Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  So what’s the difference between me and them? The real difference? They were in it for fun. I got paid. That’s about it.

  It’s an old joke at the Studio Conservatory, and not a funny one: If you kill for money, you’re a soldier. If you kill for fun, you’re a psychopath. If you kill for money and for fun, you’re an Actor.

  Dizhrati golzinn motherfucking ekk.

  My headache thundered in my ears. “You said you had a mission objective.”

  “Sure.” Bush swung his talons toward the Pratt & Redhorn. “It’s a sander. On that hotel.”

  “Sander?”

  “Search and destroy. Nobody left alive. And we burn the place down. Five hundred points. Fuck, don’t you know anything?”

  “I know some things.”

  Search and destroy. I would have vanished without a trace—missing, presumed dead in the fire. . . . This Faller character was going about things in a very organized way. Looked like he always did. He had a setup twice as nifty as the Khryllian trick of using grill hostages as draft animals. Ten times as nifty.

  Let’s say you’re an Overworld Company goon trapped here on Assumption Day, and you want to get home. If you know enough folklore, you know about the dillin, and you might even remember the references in my dad’s book, Tales of the First Folk, where he suggested that the Quiet Land—the place the dillin are supposed to lead to—might be Earth. You might also remember cubing Retreat from the Boedecken and the story behind the Tear of Pan chasell, and when you get to Purthin’s Ford, you start mining griffinstones. But not for money.

  For power.

  And when you find out about this Smoke Hunt business—that some enterprising ogrilloi have managed to find a way to tap into the Outside Power that was both the dil T’llan and the onetime God of the Black Knives—you discover that animating the Smoke Hunters draws enough energy off the Outside Power that you can force open the dil.

  Well and good. You can get to Earth. But you don’t go to Earth . . . because you’re smart enough to know you’re sitting on the only working gate between Earth and Home.

  I discovered that I was kind of looking forward to meeting this fucker.

  I squinted past them at the bloody corpse of Calm Guy on the boardwalk, then up over the skyline of the hostelry’s roof. “I know some things,” I repeated. “I know you fuckers aren’t going in there. And you’re not gonna burn it down, either.”

  “Aw, come on,” one of them—I think it was the Windsor, but it was dark, and really, when you come right down to it all dead grills look pretty much alike to me—said, “You’re gonna cost us the game—”

  “A little over five minutes ago I killed three men to protect that place. Three real men, who really died.” I looked deep into the Windsor’s piss-yellow eyes. “What do you think I’ll do to you?”

  The Windsor blinked. “Whoa—for real? Would you really? I mean, that’d be so fucking cool—way better than an autograph!”

  “I’ll torture the fuck out of you, if it makes you happy. Just don’t burn my shit.”

  Bush sniggered. “What, were you in there? We could have killed you? Hot fuck, how awesome would that be? To be the guys who killed Caine?”

  Packard nodded slowly. “Y’know . . .” He looked around at the others. “We still could . . .”

  “Settle down—”

  Bush looked suddenly thoughtful. “All you’ve got is that gun, right?”

  I said, “Let me explain,” and put a tristack into his kneecap.

  The impact spun him, and when he tried to catch himself, his leg bent backward and folded in half and toppled him sideways, because the shatter-slugs had chopped his knee joint into ogrillo scrapple.

  “Hey . . .” he said, aggrieved. “Hey, come on. What’d you do that for?”

  I hefted the Automag. “Anybody else?”

  “This sucks,” Bush said as he struggled to get back to his feet. Er, foot. “I haven’t got to kill anybody yet!”

  “Cry me a fucking river.” I shrugged down at the ogrillo body he was wearing. “You should be grateful. Other people who make that mistake with me don’t live through it.”

  “It was Packard’s idea—why don’t you shoot his leg off?”

  “And it’s still a good one,” Packard said. “Everybody spread out. When he opens fire on me, rush him. I don’t know how many points he’s worth, but who gives a shit? This is Caine. How cool are we?”

  “Sure, ice cold, you are.” I took a step backward into the alley. If I could get deep enough, I could enfilade them as they came at me. Which wouldn’t likely be enough to save my life, but I didn’t have any better ideas.

  A slight noise from behind me in the alley—a metallic rustle, like a sleepy silver rattlesnake—and I risked a quick glance over my shoulder in time to see the shadows transform into a straight, severe man in straight, severe armor, plain and functional except for the golden Sunburst upon the open electrum Palm on the breast of the cuirass, and I said, “Holy crap—I never thought I’d be saying this, but I am really glad to see you right now—”

  Markham, Lord Tarkanen, replied simply, “Pynhall.” He was faster than Tyrkilld.

  I never saw it coming.

  THE CAINE WAY

  RETREAT FROM THE BOEDECKEN (partial)

  You are CAINE (featured Actor: Pfnl. Hari Michaelson)

  MASTER: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

  © 2187 Adventures Unlimited Inc. All rights reserved.

  “Tizarre—!” I hiss as loud as I dare. “Tizarre, goddammit . . .”

  The next flare of summer lightning shows only the back of her neck and the strings of her mouse-brown hair. She hasn’t moved. Not even a twitch from her limp-fingered hands, corpse-pale above the knotted rope that holds her arms and head and shoulders above the half-liquid muck of rotting flesh and marrow-sucked bones, scraps of unidentifiable vegetables, old puke and softening turds.“

  While the rumble of thunder rolls past the camp, I scratch up a fistful of sand and gravel. No point in calling anymore;

  any louder and it might not matter how good my improvised ghillie suit is. Some alert Black Knife buck might start to wonder why a pile of scrub and rock near the edge of the slop pit is suddenly stage-whispering in a human voice.

  Pretty soon somebody’s gonna notice there’s one too many piles anyway.

  I push my fist out from under the ghillie’s rope fringe and drop some gravel into the the slop pit’s darkness. Onto my best guess at the back of her neck. “Tizarre—!”

  The night gives me a long, cold wait for the next flash of lightning. If she’s dead, I’m completely fucked. I can’t do this without her. Maybe I can still run. Maybe. Maybe if I hadn’t taken out so many pickets and gotten the fuckers thousand-amped about their perimeter, I would have had a shot.

  God damn you worthless weak fucking whiny sack of shit whore, you better not be—

  When the lightning finally comes, it shows my fondest hope: a flicker of white above the slop pit’s muck: one of Tizarre’s eyes, turned up toward the ragged rim of night sky.

  “Who . . . z’there?” Her voice is as dead as her hands. “How d’you know m’name?”

  “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 Eso-terics 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 . . .”