Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

He pushed himself off the sill, but Berne and Toa-Sytell together blocked his path to the door.

  “When Ma’elKoth desires your company, he will summon you,” Toa-Sytell said.

  Caine replied, “You want to get out of my way.”

  “Wait till you’re called,” Berne said, stepping close to tower over Caine. “He doesn’t like to be interrupted.”

  Caine looked up into Berne’s ice blue eyes, close enough that with a simple twist of his head he could sink his teeth into the swordsman’s throat. Though the old familiar fury still burned within his chest and the diamondine lust to tear Berne’s limbs ragged and spurting from his body had not slackened, he was a world away from doing anything as reckless and stupid as he had on the gaming floor at Kierendal’s. Instead he found within himself a cold and level purity of intention: everything for Shanna.

  “Funny how things change in just a couple days,” he said casually. “I can imagine a future in which you’re still alive tomorrow, Berne.”

  Berne snorted contemptuously, his breath heavy with meat. “Just stay away from that fucking door.”

  Caine leaned to one side to frown at the door around Berne’s shoulders. “What, that one?” He flicked a humorous glance sideways at Toa-Sytell, reached out, and tapped lightly with two fingers upon the Duke’s chest.

  “Hey, Toa-Sytell. Thought you told me once that I shouldn’t bother to hope that I’d ever catch you within arm’s length.”

  For one brief second, Toa-Sytell stiffened, remembering Creele’s death in the Monastery. In that second Caine was able to straight-arm him out of the way and slip past Berne’s shoulder.

  He reached the door and grasped the enormous Ouroboros ring of the knocker, lifting it with a grunt of effort—

  “Caine, don’t!” Berne gasped from behind him, an unexpected note of honest panic in his voice that sparked, for Caine, a real smile.

  He grinned back over his shoulder: Berne and Toa-Sytell both stood where they’d been, faces identically pale, their hands out imploringly as though they’d stop him if they dared, but feared to make a sudden move that might startle him into letting the knocker fall.

  “You don’t know . . .” Toa-Sytell said hoarsely, “you don’t know what might be in there—!”

  “Shit,” Caine said with a laugh. “All right, relax, you big babies. I won’t knock.”

  Instead, he yanked the door open.

  The smell from within was all blood and old shit, washed down with salt water, and sharp cedar from the coals that smoldered in the braziers. The high-ceilinged room was broad enough to throw back an echo from the scrape of Caine’s boots, but when Ma’elKoth rose and turned majestically toward the door, the room shrank like a receding dream, as though there was no place within it beyond the reach of the Emperor’s arm.

  “Caine. Come in. Shut the door behind you.”

  Caine flicked a shrugging glance back at the two behind him. Berne and Toa-Sytell each managed to look awestruck and vaguely alarmed and deeply suspicious all at once.

  He winked at them and went in.

  13

  THE DOOR’S SLAM behind him made the whole room ring like a gong.

  Ma’elKoth drifted toward him, a human thunderhead. “I have been awaiting your return.”

  He wore a veil, a drape of some kind of mesh that covered him from head to foot like a kid playing ghost with a sheet over his head; from the lower hem of this mesh sheet hung four large, irregular, shiny black rocks that looked like griffinstones. Beneath the transparent mesh he was naked save for the tight leather knee breeches that he’d worn beneath his robes for the Ritual of Rebirth. Sweat glistened across his breathtaking musculature as though he’d been oiled like a bodybuilder, and it darkened the ends of his bristling beard as well as the lower third of the mane of chestnut hair that curled to his shoulder blades.

  “I will be interested in some answers from you, Caine,” he said, and there remained no trace of his usual paternal indulgence. If distant thunder could be made into precise words, broken into clipped and overarticulated speech, it would have the impersonal, dispassionately threatening sound of Ma’elKoth’s voice.

  “Pallas Ril is your lover. Pallas Ril is Simon Jester.”

  The Emperor towered over Caine like a mountain poised on the brink of avalanche. His mask of calm began to break, cracked from the inside by the swell of outraged veins in his massive neck. “You will regret having deceived me, Caine.”

  Caine barely heard this threat. It had no meaning for him, could have no meaning. Beyond the Emperor, a slim form, bound nude upon the table-sized block of bloodstained limestone, held the universe’s hope of meaning upon its still and silent breast.

  Her eyes were open, staring blankly at the circle of grey-brown exposed stone of the ceiling above her. Her hands had been tied together stretched above her head; her ankles were tied similarly, by ropes that looped through heavy iron rings on the floor nearby. Her body was mottled with bruise, so many small insults upon her precious flesh that they’d blended together into one. Linen that once had been white stretched tight across her chest; it was now crusted with brown, shading to wet-gleaming crimson. But mostly what held Caine was her eyes, those eyes—

  They were open and they did not blink, and he could not make himself care what Ma’elKoth might be about to do to him.

  It seemed that he stood there forever, motionless, timeless, unable to think, unable to breathe. Even his heart paused for an eternal instant while he lived wholly through his eyes.

  And then her chest rose, slowly, gradually; when it fell again, Caine felt the dawn of a new day. With her breath, his own returned, and the world began to make sense once again.

  “But first,” Ma’elKoth said, so close now that Caine could smell corruption on his breath, “I will know where you have been!”

  Caine shook himself back to the present. “What are you, my mother?” he said, trying for the cheerful mockery he’d used with Berne. A flash of movement gave him barely enough warning to begin to roll with it as Ma’elKoth’s open hand slapped him spinning irresistibly, tumbling and skidding across the iron floor.

  Holy shit, he thought dizzily as he tried to unravel the stunned tangle of his limbs and reach his feet. This is a problem . . .

  Ma’elKoth pounced on him like a hunting cat. The Emperor yanked him into the air by huge handfuls of his leather jerkin and shook him the way a terrier shakes a rat to snap its spine. Every single one of Caine’s wounds screamed pain at him, and the shout of agony seemed to clear his mind.

  All at once, he became aware of a number of things:

  One: He was about to die, here. If Ma’elKoth didn’t get an answer that satisfied him, he’d beat him to death with his bare hands—and there was no answer that Caine could give.

  Two: Ma’elKoth was using his bare hands not merely from rage, but because his magic was inaccessible. The net—this was silver mesh that he wore over his head, just like the suit Arkadeil had worn in the Theater of Truth, just like the veils that Konnos had invented. It must be cutting him off from the Flow. This was how he knew who Pallas was and knew that she was Simon Jester: the silver net protected him from the Eternal Forgetting.

  Three, most important, dizzying, staggering in its implications: Cut off from the power that made him what he was, Ma’elKoth was vulnerable.

  Caine could kill him.

  Right now. Right here.

  He’d never get a better chance.

  Even without the knives that the Household Knights had confiscated, despite the enormous power of the sheerly physical sort held within Ma’elKoth’s massive body, despite being a foot and a half shorter and about half the weight of this man-god, Caine had a chance, had a good chance.

  Maybe his only chance.

  Right now.

  Ma’elKoth shook him again—the room spun and jittered crazily around him—and roared into his face. “Where? Answer me! Where have you been?”

  “All right,” Caine said, “all right—
”

  Ma’elKoth shifted his grip to hold him in the air by only one hand, while he drew back the other in a fist the size of a catapult stone. Caine got his own hands, both of them, up in front of his face in time to absorb some of the thundering force of this punch. Instead of breaking his neck, it only shot stars through his vision. A hot rush of blood filled his mouth from his smashed nose and teeth-cut lips.

  “Ma’elKoth, stop!” Caine said with as much force as he could press through his half-stunned slur. “You’ll kill me . . . and then you’ll never know—”

  Ma’elKoth held him there, his feet dangling loosely below him; his mighty chest heaved like a bellows as he worked air in and out through teeth clenched so tightly that scarlet patches overlay his bulging jaw.

  “I trusted you, Caine,” he ground out. “I do not give My trust lightly to any man. I will have My answer, or I will have your life.”

  Caine met his smoldering gaze with a flat stare of his own. “Put me down.”

  Ma’elKoth’s face went from red to white with rage. For a long moment Caine’s life teetered on a knife’s edge, but Ma’elKoth suffered from a curse that plagues all brilliant men: he had to know.

  Slowly, struggling with his anger, he lowered Caine to the iron floor; slowly he opened the fist that held Caine’s jerkin.

  “Speak, then.”

  Caine pretended to straighten his clothing; he pretended that wiping the blood from his lips really mattered; this gave him the space of two breaths to rake Ma’elKoth with his eyes, deciding where to hit him first.

  His knee, the joint vulnerable behind the tight leather; his bulging groin; the nerve cluster behind his solar plexus—? No: the bare hint of skin-covered cartilage that showed between the cabled muscles of his throat. A handspear or a phoenix fist, either one, quick and sharp. Even if the larynx didn’t break, the muscles around it would clamp down in reaction: he wouldn’t be able to yell an alarm. Then it would be flesh against flesh, bone against bone, man against man: on those terms, Caine would not allow himself to lose.

  Ma’elKoth would die before the altar on which he’d bound Pallas Ril.

  And yet, poised here on the cusp between killing and dying, knowing full well that if he did not attack, Ma’elKoth would give him no other opportunity, looking up into the rage-poisoned eyes of this giant man-god, Caine thought inexplicably of Hamlet coming upon Claudius the King at prayer: Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying . . .

  Images cascaded through his mind: the fight, the death of Ma’elKoth, freeing Pallas Ril, opening the door of the Iron Room—to find Berne and Toa-Sytell outside, whom he cannot kill before their shouts alert the Household Knights at the foot of the stairs. Ma’elKoth is not the Wicked Witch of the West, that his retainers would cheer his death and let his killers go merrily on their way. He was loved. He was revered . . .

  He was, in fact, a damned good Emperor.

  And he’s one of the few men I’ve ever met that I respect, Caine thought, and one of the fewer still that I kind of, even, admire.

  A good man? No, clearly not; but then, neither was Caine, and he well knew it. But Ma’elkoth was better than most; intellectually honest, at least, aware of his own brutality, and with the good of his subjects at heart . . .

  Kill him now, kill him here, what happens? Ma’elKoth dies, Caine dies, Pallas dies, maybe Berne, maybe Toa-Sytell, maybe hundreds of thousands more in the Second Succession War that will surely follow. Who wins?

  The Studio wins: a massive, destructive civil war is exactly what they’ve been hoping for.

  Kollberg wins.

  That, Caine decided, was not an acceptable outcome.

  His father had told him to forget the rules. He’d shrugged it off. He’d never paid much attention to rules in the first place. But now he found that there were rules he’d lived by, rules that had made Caine what he was, patterns of behavior, trip wires of which he wasn’t even aware. Now it came as a startling revelation:

  Maybe I don’t have to kill him.

  Not only did he not have to kill Ma’elKoth here, he didn’t have to kill him at all. That was a Caine pattern: when threatened, kill. But he could choose not to be a slave to his own past.

  Maybe here in the prison of the Iron Room, he’d found another kind of freedom.

  Everyone thinks Caine is all of me; that’s my edge.

  Step outside the Caine patterns—he’d already begun. Maybe if he stayed outside, circled around them, so to speak, used the patterns themselves as a weapon—those patterns that determined what friends and enemies both expected of him, what they thought he was capable of—he could have it all.

  Why settle for less than everything?

  Save Shanna. Save himself. Pull the King of Cant out of the shit-hole he’d dumped him into. Get Kollberg. And screw the Studio: save the Empire from another Succession War.

  He saw a chance, a vague and misty path through the fog, so dangerous that the mere thought of it stopped his breath. But he’d already started along that path—he’d been pushing through it blindly, picking his way among the pits and the mires—and now the sun had risen within him, and the fog had begun to burn away. He saw that he was already doing it right: he was already on a path that led to everything, if he only had the guts to risk it all. The slightest hesitation, the vaguest stirrings of fear, and he’d be lost. The demons that patrolled this path would close in and rend him at the first hint of uncertainty, but he didn’t mind that at all.

  There was one Caine pattern that he’d never change: when in doubt, go for it.

  A wild grin took over his face.

  “You know what?” he said brightly into the teeth of Ma’elKoth’s expectant fury. “I don’t think I’m going to kill you.”

  Ma’elKoth’s eyes widened, then his brows drew together. “Of course you won’t. What makes you think you could?”

  “Let me put it this way: I’m hoping I won’t have to.”

  “No games, Caine. I am waiting for your answer.”

  “You’ve been here all day, haven’t you? Must be frustrating, questioning her with that net over your head. No wonder you’re in a temper. Kind of funny, if you think about it: With the net, you can’t use your magick to force the answers out of her. Without the net, you can’t remember what questions you want to ask, or even why you’ve tied her up here. So, what are you left with? Pain? You know in advance that won’t mean much to an adept.”

  Ma’elKoth grunted. “I haven’t touched her. The bruises are from her capture.”

  A knot loosened in his chest. “Then what’s wrong with her?” he said. “Why does she just stare like that?”

  “Caine, I am a patient man,” Ma’elKoth rumbled dangerously, “but not today.”

  “Yeah, no shit. Me neither. Listen, if you keep that net on, I might just go ahead and beat you to death.”

  One eyebrow lifted, and a corner of Ma’elKoth’s mouth quirked; fury had become amusement without transition. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. You know I can; I mean, for all your size and strength, you’re no warrior. Without your magick, I’ll drop you like a bag of rocks.”

  “You would never escape the palace.”

  Caine shrugged. “I’ve done it before.”

  Ma’elKoth pursed his lips while he considered that.

  “Just so,” he said at length. “And why is it that you tell me this?”

  “Making a point, Ma’elKoth.” And getting your attention off where I’ve been. “If I meant you harm, I could have your life. Right now.” He opened his hands, showed them to Ma’elKoth in a gesture of innocence. “I also want you to take off that net.”

  “And why is this? Do not hope that this spell that protects your lover will win her release. I may forget why she is bound here, but I will not forget the use of this net, and that by putting on this net I relearn the identity of Simon Jester.”

  “Nah, nah, nah, that’s not it at all. First, she’s not my lover. She dumped me months ago. Second, she’s not Simo
n Jester—not in the sense of being the mastermind who’s protecting the enemies of the Empire.”

  “Come now, Caine. Berne himself—”

  “Is an idiot, and you know it. He assumed she was; she never bothered to correct his mistake. She’s protecting the real one.”

  “Hmpf.” Ma’elKoth looked away now, then back. “At one time, he thought that the real Simon Jester was you.”

  Caine snorted. “I’m not that smart. Neither, obviously, is he. But I can tell you who is.”

  Ma’elKoth folded his massive arms. “And?”

  The lie came out smoothly, without hesitation. “It’s the King of Cant.”

  “Impossible,” Ma’elKoth said instantly. “Duke Toa-Sytell—”

  “Has been completely fooled. I have it from the mouth of Majesty himself.”

  “But . . . but . . .” Ma’elKoth frowned, sputtering.

  Caine almost laughed out loud; he’d never imagined he’d see the Emperor at a loss for words. “Do you want to know what they’re doing right now? Take off the net.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “Of course you don’t,” Caine snapped. “You’ve spent the whole fucking day in a room with no windows, a room that makes everybody crap their pants just thinking about knocking to tell you what’s going on outside! And then you can’t feel anything in the Flow because you’ve buried your head in this damned net of yours. You want to be a god to your Children, Ma’elKoth? Well, there’s thousands of them screaming for you as we speak. You want to step outside and look? Half your fucking city’s on fire right now!”

  “Fire?” Ma’elKoth said, sounding suddenly young and vulnerable, like a small boy caught half asleep. As though they moved of their own volition, his hands lifted and caught at the netting from the inside, pulling it down over his head, taking long strands of his curling hair with it, dragging them across his face, ripping the hairs from his head with faint tearing sounds that Caine could barely hear but that must have buzzed like harsh static inside Ma’elKoth’s skull.

  When it came free he cast the net blindly aside. He lifted his head like a hunter who’s heard the far-off call of his prey, and he froze in that position as though he’d been turned to salt.