Caine Black Knife aoc-3

by Matthew Stover

  “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 amp; 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?”

  Tyrki
lld 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 expansive 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.”

  “Happy men,” Tyrkilld said, leaning forward to lay a brick of a hand on my arm, “are only half alive.”

  I decided not to tell him my life could be read as a chain of evidence establishing exactly that. “I figure you’re a decent guy, Tyrkilld. As low-rent cocksucking thugs go, y’know.”

  “Gracious as ever.”

  “I figure you wouldn’t really be in this if you had the faintest fucking clue what was really going on. Freeing enslaved ogrilloi doesn’t have shit to do with it. Freeing ogrilloi is only a means to an end.”

  Tyrkilld swayed a bit. “And-? You’ll have to help me, lad; I’m no master of the mental arts even when sober.”

  “Freedom’s Face is a cover for an Ankhanan insurgency. Because even now, nobody wants to fight the Knights of Khryl straight up. Not even the Empire.”

  The Knight’s eyes went round. “Fight us? Ankhana?”

  “If they have to.”

  “For what? What do we have that they could possibly want?”

  “This.” I waved a hand. “Everything. All of it.”

  “The Battleground?” He looked dazed. “The vast Ankhanan Empire covets our poor scrap of a corner of the Boedecken Waste-? What for? Hasn’t your bloody elven sorceror of an Emperor land enough already?”

  “It’s not about the land. It’s about what’s here. It’s about your Artan guests and BlackStone Mining. It’s-complicated.”

  “Are we so short of time?”

  “Maybe. And I’m not sure I could make you understand why they want it anyway. And you’re sure as hell short of brains right now. No offense.”

  “None taken; freely admitted, my lad. Freely admitted. And how do you come by this sudden trove of intelligence that Khryl Himself avowed you lacked only this morning?”

  “People tell me things. When I ask them nicely. You should give it a fucking try someday.”

  Tyrkilld’s wariness evaporated into a sudden chuckle. “Red Horn! A flagon! And one for the freeman!” He pounded the table with the flat of his hand. It cracked, and sagged in the middle.

  He blinked at it, then shrugged. “And so pray, Master Monassbite, if it would please your Imperial Lordliness to impart to a poor humble hedge Knight one last pittance of your Shining Verity. . why bring’st you this news to my insufficiently sober self? I can barely hope to remember it, much less take action. .”

  “Nobody told you to get pisseyed.”

  He leaned back again and favored me with a long, slow, alchoholically deliberate scrutiny. “If what you’ve told me is true, you understand that what you’ve just done is. . well, for want of a kinder word, one can only call it treason.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve done worse.”

  Tyrkilld blinked, blinked again, and then unleashed a roar of laughter. “I’ll drink to that!” He peered around. “Or I would. . Red Horn! Where’s my swill?”

  He slapped the cracked table. It split with a groan and collapsed. The kitchen doors banged open again and Kravmik lumbered in, another bucket-size flagon in one hand and a civilized cup in the other. “And here we go-grk. For love of-Tyrkilld, you break another my table!”

  “Bring on the swill,” said the Knight with a lordly wave. “Put the table on my account.”

  “Bet I will,” the ogrillo grumbled as he set the flagon and the cup on the edge of the nearest undamaged table. “Be more careful, you, hey?”

  “So you two know each other, huh?”

  Ogrillo and Knight looked at each other before looking at me with expressions of mildly inquisitive innocence.

  “No taking a knee. Not even a ‘the Knight thisandthat.’ Not to mention your own private barrel of whateverthefuck this is.”

  Tyrkilld yawned and smacked his lips. “I’m not in Khryl’s Battledress, and thus informality is no insult. As for the barrel-”

  “’S just grillswill,” Kravmik said. He hung his head a little. “The Knight Aeddhar’s gotten a taste for it, that’s all. So I keep a barrel topped up for him. And in exchange, he makes sure the parish armsmen don’t bust up my pot still.”

  “Pot still?” I sat up straighter. “Pot still as in distill?”

  “And a nasty vile fluid it dispenses, too,” Tyrkilld sighed, reaching for the flagon. “He boils the alchohol off his beer, capturing the spirit in a long coiled tube of-”

  “Wait. Stop. Both of you. Hot st
aggering fuck.” I lurched to my feet. “Grillswill is distilled beer?”

  “Not so loud,” Kravmik muttered. “I know we’re alone here, but it’s not completely legal, you understand?”

  “Or even at all,” Tyrkilld said, taking a long draught. “And for good reason too.”

  “Give me that.” I snatched the cup off the table. Inside was a very pale, almost colorless liquid. . with that dark, burnt-chocolate scent. . but also some heather, and honey, and exotic spice. .

  That was the smell. The taste that had brought tears to my eyes.

  I remembered now: Orbek recounting the boogeyman stories his father used to tell him. About marsh ghouls in the Boedecken, who’d lure you out into the bogs and suck out your eyeballs and pull you down. . into the bogs.

  The bogs that were full of-

  “Peat.” Wonder kindled within me like summer dawn. “It’s sonofabitching peat.”

  Kravmik frowned at me. “It’s bogearth. We cut it for the cook fires-wood’s too expensive to burn here, coal ruins the food, and turds. . well, humans get funny about turd smoke.”

  “You’re making beer out of malted barley. That you’re drying over peat fires,” I murmured reverently. “Bogearth, whatever. And you’re distilling the beer to make, uh, grillswill.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Oh, my sweet and generous gods.” I took a sip. It was liquid fire. Too young. Too harsh. Unfiltered. Yeast and fermentation esters.

  It was fucking magnificent.

  I said, “Kravmik Red Horn: Lazzevget, will you marry me?”