Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Stover

  You turned your face up toward the joining where the ivory ceiling meets the green wall, but you are looking at something I cannot see with your eyes.

  “When I was twelve I got in a knife fight with an older kid. All we had were homemade shanks, all point, y’know? I wasn’t even scared; I’d cubed White Fire, Black Steel maybe twenty times, so I let him slash me over the ribs because I knew it’d only hurt but wouldn’t kill me, and I stabbed him in the thigh—just like Jonathan Mkembe, get it? And he ran away. Jesus Christ, Administrator, when I lost my goddamn virginity, you know what I was thinking? I was thinking we were both decent fucks, doing pretty good, considering neither one of us were, y’know, Actors, and I was using pro technique, y’know, because I’d already fucked maybe seventy or eighty women secondhand—and she’d done more than that. . . . The biggest thing that ever happened to me? When I was maybe ten or eleven years old, I met Nathan Mast. You know who he was?”

  Kollberg shakes his head. “I don’t see where you’re going with this, Michaelson.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He used to be famous, back before I was born. He was one of Mkembe’s sidekicks for a while. The point is, he was living in the Mission District Sorrows—the Single Room Occupancy Temp flops. He was a broke-down old ragface.”

  “Pathetic.”

  “Not for me. It was the greatest day of my life. You know why? He was just an ordinary fucking guy. You get it? He wasn’t a god. He wasn’t Superman. He was just like any other Temp ragface. Just another loser.”

  “So?”

  “So he was just like me.”

  Kollberg squints. “Ah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And so—”

  “And so that was the day I discovered I had a shot at this. I’ve been getting ready for it ever since. I’m not going to fuck it up.”

  “Fine, then. I’m very glad to hear it. Now, the garrison commander at North Rahnding is a Knight Captain by the name of Purthin Khlaylock—”

  Administrator, you’re hearing me, but you’re not hearing me. What I’m trying to get through to you—without any disrespect at all—is that I know more about this shit than you do. Than you possibly can. That’s nothing against you, Administrator. Adventures are just your job. They’re my whole life. There is nothing in my life I care about more than story. There is nothing I know more about than the difference between a good one and a bad one. You’re betting my life and your future on what happens in the next day or two. Let’s go balls-out to make it the Greatest Fucking Show on Overworld. Come on, Administrator. What do you say?”

  Kollberg’s lips go back to asshole. “Are you trying to tell me you have a better idea?”

  You draw a long, deep breath. The word inspiration has never been so appropriate on so many levels, for with the air comes your true spirit. Your power.

  My Power.

  “What I’m telling you is that Caine can’t run away.”

  “Eh?”

  “I know you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to set up this escape, and I appreciate it—”

  “It’s not an escape, Michaelson. It’s a rescue. That’s why you’re not going first-hand until you make contact with the Khryllians—”

  “Yes, sir. And if you can get the Khryllians coming, you can have them coming all the way to the city, right? Why bother leaving at all?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What if—instead of supposedly crawling out of the vertical city—I were to supposedly crawl into the city? Deep into the city?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’m with you on the nobody cares about continuity. You’re right. Fuck logic. It’s fantasy; who gives a shit as long as it juices your shorts, right? So:

  what if I were to crawl into, say, where the Black Knives stashed all our weapons . . . ?”

  Again you bring your voice down like a lover’s. “Think about it, Administrator—think about Caine alone in the dark, surrounded by ogrilloi, yanking out these spikes—then finding the bladewand . . .”

  Kollberg’s eyes light up. “I can see it. I can see it!”

  “So a few extra things could have been stashed among the gear as well, huh? You could manage that, right? Another magick weapon or two, maybe some real Healing salve instead of the fake crap . . . a few things that nobody told anybody else they had. Now Caine’s got them all.”

  “Right . . . right . . .” Kollberg frowns. “No, wait, it won’t work—the Black Knives have already distributed your belongings. They’re all over the camp.”

  You shake your head in crisp dismissal. You have him now, and you know it; the battle is won. The rest, as you will come to enjoy saying, is mop-up.

  “Doesn’t matter. Look, we were after the Tear of Panchasell, right? So other people must have been looking for it too—so I’ve crawled in someplace and passed out among the bones of some centuries-dead treasure-hunters. You can manage some dusty old bones, can’t you? Now I’m armed. Shit, with the Winston scanners, you could locate the Tear itself, can’t you?”

  Kollberg’s sideways half-shrug half-nod is a shade too noncommittal.

  “Oh.” Your lips might make a smile if they weren’t so thin and flat against your teeth. “You already have.”

  “Well—”

  “It’s really there? It’s not just a legend?”

  Kollberg sighs. “It’s really there.”

  “Cool. You can drop me in right on top of it—how’s that for dramatic? Semiconscious, I’ve crawled in and passed out right next to the legendary treasure that we’ve given our lives to find?”

  Kollberg’s lower lip sucks in between his teeth. “It’s . . . not bad . . .”

  “So there I am among the bones, next to the Tear of Panchasell . . . maybe with a hot-shit magick weapon, or something else to give me an edge, huh? I can move okay, even wounded, but if I can get close to Marade, I can get Healed too. Or drop some Healing shit in among the bones—whatever you’ve got on hand; I don’t care. I’ll make it work. All I need is hard intel on where everybody is and how to creep their positions—you can do that through their POVs—and Winston scans can get me the layout of the camp, with guards and whatever. I need to know where the top bitches are, and I want to know who’s got the fucking bladewand, and we can work out the rest of the details as we go along. Whatever else I need, you can just kinda slip in there, where I can be conveniently surprised to find it . . . just exactly when I need it most . . .”

  Kollberg’s nodding along with you, his gaze directed inward, at visions of monitors lit with an imaginary Adventure. “Audience,” he mutters. “Audience. We can sell cubes, but you should really have first-handers for this—”

  “That’s why I want you to call Marc Vilo for me.”

  Kollberg’s eyes narrow to fleshy slits. “Eh?”

  “Businessman Vilo knows people, Administrator. Lots of people. People with what you call exotic tastes.”

  “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “You’ve heard of him, right? You know how he makes his living?”

  “Well—Vilo Intercontinental—”

  “Is a front for organized motherfucking crime, Administrator. He can probably fill your first-hander booths just out of his own top boys.”

  “Really?” Again, the light in Kollberg’s eyes fades to a frown. “Well—this will be exciting, to be sure, but I hardly think a rescue, even single-handed, can be called exotic—”

  “Rescue?” Your laugh is dark as night on the cross. “Fuck rescue. Those people died when they passed their Boards.”

  “Michaelson, really—” Kollberg tries to hold onto a disapproving frown while a smile fights for control of his mouth. “I mean, even Marade? Your promise—”

  “Guys say lots of shit when their dicks get hard.”

  Kollberg’s mouth opens. Then it closes again.

  “I learned a lot about myself out there. I learned I’m not who I thought I was. I’m not who I wanted to be.”

  Lips peel off your teeth. �
�Who I am is better.”

  Kollberg blinks. “Michaelson—”

  “This is the question, Administrator. You don’t have to answer. Don’t answer. Just think about it. What was the part that made you decide to pull me? To take this chance on me? What got your dick hard?”

  Kollberg’s lips vanish altogether, and his eyes nearly do the same.

  “I bet I can tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t when I was making that speech about being legends. It wasn’t when I sold everybody on the die fighting crap. It wasn’t even when I went out alone and fought Spearboy. None of that hero shit.”

  “Heroes sell, Michaelson—”

  “Sure they do. Hell, I like ’em too. What’s not to like? You can’t piss without splashing a hero in this business.” More of your teeth appear. “But you weren’t out pimping Marade’s clips, were you?”

  Kollberg looks thoughtful.

  “I’m not one of the good guys, Administrator. I am what I am.”

  “This—” Kollberg still looks thoughtful. “—is not necessarily a problem.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “I believe,” Kollberg murmurs, “that I am beginning to understand.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with the whole escape-and-rescue thing. Getting your friends out, saving lives, all that shit. That’s good-guy crap.”

  “And you . . .”

  “I don’t care if they live through it. I don’t care if I live through it.”

  Kollberg gives you a half-believing smile. “What do you care about?”

  “I care about story.” The heat in your chest boils into your throat, but your voice stays low and hard.

  Because now it’s your voice. Not Hari Michaelson’s.

  “Remember what I said about story? I’m gonna teach those shit-rotten rat cunts a fundamental principle of real story.”

  “Ah?”

  “When you fuck with the bad guy—” Your true grin unfolds like a butterfly knife. “—the bad guy fucks you back.”

  And I, as I did, as I do, as I will forever, say—

  Yes, My Love. Yes.

  Fuck.

  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.

  I take my time unwrapping the wire from the dagger’s hilt, smoothing each kink, stroking it long and straight. It’s good wire, flexible, copper maybe, eight feet or so; I double it, slip the dagger through the loop, and wrap off the ends to the dagger’s naked tang just below the guard. And that’s it.

  Time to go.

  I unfold myself from the Warrior’s Seat. Undoubling my legs brings a red snarl from the crusted spike-holes in my ankles. It makes me smile.

  The blue sparkle has faded from the mud, and it has dried now, and I scrape it from my arms and chest and back with the dagger’s blade, shaving with it fear, and doubt, and the memory of pain.

  I have no need to check the belts, or the gear I have taken from these ancient bones. Each piece is in its place, as I am in mine.

  The mud falls away, and the blade touches scars I bear.

  This is the axe from Kor.

  This is the arrow from the Teranese floodplain.

  This is the spike from the cross, and this the burn from Crowmane’s god.

  This is the alley knife from home, and this the brick, and this my father’s fist. There are scars the blade cannot touch, but I don’t need them. The ones on the outside are enough to tell me who I am.

  I am strong. I am relentless. I am invincible.

  I bend now and lift from among the dusty armored bones the spikes I pulled from wrist and ankle. Dirt has caked my blood upon them. In the rose-pale glow cast by Panchasell’s Tear, I weigh them in my hand. Then I stick them behind my belt.

  I grin at the runecut rose diamond the size of my head on its pedestal of gold, and the vast shadows of the cavern echo my black chuckle. “Think you’re the biggest tear ever shed?”

  I thread the dagger through its doubled loop of wire. “That’ll change.”

  >>scanning fwd>>

  He hunches away from his partners and shuffles along the shadowed alleyway. At the ass end, he leans his spear into the corner so he can use both hands to unwrap his breechclout, and he squats.

  Ogrilloi and humans aren’t that different. They’re pack hunters, we’re opportunistic scavengers, but the behaviors overlap enough that our evolutionary adaptations have a lot in common. Like, say, we both prefer a little privacy when we crap.

  Has to do with diets heavy in protein and aromatic fats. We evolved using the undeniably fierce smell of our feces to mark off territory. And being top predators—or, in our case, smart enough to be dangerous to top predators—we don’t worry about fresh fecal reek attracting the wrong kind of attention.

  Our shit says better keep the fuck off.

  Loudly.

  And it’s a hell of a lot louder to a scent-hunter like an ogrillo than it is to us poor nose-challenged humans.

  Steam from one hard turd rises faintly into the slanting moonlight. Which is why that squatting buck over there has no idea I’m slipping over the lip of this ruined wall. He leans on the shaft of his grounded spear, grunting low in his throat, waggling his hips, trying to work the next turd out. Poor bastard’s crapping diamonds. Too much rich food.

  But, y’know, I’m about to help him with that.

  I slide through the moonshadow along the crumbled wall, bare feet feeling each step before I shift weight forward.

  There are two contrasting styles of garrotte. The more popular is the cheese-cutter style: a single strand of thin flexible wire between a pair of handles. It’s pretty damned foolproof. Slices the external jugulars, crushes the trachea, and with the right kind of takedown there’s not much struggle either. The downside is that it takes a long damned time; a determined man can keep fighting quite a while with no fresh oxygen to his brain, and if you get a little careless on his back he can still kill you before he bleeds out. And if the wire’s too thin it can cut the trachea instead of crushing it, and then you’ve got a real fucking fight on your hands.

  I favor the strangler’s noose.

  Squatting, he’s put his head just at my chest height; the doubled loop of the dagger’s hilt wire slips down past his eyes, his snout, his tusks—the loop’s extra-wide; if it snags I’m a dead man—and in the nightshadow he can’t see it. The first he even knows it’s there is when my two-handed yank on the dagger snaps the noose tight under his chin. He jerks up standing, and I ride his rise, doubling my knees to put my weight into his shoulder blades.

  One one thousand.

  My weight captures his balance; we go staggering backward. He drops his spear to claw at his throat, and his cry of alarm doesn’t even make a hiss past the two strands of hilt wire that clamp shut his trachea.

  Two one thousand.

  His backward stumble takes us to the ruined wall. He hits it just above his knees and we topple over it. His weight crushes me into the rubble and flares splash the inside of my head and I don’t care.

  Three one thousand.

  He kicks and flails and rolls and tries to reach back over his shoulders to get at me with his fighting claws, but his own massive musculature betrays him; his arms won’t bend that way.

  Four one thousand.

  And now he finally remembers the spear he left on the ground over by his steaming turd, and he struggles to his knees and pulls himself over the wall again.

  Five one thousand.

  And he takes one step, and my weight drives him to his knees. He keeps trying—the bastard’s no quitter—but this is the thing about the strangler’s noose: properly applied, it doesn’t cut the jugular veins, it only squeezes them shut—and it doesn’t close the carotid arteries. Which is to say: it doesn’t stop blood from going to your brain. It stops blood from coming
out.

  The whole thing takes only a little more than twice as long as it takes to say massive cerebral hemorrhage.

  He makes it to the spear at seven seconds, but his hand will no longer close upon it. At eight seconds, his will can no longer drive his collapsing body, and he crumples, twitching.

  He keeps twitching for a while. Even after he’s basically dead. His sphincter never does let go. Poor bastard.

  I take the wire off his neck before I skin him. I leave the flesh on his head, except for the musk glands under his jaw, which I have use for.

  Last, before I go: I take from behind my belt one of the nails that had fixed me to my cross. I use the pommel of the dagger to pound it into his forehead.

  Because they’re scent hunters. Because I want them to know.

  Caine is here.

  Caine is coming for them.

  I AM THE SMOKE HUNT

  I woke with the taste of raw human flesh still fresh and bloody on my tongue.

  I rolled over and scrubbed at my face with one hand while my other groped for the pitcher on its stand beside the bed. I rinsed my mouth with stale water, then made a face and spat it on the floor. Fucking water tasted worse than the blood.

  I hacked goo up the back of my throat and muttered, “Now, that was a party . . .”

  I poured water into a shallow terra-cotta bowl and splashed it on my face, softening the sleep gunk at the corners of my eyes before scraping it away with my fingernails. Dawn had paled the stars above the room’s slanted skylight. I sighed and shook myself till my ears rang. It’d probably be an hour before I could get breakfast. Or even coffee. After a soggy minute or two, I remembered ordering the Pratts out of town.

  My head got too heavy to hold up. It sank into my hands. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”