Still only half awake, I had already pulled on my boots and was looking around for my tunic when it finally occurred to me that dawnglow doesn’t pulse. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, crap.”
And what was that noise? Voices?
I stood on the bed and shoved the lower edge of the skylight until it squealed loose from the rust on its rim.
Yeah: voices. Faint, empty with distance, but clear—
Dizhrati golzinn Ekk!
Okay: not a dream. Not a vision.
Prophecy.
I sagged, hanging from the skylight’s lower rim. “Son of a bitch.”
Did I have to deal with this before I even got coffee? “Son of a bitch.” I rubbed my stinging eyes. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
Fixing the prop to hold the skylight open, I turned around and grabbed the rim underhand; with a groan of middle-aged morning, I heaved my legs up through the opening and back over the lip. As I slid through the skylight belly-down, I collected a soot-greased scrape on the stomach from a sharp slate and a bang on the skull from the lead-framed pane, so when I pushed myself up to my knees I was already pissed as hell, rubbing the back of my head and looking around for somebody to take it out on.
A distant surf of ogrilloid roaring half-drowned shrieks of terror and agony and rage. Human shrieks. Probably.
There: three or four blocks over, toward the voices; that was the glow I’d thought was dawn.
Buildings on fire.
My breath smoked. Splashes of the water I’d wiped from my face trickled goosebumps across my bare chest. I glanced longingly back down through the skylight at my warm rumpled bed-but the false dawn caught my eye again. Looked warm enough over there.
I was already backing up to get a running start for the leap across the alley to the rooftop beyond when I finally thought, What in the name of sweet shivering fuck am I doing?
I was fifty years old, for shit’s sake. Fifty years old and about to run the rooftops toward some kind of goddamn free-for-all massacre. For no reason. Just because it was there.
Without even a shirt on.
I shook my head and lifted a hand as though telling some pushy asshole to back the hell off. “Not my business.”
I didn’t sound convinced, or convincing.
“Not my business.” That was better. Good enough.
Now the shouts and screams picked up a soggy kettledrum backbeat. Gunfire. Full-throated: heavy-caliber stuff. The Khryllians had arrived.
Anything I needed to know, I could find out in the morning. After the shooting was over.
You want me to stuff my aging ass into that meat grinder? I monologued to my audience of one. Make me a fucking offer.
God did not reply.
I shrugged. “Have it your way,” I said aloud. “I’m going back to bed.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed. Leaning on my knees. Staring at the floor. At the splotch where I’d spat that mouthful of water. Just a blot now, about the size of my hand, darker in spots where water had soaked into wood through worn-down varnish.
It had tasted like blood. .
Now, in the dim pulse of fireglow through the skylight, it looked like blood, too.
Gunfire and screams.
Dizhrati golzinn Ekk!
And bubbling up out of that soggy black swamp of that dream: stone walls crumbling beneath my fists and two of me leaping into a bedroom full of screams and blood-A thin pale human dying across the body of a young trim redhead—
And the saliva that pumped along my tusks when both of me heard howls coming from the twin bassinets beside their bed.
This prophecy thing pretty much sucked dog ass.
I put my shirt on. After a second’s thought, I added the rest of my clothes: my knives, the spring-loaded baton, the garrote, and the spare clips for the Automag. Even the flatpack of picks. Because you just never fucking know. Then I headed for the stairs.
At the landing below the second floor, I heard Pratt’s voice. He didn’t sound happy. He sounded like he was trying not to crap himself.
“I’m sorry, goodmen. Please, the hostelry is closed, you’ll have to come-no, Kravmik, don’t-!”
A stranger’s voice drawled, “Yeah, Kravmik. Don’t.”
The period on the sentence was the cold double-click of a single-action hammer going to full cock.
The stranger had an Ankhanan accent.
Somebody else said calmly, “Go sit down. Both of you. Next to the girl.”
On the landing above the lobby, I stopped and muttered, “Shit.”
There was a window at the far end of the hallway behind me. I was already turning for it, already seeing myself dropping the four, maybe five meters to the alley, when I heard “But he’s not even here.”
Pratt sounded desperate. “He ate, changed his clothes, and went right out again-he had something to do with Knight Aeddharr-I don’t know what it was-”
“Put it away, Hawk,” the calm voice said. “There’s no need for that. Yet. Whistler?”
“I’ve got him.”
“What are you doing? What is that thing?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The voice of Whistler: “Now. Did Freeman Shade really go out?”
“No, not really,”
Pratt said sheepishly. “I just made that up, because I was afraid you guys might want to hurt him or something.”
“Pratt?” Kravmik’s rumble sounded blankly astonished, and a woman’s voice said, “Lasser, what are you doing?”
“Oh, it’s all right,” Pratt told them. “These are good people. Really.”
“That’s right,” said the voice of Hawk. “We’re good people. Now shut up, both of you.”
“Hey-” Pratt lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Hey, do you know who he really is? I mean really?”
“Yeah,” Calm Guy answered. “We know. We’re friends of his.”
“Oh, good. Everything’s better when everybody’s friends.”
Up on the landing, I wasn’t feeling friendly.
A professionally laid-in Charm. At least one handgun. Three in the lobby, one a thaumaturge. That meant probably one in reserve on the street out front and two more covering the alley. That’s where they’d have the heavy stuff. And the Smoke Hunt was on its way.
“Pratt, let’s take a walk up to his room. Whistler, on me. Hawk, watch the grill and the girl.”
“By myself?” Hawk sounded bemused rather than worried. “This could get interesting.”
“If he slips us, use them. Use the girl.”
“He’ll give a shit?”
“Sometimes he gets sentimental. Especially when they’re pretty.”
“I’m feeling a little sentimental, myself. .”
“Keep your pants on. She won’t live that long.”
“I can be real fast-”
“Yeah. If there’s time we’ll all get a turn. But I’m first, get me? Whistler. Come on.”
I pulled up the rear of my tunic, drew the Automag and very gently racked the slide. Holding the big pistol tight against the back of my right leg, I started down the stairs.
Sometimes I do get sentimental. Especially about people who work for a living. Pretty or not.
To my left, through the posts of the bannister: Kravmik sat half hunched across Yttrall Pratt next to the dining-hall door, shielding most of her tiny figure with his huge curve of shoulder. In front of them slouched a nightclub-pale junior featherweight with glossy black hair, his compact efficient-looking frame loaded into a slashed-velvet doublet and hose under a loose knee-length cape. Hands empty. Loose.
Hawk. The gunman.
Middle of the lobby: Pratt, hurricane lamp in one hand, turning toward the stairs, catching sight of me, face lighting with a smile of pure uncomplicated welcome. At his side another smallish man, thin, long-faced, balding, folds of flesh sagging under eyes mournful as a bloodhound’s, wearing a thigh-length hunter’s vest, all pockets, a twist of thread between thumb and little finger on which spun gemsto
ne flashes.
Whistler. The thaumaturge.
And half-turned toward the stairs, left hand extended to usher Pratt and Whistler past, bigger, solidly into cruiserweight, head shaved and polished the color of tea-stained mahogany, also doing the slashed-velvet doublet thing but his worn open like a jacket, no hose here-the pants would look normal enough on a darkened street, but even in Pratt’s lamplight they jumped up and bit: close-fitting heavy leather, flapped at the ankle to overlap instep and heel tendon, jointed at the knee, thick boiled panels over hamstring and quads joined by heavy wire, not much against a bullet or a Khryllian morningstar, but they’d turn most blades-and it was a good bet the jerkin under that open doublet was made the same way because that’s what Grey Cats favor when going out for red work. Or ex-Cats gone merc.
No-name. Calm Guy. Giver of orders. Whose right hand was out of sight.
This might turn out to be a bit of a trick.
Another step down the stairs and Pratt’s pure uncomplicated welcome burst out with pure good nature. “Hey, here he is now!”
“Hey, here I am now.” The Automag was cold through the thin cotton of my breeches. “Let’s nobody get stupid.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Calm Guy didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. “You first.”
Another step down the stairs. “Civilians can walk, huh?”
“Maybe they could have,” Calm Guy allowed, “if it had been my idea. Since it was yours, I like them where they are. At least until I see both your hands.”
“You first.”
A shrug. “I’m easy.”
Calm Guy turned and spread empty hands. The ruffled cuffs of his doublet draped his wrists and half his palms. The drape along the insides of his forearms was just exactly the wrong shape.
“Those blades up your sleeves’ll get you pounded by a Knight.”
Another shrug, and a tilt of the head at the kettledrum backbeat of gunfire in the night streets beyond the lobby’s lamplight. “Knights are busy.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly the problem.” I took another step. “We can still get out of this with nobody dying.”
“Dying?” Pratt looked from me to Calm Guy in growing distress. “What exactly is going-?”
Whistler said, “Shut up. Don’t worry about it.”
Pratt relaxed. “Oh. Oh, sure. I forgot: you guys are all friends.”
“Yes,” Whistler said, spinning his gemstone. “Yes, we are friends.”
Calm Guy squinted up the stairs. “Still haven’t seen your hand.”
“Yeah. I appreciate the invitation, but-”
“You think this is an invitation?”
“If you were here to kill me, we wouldn’t be talking.”
“Killing you’s Plan B. Moving up toward Plan A-and-a-Half. You’re coming with us. Peacefully. Peacefully in our company or peacefully in a bag.”
“I like peacefully.” I can play nice, when I have to. “Peacefully works for me just fine.”
“Come on, then.”
I didn’t move. “Where we going?”
“Simon Faller has requested the pleasure of your company. Forcefully.”
“Faller?” I tried them in English. “Y’know, I’ve been wanting a word or two with Mr. Faller myself-”
He gave me a what the fuck? smirk, and spread it around to his friends. “You talk too much already,” he said. In English. He had a Brooklyn accent. “We’re not here to talk.” He chuckled and made a slight, ironic bow. “Just guys with a job to do, you get it? Deliverymen.”
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-!”
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