Caine's Law

by Matthew Stover

  CAINE BLACK KNIFE

  “I am CAINE BLACK KNIFE!”

  CAINE BLACK KNIFE

  “I am BLACK KNIFE, and I say—this is OUR PLACE!”

  Hell erupted in a hurricane of rage and triumph.

  Angvasse caught his eye and nodded. She mouthed, Good one.

  Into the hurricane of rage leaped all six Lords Legendary. Their simultaneous landing on the Ring sounded like the continent had exploded. It blasted the city into silence.

  One of the Lords stepped forward. “This … monstrosity … ends now! You both will surrender yourselves. Until we decide how best to undo this horror.”

  “Horror. Huh. Y’know, when Black Knives talk about meeting me, that’s exactly the word they use. The Horror.” He bared his teeth. “Maybe it’ll work out better for you.”

  The other Lords Legendary began to spread out around the circle. The spokeslord said, “A thousand rifles are on you as we speak. One word from me and Khryl Himself won’t recognize your bodies.”

  “Khryl knows His Own,” Angvasse said sadly. “You are not among them.”

  The Lord raised a mailed fist. “Armsmen! Take aim!”

  “It is as you have said, my Lord Champion. Holding the Battleground has broken our honor, and stained the name of Our Lord of Battle forever.”

  He smiled. “Our Lord of Battle’s a fucking punk. Make of Him instead the Lord of Light and Love and that kind of shit, you might get an Order who’d use the Might of Khryl for something better than holding slaves and killing people.”

  “As you said: to have better gods, be better people.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at the spokeslord. “You want to shoot us, punk ass? Go ahead. Let me just say one thing first.”

  “And that is?”

  He spread his hands. “You were warned. All of you. Warned.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Then yield. Take a knee, and live.”

  He exchanged a look with Angvasse. She said, “Brothers together. To the end.”

  “Oh, sisters too,” he said with a smile. “And this isn’t the end.”

  “Yield!”

  “Fuck yourself.”

  The Lord’s mailed fist came down. “Fire!”

  And fire is exactly what he got.

  A thundering blast of white flame leaped up from the whole Ring. Armsmen on the galleries of the Spire above poured volley after volley into the fire, and several Lords Legendary managed to reel out of the flames in red-hot armor, and at the instant of the Lord’s command, Angvasse Khlaylock shouted Tashonall and gathered Caine Black Knife into her arms as she streaked for the dangling cabled chain she had ridden down into the Ring, leaping high to burst out from the flames in a blue streak of witch-fire.

  She caught the chain. Far above, a counterweight plunged, and the two flashed upward through the storm of bullets as though they’d been shot from a cannon. On Angvasse, the splattering impacts of rifle rounds made no impression beyond causing her to fix a loop of the chain to her wrist, so they wouldn’t fall if she lost consciousness; the Love of Khryl sustained her and restored her shredded flesh. Every time one hit Caine, he snarled a curse—largely from force of habit—as power from the oil in his arteries flashed each slug into nonexistence, because the burns hurt more than the bullets would have, and his leathers were on fire everywhere they had not been blown off.

  Angvasse shouted into the wind, “There must have been easier ways!”

  His arms tightened around her, and he put his lips against her ear. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you having fun?”

  “Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”

  — Ecclesiastes 12:13

  “You might as well come on down in person,” Caine says to the sky full of Face. “I mean, seriously. You know me. The harm I intend to do you is already done.”

  HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU SAY?

  “Jesus Christ, how can you not? Besides, the entire sky thing is not a good look for you. Nose hair. And, holy shit—try flossing sometime, man. Yikes.”

  AND HAVE YOU LURED US HERE FOR JUVENILE ABUSE?

  “Oh, hell no. The juvenile abuse is strictly for my personal entertainment. I have a real reason. Remember the afternoon of the day we slagged Kosall?”

  VIVIDLY.

  “Remember what I told you?”

  WE CONVERSED AT SOME LENGTH, ON A VARIETY OF SUBJECTS.

  “Y’know, if I wanted, I could summon it up so we could all watch it together. But it’s not that important. You were talking about being my friend.”

  AND I AM.

  “Swell. Remember what I told you? I told you I’m not your friend. You killed my wife, fucker. You hurt my daughter.”

  AND FROM THOSE CRIMES, WE SAVED THE WORLD.

  “See? You do remember. I said, ‘I don’t care if you save the motherfucking universe, it won’t get you off the hook with me. I don’t care if you are God. Someday, somehow, I’m gonna fuck you up.’ Remember?”

  OF COURSE.

  “Well, this is the day.”

  YOU’RE MAD.

  “Crazy too. I unhappened your discarnate ass. Welcome to the rest of your fucking afterlife.”

  WHAT?

  “Funny thing is, I didn’t even do it on purpose. But once I figured out what I’d done, I ran with it. It’s kind of my style.”

  ANYTHING YOU’VE DONE CAN BE UNDONE. WITH A SHRUG OF INTENTION, WE CAN REHAPPEN ANYTHING YOU CAN UNHAPPEN.

  “Yeah, maybe. If you weren’t kind of tied up here right now. The instant I pull that Sword—the instant Duncan decides I can pull the Sword—you’ll blow away like a bird fart.”

  AND YET YOU STAY YOUR HAND.

  GLOATING HAS NEVER BEEN YOUR STYLE.

  Caine nods. “This isn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it would be.”

  WHY DO YOU POSTPONE THE INEVITABLE?

  “Because I’m sorry.”

  The Face that is the sky falls silent.

  “Ma’elKoth, goddammit, come down here and be a man again. Just for a while. I want to apologize face-to-face. Please. Out of respect for the friendship we could have had.”

  “Then I am with you, Caine.”

  And He is.

  Wreathed in majesty like the sun, God cannot be regarded with mortal eyes. Even with his arm thrown across his face, the figure of God scalds Duncan’s eyes and crushes breath from his lungs.

  “Fucking cut it out.”

  There follows some byplay that Duncan does not clearly hear—some words of the Sword, of the horse-witch, and of Duncan himself—and then at length the furious majesty passes through and beyond him, and Duncan can breathe again. He takes his arm from his face, squinting cautiously, to find seated on the grass some distance away a figure he knows well: Tan’elKoth, dressed as he had appeared on Earth, in his formal Artisan shirt and tie, clean-shaven, his lush curls gathered back into a conservative ponytail. Caine stands by his side, and the two men stare gravely into the middle distance, and though they are well away and speak together only softly, Duncan is aware of their words.

  “I wish shit could have been different,” Caine is saying. “I wish I could have been different.”

  Ma’elKoth doesn’t seem to hear. “What changed?”

  “What, about me? About me and you?”

  Ma’elKoth shrugs diffidently, and looks away.

  Caine sighs and lowers himself to the grass beside him. “I just got thinking, that’s all. Like you said that day in the Cathedral, we both did what we had to do to protect what we most loved.”

  “You weren’t impressed by the sentiment at the time.”

  “I was angry.”

  “Now you’re not?”

  “You know I am. I just—I don’t know. Most of the really shitty things you did were at least partly because of shitty stuff I did. But that’s not really it either. It’s not easy to talk about.”

  “I have never known you to be inartic
ulate—though I frequently wished you so.”

  “Yeah, okay, fair enough. Look, in the Vault of Binding in Thorncleft, they have at least one History of Caine where I really was the son of a blacksmith in Pathqua—where my fake background was real. Somehow it got unhappened, and became only fiction. I don’t know how or why, but it doesn’t really matter. It just got me thinking about how my life would have been different if I hadn’t been an Actor, you know? If I really was who I’ve been pretending to be.”

  “And you suspect your life would be so very different?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m fucking positive your life would be different.”

  Ma’elKoth goes thoughtful.

  “Seriously. You never get kidnapped to Earth. The history of both worlds looks different. And it’s more than that … if I weren’t an Actor, if I really was Dominic Smith, really was Caine, when you went looking for me you would have found me. Then I could have been your loyal leg-breaker instead of Berne. Imagine how much shit that might have saved. If I’d been more dependable—and easier to find—Hannto might not have felt like he had to hire Berne for the Dal’kannith thing in the first place.”

  “And do you imagine this hypothetical life to be greater than the one we have shared?”

  “Greater? Probably not. Calmer? Happier? Less cataclysmic? Seems a safe bet.”

  Ma’elKoth greets this with a solemn nod. “That it does.”

  “And …” Now Caine looks away. “And something happened that made me understand you. Really understand you. Understand why you made yourself what you are.”

  “Were.”

  “Yeah. I get it now. I get you.”

  “I can’t imagine why you felt a need to tell me this.”

  “Let me show you. Let me show all of you.” Caine rises, and moves back among the others. “What you’re about to see is what this is all about. Not why it started, or when—but why I started. The fights, the killings, the double-crosses, my career—hell, my whole life, all that shit—none of it means anything without this.

  “I used to say why is bullshit. Well, y’know, live and learn. This right here …

  “This is why.”

  “Sometimes eating an apple can last all day.”

  — THE HORSE-WITCH

  Occasionally

  He woke to twilight among trees and stone. A soft rush of falling water came from not far, and also not near. Earth rose up before him, and behind and beside. Far above, indigo sky glittered with stars framed by outcrops of sun-bleached rock.

  Ah: a canyon.

  He remembered walking into a canyon. He wasn’t sure it had been this one. It had twisted and curved in upon itself until he’d entirely lost track of any notion of north, south, east, or west. This didn’t worry him. Compass points are half-imaginary anyway, useful mostly to those who don’t know the road. Here the only directions were this way and that way, up and down. These seemed to be enough.

  He woke also to the understanding that he had not been sleeping. He had been walking. He wasn’t sure for how long or how far, and he wasn’t sure it mattered. He also wasn’t sure why he was now walking awake, where before he had walked somewise else.

  He rounded a sharp angle and found her there, beside an earth-banked fire on a sward that filled a long slow bend in the river. Two horses were with her. One placidly cropped grass. The other, larger horse dipped its head and nickered as if to say I see you, I know you, and I am not afraid, and he recognized the young stallion he and the ogrillo had followed into the south.

  The woman by the fire said, “He likes you.”

  “He does?”

  “He wants to know if you like him back. He wants to know if you want him to be yours. He asked me to find out because you don’t speak horse.”

  He stopped across the campfire from her and lowered himself to the grass. “I’ll have to think it over.”

  She nodded. “It’s a serious matter.”

  “I get that.”

  “He likes you because you’re strong and fierce, and because other men fear you and do what you say. He thinks that together you and he would be the wind, and laugh at fences and chains and castle walls; he thinks that together you would be the thunderbolt, that men would tremble and hide their faces, and pray to you to spare their lives.”

  “That’s kind of dramatic.”

  “He’s very young. And very male.” She smiled at him. “What was your dream, when you first became a man?”

  He had to smile back. “Well, yeah. Okay.”

  “Also—and this is very important—he likes you because I like you. He believes I’m very wise, and that I see deeply into the hearts of others.”

  “I kind of believe that myself.”

  “Because I like you, he believes that strong and fierce is not all you are. He believes you can be gentle. He believes you can be kind, and that you will care for him. He believes you understand what it is to love, and to be loved.”

  He had to look away.

  “He’s young, and full of extravagant fantasy; his heart holds more dream than reality. Young of that type are fragile. If you take him to be your horse, you are making a sacred vow—to both of us—that he’s right about you. That I’m right about you.”

  “That’s why I have to think about it,” he said, barely above a whisper. “It’s kind of an intense relationship.”

  “There are horses who pass their lives cheery and carefree, who play with their herds and are not troubled by the imperfections of riders, however many there may be. Many horses, most horses, don’t need a single person on whom to rest all their trust and devotion.”

  She met his eyes across the fire. “Horses like those don’t join the witch-herd.”

  He drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. “Pretty much the same for people, huh?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to understand that.”

  They were silent then for a time, letting the fire’s crackle and the ripples on the river speak for them. A brush of wind and cricketing of frogs and the mare’s contentedly methodical rip-and-crunch of the grass, and he said, “That sound. The river and the frogs. The grass. Mostly the grass. Something about hearing her eat grass …”

  “Lets you be calm,” she said. Slowly. Quietly.

  “Better than a tranquilizer.”

  “Even an ordinary horse’s senses are a hundred times sharper than ours. Prey animals. Fear is their life. Sight, scent, sound. These are what keep them alive. And the senses of the witch-herd horses are a hundred times sharper still. They’ve learned that ordinary fear isn’t enough. A horse can eat while she’s afraid … but not slowly. Not evenly. For more than a hundred thousand years, your ancestors have known a placidly chewing horse means safety.”

  “You talk more than you used to.”

  She shrugged. “You live on words. You don’t understand until it’s explained, to you or by you.”

  “Everybody’s like that.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the horse-witch.”

  She smiled, and her smile warmed him like a kiss of fire.

  He looked back to the young stallion. “Fucking grass. Shit, if I’d known that years ago …”

  “If you’d known that years ago, you’d be somebody else.”

  “Better?”

  “Different.”

  “Still—grass. Just grass.”

  “Food is powerful. Shared food is more powerful. Here.”

  She tossed him a carrot she must have gotten out of that same other-place where she kept her knives and rasps and medicines. “Take a bite. Take two.”

  He did. The carrot was perfect: sweet and crisp and earthy. It made him smile.

  “Give the rest to him.”

  He looked up and saw that the young stallion was behind him, sidling up warily, watching him sidelong. He offered the rest of the carrot on a flat palm. Gravely, decorously formal, the stallion took the carrot from his hand and began to chew it. The man chewed too
. They watched each other chew. The stallion stared intently, long enough to be sure no more carrots might unexpectedly appear, then turned slightly aside and joined the mare in crunching grass.

  “You made him happy just then.”

  “More like he made me happy.”

  “If you’re with him, what makes him happy will make you happy. What makes you proud will make him proud. In lands to the south, from Kor to Yalitrayya, the wise women say your horse is who you are without your name.”

  “It’s like magick.”

  “It is magick,” she said. “Good magick. Magick that does no one harm.”

  He discovered he was hungry. He chanced to look down into the campfire, and found a pair of spits, on which were roasting the limbs and torsos of some small animals. Jackrabbit, probably. And a substantial-looking camp oven, cover off, in which boiled a thick pottage of beans and barley. “Was that always there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Always as in from before I came walking up, or always as in, y’know, always?”

  She shrugged.

  “Smells good,” he said, because it did.

  “I hope you’ll like it.”

  “When will it be ready?”

  “When would you like to eat?”

  He looked around. The twilight made the rocks and trees and grass and river seem alive somehow, changeable and permanent together. The grass smelled like a hayfield after the rain. Some twilight-blooming flowers were opening upstream on the riverbank, and the water carried their delicately inviting scent. He rubbed his fingers together, scowling faintly at the grime caked under his nails, and slowly he became aware of how stiffly sweat-salted and greased he was, and he imagined how he must smell. “Will it keep long enough for me to take a bath? Maybe wash my clothes?”

  “If the hare overcooks, I’ll strip its meat into the pottage and we’ll have stew. If you’re too tired to eat tonight, it will still be warm in the morning.”

  He nodded and went to rise, but the weight in his heart made him pause on one knee. “Have I been here for a long time?”

  “You’ve been here since you got here.”