“The governor chip on my consider insanity engine burned the fuck out a long time ago. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the survival of the universe depends on it.”
“Depends on it being done, or on you being stopped from doing it?”
“Look, we both know I sometimes jump into shit without checking all the angles and fields of fire.”
“Sometimes?”
“But you’re the opposite. And this could end up being about you. I need to know that you’re okay with it.”
“Do I need to remind you what happens when I let you talk me into something?”
“That’s what I’m going to show you. What will happen if I talk you into this.”
“If.”
“Yeah. Everything’s provisional. Contingent.” He looks down at Duncan. “Everything I’ve shown you is the same. Contingent. It can all be wiped away with one snap of somebody’s fucking fingers. I’m showing you the best outcome, you get it? What happens if I get everything I ask for and pull off everything I think I can do.”
Kris still looks dubious. “What exactly is this everything you’re after?”
“What if,” Caine says softly, “you could take back the worst thing you ever did?”
“Apparently I should have taken a minute to think this through.”
— DOMINIC SHADE
The bartender’s primal, and his hair has more lacquer on it than his extravagantly long blush-pearl fingernails do. The hair sweeps up in three preposterous platinum waves like the tucked wings and stiff tail of a stooping peregrine. The black pearl studs on his pierced lower lip manage to suggest eyes and his chin is plenty pointed enough to be the beak. His cheeks have the waxy translucency of a longtime lachrymatis addict, and his hands show just a hint of the shivers—he’s still a little high. His eyes are the color of stainless steel, and show only professional welcome and equally professional reserve, which is pretty impressive considering the accumulated filth of hard travel that stains my clothes, not to mention my generally shaggy smelliness.
I flip a gleaming royal onto the bar. “Brandy. Tinnaran, if you have it. I don’t care about vintage.”
The bartender looks distinctly offended. His professional smile widens until I can see his canines. From a fey, that’s not friendly. Probably shouldn’t have said if you have it.
He fishes a nondescript jug from somewhere in front of his crotch and turns toward the mirror, reaching for a snifter. “Will the gentleman have a steamed glass?”
“Fuck, no. And leave the snifters to the tourists,” I tell him. “A cordial will do. Or a, y’know, a pony.” Which I find obscurely amusing, but it’s not a joke I can share.
Some of the piss drains out of his expression. He spins a tall slim pony onto the woven silk coaster and fills it from the jug, then watches expectantly as I sip. It’s good. Really good; the only thing wrong with it is that it’s not Scotch. He can read me well enough to know he got it right, and he gestures with his left hand. The royal disappears from the bartop and appears in his right. Probably so he wouldn’t chip his nails.
“Thanks. Keep the change.”
His feathery, near-white left eyebrow arches an additional millimeter. “Change, sir?”
I manage to not choke on the brandy.
“The gentleman did say he doesn’t care about vintage …”
“Yeah. Where I’m from, that means give me the cheap shit.”
“Ah. Apologies for the misapprehension.” The gold royal chimes faintly as it reappears on the bartop. “Allow me to express the regret of the house by buying your brandy, sir.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I only wanted to leave a nice tip.” A spectacular tip—an Ankhanan laborer might earn a couple royals a month, if he’s got a good job—but the bartender’s face frosts over. I’ve insulted him again.
Apparently here, two weeks’ wage doesn’t qualify as nice.
I put another royal on the bar. He looks a little more friendly. I stack a second on top of it. “Rith. Fermented. Six month at least. Twelve is better.”
“Smoke or chew, sir?”
“Smoke. In fact—” I add another coin. “I hear your house blend is worth trying. Your leafmaster has a reputation.”
“The gentleman has good sources.” He’s thawing. “I have the honor of serving Lady Kierendal in that position, sir. I would attest just how fine our house blend truly is, did modesty not forbid.”
Leafmaster. On second look, his tall black-silk choker doesn’t quite conceal a line of bruise that suggests somebody’s been taking that choker thing a bit literally. Well, all right, then. That’s convenient.
And it means I don’t have to fake a scene with the smoke. Rith gives me a headache.
“Tell you what.” The stack grows to four. “Make me happy, and I’ll plaster the kingdom with unsolicited testimonials.”
“I am always eager that my work be appreciated by the cognoscenti, sir. Please do not hesitate to call on me if there is any way I might further serve the gentleman’s pleasure.”
“Well, yeah, there is one thing.” I lean toward him. “I skimmed the parlor talent on my way in, and I didn’t see what I was looking for.”
“Oh? It is a rare gentleman who finds our parlor staff lacking, sir.”
“Yeah yeah, sure, whatever. Everybody’s very pretty. Even that ogrillo bitch has her shit rolled and lit, which is not something I can say of many grills. I just had in mind something, y’know, specific.”
Specific adds another millimeter to the arch of the bartender’s eyebrow. “Here at the Exotic Love, we cater to the most specialized taste, sir. We are eager to accommodate a discerning client’s most … detailed … request.”
I lower my voice more to have an excuse to lean closer. “I’m looking for something sophisticated. Cultured. Possessed of particular skills. And tastes.”
“How particular?”
“It’s not complicated. Somebody who knows the harsh. All of it. Who likes it. And who isn’t afraid to get, y’know, permanent.”
“Ah …” His face sharpens a little. Now he’s interested.
Go figure.
“And experienced. I mean, experienced. Permanent’s in play; I want somebody who knows the game upside down and inside out.”
“How experienced?”
“Decades. Centuries is better.”
“Mmm …” His steel-colored eyes go over me in detail now, speculative, analytic, ticking off scars, calculating the curve of muscle and bone under my grey serge travel clothes, looking for signs of softness around my middle, tissue breakdown under my jaw, calluses on my hands, and what he finds squeezes a hint of appreciation through his professional’s mask. “We may be able to meet your needs, sir. There is, however, a dress code.”
“These clothes? Fucking burn ’em.”
“Ah, no, apologies again, sir. It’s not a question of clothing so much as it is hardware.” His fingers flicker in a gesture my eyes can’t quite resolve, and every blade in every sheath all over my body gives me a little jolt. Not unpleasant. Just enough to let me know that he knows where every single one of them is. “For the sort of entertainment we’re discussing, only house equipment is permitted. I’m sure a gentleman of your refined tastes can appreciate why.”
“I suppose I can defer to your expertise in the handling of hardware.”
The corners of his mouth twitch. He might be suppressing a smile. Or maybe a retch. Or both. Doesn’t matter.
You don’t pay a whore to like you.
“So …” I rest both elbows on the bar, bringing my weight a span closer to him. “If a gentleman were to have someone specific in mind … and if this gentleman might want to share some of your fine house blend with this specific person—a person with an educated palate, who can appreciate its quality …?”
This brings a playfully wicked twinkle to his eye. “This can indeed be arranged … but first, the gentleman will, ah, want a bath.”
“Might a specific person be ava
ilable to scrub a gentleman’s back?”
The wicked twinkle trickled all the way down to the upcurving corners of his lips. “With my compliments.”
I pick up the stack of gold coins and jingle them in my fist like I’m about to roll dice. “Got somebody to cover the bar?”
“Leave the arrangements to us, sir. It’s what we do.”
“Sure, sure. See you shortly.” I hold out my gold-filled fist. “Thanks.”
He reflexively extends his hand and I drop the gold, and while he’s making sure he doesn’t fumble any or chip his nails or in any other way mar the perfection of his service, I take his wrist and yank him toward me over the bar. He has time for just half a blink before my left cross smears his nose across his stratospheric cheekbones.
He seems to have trouble opening his eyes again, and instead of a shriek of alarm he says muhaahgk while I reach over and grab one of those lacquered peregrine wings and give it a wrenching twist that should be more than sufficient to rip away a handful, and it is. More than sufficient, because the whole fucking thing pops right off his head, which is shaved smooth except for some crosshatched scars the color of antique piano keys.
A wig. Of course it’s a wig, dumbshit. Or he’d have to redo the fucking thing every fucking time he does any fucking. And then its weight registers, and I realize it’s not a wig, it’s jewelry, because what I’m holding isn’t platinum-colored hair, it’s honest-to-crap platinum. Made to look like hair.
Huh. I guess a royal really is a shitty tip in this place.
And in the second or so it takes this daisy-chain of dumbassitude to circle back and fuck itself, he’s past the shock of the assault—huh, tougher than he looks, and goddammit I knew that—and he unleashes a godawful banshee wail that goes through my head like the screechers on a Social Police riot car. The sound makes me flinch and pull back, exactly like it’s intended to, but that’s no reason to let go of his wrist, so I don’t, and half a second later I discover that the banshee wail isn’t coming from his mouth.
This I discover because his mouth has latched onto my right wrist and those sharp fucking teeth of his are a lot sharper than they look and they look fucking sharp and the shriek keeps going even when he’s chewing down to my ulna and I could reach over and snap his neck like a pencil except that’s a really bad idea, so I have to settle for fishhooking his masseter with my thumb and prying his jaw open and it’s time for me to fuck off out of here because I seem to recall that Kierendal favors chainmailed ogres for security.
But what am I gonna do for the hair? Pants him?
Do elves have pubic hair?
While I’m trying to puzzle this out, he pounces across the bar at me like a fucking mountain lion, all claws and teeth, and I fall back and get my guard up in time to intercept a very professional side kick and it still jolts me back and stabs the numb fire of a bone shot up my left arm and blood spurts and it’s not his.
Oh, awesome. He’s in stiletto heels.
Literally.
He snarls like a mountain lion too. “No fucking feral scum puts one filthy paw to me until I get fucking well paid!”
Or less like a mountain lion than a really, really pissed-off whore.
He lunges and he’s all over me. Heel kicks, open hands—fuck, the fingernails are blades too—and he is lightning in a fucking bottle that somebody stuffed my stupid ass inside of. He’s faster than me. He’s faster than Berne. Hopped on lachrymatis, he’s a fucking meat grinder—every other shot draws blood. The only reason I’m not dying already is that I’m twice his size and speed makes up for muscle only to a point, and because I know how to keep major arteries out of his way. I give ground, covering up, keeping those blades off my neck and away from my heart and liver.
Yeah, okay, maybe I should have realized a three-hundred-year-old rough-trade whore would pack a variety of sharps. And, yeah, son of a noble House, sure, decades of personal combat training, but I wasn’t exactly planning to pull this in public and I can’t kill him, but of course he doesn’t have the same problem with me.
This would be the time to trot out my Back off, fucker. I’m Caine routine, but nobody in this town will hear that name for years.
Serves me right for improvising.
I have maybe ten seconds before security arrives, which is actually good because if this doesn’t work I’ll need them to save my life. I back to my left rear flank, a narrow angle that brings my ass in contact with one of the seats along the bar, because the first rule—the only rule—of defeating a superior opponent is Never strike a striker. Never grapple a grappler. Never shoot a shooter.
In other words, a century of knightly combat training might not prepare you for having a barstool busted across your face.
Worth the experiment, anyway.
I spin away from him and get the barstool and continue the spin with the barstool whistling straight at those sharp fucking teeth of his, and his knees bend and he lets himself drop under—fuck, he’s fast—and I go with the momentum into another full spin, this time at his knees, and he springs straight up over the swing and uncorks a flying kick that stabs his heel at my right eye but, y’know, I don’t give a fuck how fast you are, you can’t dodge while you’re in midair, so his flying kick chips the barstool’s leg and I knock his skinny elvish ass halfway across the room. He takes it in a back-roll but by the time he’s up I’m in full charge, the barstool in front of me like a shield, all four legs toward him, because another thing knightly training might not prepare you for is having somebody jabbing at you with four different clubs at once.
He goes for a drop spinning heel kick that swivels him low, under the stool and parallel to the floor at the height of my knee, which is what his heel is whipping at but I take that shot on the kneecap without breaking stride and dive on top of him with the barstool between us. The foot-brace takes him across the bridge of his nose and one leg clips his shoulder and one takes him right below the heart and his eyes roll up and oh holy crap I wish I could just lie here on top of him and get my fucking breath, but I can feel through the floor the approaching thunder of boots bigger and heavier than any human being wears.
I grab his limp hand and use his razor-sharp thumbnail to slash the choker. I get some skin with it, which frankly right now works for me. I wad the choker and smear it across the blood pumping from his broken nose. Should be convincing enough.
Jesus, it’ll suck if I have the wrong whore.
The thumping from my left stops abruptly. I throw myself into a roll toward it, one hand stuffing the choker inside my blouse while the other slams that really remarkably durable barstool square into the groin of nine-some-odd feet of ogre. It doesn’t impress him.
Oh, sure, chainmail and a codpiece. Am I having fun yet?
Still, it could be worse: he doesn’t want to chance damaging the elf, and so instead of bashing my brains out with his cartoon-size spiked mace, he reaches down to grab me, which he does slowly enough for me to throw into a roll the other way and come to my feet and grab the barstool again. Things back in his direction look grim—he’s adjusted his grip on the mace, and the door he came through is filled with a couple of capable-looking stonebenders—and the other way, an even bigger ogre is moving to occupy that exit, and why is nothing ever easy for me?
I think it was Clausewitz who said when in doubt, blitz. Or maybe Lombardi.
I put my head down and charge for the only daylight I’ve got: the rapidly narrowing gap between the big fucker and the archway and I add a little stutter-step that lets me spin again and throw the barstool tumbling at his head. His hands come up to block and he turns a little as it whacks him and by then I’m already diving past his balls through the archway into a roll that puts me back on my feet pelting for the street door, and once I make that I should be okay because after all it’s not like I killed anybody.
Shit, barely even drew blood. Except for mine.
Out in the street the day’s so bright that at first I can’t see much, but I can hear
, and feel, and what I hear is a hot sizzle going past my head and what I feel is the breeze of something passing way too close to me and then there’s a spannng from up ahead and a chunk of masonry from the storefront there basically explodes.
What the fuck?
I skid to a stop and look back in time to see a couple ogres coming after me full tilt and another one behind them winds up and just throws something round and shiny straight at my face and I barely get out of its way and this one catches the wall square and stone shrapnel goes all directions and what the fucker’s throwing at me are steel spheres like fucking ball-bearings the size of my fist and Jesus a glancing hit could kill me.
I guess I’m not done running yet.
A meter or so of razor-sharp steel needle disagrees with me: it spears through the back of my knee and stabs straight through the joint to nick the inside of my kneecap. The needle is of the opinion I should go face-first into the cobbles, and it’s real goddamn persuasive. Which is not a terrible thing, as it gets me out of the way of six or seven others that go past my ass with a sound like a million pissed-off dragonflies.
I turn the face-plant into a shoulder-roll and on the way over I yank the fucking thing out of my leg in time to keep impact with the street from jamming it all the way through the bone. I come up to my feet with the weapon in my hand and fuck my skull like a beanbag chair: it’s a motherfucking birdlance.
Treetoppers. I hate treetoppers.
I’m not a bigot. We get along fine when they’re not invisible and buzzing around my head trying to jam a yard of birdlance into my eye, but this is not one of those occasions. They can’t be outrun; gotta get inside, somewhere tight, preferably steel-plated, and before I can spot a likely candidate the ogres remind me of their presence by clipping my right shoulder with one of those fucking steel baseballs, hard enough to spin me all the way around.
Shit.
If they’d give me half a fucking second I could detune myself from the treetoppers’ Cloak, but that takes concentration that I really kind of need to duck, dodge, dive, and roll to get a horse trough between me and the ogres without getting my ass knocked to downtown fucking Thorncleft. The getting-inside-somewhere is looking problematic too, as this crowded street of busy storefronts transforms in seconds to a deserted ghost-town street lined by locked-down storefronts that look more like bunkers, which is another fucking crisis because clearing the street means my buddies out there don’t have to worry anymore about hurting bystanders, and now from the general direction of the Exotic Love comes the regimented chmp chmp chmp chmp of hobnail boots in perfect step along with a syncopated clanging like steel drums played by overcaffeinated gorillas, and Jesus wept it’s a troop of stonebenders. With at least one rockmagus.
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