Caine Black Knife aoc-3

by Matthew Stover

  “And?”

  “Shit.” The pistol got heavy: like straight-arming an anvil. “Oughta shoot you just for creeping me out.”

  “Is your brother a blooded warrior, freeman?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I was flanked by two Knights Venturer.” The sad distance in her eyes became somehow less distant but more sad. “He shot them first.”

  I stared. She stared back. After a minute, I blinked. She didn’t.

  “What?”

  “Need I rephrase?”

  The pistol sank. It didn’t matter. I’d forgotten the pistol. “You had your back to him. Or something. He never saw your blazon.”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t know who you are.”

  “He knew.”

  “No goddamn way. Not a chance in Hell, and that’s not a fucking pun, either. No way.”

  “And yet it is so.”

  “If he wanted to die, he could have just blown his own bloody head off-”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why?”

  “This is a question which has troubled me for three days now. Can he have been enchanted? Pixilated in some way? Has his reason been driven from him, or is it simple despair and a desire for a memorable end? — for it is no small thing to be slain by Khryl’s Own Fist.”

  She put out a hand to the altar-block as though she needed some strength she could draw there. “When I learned of your arrival, it struck me that you might become interested in answers to these questions.”

  I looked at her for a while again. Again she let me.

  Pretty soon I shrugged down at the gun, then tossed it back on the leather wrap. I stared off over the city to hide the look on my face. “I want to see him. Tonight.”

  “Freeman, civilian access to the Pens-”

  My neck clamped down on my voice, making it scrape like a red-hot rasp.“I’m his next of goddamned kin.”

  “You truly claim this?”

  I looked down at the bracelet of scar around my right wrist. I traced its wrinkled surface with my left index finger, remembering—

  Remembering dragging myself on my belly up the Shaft in the Ankhanan Donjon, half-dead legs twitching and useless, lantern in one hand and ring of keys in the other. Remembering finding Orbek chained to the wall.

  Remembering what they’d done to him.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “As a member of his immediate family, you have the right to visit your ogrillo on this, his final night of life. Say to Lord Tarkanen that such is my will.”

  “He’s not my-ah, fuck it anyway.” I stared down at the cloudy smear of sunset gleaming from the platinum floor. “Thanks.”

  “It is our way.”

  “Are we done here? I better leave before I blow past sad and show up at angry.”

  “Angry at whom?” Her eyes said that for her, sad was the edge of the world; angry was a mythical monster somewhere beyond. “Would you punish a sword for the acts of its wielder?”

  “I’ve done it before.” I looked away again. “That’s another story I don’t want to get into right now.”

  “Would you not prefer to strike at those truly responsible?”

  I thought it over. No, really: I did. I’m no great believer in justice, and-like Ma’elKoth used to say-revenge is the shibboleth of spiritual poverty. But—

  This was Orbek.

  I sighed. “I’m listening.”

  So here’s yet one more way this whole shitstorm’s my fault.

  That book-writing friend of mine would say you can arrange any story you’re in to make anything your fault, and maybe that’s true. But I knew it then. I could feel it.

  We were standing in a boundary condition: on one of those infinitely complex fractal positions where the smallest gesture might trigger the slide toward an infinitely unpredictable resting state. We were the butterfly in Hong Kong, and the whisper from our wings was going to alter the path of the category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic.

  I could feel it because that’s what I do. When I breathe myself into mindview, I can even see it: black Flow, the energy of change itself. The cosmic web of causation. Quantum smears of probability, and the islands of order that are the heartbeat of chaos.

  Hell, it’s more than what I do. According to a certain pack of demented clusterhumps who are a chronic hornet’s nest in my buttcrack, it’s what I am.

  But fuck them, anyway. This story isn’t about them.

  She took a deep breath, and her hand tightened on the altar-block. “Your brother had fallen among bad company, here on the Battleground. The truth, I fear, is in fact darker: that he had become part of the Smoke Hunt.”

  “If you really want to know what’s going on, why aren’t you just sending down some Knights with a list of questions? With that truthsense of yours-”

  “It is not ours, freeman, but Khryl’s. And even so, it has its. . limits.” Her indigo gaze darkened. “Are the Monasteries unaware of this?”

  I met that squarely. “Still, though. What do you think I can do that you can’t?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, freeman.” That wistfulness had slipped back under her voice, and I realized it had been always there, deepening subtly every time she called me freeman. “I suppose that would be between you and your conscience.”

  “Yeah. Conscience. Sure.” I sighed. “What do I have to do?”

  “You will pledge yourself to a Call of Duty, sealed and sanctified by the Witness of Our Lord of Valor.”

  “You want me to work for you.” I squinted at her. “That’s not as good an idea as it sounds.”

  “You would. . work. . not for me, but for Khryl.”

  “He might not like it either.”

  “Nothing in the Battleground is a question of what we like, freeman. It is necessary that the enemies of Our Lord meet His Justice.”

  “You mean your justice,” I said, nodding down at the pistol.

  Her eyes went bleak as winter dusk. “It is the same.”

  “The coincidence’s kinda funny, huh?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Not much is, I bet. What’s involved in this Call of Duty shit?”

  “Through me, you will pledge yourself to Khryl’s Service in this matter. Your pledge will be Witnessed by the Lord of Battles Himself, and your compliance will be enforced by His Will until He is satisfied that you have completed your task. Once invested, the Call of Duty is absolute; you will faithfully comply with the terms of His Call and pursue its resolution to the exclusion of all other concerns.”

  My teeth found the inside of my lower lip again. It was starting to swell.“What if I don’t want to?”

  “Freeman, you will want to. Taken freely, His Call becomes your own most potent desire. For the duration of His Call, you will burn for its completion.”

  “You sound awful damn sure I’m going to do this.”

  “Your alternative. .” One finger twitched at the Automag. “. . remains.”

  “What if I don’t like that one either?”

  “The ogrilloi of the Smoke Hunt,” she said tonelessly, “bear marks at the bases of their spines. The mark is a simple curve of black, shaped like a fighting claw.”

  I found myself dropping my gaze toward the red-smeared streets, but I didn’t see them because I wasn’t looking down a thousand feet at the city. I was looking down twentyfive years at lean, stringy, desert-hard Black Knife bitches. Dancing in the firelight below my cross.

  “And now, today, to my city, comes the legendary Bane of the Black Knives. The Skinwalker himself. I cannot believe this is coincidence.”

  I shook the flashback out of my head. “It’s not. Not even a little.”

  “Thus it is that I have brought you to my side.”

  “You want me to stop the Smoke Hunt.”

  She said, “Yes.”

  “And you think I’m gonna jump at the chance because they’re playing at being Black Knives.”

  “Yes
.”

  “And you’re willing to turn me loose in Purthin’s Ford because you’re afraid that Justice and Truth aren’t gonna cut it this time. Because Khryl makes you play by too many rules.”

  “I told you it was. . complicated.”

  “Lady, that’s not complicated at all. Think about who I am.” An effort of will unknotted fists I did not remember clenching. “That’s what I came here for.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I believe that of all living creatures, perhaps you alone truly understand what it is that Khryl’s land faces: the doom that lours upon His people. Perhaps you alone truly understand what the Black Knives were, and would be once more.”

  “Screw Khryl’s land. And his people.” I stared into the clouds. “Even Orbek. It’s not like he’ll thank me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You still hate them. The Black Knives. Even after so many years. It burns in you. I can feel it.”

  “Some things,” I said slowly, “you don’t get over.”

  “Yes.” Starfire kindled in her eyes. “Yes.”

  She thought she knew what I was talking about. I could read in those eyes that she did know something about hate. Something. Not everything. I remember being that young. I remember thinking I knew what it is to hate.

  “I believe it is Khryl Himself who has brought us together,” she said. “That Khryl Himself has decided that you are the last best hope of His people.”

  “I’m just a guy. A guy who’s gotten lucky a couple times, that’s all.”

  The creases around her eyes squeezed toward a smile. “And many who believed so now moulder in the dirt.”

  I couldn’t exactly argue the point.

  Her face hardened. “Thus it is that I have brought you to my side. Thus it is that Khryl excuses my defiling His Purificapex with your presence-you, the disrespecter. The blasphemer.” Her voice could have cut glass. “The Enemy of God.”

  I shrugged. “Not your god.”

  “Prince of Chaos. Blade of Tyshalle.”

  “I always heard Tyshalle and Khryl were on pretty good terms.”

  “Not even human.”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “It is known to the Order that you are of the Aktiri. That you escaped from the True Hell-not this pale irony below us-along with your demon Artan brethren, on what has become known in Ankhana as Assumption Day.”

  “My demon brethren. Oh, sure.” I made a face. “Y’know, one of your Order’s greatest Knights was one of my ‘demon brethren’-”

  “You speak of Jhubbar Tekkanal.” Now the smile did break through her weary mask, but it was a smile without joy or humor. “Did you think his origins unknown? Did you think his true nature could be concealed from Khryl?” She tossed her head like an offended mare. “Why do you think his epithet was the Devil Knight? It was his purity of heart-the power of his faith-that enabled him to transcend his demon heritage. You-”

  Her stare was bleak. “You are known to be without purity, and without faith.”

  “Yeah, okay, whatever.” Though truth is a fine thing, it’s still not much fun to have everybody I meet shove it in my face. “We’re demons, sure. Fine. Must not bother you too much having us around, though, right?”

  The corners of her mouth turned down. “We are not here to speak of these things.”

  “Yeah. Fancy guns your armsmen carry. And that razor wire. And the searchlights and those coal-gas lamps at the Pens down there. How many Artans you got living in Purthin’s Ford, anyway?”

  “In Purthin’s Ford?” Her eyes glinted. “None.”

  “Sure, all right. Where do you keep ’em, then?”

  “They have nothing to do with you.”

  “Where I come from-what you call Hell, I guess; we just called it Earth-a lot of people wanted to work for the Company. The Overworld Company. I mean a lot. A lot more wanted to be Aktiri. Only the smartest, toughest, most ruthless bastards made the cut in the first place, and the ones who have survived here since Assumption Day aren’t just smart, tough, and ruthless, they’re goddamned lucky, too. Which makes them just about the most dangerous sonsofbitches you ever didn’t want to meet in a dark alley. I’ve spent three years making sure these rimjobs behave themselves. Or making them dead.”

  Her eyes were cold as the space between stars. “They have nothing to do with you.”

  I stopped myself from spitting on the floor. If I did, she’d probably belt me so hard I’d land in Thorncleft.

  Maybe she didn’t understand what they were after. Hell, maybe I didn’t either; I could be wrong. After all, anybody Earthside would know Retreat from the Boedecken; they’d know better than to fuck around with Black Knives. Or with me. “All right. Let’s have it, then.”

  “It?”

  “Your pitch.” I rolled a hand. “Your offer. The deal.”

  The starfire in her eyes smoked over. “You said this is why you came to Purthin’s Ford.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yet now you require a fee?”

  “I came here to dope-slap some sense into my brother. I sure as fuck didn’t come here to get the snot stomped out of me by Right Arm of God theofascists in the middle of some butt-raping terrorist insurgency. And I’m not real interested in having it happen again.”

  The smoke in her eyes thickened. “Not money, then, nor land; you seek no reward.”

  “Two. Well, one reward. One tool.”

  She lifted her head. “The reward?”

  “Orbek’s life.”

  “It cannot be.”

  “Then no deal.”

  “Ask anything else. The Justice is ordained by Khryl Himself, and I have no authority to alter, gainsay, or refuse to answer. Orbek Black Knife made this Challenge; he has placed his fate under the Regard of Khryl, and that is where it lies.”

  “What if he withdraws?”

  She turned toward me. “Then he must make submission.”

  “Let’s say that’s not a problem.”

  “There is still the murder in Hell.”

  “Let’s say that’s not a problem either.”

  She offered a reluctant shrug. “Perhaps the Lord of Justice might be satisfied with exile, upon pain of death, from all His lands forever.”

  “Done.”

  “Then-granted your assertions-done. What tool do you require?”

  I tried to look casual. “Authority.”

  Her stare said she was pretty sure I was about to sprout horns and a tail and come after her with a red-hot pitchfork.

  “Your authority comes straight from Khryl, right? That’s what I want. I want freedom of action. The next time some asswipe Tyrkilld takes a swing at me, I want to flip out the Holy Foreskin and tell him to suck it, I’m working for God’s Own Motherfucking Self.”

  She gave me that pitchfork stare for a long time. When she finally decided to talk, her expression hadn’t changed. “It is said that you are a man without limits.”

  “That was Ma’elKoth.”

  “Boundaries, then. That there is no line you will not cross.”

  “People say lots of shit about me.”

  Sunset began to burn through the smoke that hooded her eyes. “You must understand that I am the same.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “In service to my Lord-in the defense of His Land and His Soldiers-I have no boundary.”

  “I believe you.”

  She idled back to the altar-block pedestal that protruded seamlessly from the cool smooth platinum on which we stood. She reached to lay her hand lightly on that angled handle, fingers curling gently around it in what was almost a caress.

  The universe snapped into focus.

  — the soft prickle of blood-rusted wool against skin drying tight and stretched-

  — the damp-glazed chill of the platinum under feet colder than the breeze that smelled of coal smoke and rain-

  — eyes shrouded with limp wet hair the same bleak brown as the robes-

  — the swell of breath bringing small hard
breasts up along the inner curve of fabric-

  — both hands buzzing with the memory of knives—

  Words came from me without volition-

  “What the fuck did you just do?”

  — because these were the words I always said now.

  These were the words I’d been planning to say at this moment since the birth of the universe.

  And by the time she spoke, I already knew-

  “This,” she said softly, “is the second most sacred relic of our Order. It is all that remains of the Accursed Blade that struck off the Peaceful Hand of Our Lord of Valor.”

  And it happened-

  — the flash of grey steel and the jewel-spray of blood in firelight blossomed inside my head blazing the silent anguish of a wounded god-

  — as it was going to happen five hundred years ago.

  Again.

  And again from my mouth came the words I always said now-

  “What’s happening-? This is-this is-I’ve felt this before. .”

  I knew her answer.

  “You have not. It is the Regard of Khryl.”

  The words echoed within me endlessly, as though she still had yet to say them, but they had been said long ago but were forever speaking now.

  “The Gods exist beyond the grip of time. When we draw Their Eyes, They brush us with Their Power.”

  “No,” I insisted forever. “No, I know this feeling. .”

  She always said, “It is the echo of the future.”

  “No. . no, I really have. .”

  I have always been here because there is no past: all that exists of the past is the web of Flow whose black knots are the structure of the present. I will always be here because there is no future: everything that is about to happen never will.

  Now is all there is.

  I have always sat in the rubble of the Financial Block, facing down the length of God’s Way over the carnage and ruin of Old Town, perched on a blast-folded curve of assault-car hull with Kosall’s cold steel across my lap. The rumpled and torn titanium wreckage permanently ticks and pings as it eternally cools under my ass. A few hundred yards to my left, there has always been a smoldering gap where the Courthouse once stood, surrounded by a toothed meteor-crater slag of melted buildings; even the millenial Cyclopean stone of the Old Town wall sags and bows outward over the river, a thermal catenary like the softened rim of a wax block-candle.