Caine Black Knife aoc-3

by Matthew Stover

  Somebody with no pants on.

  Um. Yow.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  Marade’s voice, just above a whisper. A hand strong and hot and smelling of vomit and old sweat cups my cheek. “Caine? Khryl’s Love can Heal your remaining wounds, but you must be silent, do you understand? You must control yourself; I cannot do it for you.”

  I summon a hoarse whisper. “Control?”

  “You were screaming.”

  “Uh. This isn’t-” My voice scrapes into a cough that blooms scarlet from my ribs through the top of my head. “Oh, crap. That really hurts.”

  It hurts so bad I can only laugh. Laughing hurts worse.

  “Softly, Caine. I cannot guess how near they may be.”

  They who? “I was just gonna say: this isn’t exactly how I pictured waking up across your thighs.”

  The hand moves up to stroke my hair, and her voice is soft and sad. “Do you never stop?”

  I open my eyes and see only the same Mandelbrot blooms of color that I’d seen with them closed. “Um, I can’t see. I can’t see a damn thing.”

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Blind? So much for my fucking career-

  “It’s all right, Caine. It’s all right. It’s dark, that’s all.”

  “What happened? What’s going-wait. I remember-”

  The vertical city. Black Knives in the badlands. The ambush. . ogrilloi screaming as they burned. . the fight at the gate, the fight on the third tier. .Rababal.

  Stalton.

  Breathe-breathe-find Control. It’s only pain.

  Yeah, shit, huh-only pain, yeah, sure, fucking right. Hard to meditate with splinters of rib scraping around your lung.

  “What-hrrr-what happened to your armor?”

  “So dented and rent that I can no longer wear it. And. . I’d rather do without. From what can it now protect me?”

  Slowly, incrementally, I push the pain outside myself. “Our clothes?”

  “Khryl’s Love is swift; in the dark, wounds may close with cloth inside-”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  How much does my life suck? Finally naked with Marade, and I’m too busted up to do anything about it.

  Huh. Not entirely naked-my exploring hands find wet sticky cloth tied around my belly, and more around my right thigh. Sticky and crusty with the texture of burnt-on coffee grounds where it isn’t wet.

  Clotting blood. A lot of it. I can’t find any dry cloth. Under the sticky cloth around my thigh, something hard and raggedly sharp like splintered bone sticking up-oh yeah—

  I remember snapping off the head and flights but leaving the shaft in. No way to tell if it nicked my femoral artery; if it did, pulling the shaft could bleed me out in minutes.

  I seem to be severely fucking broken, here. Which somehow doesn’t really bother me. Not really at all.

  Huh.

  If I didn’t hurt so goddamn much, that’d be kind of interesting.

  “So these bandages have to come off, huh?”

  “Yes. Khryl’s Love has Healed your skull fracture, but He will need both my hands for your belly and your leg, if you are not to bleed to death.”

  Breathe.

  And . . breathe. .

  “I must ask you, Caine, and you must tell me truly: do you wish to be Healed?”

  “Are you kidding?” Right now I’d trade my balls for a fucking aspirin. “Yeah,” I tell her. “Yeah, I want it.”

  “Because you must know what we face. I can remove the shaft from your leg, and. . you understand. Bleeding out is a gentle way to die.”

  I’ve already made that choice. “And leave you here alone? What kind of guy do you think I am?”

  “I have discovered, tonight, that I do not know. And so I ask.”

  Uh. I’m not ready for this. “Where are we?”

  “Still in the vertical city. Deep in one of the chambers. A storm cellar, perhaps; there is only one door.”

  “How many of us? Who’s here?”

  “Just us. You and me.”

  “Yeah, okay. Okay.”

  Another few seconds of measured breath. I find that I have to ask. I have to know. It doesn’t matter that I don’t like them, or that they don’t like me. Like doesn’t matter anymore. If it ever did.

  “Pretornio?”

  “The porters’ formations were-not mobile. Seven dead. The rest-”

  She doesn’t want to say taken.

  “eah, okay.”

  “Stalton?”

  I know what she really wants to ask. She doesn’t want to know: she needs to know. She can’t stop herself. “Did you. . did you find him?”

  Maybe she needs to work her way up. To talk around the question.

  “He’s-”

  Maybe she’s not the only one. Why is this so hard to say? “He’s dead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. Real sure.”

  She waits for me to elaborate.

  Finally: “What about Rababal-Rababal and, and. . Did you-I, ah, I saw a flash. .?”

  “Yeah.”

  The pain’s leaking back in through my wall of Control. I shift, trying to find a position where the cold burn in my guts doesn’t make my head swim. There isn’t one. “The last explosion-? The big one?”

  “Yes.”

  I shrug against her thighs. “That was Rababal. That’s why it was the last.”

  Silence. I feel her breathe.

  “Did he-?”

  “He had three or four arrows in him. Couldn’t even stand up.”

  Don’t think I’ll tell her how he cursed me as he lay bleeding into the dead weeds. “He decided to go clean.”

  “Clean.” Her echo is tiny: comprehending. “The explosion was. . bits and pieces of bodies-a waterfall of fire-they rained all over the lower levels. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I’d tell her he went out with a bang, but she wouldn’t think it’s funny. “Some of those pieces were his.”

  “Yes.” Her warm soft flesh rises and ebbs under me in a long sigh. “We may live to regret that we haven’t joined him.”

  “Pretty likely.” Pain surges like vomit climbing my throat-

  — oh, crap-shouldn’t have thought vomit-

  “Marade?” My voice has gone thick. “Better move. Think I’m gonna puke.”

  “You already have. Several times.”

  Must be true: a spasm of retching that rips unnamable things inside my belly spills only thin acidic drool from my lips.

  “Caine-” she says as I go quiet again. Her voice is thin, tight, hesitant, like she’s working herself up to ask something she doesn’t want to know the answer to. “Caine, I couldn’t find. . what about-what about-”

  Yeah. Wish I had a better answer. “It’s not good news.”

  Her breathing hitches. “They have her. That’s what you think. They have her, and, and-”

  A bare whisper, half a breath from silence. “-and she’s alive. .”

  “I don’t know. Probably.” I shrug helplessness against her thighs. “I was going after her when they took me.”

  “Caine-what you said-what they do to thaumaturges-”

  Her voice fails, and the hitch in her breath becomes faint gasping, and her arms tighten around me: begging me with her body to tell her I was exaggerating, that I just made that shit up, that it isn’t true and it’s not going to happen to Tizarre.

  But I wasn’t exaggerating, and it is true.

  “They might not know. She was armed. If she fought them blade and shield-if she didn’t use any magick-they might think she was there only to cover Rababal’s back.”

  Best I can do.

  A couple wet sniffles. “I was-I wasn’t-” I can hear her swallow. “You weren’t who I was looking for.”

  Her voice goes solid again. Soft and flat and brutal. “I was looking for her. Finding you was an accident.”

  “It’s all right, Marade. I know. It’s all right.”

  “She and I-she’s my partner, Ca
ine. You wouldn’t understand. You don’t. . you don’t need anybody-”

  That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

  “We’ve been partners-forever. Even in school. Marade and Tizarre. We’re a team. Halves of a greater hero. That’s how we pitched it. To the bosses. We were going to be like, you know, like the female Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.”

  She’s not giving away anything I haven’t figured already. But still, she should know better. “Marade, don’t-”

  “Fuck it,” she says, harsh, freighted with loathing: the stinging emphasis you get from someone who never uses obscenity. “Fuck it and fuck them. What does it matter now? If they have a problem, they can edit this out.”

  “Yeah. I guess they can.” I close my eyes against the darkness, open them again. “Anyone else? Do you know?”

  “I’m not sure. Tizarre and I. . we used to talk about it, late at night. Trying to guess. Kess, maybe. And I think Stalton. . was. I think. Probably.”

  Wow.

  A sawtooth knife scrapes inside my ribs: everyone who ever rents Stalton’s last cube will watch that hammer come down at their own eyes. Be able to feel it. If I weren’t going to die here, I could do it myself.

  Wow.

  “And you, of course,” she says. “Finding you working for Rababal is what made us realize we weren’t the only ones.”

  “Why me of course?”

  “Because we recognized you. From, uh, you know-from school.”

  Holy crap. “For real?”

  “Oh yes. We knew all about you. We came in the quarter before you graduated. We were-I guess you could call us fans. Your first fans.”

  Huh. So far, my only.

  “I don’t-” Why do I feel like I should apologize? “I don’t remember you.”

  “A couple of first-quarter girls? Why should you? You were the campus stars-you and your friend. You know, the elf-?”

  Yeah. Conditioning won’t allow us to speak his name, but we don’t have to. And, y’know, thinking about school gives me a weird warm feeling. Even the pain in my gut fades a little. Much as I hated the place, I like remembering it.

  Talking there and then beats the shit out of living here and now.

  “We always-we kind of thought you must be dead, or something.”

  “Or something?”

  I can feel her shrug in the shift of her breasts. “Everyone thought you’d be a big star. I mean, it’s been, what, six years? Seven? We thought we would have heard of you by now.”

  “Yeah, well, my life hasn’t been going exactly to plan. Maybe you’ve noticed.”

  Her sigh is silent, but I can feel it. “Andthat friend of yours. He was so gifted. Best in the school. Whatever happened to him?”

  I shrug against her thighs. “Nobody knows. Dead, probably. He never came back from-” Can’t say the word. “Never came back from, y’know, his, uh, training. You know.”

  “Being the best. . it doesn’t really count for much, does it?”

  “Not unless best means luckiest.” It comes out pretty well, but the cold twist above my wounded guts reminds me how much I still miss him. Not that it matters now. If you believe the religious types, I might see him soon enough.

  “Tizarre. .” Her voice has gone to hush. A drop of moisture splashes on my chest.

  “Tizarre had such a crush on him. .”

  Another drop. I resist the urge to taste it.

  “She used to write about him. Poetry. Sometimes to him. In her diary.”

  “Yeah?” I have had as much as I can take of this maudlin crap. “She’d have been disappointed. He was queer.”

  “He. . what? He was?”

  “Most likely. We never talked about it. But I’m pretty sure. Only way she would have gotten anywhere with him is if she suddenly grew a dick.”

  “Caine, you-” I can feel her shift in the darkness. Maybe shaking her head. “Why do you have to be such a. . an asshole all the time?”

  Oh, for shit’s sake. Here we go. “I wonder that myself.”

  “You’re so. . hostile. So angry. Are you always like this?”

  “Sometimes I’m worse.”

  “That’s what I mean. You say it like a joke, but it’s not. Not really. You always have something rotten to say about everything. Even yourself.”

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea for a good time-why don’t I bleed to death on your lap while you outline my defects of character?”

  “Hnh. And to think I–I thought-”

  “What? You thought what?” It comes out harsh: a lot colder than I meant to sound. Because I really want to know.

  Because she and Tizarre-Tizarre and her crush on my friend. . I mean, what about Marade? Did she ever have a crush of her own?

  From balls to brain I ache with hope that she’s always had a thing for bad boys. .

  Because my body doesn’t care where we are. My body doesn’t care how broken I am. How much I hurt. My body doesn’t care about anything except the smooth warmth of her skin. The soft full arc of breast against my arm. Because right now all I can think about is that one mind-bending kiss.

  But all she has for me is a resigned sigh as she shifts her grip so that she can cradle me in her arms like a baby. “Are you ready now?”

  Ahhh, shit. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  Without apparent effort, she lifts me off the floor and stands.

  “Khryl’s Healing is a power of Love.” Her voice has recovered that Ivanhoe swing: she’s got her Knight on now. “It is His Love for those wounded in the service of Valor that knits flesh and bone. But because my flesh is Its channel, His Love can only follow my own.”

  Really? My breath goes short, and not from pain. “Marade, I-”

  “Shut up.” Her real voice, with a snap to it. A fresh sigh brings on her Knight again. “You must be silent, Caine. You must. To find love for you in my heart is. . difficult. At best. And when you speak-”

  One more sigh, short and bitter. “When you speak, it is impossible.”

  ››scanning fwd››

  Years pass in a thermite blaze.

  Sticking her fingers into the holes on either side of my thigh was bad enough; when her whole hand goes into the wound in my gut, my control breaks.

  It’s so wrong-her fingers wriggle and slide and I can feel them, I can feel every one of them and I reject, I deny, I refuse to feel but there is a savage intimacy to it, beyond extreme, a secret sharing profound and profoundly wrong that surges up my throat like vomit and I shudder and moan-She’s reaching inside, pushing through the torn viscera, groping into the hole that fucker’s fighting claw ripped in whatever the hell the organ might be-liver, stomach, large intestine, I don’t know, it hurts so much I can’t remember which is what-and when her attention turns to Khryl’s Love, the white phosphorus it ignites inside me burns spastic jerks through my arms and legs and bangs my head on the floor.

  Faint pearly iridescence like faerie fire crawls her skin again, and when the screams start to rip upward from my gut to the top of my head, she brings her shimmering arm to my lips.

  “Bite down,” she says, distant. Clinical. “Go on.”

  I take her salt-sweet skin into my mouth and latch onto her ulna and taste dust and sand and sweat and muffle my screams on her flesh as every twinge and pang and ache that would make a misery of the weeks of healing this wound would require is crammed into five shattering minutes that transcend agony.

  When my knitting belly has finally pushed her hand back out, she lays it along my flank; the iridescence fades from her skin and we collapse together into the absolute darkness, gasping exhaustion in each other’s arms. “Y’know. .” I wheeze out the words. “No matter how. . well it works. .that shit is never gonna be popular.”

  “Nor should it be.” Her voice is faint, but her breathing is already regularizing: she’s in a lot better condition than I am. “Khryl’s Healing is for heroes. His Love does not spare your pain, but requires that you embrace it. Even love it: the badge of valor.” />
  “Yeah. . sure. But. . I don’t think the pain loves me back. .”

  I swear if I’d lived through this, I would’ve finally quit smoking. I really would.

  We lie together in silence for a while. The darkness is a comfort now.

  I remember once my dad saying, on one of his bad days-I think it was a belt he beat me with that time, but I’m not sure; the beatings all kind of blend together-but I remember lying curled up on my cot, bleeding, shivering with hurt and shame, and I remember him saying in that thick dripping lunatic’s voice: Just think about how good you’ll feel once you stop hurting.

  I thought it was a joke-one of those harsh psycho attempts at humor that were the way his love for me would try to punch through the walls of his bad craziness-but, y’know, right now I wonder if he knew something I’ve never figured out until just now. Because now that I’ve stopped hurting, I feel great.

  More than great.

  Because I’m still naked with Marade, and her skin is infinitely soft over spring-steel muscle, and her taste is still on my lips and I’m not busted up anymore.

  And I felt it-felt it through the Healing. Felt it like an arc of lightning through her hands into my heart. She somehow managed to find a way to love me.

  Oh, lord. Holy stinking crap on a stick. That didn’t take long. Better roll over. If she touches my dick by accident, she’ll think I pulled a knife.

  She’s shivering. It’s not cold here.

  Her shivers grow into trembling, then to shaking, and her breath hitches into quiet, half-stifled sobs, which gives me a soft-on faster than naked pictures of my grandfather.

  I’ve heard some guys get hot for women in tears. To each his own, I guess, but I think that’s kinda sick. Something about Marade sobbing like a little girl is as wrong as the feeling of her hand inside my belly.

  “Hey-hey, Marade, come on. .” I scoot around her-leaving some ass skin on the rough stone of the floor, but forget that-and slip my arm around her shoulders. She buries her face in the hollow of my neck. Tears trickle down my chest. I hold her and stroke the long dusty cascade of her invisible hair, murmuring the same kind of meaningless shit I used on Stalton.

  And it works this time, too.

  “I just. .” she murmurs against my throat as her shaking slowly quietens, “I just keep thinking-hoping-dreaming that they might somehow take pity on us. . that they might bring us home.”