Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Stover

  Huh. When I called it Hell, I was just, y’know, riffing. But now I see it with different eyes.

  “Come on out if you want,” I call. Quiet has outlived its usefulness. “You can see for yourself.”

  I heft the monocular. “Won’t need this.”

  A long, smooth windup and I pitch the fucking thing high and hard, out over the half-klick drop to the badlands. The sunset picks it up at the top of its arc and makes it shine like a falling star.

  It drops out of the light, swallowed by the shadows below. A lifetime passes while I wait for the stillness to give up a faint clatter of metal on stone.

  A presence at my shoulder: Stalton. “What’d you do that for?”

  “I got it off a dead man,” I tell him without moving. “I don’t want it to pass on the same way.”

  “Shit, Caine, you didn’t want it, you coulda just gave it to me—”

  I turn just enough for him to see the look in my eyes. “Maybe you don’t understand what I just said.”

  I leave him there to think about it and go back to the other partners.

  Far out in the badlands, the vast dust cloud swells wide, one thin arc of its uppermost reach glowing in the last of the sunset. Marade’s staring at that cloud like she can read her future in it. And she can.

  So can I.

  Rababàl and Tizarre stand like they froze solid in the middle of an involuntary flinch. They’re staring at a hundred-odd ogrilloi trotting toward us along the escarpment, not more than a mile away. Even as we watch, their gorilla-bear lope fades to a walk, then they start dropping into that wait-until-dark squat.

  “How did they get up here?” Rababàl fumbles with his platinum disk, drops it, and lets it chinng into the rocks at his feet. He doesn’t even look down. “How did they get here ahead of us?”

  “They didn’t.” I nod back toward the city. “They’re still down there. These are new.”

  “But—but—what are they doing up here?”

  Marade murmurs the textbook answer. “When marching a large body of troops parallel to a major geographic feature—a mountain range, say, or this rift-cliff—you need a screen of skirmishers on the far side, in case—”

  “Marching troops?”

  Chrome steel creaks as she slowly shakes her head. “Or whatever.”

  He follows her gaze out to the vast dust cloud now disappearing into the horizon’s shadow. “Um. Oh. Um, I see.” His nervy voice, finally, has gone calm and quiet. For the first time, he sounds like a grown-up. “I understand. That cloud—that’s not a storm.”

  She nods, still staring at her future. She doesn’t seem to like the looks of it.

  Yeah, well, me neither.

  Tizarre’s got that wild look around her eyes again. “Where the hell are the horses? Where’s Kess and the grooms?”

  I wave toward another trail of rising dust, upland toward the sinking sun.

  “Bastard,” she breathes. “That ratsucking bastard—”

  “Leave the language to me,” I mutter. “You don’t have the touch.”

  That wild look of hers takes on a dangerous calculation. Even money says she’s running through all the magicks she knows that can hit them from here. “They haven’t gotten very far—”

  “They’re plenty far. But they won’t get a lot farther; that dust isn’t theirs. It’s from Black Knives on their trail.”

  Stalton’s at my shoulder again. “More Black Knives?” he breathes, blinking. Yeah: weak eyes. “Are you pulling my dick? How many?”

  A sign that can’t unclench the fist in my gut. A shrug that can’t shift the weight on my shoulders. That’s all the answer he should need.

  “Come on, Caine. You had the glass. How many are out there?”

  So I tell him. “All of them.”

  >>scanning fwd>>

  I stick out a hand to stop the two thaumaturges in the stair shaft to the escarpment’s top. “What d’you got left for Fireballs?”

  Tizarre looks at Rababàl. He makes a face. “A, well, a dozen. Or so.”

  “A dozen. Fuck my ass.”

  “Had I known how splendidly your master plan would work,” he says through his teeth, “I would have been more conservative—”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Don’t panic. Do not panic.

  Panic—

  Huh. Funny.

  What panic?

  Y’know, all I’m really getting right now is that hot dark tingle just above my balls. Maybe I really am one stone batshit son of a bitch.

  I’m looking forward to this . . .

  “Okay. Okay, look, can you Reach from mindview?”

  “Telekinesis?” He frowns. “Well, yes, a little. I’m not strong.”

  “Won’t have to be. Collect canteens from the porters. Dump the water and fill ’em half full of lamp oil. Drop a buckeye in each, you follow?”

  His frown turns appreciative. “I believe I do.”

  “Tizarre: you can Nightsee, can’t you? Can you Whisper?”

  She starts to nod, stops. Her feathery brows draw together. “I should be able to. Should. Something’s weird in the Flow here. No promises.”

  “No excuses either. Make it work.”

  She looks dubious. “The moon’s barely past first quarter, and it won’t rise till after midnight. Even if I can tell you where they are, you can’t fight in the dark.”

  I nod toward Rababàl. “You’ll be with him.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “The oil canteens,” Rababàl murmurs.

  “Yup.” She’s recon. He’s artillery. “We’ll fight by the light of burning ogrilloi.”

  The stubby necromancer stares at me like he’s never seen me before. Like I’m some kind of weird-ass animal and he’s trying to calculate how dangerous I might be.

  He has no fucking idea. “What else you got?”

  “For combat?”

  “No, shithead. For a bad attack of drizzledick.”

  “I, uh—Minor Shields. Some. Er, five. Just—y’know. For protection.”

  “And?”

  He glances away. Rising color warms the bottom folds of his jowls. “And, well, I suppose . . .” he says diffidently. Offhand, as if it only just occurred to him. “I mean, y’know, there’s my bladewand . . .”

  “A bladewand?” I ratchet my dropped jaw back into place and lean so close that when he licks his lips I can smell his spit. “You have a bladewand? And you let me walk out that gate with nothing but a motherfucking knife up my sleeve?”

  “Well, I, ah—it’s magick, you see—”

  “You don’t want to know what I see.” I open a hand. “Give it.”

  “But—but—”

  “Give it, or my hand to fucking God I will take it off your body.”

  Behind me, Stalton takes a step back up the crest passage. “Caine, you can’t just push him around like—”

  I stop him with a look over my shoulder. “Ever see a move like the one I pulled on that fucker outside?”

  His answer is a measuring squint.

  “You’re about to bet your life I don’t have another.”

  Color rises in his face. “That’s not—”

  I shove my open hand at Rababàl. “Now.”

  He fumbles the bladewand out from inside his vest. It’s all I can do not to snatch it. I’ve never seen one in person. Not even secondhand, not in maybe fifteen years . . . not since I was a kid, playing bootleg cubes of the Light-weaver . . . then he holds it out to me, and I take it.

  And I’m holding it. In my very own hand. I really am.

  It’s heavy, and warm with the damp heat of his sweat. Almost as long as my forearm, its wine-colored wood is dense as steel, inlaid with an impossibly intricate lattice of fine platinum wire. The butt end swells to an ovoid the size of a hen’s egg, rounded and smooth, and it nestles into the hollow of my palm like it grew there. The balance point is a bare fingerbreadth from the butt; the griffinstone inside must be a monster.

  A bladewand. I can’t f
ucking believe it.

  A breath is all it takes to summon the limpid passionless clarity of the Control Disciplines. They’re not so different from mindview. My palm tingles with energy.

  Hmm. The Lightweaver used to do it kinda like—

  I point the wand at the passage gap and reach into myself, summoning pure concentration, feeling for the trigger point with my mind. Nothing happens.

  Shit.

  Rababàl’s still sputtering. “But—but—but it’s magickal, don’t you understand?”

  I do understand. I did a year of Battle Magick at the Conservatory—but if I’d been worth a wet fart at it, I wouldn’t be here now . . .

  “You’re no thaumaturge, Caine. How can you expect to—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Maybe I should take it,” Tizarre says uncertainly. “I mean, I’m good with a blade, and—”

  “Shut up.”

  Less effort. Just an intention. A feel . . .

  A surge inside my right arm: not a tingle, not the electric sizzle that Telukhai always felt, but an actual surge like a tide of hot oil pulsing from my spine to my fingertips—

  “Really, Caine, you’re only embarrassing yourself. Years of training—”

  Translucently shimmering blue-white energy licks along the platinum lattice and stretches out from the wand’s tip: a plane as wide as my hand and about three meters long that enters the millennial stone of the crest passage wall without resistance. It lasts for only one heart-thumping second, but that’s plenty of time for me to give the wand a twitch and carve off a hunk of rock bigger than my head.

  Ohhh, yeah.

  The hunk slides sideways and crashes down the ramp. The cut is smooth as glass. The bladewand’s butt is hot in my hand.

  Now Tizarre and Stalton both have that what-the-fuck-kind-of-animal-is-this look on their faces too. Rababàl breathes: “Who are you?”

  I hold up the wand to catch the last rays of sunset. Platinum traceries shine like smears of blood.

  I am really looking forward to this.

  >>scanning fwd>>

  “You know what we’re up against now.”

  They stare at me from their huddles and clusters in the deep vaulted shadows of the immense passage hall, faces pinched and green with dread. Moonrise drips ghost-milk down the crest passage behind me.

  “There’s no way out. There’s no way back. There is no parley. No appeal. They’re gonna come, and we’re gonna die. All of us. We can’t even slow them down. All we’ve got is a choice. Die tonight, or die from now till next month. Screaming.”

  Not exactly St. Crispin’s Day, but at least I have their attention.

  “I am going to die tonight. So is Marade, and Pretornio. Stalton and Rababàl and Tizarre.” I nod at the cook, and his lover next to him. “So are you, Nollo. And you, Jashe. And every single one of you. Anybody who doesn’t will wish he had. Say it with me: I am going to die tonight.”

  They look at me like I asked them to do the chicken dance.

  “Come on. Say it. I am going to die tonight.”

  Slowly, with a kind of reluctant surly stubbornness, they mumble their way through it.

  “Where I come from, there used to be this, like, nation of warriors. When they were going into battle, they’d tell each other, Today is a good day to die. And they’d believe it.” I nod toward the sunset behind me. “Well, for us it’s night. This night. And I don’t know how good it is, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”

  I make a fist and hold it out. “Tonight is a good night to die.”

  They look at each other, at the niter-scaled walls, at the shadowed vault above. Anywhere but at me.

  Christians like to say the truth will make you free. Guess I’ve got the wrong truth.

  “Listen—” I let my fist go slack and rub my forehead. “Listen: I’ve got my share of problems, y’know? You all know it. I’m an asshole. Nobody likes me. Sometimes I don’t like me much either.”

  I give them a second to disagree. Nobody jumps in. Big goddamn surprise. “

  Shit weighs down on me, y’know? Like it does on everybody, I guess. I worry what the fuck I’m doing with my life. I’ve got a sick dad, and I can’t take care of him, and this girl I’m hot for thinks I’m a jerk, and shit, y’know, she’s right, but somehow I just can’t help my—” I manage to avoid looking at her. “Ahh, forget all that, it’s not important.

  “Here’s the point: that’s all future stuff, y’know? Everything you worry about. Everything that keeps you awake at night. All the shitty things the world has waiting for all of us. You know: Failure. Old age. Loneliness. Heartbreak. Cancer. Whatever.

  “All that is gone, now. You get it? That’s all shit to worry about tomorrow—but we won’t have to. Not ever again.

  “For us, there is no tomorrow.

  “Think about it. We have nothing left to worry about. Nothing. Shit, those Black Knives out there tonight? They’re giving us a gift. Because all that bad stuff, all the rotten fucking shit that could possibly happen for the rest of our lives . . . won’t. Because the only rest of our lives we have left is a few minutes to decide how we’re gonna die.”

  “What difference does that make?” somebody says. “Dead is dead.”

  “Don’t care how you die? You don’t even have to leave this room. Just step over here.” I open my arms, offering. “You won’t feel a thing.”

  No takers. No surprise.

  “I’ll tell you how I’m gonna die.”

  A long, slow look, eye to eye to eye. I let that spark in my balls heat up my voice. “I’m gonna drown in their smoking fucking blood.”

  A muffled snort from the shadows: sounds like Stalton.

  Thought he’d like that one.

  “I will choke to death on their raw fucking brains. You follow? The cocksmoke that finally kills me will carry the marks of my teeth into his fucking grave—and when somebody digs him up a thousand years from now, they’ll point to the scar on his throat and they’ll say, ‘You see that? That was from Caine.’ ”

  The passage hall goes quiet, and some of the eyes on me go cold now: the open-behind stare of surrendered hope. Good for them.

  Good for me.

  “I can’t say what happens in the next life. Or if there is a next life. You want that shit, talk to Pretornio, or Marade. I will tell you this, though. There’s one afterlife we know we can have: we can make the kind of fight here that will become a fucking legend.”

  I come to my feet. “To hell with the next world. Let’s be immortal in this one. We’re gonna die anyway. Let’s do it right.”

  “Yeah?” Sounds like the same guy, there in the darkness. “But who’s gonna know? We’ll all be dead. Nobody will even know this ever happened—”

  “We will be remembered.” God’s own truth: this could be Adventure of the Year. I’ll be famous. Hell, they’ll be famous too. Dying in front of an audience of millions.

  Wish I could be there to enjoy it.

  “Believe it.” I give them a stare like the truth is a nail I can hammer into their heads with my eyes. “Our story will be known.”

  “Yeah? Who’s gonna tell it? Who’s gonna remember us?”

  My conditioning would choke me if I tried tell him, but I have another truth. A better truth. A truth that just might make us free.

  “I thought that was obvious.” I raise a hand and wave at the black stone of the passage chamber walls, through the stone, out into the infinite night beyond.

  Out at the Black Knives.

  “They will.”

  HAND OF PEACE

  The robe itched. It smelled like meat.

  I padded barefoot up an endless spiral of stairs built out from an inner cylinder of granite; the outer drum curved a good six feet clear of the stairs’ empty edge, leaving a long, long drop to the lamplit arc of the Lavidherrixium below.

  My hair was drying stiff, and my face felt tight and sticky, and my skin crawled, and I couldn’t stop half a grimace that was at least p
art smile. So many people would be shocked, shocked, to find me suddenly fastidious about bathing in blood . . .

  Funny thing: most of them were dead. Really funny thing: I killed a lot of them myself.

  I’m not known for my sparkling sense of humor.

  Eventually the smell of blood and lampblack gave way to clean after-rain and a sunset breeze, and the steps became damp, and I rounded the curve of the cylinder and found myself outside. Way outside.

  An intricate scale model of Purthin’s Ford speckled with pinpricks of firelight stretched away below, and the sudden shift in perspective from six lamplit feet to six moonlit miles kicked me behind the knees and nearly pitched me headlong over the edge.

  I lurched away from the rim, slipping, pressing my back against the white-stone curve of the Spire, bare feet scrabbling for purchase on the damp stair, and I held himself there for a year or two until my vertigo began to pass.

  Eventually I could breathe again.

  “Holy crap.” A faded wheeze: that was all I had. “They couldn’t post a fucking sign? Maybe put up a railing? Holy crap.”

  The final curve of the stairs looped up to the topmost reach of the Spire. I went up it with my right shoulder brushing the wall and my eyes on the stairs in front of me; even the top of the escarpment, only a hundred feet below, pulled at my balance, dragging my head toward the brink.

  I had a feeling that even Khryllians didn’t come up here lightly.

  The five spires around the top of the Eternal Vaunt curved upward like tenmeter fingers of an upraised hand, plated in lustrous white metal; between them the cap was a steep slant of the same metal, polished and still slick after the rain. The stairs ended where the metal began; the slope of metal curved upward in a convex arc so that its apex was out of view.

  I reached down and laid my palm on the metal: smooth and slick and colder than the rain.

  Hmm.

  I knew enough about the physics of magick to understand that the curve of the finger-spires above would focus Flow on that apex—the cup of the stylized palm—so this metal would be conductive . . . not silver, though. From this height, a slash of sun still burned the horizon, visible through a rent in the slow clouds; in its light the metal showed no hint of tarnish, and I couldn’t imagine a legion of Khryllians making the climb up here for a daily polish. Not to mention Ma’elKoth and his friggin’ artistic sensibilities . . . which meant this had to be something like, well—