You’re insane.
“You should understand that I’m trying to help you, even though you don’t deserve it. Eventually he’ll believe me about Faith, and then he might just execute your slag ass, River Bitch. After that he’ll find out I was right. She’ll barely even miss you.”
“Um,” Duncan says, “are you sure you want to take that tone? With Her?”
I know of your rutting with the man who once had been My Husband. I have no reason to harm you, but I also have no reason to endure your company. The Power gathers almost to physicality. Begone.
The horse-witch shrugs and goes back to braiding wildflowers.
How are you still here? The sky darkens again, and once more thunder rolls. Begone!
The horse-witch rolls her eyes without bothering to look up. The Presence gives now only a sense of being flabbergasted into immobility.
“She doesn’t like you,” Caine says to the Power. “She doesn’t get angry often, and she never holds a grudge. Except for you.”
This is impossible!
“Apparently it isn’t.”
It’s inconceivable …
“Look, first, she can’t be forced. You can kill her, but you can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to. And second, you can’t kill her.”
Watch me.
“It’s not even about you and me, or You and me,” he goes on. “It’s because she, um, some people, some of whom looked like her, used to run away and pray to You for help to hide in forests and shit. Prayed for even a chance at freedom. And you didn’t help.”
And don’t.
“Yeah. She doesn’t hate Shanna. She knew about Shanna. She even helped some of the tokali escape, when she was down along the river that fall. She knows Shanna Leighton would give her life without hesitation to help these people You ignore. The human Pallas Ril did give her life to help people like them. But You can’t be bothered. So the horse-witch is angry, and probably still will be even if I kill you.”
Kill Me? You?
“You don’t understand what’s going on here. Ma’elKoth—Home, whateverthefuck—sent you after the Sword because you’re the only god in His pantheon who had a physical Aspect before Assumption Day. You’re the only one who can’t be unhappened.”
Unhappened …?
“Believe it.”
You truly think it is even vanishingly possible to unhappen the Mind of Home?
“There’s one way to find out.”
You’re insane.
“I get that a lot. I know you’re thinking you should probably warn Him or something, or maybe just run the fuck away, but you can’t. He can’t either, because you aren’t wholly separate entities. You express a part of His whole, right? So while I hold You here, I’m holding Him.”
And how do you hope to hold Me?
“You’re kidding, right? Have You completely fucking forgotten everything You ever knew about me? It’s already done.”
Done …
“I know You’re a Natural Power, so you don’t have the whole temporal omnipresence shit, but somebody should have told you who Khryl was. Who the real Khryl was. Angvasse, if you wouldn’t mind, bring Kris on out here.”
In the depth of shadow under the trees, the tent-flap of the yurt pulls back, and out from it walks Angvasse Khlaylock, now dressed in a simple tunic and pants, and at her side walks Kris Hansen.
Kris said, “Next time warn me. I thought I really was about to die.”
“I figure that’s a feeling you immortals need to be reminded of, every so often. Besides, you’d have blown it. You are a man of many talents, Kris, but you can’t fucking act.”
Kris looks like he can’t decide whether to scream or weep. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be your friend?”
Caine turns back to the Presence. “Just between You and me and Ma’elKoth, Khryl was the one who Bound all You Fuckers in the first place. You touched him with Your Power; his power touched you. Worked out well, considering Lord Fair Fucking Play over there wasn’t willing to just bushwack Your Ass.”
You don’t—you can’t possibly even hope—
“No? So, the last time I had a little disagreement with You and Ma’elKoth, how did I make him come after me?”
Oh—oh, the black knife … the oil …
“Sucks to fall for the same fucking trick all over again, doesn’t it?”
Thunder becomes words:
AND THUS WE SHALL NOT.
When they look up, the sky from horizon to horizon is the Face of Ma’elKoth, with clouds His Beard, mountains His Teeth, and the sun and moon His Eyes.
“Oh, hey,” Caine says. “Thanks for stopping by. There’s something I want you to see.”
“Let me quote you: ‘I believe in justice, as long as I’m holding a knife at the throat of the judge.’ ”
— SHANNA LEIGHTON MICHAELSON
Heroes Die
He stared down the face of Hell into the Ring of Justice, and he had to give the fuckers credit.
The Order of Khryl had a refined appreciation of the power of showmanship. They had arranged a spectacle on the order of the Nuremberg Rally in Triumph of the Will. Arguably even better, as the Nazis had been too fastidious to build a national event around mortal combat between race-champions. The Khryllians would have had Hitler do the intro for a cage match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling with spiked cesti and no referee. To the death. Now, that’s showbiz—
And pretty much what they were going for with this particular Khryl’s Justice.
This Ring of Justice had been raised and consecrated especially for this particular event. A circular platform a dozen feet tall and some fifty paces in diameter stood at exactly the intersection between Purthin’s Ford and Hell, positioned for maximum exposure to both: erected upon the jitney landing at the foot of the vertical city, between the base of the Spire and the lowest tier of Hell. The disk was covered and draped with several layers of thick, absorbent linen, white and spotless to absorb and show every drop of blood; blood shed in Khryl’s Justice is sacred to the Lord of Battle.
Two rings encircled the platform, one at three feet and the other at six. On the tallest, one hundred outward-facing armsmen stood shoulder to shoulder, riot guns at parade rest, eyes invisible within gleaming helmets. On the ring below stood one hundred and twenty. On the flagstones below them stood two hundred more. Public sentiment had been running high for some time, and the devastation of not only the previous night’s Smoke Hunt but the morning’s bombing in Weaver’s Square had the massed assemblage of Oath-bound Soldiers and Civility in a dangerously unstable mood.
The Spire bristled with sharpshooters. While nearly all of them directed their attention straight across to the tiers of Hell, a surprisingly large fraction scanned the massed humanity below. The officers of Khryl’s Own understood all too well the risk of a general riot, and the dire outcome should such riot spread to become general disorder.
Simple arithmetic:
Five hundred Knights. Ten thousand armsmen. Thirty thousand sworn Soldiers of Khryl, and as many again of the unsworn Civility …
And over two hundred thousand ogrillo slaves.
Nobody wanted to find out what the final sum would be.
At the moment of Shortshadow, as noon is called on the Battleground, a young and powerfully built ogrillo hung with weighted chains had been brought up onto the Ring and there directed, as is traditional, to kneel and await the Knight Accusor. Words passed between him and the armsmen who had accompanied him, but the young ogrillo kept his feet.
This had not made the crowd any happier. Now as dusk approached, the mutterings among the spectators took on a darker tone, and were punctuated by occasional shouts of defiance, as the younger, less disciplined, and less sober encouraged one another to rush the Ring and settle this Broken Knife bastard whether Lady Khlaylock showed up or not.
He stood on the sill of a low window on the east face of the third tier, not far from the parapet from which Caine and the par
tners had watched the approach of the Black Knife Nation. Leaning back into a corner where this building met the next, the blood-rimmed shadows swallowed all of him save the whites of his eyes. The retaining wall in front of him was packed knife to knife with silent ogrilloi. None of them seemed to mind him watching over their shoulders.
Be different if they knew who he used to be.
Be more different if they knew who he was now.
He squinted up at the white-painted framework of the main crane’s boom as it swung out from the cargo aerie on the topmost tier. He thought he could pick out a white-clad figure near the tip, but he might have been kidding himself. His eyes weren’t what they’d once been, and the latticed steel of the boom made effective camouflage.
He could see plenty well enough to register the seething streets around the Spire. Freedom’s Face had done their job well. As the afternoon had worn on, more and more of the assembled crowd had drifted away in disappointment, dismay, and boredom. No one understood why the Champion had not already appeared, and no one was certain what her disappearance would mean for the ogrilloi, the Khryllians, and the Battleground itself.
Things were different now.
An hour before, Kierendal’s agents had scattered throughout Purthin’s Ford to spread the word:
The Champion arrives at sunset. The last of the Black Knives will give submission to the Living Fist of Khryl, or he will die. Khryl’s Justice will be served. The Smoke Hunt will end.
And everybody wanted to see it happen.
Funny: that was exactly what he intended to show them.
A small dais had been erected back against the wall where the two switchback ramps met in the middle. Seven chairs. Men wearing the mirror-polished full plate of Khryllian Lords sat in six of them—these would be the Lords Legendary. Every single one of them a former Champion of Khryl, and each very high on the list of people who should under no circumstances, ever, be fucked with. The empty chair in the middle was for the remaining Lord Legendary, who also happened to be Justiciar of the Order of Khryl. But he had a prior engagement.
Hosting a banquet for crows, maggots, and worms.
He wondered if any of those fuckers even knew Khlaylock was dead. It was possible Markham’s balls had finally dropped and he’d ’fessed up. Didn’t seem likely; actual testicles would be a little too human.
Maybe later on, he’d pants the sonofabitch and see for himself.
He stared down at the top of Markham’s head. The fucker was just standing there, perfectly calm in parade rest, behind and to the right of the empty chair, his helm under one arm, and jeez, if only he’d kept the Automag—
Huh. Yeah, maybe better he wasn’t strapped. He probably couldn’t have stopped himself.
While Markham might have been carved out of limestone, the Lords Legendary seemed restive—leaning toward one another as if to speak only for one another’s ears, looking around, probably wondering whether Angvasse would show up after all—because if she was gonna make it before sundown, her processional should be already visible, and they should have been hearing the Khryllian Call of Justice anthem for the last ten minutes.
Yeah, processional. Just wait, fuckers. He had a processional for them right here.
“Kierendal,” he said softly between his teeth. “How we doing?”
In position. Her Whisper was faint, half-buried in a breathy rustling of breeze. T’Passe says everything is in place. One supposes we must trust her, despite her unfortunate loyalties.
“To the Monasteries or to me?”
You pick.
“She’s a hell of a lot more trustworthy than I am.”
Everyone is. It’s not her intentions that worry me; I warned you magick is erratic here.
“Shit, Kier, if magick’s the only thing that doesn’t work today—”
I’m only saying that when this whole preposterous charade goes tits up, don’t count on me to save your life.
“And that’s different from the other crazy shit we’ve done together exactly how?”
A long empty pause.
Die fighting, Caine.
“Um—you do know that’s supposed to mean good luck, right?”
For both of us.
“Always the charmer.” He looked to his left, to his right, and once more down the face of Hell. “I don’t see any reason to wait.”
Is that a go?
“Yeah. Go.”
A shattering detonation split the sky.
Everyone in Hell and Purthin’s Ford felt the explosion in their chests like a thump from a fist. A sheet of writhing silver fire whited out the sun, then shattered into thousands of blazing stars trickling down like hot rain.
Down through the storm of stars came a figure in gleaming white, brilliant and blazing, one foot in a stirrup at the bottom of a rope that reached up through the flaming sky above.
Lower, darkness gathered around the figure, which made it shine ever more, brighter and brighter until it seared the eye—but eyes adjust, and as they did a cheer went up from the crowd, answered by an oceanic roar of rage and hunger from the face of Hell.
To welcome Angvasse Khlaylock.
She received the cheers and the roars with only stillness, impassive, incalculable, until the rope reached down fully to the Ring of Justice and she stepped forth upon the linen and finally, only then, acknowledged the storm of voices by raising her right hand.
For a single breath, all voices stilled.
Her raised hand became a fist.
The answering roar rocked the Battleground from Riverdock to the Purificapex atop the Spire.
Sure, the Order of Khryl understood spectacle. They were even pretty good at it. But there is a world’s difference between knowing showmanship and being the show.
He’d been the show for half his life.
He didn’t mind somebody else taking center stage for a change. Briefly. But even that showed personal growth, he figured. A little. Maybe.
He squinted out at the unarmed woman standing where everyone expected to see the Living Fist of Khryl. He wondered briefly, for the hundredth or thousandth time, if he should have told Angvasse what lay beneath the jitney landing—what was underneath the Ring of so-called Justice: the ruins of the ancient gate to the vertical city, where once upon a time a small band of Aktiri ambushed a Black Knife scouting party and lit the fuse on this whole clusterfuckbomb in the first place.
Too late now.
He reached back over his head for the lip of the window above. With a single smooth heave he drew himself up high enough that he could kick off the wall and swing his legs up through the window and slide the rest of him after.
He went flat on the floor and rolled to the side before standing. He came up with his back to the wall and knives in his hands.
Nobody home. Which was how it was supposed to work, but he hadn’t lived this long by taking that kind of shit for granted. He moved deeper into the apartment, away from the light of the windows, and entered the webwork of halls and tunnels, back into the rock.
He didn’t bother to put away the knives.
On the Ring, Angvasse Khlaylock paced toward Orbek Black Knife with a stately ceremonial deliberation. She beckoned for the waiting pair of Knights Attendant to enter the ring and unlock the heavy chains that bound him.
Orbek peeled lip from tusk, seized chain with both hands, and with a ripple of muscle and bulge of tendon snapped them in two. The crowds, human and ogrilloi alike, unleashed a roar. He let his broken chains fall and stepped forward, leaning into the thunder as though it had weight, and raised his fist to the tiers of Hell above. As the roar subsided, he answered it with one of his own.
“I am Black Knife! Orbek Black Knife!”
BLACK KNIFE! The echoing roar from the tiers of Hell made the rock tremble. ORBEK BLACK KNIFE!
“I am Orbek! Buck of God! Terror of Our Place! Today Orbek Black Knife breaks Khryl’s Own Fist. When Khryl FALLS before BLACK KNIFE, all world will know!
“
From now till forever, BLACK KNIVES DON’T KNEEL!”
At his side, Angvasse warned off the Knights Attendant with a glance, then spoke only loud enough for Orbek’s ears alone. “And yet you are not Orbek,” she said, “and you are not Black Knife kwatcharr. Khryl punishes the faithless.”
He turned his tusks toward her. “What Khyl does or doesn’t, who fuck me cares? What I am is your death.”
“You’re not that either. Neither of us is who we thought to be, in this Ring on this day. Must this be done?”
“Do you yield?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you die.”
“It’s unlikely.”
“Don’t you Declare Yourself, or whatever fuck-me stupid shit you gotta do before I kill you?”
She nodded, and turned to the Lords Legendary on their dais. She lifted her hand, and waited for the crowds to quiet. When they had, she spoke slowly, precisely, and so clearly that she could be heard without raising her voice.
“I am Angvasse Khlaylock of Lockholm, Lady Legendary and Knight Accusor in this matter. I will see this supposed ogrillo kneel, or I will see it dead.”
No roars greeted her, only a rustling that gathered like stormwinds stirring fallen leaves.
She turned back to Orbek. “Ready?”
Orbek wore a frown that was developing toward a scowl. “Where’s your armor? Where’s your weapon?”
Her eyes softened momentarily, as though she restrained a tolerant smile. “Do I need them?”
“And what’s that supposed mean? Supposed ogrillo. You know my name. What do you play at?”
“If this is a game, you have lost. You are not kwatcharr of the Black Knives. You are barely Orbek. You’re not even an ogrillo, any more than were the Smoke Hunters.”
Cords in his neck drew his chin down, and the brush of hair on his spinal ridge stood straight out from his body, and he did not reply.
The rustling from the crowds began to develop voice, puzzled, quizzical, some astonished and more derisive. Markham Tarkanen stomped to the front of the Lords Legendary dais and raised his arms. “Silence! In the Name of Khryl Battlegod, I will have silence!”
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