Caine Black Knife aoc-3

by Matthew Stover

  “Keep it down, for fuck’s sake,” I hiss at her. “It’s Caine. We need to-”

  “Caine?” Blank and dull. Not even a spark. “How-?”

  “Never mind that. We need to get you out of there.”

  Silence.

  “Tizarre?”

  “I-don’t, Caine. I can’t. Don’t make me. Just let me die.”

  Not fucking likely. “Don’t quit on me now, Tizarre. Not now. I need you.Marade needs you.”

  A whisper from the darkness: “I can’t. . feel my legs, Caine. I can’t feel anything. They. . they cut me before they hung me in here. . Storm’s coming. I can end it. I can drown. .”

  Huh. If she wanted to drown in other people’s shit, she could’ve just stayed home.

  “I can help you. I found stuff, Tizarre-”

  Fuck it anyway. “Stuff from home, Tizarre.”

  Another flash of summer lightning.

  Both her eyes are open now. “Home?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been home. You get it?”

  “Marade-before they took her, she said-she said you promised-if they took you home-”

  “Yeah, I promised.”

  I let the thunder roll past before I go on.

  People who have moral qualms with bald fucking lies don’t become Esoterics in the first place. What I am about to say won’t give me the slightest twinge.

  “And here I am. I came back for her. I came back for you. Because she’ll never leave you behind.”

  Another flash-and her eyes are wide now, and they seem to hold the light. Her voice is still a whisper, but its hush is no longer lifeless. “You-you came back here-to save us. .”

  “I can’t do it alone, Tizarre. I need you. We can save Marade.”

  Thunder rolls by. Louder.

  Some god sounds angry.

  “We can save everybody.”

  The next flash of lightning gives me the answer on her filth-crusted face, and that answer gives me a brief sick twist just below my heart.

  Maybe I was lying about that not the slightest twinge part, too.

  ››scanning fwd››

  The thunder crashes before the flare of lightning fades, and the cloudburst roar almost covers her half-strangled snarls as her hands twitch and shudder and spasm themselves back to life.

  “. . nahh . . shit-” The rain erases any tears before they reach her cheeks. The cords bulging from her jaw to her collarbone pick up faerie-fire highlights from the faint blue glow of the gluey mud that packs the bandages on her legs. “Never thought I’d be happy to hurt this bad. .”

  I shrug at her from the doorway. “Pain’s just God’s way of reminding you you’re alive.”

  “Then. . gahhh. . maybe I need a kinder god. .”

  “We all do.” I come out of my squat. “That’s enough. Get too clean, you’ll smell human again.”

  “All right.” She nods and wipes a smear of snot from her nose onto the back of one shaky forearm. “All right, help me in.”

  I pull her back into the dry and settle her against a wall while I smear her bare feet with one of the last of the glands.

  “What are you doing?”

  “They can still track us if they try hard enough, but this way we at least won’t draw their noses unless they already know we’re here.”

  “Those are-”

  “Scent glands. Grills carry them under their jaws, in the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. A subtler way of marking territory than just pissing around.”

  “You-cut them out? Out of their-”

  “What do you think keeps me ahead of these fuckers? Good looks and charm? Come on.” I pick her up, sling her arm over my shoulder, and half carry her into the winding dark.

  “Where are we going?”

  The one safe place in the entire fucking Boedecken. “Somewhere you can’t get to until you’ve already been there.”

  Deep into the black. I count steps, listening for rainfall ahead, landmarks where the ceilings have caved in. Up and up, and up some more, and she’s gasping against my shoulder. “How do you-don’t they search?”

  “Not on foot. Not anymore.” Her weight turns my chuckle into a grunt. “I guess they decided that’s a bad idea.”

  “But-magick? They have magick-”

  “It’s not-” Shit, she’s getting heavier. “-thaumaturgy. It’s theurgy. They have to petition their god for power.”

  “So?”

  “So I killed their high fucking priestess. The big bitch with the headdress of black feathers.”

  “You-how could you possibly-?”

  “Easier than you think. You could say it was luck, but I don’t think so.”

  Now I do manage a low laugh. A real one, dark as the storm outside. “I’m pretty sure their god’s on my side.”

  ››scanning fwd››

  She huddles against the dust-dry rock, arms crossed over her breasts, dripping dirty rain into the sand. The rose-pale glow from the Tear puts a blush on her bare skin that could make her look healthy, if not for the shivering, if not for the pain and bleak horror in her eyes.

  “It was really here,” she keeps murmuring while I dig through the pile of old bones and armor and weapons and shit for a tunic and pants and boots. “It was really here, all this time. .”

  “Yeah.”

  “And we never would have found it.”

  “Yeah. That’s the magick on it. If I’d been looking for it, I couldn’t have found it either.”

  Her eyes are wide. I wish it could be wonder. “This is. . all this gear. . it’s from home?”

  “Nah.” I give her an apologetic shake of the head. “That was. . well, this is mostly shit I found here. We’re not the first people in the last thousand years to come hunting the Tear. Some of them died here for reasons other than Black Knives.”

  “But-”

  “And some of it’s our shit. Some of it’s stuff I took off Black Knives this past day. They were carrying useful things besides their scent-mark glands.”

  Awe wipes the pain-twist from her face. “You’re the skinwalker.”

  “The what?”

  “A monster-a shapeshifter-kind of the ogrillo boogeyman.” She smears wet hair back from her eyes. “I heard them talking about it-about you-”

  “You understand them? You speak their language?”

  “No, nothing like that-it’s magick, kind of a limited telepathy-just something I’d do when they’d be close enough to hear-to, to take my mind off-”

  “Yeah.”

  “They said you’d gotten off the scaffold, but-they said you were dead. You had to be. Some of the bucks were saying a skinwalker’s stalking the camp-it can walk through walls, turn invisible, read minds, and it can look like anyone it kills-it takes their skins and wears them, and it becomes them on the outside, but inside it’s a monster. .”

  “A skinwalker.” Huh. I like it. Must be why they stopped stalking me-a little superstitious terror goes a long way. And there I was, skinning the bastards only because it makes the bodies look like hell on a stick.

  Just lucky, I guess.

  “Yeah.” I flex my hands. I like the way they feel. “Yeah, that was me.”

  “But you-you have been home, though? You’re going to take us home-you said. . you said you’d take us. .”

  “I said what I had to say to get you out of that fucking pit.”

  Air squeezes from her chest. “You. .”

  “I need you alive and fighting, Tizarre. I’ve got shit here that can clean out your infections and give you back some strength. I’ve got food and weapons and some armor and some magick stuff that I’m not even sure what it is. But none of it would’ve done you any good down there. None of it’ll do you any good up here if you’re not game to use it.”

  “I. .” She wraps her arms over her tiny breasts and can’t look at me. “Down. . down in that hole. .”

  “Yeah.” I squat next to her and lay the tunic over her chest. “I’m not gonna pretend to know
what it was like for you down there. But I went through some shit these last few days myself, y’know?”

  Her fingers are working well enough to grasp the tunic and draw it around her like a blanket. “Yes. Yes, I know. But you-you were always strong. .”

  “Nah. Just dirt mean.”

  Now she can look at me again. Now I can see the tears.

  “This is what I figure,” I tell her. “I’ve been through some shit before this, too. Nothing this bad. Nothing as bad as what they did to you. Nothing as bad as what they’re doing to Marade right now.”

  “Marade. .” she echoes, hollow and distant and sad. “What are they doing to her?”

  “It’s. . bad. Worse than what they did to me. Worse than what they did to you.”

  “Oh. . oh, gods.” Fresh tears now. “Oh, gods, I can’t stand it. .”

  “She can.”

  Mouse-brown brows draw together.

  “That’s the thing about Khryllians. That’s the gift of Khryl. It’s a rough fucking gift, but it’s there. She can survive anything except giving up.”

  “She won’t. She’ll never give up-”

  “She will when she finds out you’re dead.”

  “Oh. .” Her eyes widen again, and her mouth goes slack. “But, but I’m-”

  “That’s why you have to pull your shit together. Now. When this storm stops and they look into that slop pit and all they see above the surface is that pair of dead arms I hung in that rope-”

  Her shaking’s getting worse.

  “I can’t do it for you, Tizarre. It’s your power. You’re the thaumaturge. You can do Cloak. You can walk right into the middle of that fucking camp.”

  “You-you want me to-go back in there-?”

  “You have to.”

  “I-can’t. Caine, I can’t-”

  “You can. That’s the thing. That’s what I’m trying to get through to you. You’re stronger than you think you are. I’ve seen other people go through shit. Some of it worse than this. I know something about how people survive. How people live with it. It’s not complicated. It’s just hard, that’s all.”

  “Hard.” She laughs now, and there’s a bright brittle edge to it. “Hard?”

  “Yeah. You just keep fighting. No matter what. You just have to not quit.”

  “Caine-”

  “It’s the same for regular people as it is for Khryllians. We can survive anything except giving up. Sure, for them it works for their bodies too-but screw that anyway. As long as you don’t quit, all these fuckers can do is kill you.”

  Maim you, blind you, cripple you, leave you brain-damaged and drooling, whatever. . but a good lie trumps a bad truth every time. I put a hand on her arm. “Dying’s not the worst that can happen.”

  That’s true enough, anyway.

  “You don’t understand.” Her shivering’s getting worse, despite the tunic. Guess it doesn’t have anything to do with cold. “I did quit. I gave up. I was screaming. . begging. .”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Once again, white appears around the rims of her irises.

  I shrug at her. “They broke me like a rotten fucking stick. So what? They break everybody. It’s what they do.”

  “But-but-”

  “But that was then.” I stand up. “Fuck then. Then is over. Fight now.”

  “I–I don’t know if I-”

  “They have Marade chained facedown over a pile of rocks. Naked. In the middle of the camp. So the whole clan can watch while the bucks take turns on her.”

  “Caine-Caine, don’t-”

  “You know why she’s still alive? It’s not just because she’s Khryllian, Tizarre. Yeah, her god Heals her, because she fights. Every time. She fights every time. But you know why she fights every time?”

  I shift my squat in front of her and take her arms, so she can’t look away from me. “It’s because I’m not on that cross anymore.”

  “Caine-”

  “It’s because you might still need her.”

  “I-”

  “Are you gonna leave her there?” I give her a shake. “Are you?”

  “How can you-how can you put this on me?”

  “Because it is on you. It’s on both of us. Because there’s nobody else.”

  I show her some teeth.

  “Because I have a plan.”

  ››scanning fwd››

  The rush of rain becomes a sizzle. Then a hush. Fading thunder rolls away to the east.

  Time to go.

  I lean into the rope harness hard enough to scrape bloody hemp-burns up my chest and over my shoulders. The sledge lurches into motion, and I drag it out toward the night.

  My night.

  It’s a good night to die, fuckers.

  The Black Knife camp spreads rain-smoking watch fires across the badlands, three hundred feet below.

  Out along the parapet. .

  There’s still enough hush in the misting drizzle to cover the grind of the sledge through sand and over wet stone, and I am taking no chances because night and hard stone can play tricks with sound. The weight of the sledge counterbalances me only a couple hand spans off the rock. One of the skids catches on a corner of crumbled wall, and a couple of the barrels tip loose of my half-assed lashings and tumble off. I scramble out of the harness and dive for them before they can roll out a gap in the retaining wall.

  Not yet. Not here.

  My hands shiver and jerk while I struggle to get the barrels secured back onto the sledge. For sure this time.

  Details. It’s always the little fucking details that kill you.

  Come on, goddammit. My fingers just won’t for shit’s sake cooperate, and the stress floods out my Control-enhanced nightsight until I’m fumbling blind and I am not going to bitch this up. I’m not. Not this time.

  When the barrels are finally back in place, I check the lashing on the chest that holds the bottles, and the rags that wrap and wick them. If I lose those. .Solid. Solid. All right. Keep breathing. It’s all right.

  Back in the harness. A few breaths brings the parapet back to a ghostly grey-blush shimmer in my peripheral vision. Good enough. Let’s go.

  And I go.

  But—

  Fuck.

  Taking too long. Too much scraping. And I just don’t have the strength. Without the pain to remind me, I keep forgetting how fucked up I still am.

  Should’ve dry-run this thing. But how could I? Too late now anyway.

  Just push.

  I lean deeper into the harness. Rope grinds through skin and muscle and burns into bone okay not really but still it feels like hot staggering fuck—

  Fucking push.

  It’s too loud the rain’s stopped they can’t hear me but they can, I know they can hear me and I can’t go any faster but I just can’t get there push goddammit pushI make the point just as my knees give out. I slip the harness and throw myself into the point’s muddy sand and let the blood from my chest and shoulders mix with the puddles while I try to figure out how I’m ever gonna get my breath.

  “Caine-”

  I jerk and spasm onto my back and roll to my feet by reflex with knives in my hands before I register that it was Tizarre’s voice. I fade from the lip of the point and get my back to a wall.

  “Shit,” I mutter through my teeth as I put away the knives. “Might as well, y’know, slap my balls or something. Be nicer.”

  A hand I cannot see attached to an arm I cannot see lands lightly on my shoulder, and a shuddering wave of dream-wakening twists through my mind because I can see her, and now that I can, I know I always could. . but only with my eyes. Not with my brain.

  Until she decided to let me.

  Thaumaturges creep the shit out of me, and Cloak is one of the reasons why.

  “Everyone’s as ready as I can make them.” She has the bladewand, and she offers it to me butt-first. “Any fucker close to Marade when the show starts is in for a hell of a surprise.”

  I take the bladewand. “I’ll bet.
”

  “You have no idea.” Her face is still bleak, but now a grim fire glimmers deep in her eyes. “Instead of the shackles on her wrists, she had me half cut the staples that fix the chains to the stone.”

  “Um.”

  The image is vivid: Marade rising naked from that pile of rubble while from each hand three feet of chain as thick as my wrist screams into a lethal iron blur—

  Hell of a surprise is one way to put it, I guess.

  Makes me wish I could be there to watch.

  I stick the bladewand in the top of my boot and extend my hands. “Dawn’s coming. Set me up.”

  She takes my left hand in one of hers. I get a faint half-orange image of her licking her lips, frowning. “It should really be, y’know, copper or silver paint-”

  “Blood’ll be fine. Do it.”

  “You do it.”

  I pull a dagger and gash the base of my thumb; she catches my blood in the cup of her palm. “Have you ever done this before? Used a Shout?”

  “I know how it works.”

  She nods. “Don’t forget to cover your ears.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This’ll take a little bit. Go ahead with the oil barrels now. After I do your hands, you can’t use them for anything else.”

  I put the dagger away and draw the bladewand out of my boot. “Get on it.”

  She stares down at the pool of blood in her palm and starts taking the deep, slow, regular breaths that will drop her into mindview. The blood begins to shimmer with a faint alcohol-flame glow that casts no light.

  A twist of intention sends a blue plane of force flickering out from the tip of the bladewand; the lashings on the barrels fall away, and the tops of the barrels themselves slip sideways on glass-smooth cuts. I slap the top off the first one and just tip it over. Oil floods out onto the point, oozing and rolling and twisting over the water-soaked sand, flowing thick and sluggish down toward the apex, where the wall has fallen away. I kick the second one off the other side of the sledge and let it spill there, then lift the third and the fourth carefully to the gap in the retaining wall and set them there as the spilled oil begins to roll over the lip and drain along branching channels below.

  “Caine-” Her voice has that spooky emptiness; she’s still in mindview. “Now.”

  I scrub oil and grit from my palms onto my breeches, then give her my hands. She dips a forefinger into my blue-shimmering blood.