely understood, freeman?”

  “Better than you want to be, maybe. Where the fuck are my boots?”

  “Freeman, please.” Markham looked actively pained. “If we might beg your further indulgence on this one small matter.”

  “We?”

  “I and the Champion.”

  “You and the Champion?” I shrugged. “What exactly is it you want me to indulge?”

  “Since Knight Aeddharr is . . . indisposed, the Order of Khryl, the Justiciar, and the Civility of the Battleground all humbly request that you will deign to accept the aforementioned apology, offered in person by the Champion of Khryl.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Since Knight Aeddharr is—”

  “No, no, I heard you . . . I mean, I think I heard you.” I put a hand to my head, but I didn’t feel any major lumps, and shaking it didn’t bring back any dizziness or blurring. “The Champion wants to apologize? The Champion of Khryl?”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head again. “It’s like getting offered a handjob from the pope.”

  Markham’s brows pulled toward a hint of a grey frown. “What is the pope?”

  “Never mind. All right, bring him in.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let’s have it. I’m a busy man.”

  “Freeman Shade, you misunderstand. The Champion does not come and go at your bidding; I am tasked to deliver you into the Champion’s presence.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Freeman?”

  “Tell your Champion thanks for the sentiment, but I’ve got shit to do.”

  “Freeman, you still misunderstand—”

  “One of us does.”

  “I am tasked to deliver you—”

  “And I’m telling you I’m not going.” I let my friendly grin go less friendly. “Unless you’re also tasked to tie me up and drag me there.”

  Markham went very still. Still like a lizard that feels the approach of a mouse. “Tie you up, freeman? Not at all. I am tasked only to deliver you; my duty unto the Champion, and to Khryl, requires that I fulfill all lawful tasks. The Champion did not specify that you be willing. Or conscious.”

  His expression never flickered. “Or alive.”

  “You’re a friendly sonofabitch, aren’t you?”

  Markham’s lips were so far gone it was amazing he had a face at all. “This will be difficult only if you choose to make it so.”

  I looked at him long enough to remember how old I am.

  “What the fuck, huh? Let’s go.”

  A stonefaced armsman brought me my trunk and stood by while I fished out a tunic, vest, and pants and shook traces of bug powder out the window. My boots were damp. Even through the bitter saddle soap, they still smelled of blood.

  I wadded up the white linens and underhanded them at the armsman. “Give ’em to the beggars, along with my other stuff.”

  The armsman let the linens bounce off his chest and didn’t even glance at where they fell on the floor. “There are no beggars in Purthin’s Ford.”

  I shrugged. “Then stick ’em up your ass.”

  Markham was waiting for me under the sally gate of the vigilry. Though my guts still spasmed and my noodle legs were still way overcooked, I dragged the travel trunk over the courtyard flags in my best imitation of brisk, and I bit down on my voice to make sure I didn’t wheeze when I joined the Lord Righteous at the wide stone archway. “You cocksu—uh, guys—still go everywhere on foot, right?”

  “We bear the weight of Khryl’s Armor with our own strength, yes.”

  “Your own strength, yeah. That’s what I meant. But for someone without Your Own Strength, this trunk isn’t exactly a feather pillow, you follow?”

  “Of course, freeman.” Markham stepped into the street and pointed at a passing dogcart.

  The cartboy—a sweaty grill pushing sixty, barefoot, in a homespun vest and shapeless pants ragged at the ankle, smelling of ass and cheap booze—dropped the dogcart’s draw shafts and threw himself into submission: knees on the street, hands behind ankles, forehead into the cobbles alongside the Khryllian’s instep. “Will dhe Lord do dhis poor ellie dhe honor’v acceptin’ service?”

  “The freeman will ride, Eligible,” Markham said. “Load the case.”

  The grill scrambled to his feet and lunged for the travel trunk with as much alacrity and enthusiasm as arthritis-knobbed joints allowed; I saw the cartboy’s grimace at the trunk’s weight and said, “Hey, let me do that—”

  “No, no, kwatch—no, I goddid, sure.” The cartboy kept his head ducked, eyes fixed on the cobbles, forcing his spine into an awkward half crouch to hold his crown ridge below my chin. “You please go climb up, kwatch. Do my job, I godda, hey?”

  I found my lips pulling back and I couldn’t unlock my teeth. “Don’t call me that.”

  The cartboy ducked his head even lower and his shoulders hunched around his ears. “Hey, don’ mean nuddin’, kwatch—kwatch don’ mean nuddin’, bud, like—”

  “I know what it means.” Sudden cords in my neck drew down my head.“I’m not your fucking kwatcharr.”

  “Hey, I—hey, I don’ . . . I don’—”

  “A man has spoken, Eligible.” Markham’s voice was soft and bland, entirely matter-of-fact, but it stopped the stammering like he’d cut the grill’s throat with a silken knife. “Freeman Shade? Will you ride?”

  I didn’t answer. I was staring at scar-puckered stumps, dark and skin-cancer rippled, on the cartboy’s forearms. Stumps of his fighting claws.

  Guards in the Ankhanan Donjon had lopped off Orbek’s fighting claws at that same joint. With bolt cutters.

  click clack, he’d said. click fuck-me clack.

  For trying to help Caine. That is: me.

  Then.

  you understand what they do to me? do you? they do to me what you do to black knives, all those years ago: cut off what makes me me. now I never get a bitch. never get pups. what good’s being safe? a good death is all i got left. a good death. honor on my clan.

  I found myself trying to swallow around that familiar fist tangled in my guts.

  “Eligible? What’s that mean, eligible?”

  “Sure, kwatch—er, boss. Sure. Godda be ellie, hey?” The cartboy swung the travel trunk into the dogcart’s cargo cage. He displayed his maimed forearms proudly. “Betcha I am. Don’ wanna ged messing wid ’dacks, boss. Sdick to ellies. We dake care a you good.”

  The cartboy shuffled back between the draw shafts and picked them up. “Good hey, climb up, hey? Where do I run you?”

  I looked at Markham. “Eligible for what?”

  The face of the Lord Righteous looked harder than the cobbles of the street. “Will you ride?”

  I chewed on the inside of my lower lip for a second.

  “Shit.”

  I dug an Ankhanan silver noble out of my purse and flipped it to the astonished cartboy, then stepped to the back of the dogcart and reached for the trunk.

  “I’d rather walk.”

  The Spire gave me the creeps.

  It reminded me of the Washington Monument. I posed at the monument once for promo shots, and it’s something you never forget: the psychic weight of that monstrously blank neo-stele looming behind your back. A giant white cock, fucking the sky.

  Except the Spire was bigger. A lot bigger.

  I kept my head down. *Never did things by halves, did you?*

  God, as usual, did not reply.

  It wasn’t just t
he illusion of looming threat—the way it leaned over me as though I were about to be crushed by God’s Own Hard-On—it was that the Spire really was, in a sense, God’s own hard-on.

  Fucking Ma’elKoth.

  A stalagmite of whitestone-faced granite piled on the lowest arc of the vertical city, studded with embrasure-pocked battlements, its bleached immensity commanded the whole of Purthin’s Ford and the face of Hell. Six arching sally bridges, staggered in a quarter-spiral, joined it to the tiers of the vertical city. Its uppermost reach overtopped the lip of the escarpment by nearly thirty meters; the five-spired cap caught the sun in a brilliant white-metal blaze that could be seen, on clear days, all the way to the Rymedge Mountains beyond.

  And that wasn’t enough either. Impossibly huge and impenetrably strong just wouldn’t properly demonstrate the big bastard’s infinite genius—the goddamn name he chose for himself is a phrase in Paquli that translates as I Am Limitless—and I guess even in those days he felt the need to prove it with every move he made.

  The Spire was also the spillway and control center for Home’s original hydropower dam.

  I’d seen guesstimated specs on it in a Monastic Threat Estimate from about fifteen years ago. The river is the outlet of the Fist of God reservoir, far upland on the plateau. The Fist of God is a vast crater—meteor impact, maybe, or some ancient volcanic hiccup—that went deep enough to penetrate the bedrock water table that fed the river. My river. Now it’s a great big pool, because Ma’elKoth corked the entire fucking river down here with this immense goddamn fortress.

  Those sally bridges—light and graceful as they looked from down here—were actually immense high-pressure enclosed aqueducts. The highest joined the escarpment where the river used to be a waterfall. The lower five channeled some of the water back to the face of Hell, making five little rivers that spilled down through the vertical city for the grills to drink from and crap in; most of the river’s water churned down through the center of the Spire in a series of columns that hydraulically powered all manner of the vast fortress’s inner workings, from internal gates and portcullises to water cannon on the sally bridges to elevators big enough to shift entire companies of armored cavalry.