“Come again?”
“How much for my own barrel? Shit, how much for all the barrels? How much grillswill can you make without getting arrested?”
Kravmik nodded at Tyrkilld. “Ask him.”
Tyrkilld shrugged up at me.
“You can stomach this disgusting brew?”
“Oh, Tyrkilld-” I took another sip. It lit up my brain. “Oh, it’s pretty hairy, I’ll give you that-”
“’S just grillswill,” Kravmik muttered. “What d’you expect?”
“But that’s because you’re holding it in beer barrels for, what, a few days? Weeks? Listen, I can ship barrels of Tinnaran oak up here-new oak, and some already used to age their brandy-if you barrel it for years, instead of days-three years in the new oak, macerate some tannin into it, then finish it in the-”
“He’s gone entirely mad,” Tyrkilld said in wonder. “Kravmik, take his cup. Two sips and the poor lad’s mind is gone.”
“Reach for this cup and I’ll break your fucking arm.”
I took another sip, a long one, and held it in my mouth until my tongue burned. Must have been a hundred forty proof or better. Amazing he could distill it without blowing the roof off the building.
But after a moment I remembered where I was. And why.
I swallowed the swill and set down the cup.
“Son of a bitch.” Sweat had prickled out across my forehead. I swiped my sleeve upward over my face. “Talk about shit happening at the wrong time. .”
Tyrkilld and Kravmik were still staring at me. I shrugged at the huge ogrillo. “Thanks, Kravmik. I mean it. And thanks for sharing your barrel, Tyrkilld. You’ll never know how much it meant to me. But I have to go to bed now. Tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day.”
Kravmik shook his head and turned away. “Ankhanans,” he muttered, lumbering back toward the kitchen. “Can never tell with those people. .”
Without a table to lean on, Tyrkilld had some difficulty regaining his feet. Once upright, he frowned down into his flagon. “And amongst all this still rests concealed, Master Monassbite,” he murmured, “the truth of why you have brought your tale to me.”
I cycled a dozen different lies; a couple almost made it into my mouth.
But-
“You’re the only one to bring this to, Tyrkilld. I’m putting this on you for the same reason that Kierendal decided she wanted you dead: because you’re the one who knows shit-you’ve been on the inside. You’re the one who can hurt her, when she starts to make her real moves, and. . ah, fuck it anyway.” I reached for the cup again. “It’s because I don’t like you.”
“You’ll have to favor the ignorance of a poor parish Knight; I’ve averred already that I’m no great mind, even sober. Which it might serve you well to remember I am currently not.”
A one-shoulder shrug brought the cup to my lips; swillfire lit up the inside of my skull. “I figured you’d only half believe me. So instead of, say, going to Angvasse and mounting a full-scale sweep-which you can’t really do anyway, without telling her more than you can afford for her to know about your, y’know, compromised position-you’d go and snoop around a little, pick up some Faces, and pound ’em to check out my story.”
Tyrkilld nodded somewhat more vigorously than entirely necessary. “As would any prudent Knight who’d had experience of your dishonest self.”
“Sure. The punch line, though, is that I’m telling the truth.” I took another shot of the swill. “And Kierendal is no one to be fucked with. Which is also the truth. About the time that you found out it was all true, you’d be in the middle of being violently dead.”
“Ah.”
“Which would set off a full-scale round-up of Freedom’s Face-which is what I want-and would leave you in bloody chunks that even Khryl couldn’t put back together. Which was also what I wanted.”
Tyrkilld rocked onto the balls of his feet and stuck his chin out as though that might help him keep his balance. “And yet now you have revealed this nefarious plan entire.”
A swirl of the cup set the grillswill in motion enough to sharpen the air with the sizzle of raw alcohol.
“Maybe I’m just not the hard-ass I used to be,” I said. “It’s one thing to figure out how to get a guy killed. It’s another to do it cold while you look him in the face.”
I raised the cup.
“And it’s something entirely else to do it to a man who’s just bought you-when you thought you’d never see another for the rest of your pathetic suffering life-a big damn mug of scotch.”
Already on the edge of the bed, tunic hanging on the post, baton unstrapped and pistol unholstered, I was pulling off one of my boots when I sagged and let my foot fall back to the floor. “Goddammit.”
I flopped backward onto the bed and threw my arm over my eyes. It didn’t help.
Pretty soon I moved my arm. Stars stared at me through the skylight. A winding crack in the plaster spread crooked winter stain from the casement toward the door.
Somehow it looked like the Caineway.
“Son of a bitch.” I heaved myself upright and put my tunic back on.
Downstairs, the dining hall was a shipwreck of post-party debris. A couple of listless eligibles drifted among the wreckage, righting tables and performing triage on the chairs and benches. Young Mistress Pratt had her hair bound up now, and a sheen of sweat to match the pretty flush on her cheeks as she shouldered a massive tray piled high with tankards and half-empty platters toward the kitchen doors, while a sullen teenage human boy swept spillage toward the alley door.
Pratt was piling more trays with tankards and platters, but he stopped willingly enough when my wave from the doorway caught his eye.
“Freeman Shade?” He wiped his hands on his apron as he came over. “Is there a problem? What’d you say to Knight Aeddhar? He came back and walked through the crowd, and the party just melted away. . not that I’m complaining-flat-rate event, y’know; the less they drink, the better we do-but from the look on his face-”
“Out here, Pratt, huh?”
“Oh, sure, sure, freeman.” He chuckled tiredly as he slipped through the half door. “No harm in letting Yttrall do some of the work-not that she doesn’t pull her weight. D’you know how much it’s worth to this establishment just to let her sit on Knight Aeddhar’s knee and laugh at his jokes? Which is a job in and of-”
“Pratt.”
The hosteler met my eyes and seemed to see me for the first time. Sudden wariness pinched the fatigue-lines deeper down his thin cheeks. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” His voice had gone quiet. “Really wrong.”
“Pratt, you need to get your family out of town.”
The hosteler’s feathery, almost invisible brows drew together. “What?”
“I mean it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. And I don’t think I can explain.”
Pratt took a step back. The apron fell forgotten from his opening fingers. “Are-are you threatening me-?”
“Listen to me. You have to go. All of you. Forget about cleaning up. You can do that later. If there is a later. Things are in motion here-I’ve started things in motion-”
I shook my head, and my teeth found the sore spot on the inside of my lip. “It’s about to get bad here. I don’t know how bad. Maybe worse than it’s ever been. If you don’t go now. .” I sighed. “You may not get the chance. You could be dead. You and your pretty wife. And your baby twins. Dead ugly.”
“What-” Pratt’s mouth was slack, and what little color his cheeks had ever had was now somewhere south of his collar. “I don’t understand-what are you talking about?”
“I’m trying to save your life.”
Pratt was pleading now. “Why are you saying these things to me?”
“That’s the funny part.” My laugh didn’t sound amused, even to me. “It’s because I like you.”
Pratt only looked helpless.
“I like your place. You do a good thing here at a fair price, and you treat
people better than you have to. You’re the kind of guy the world needs more of.”
“So you’re-so you’re scaring the crap out of me-?”
“Take a fucking vacation, Pratt. Take your pretty wife and your new kids south on the first steamer tomorrow. Go someplace nice. Here will not be nice. Here could get you all dead.”
“But I can’t-I can’t just-”
“I’m not kidding, Pratt.”
Pratt gave himself a little shake and managed an unsteady laugh. He swiped the thinning hair sideways across his scalp. “I. . appreciate the-uh, the warning, Freeman Shade. I do. But really, the Battleground is the safest place on Home-”
“Not anymore.”
“Well.” He sighed. “It’s the middle of the night, and my place is a wreck. I can’t make any moves until tomorrow, can I? And meanwhile, there’s still work to do, so if you don’t mind excusing me, freeman-”
I hung my head. I hate this part.
“Freeman?”
Hate it.
“Er, Freeman Shade, if you don’t mind, I really do have-”
My hand seized Pratt’s shirtfront faster than he could blink. The hosteler had just barely enough time to draw breath for a shout of alarm before my other hand flicked out to lay my palm gently along his cheek.
“You know me.”
Pratt’s shout of alarm died in his throat. His mouth worked. His eyes stared wildly for an instant, then squeezed shut, and he clapped his hands over his face and his legs buckled. He threw himself to his knees at my feet.
“Forgive me-forgive me, Lord, I did not know thee-!”
“Get up.”
Shivering on the floor, face pressed into his knees, Pratt moaned. “Ma’elKoth is Lord of Gods and Master of Home, and Caine is His One True Hand. . Ma’elKoth is Lord of Gods and Master of Home, and Caine is His One True Hand. .”
“Get up. Don’t grovel. I hate groveling.”
Pratt lifted a face transfigured by terror and awe. “My Lord?”
“And those bloody Psalms. They’re so depressing.” I pressed a hand to my head, blinking. How much of that damned grillswill had I drunk, anyway? “Just get up, huh?”
“As the Prince of Chaos commands-”
“And stop it with that shit.”
“As the-”
“Shut up.”
Pratt stood in a half crouch, cringing away from me.
“So take it as coming from Ma’elmotherfuckingKoth Himself, all right? Get thee fucking hence from this place, goddammit.”
Pratt barely allowed himself to whisper, “As the Prince of Chaos commands. .”
I left Pratt shaking on the foyer rug and stomped up the stairs toward my room.
Christ, I hate that shit.
BAD GUY
I linger upon this moment, as I have a thousand times, or a million, or only once forever; no number can signify, because times have no more meaning than does Time. All of you is present here: your painful birth and your blasted childhood, your criminal youth and murderous manhood, your sad slipping-down maturity and all your many deaths-And yet none of you is here now, too.
In this moment, for this moment, you have erased yourself. No longer an Actor, a man, Hari Michaelson, Caine.
You vanish into the legend you are still creating.
The conference room is institutional green. The conference table is faux-granite grey. The conference chairs are mauve.
Do they look comfortable to you?
Do you somehow sense the quantum smear of futures in which you’ll someday sit in them-when you’ll have conversations too much like this one with other, younger Actors?
This question will hang suspended without answer until I have voice to ask.
For now, I focus on the hum of the motorbed under your ass, on the saline drip streaming drool into your strapped-down left arm, and on the salt I taste on the back of your tongue.
The vast curving screen that fills the far wall of the conference room shows a glowing skeletonized schematic of the vertical city. The schematic rotates slowly, displaying differently colored pinpoints of light: a virtual orrery of fourteen planets.
“I, ah, must say, Michaelson,” muses the doughy troll that you call Administrator Kollberg, “you are taking all this rather, mmm, well. .”
You roll your head to the right, and without the slightest twist of emotion regard the nine inches of iron nail still jammed through your wrist. “It wasn’t exactly a surprise.”
And I love how your voice sounds inside your head, even at a dull flat hum. .
“Well, yes. When you pull the spike yourself, online-oh, that will be very dramatic.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Don’t let it concern you. You’ll get another round of injections before the retransfer. You’ll barely feel a thing. We dial down the dolorimetrics on the cube recordings anyway; no one wants to really feel your pain-the public wants to savor your suffering, not share it.”
“Yeah.”
“So think of this as an opportunity to do some real acting for a change. Make it convincing and move on. Staggering off into the darkness-”
“I want to talk to Marc Vilo.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My Patron. I want to talk to him.”
Kollberg shifts his weight backward in the comfortable looking chair and lets his thick lips flap their way through a long, slow sigh. “I’ll take that tone from you once, Michaelson. But you’re not on Overworld now. Mind your place.”
You close eyes that burn and sting. From the air, you tell yourself in silent monologue. Something in the air.
Already you narrate your life.
“Sorry, Administrator. Sorry. It was the meds talking. But please, sir, if you would only let me-”
“Entertainer.” The plump Administrator rises and folds his soft pale hands in front of his crotch. “As I have explained, Businessman Vilo has already signed off on your new contract. He’s a very busy man.”
“Please put a call through, Administrator. Please. He’ll take it. He will.”
“He may. But he won’t change anything. He can’t; Studio operations are sacrosanct. Now. Here’s your escape.” Kollberg takes a few steps toward the head of the table. One of those soft pale hands unhitches itself from his crotch and clicks a pen-size control.
The schematic of the vertical city dissolves into a new view, from the upland plateau side. One bright red star shines well away from the exit tunnel.
“This is where you will retransfer. Once you have removed the spikes from your arm and your ankle-”
“How am I supposed to have gotten all the way up there?”
Kollberg looks at you.
You swallow, and drop your eyes-a conditioned reflex? Or is the empty malice in his colorless gaze too much for the nerves of a mere Hari Michaelson? “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Please, Administrator. Continue.”
“Well.” Kollberg clears his throat: a cough delicately indulgent as a cautious pedophile’s. “Actually, it’s a fair enough question. After you retransfer, you’ll cover the continuity gap in your Soliloquy. It doesn’t take much-just a phrase or two about the struggle to crawl all that way, and something about the confusion of the battle against Pretornio’s zombies covering your escape-”
“But-” You shake your head, your face twisting to mirror the twist of sick anticipation in your stomach. “-but, well, I mean, first they’re not zombies-”
“Oh, whatever, Michaelson, please don’t quibble-”
“And there’s just no way I could have crawled that far in that kind of shape. Hell, I don’t think I could crawl that far now, meds or not-I don’t think I could crawl that far if I were healthy-”
“It’s a silly objection, Michaelson. No one will care. After all, that ogrillo bitch practically healed you on the spot, didn’t she?”
“Not exactly healed; I mean, look at me-”
“Now, as you struggle away from the city, you’ll find a saddlebag ju
st here-”
He clicks the control again, and a new pinpoint lights up a few hundred virtual meters from the first.
“-which you will theorize must have fallen from one of the horses during Kess Raman’s abortive attempt to flee-”
“Are you serious?”
“In that saddlebag are four canteens of water, as well as jerky and flatbread. There are also several vials of a cream which you will identify as a medicinal salve; when you rub it on your wounds, this will cover the effects of the intra-dermal time-dissolve antibiotic and steroid capsules we’ve injected along your spine. They’ll release over the next seven days, though you’ll hardly need them that long, as you shall see.”
The twist on your face becomes a full wince; nausea thickens below your throat, and it can hardly all be from the antibiotics and steroid injections, can it? “Um, Administrator-?”
Kollberg again clicks the control, and the virtual city shrinks into a vanishing perspective; a new star appears virtual kilometers away. “Roughly here-where you can easily arrive before daybreak-you’ll find two horses, which you will identify in Soliloquy as from the company’s remuda and theorize that they must have escaped from the others during the raid. Make up whatever names you like; it’s not important. One will be fully tacked and will have saddlebags of its own, also containing filled canteens and provisions, as well as some spare clothing and boots, so that you can dress yourself and bandage your wounds. Don’t worry about having to find them-we’ll transfer them in near enough your location that you’ll be able to hear their tack jingle-”
“Administrator, please.” You duck as though you would bob and weave if you weren’t strapped to the motorbed. “Isn’t that a little . . convenient? I mean, come on, sir-finding the saddlebag with exactly what I need-then a horse, with clothes and boots-not to mention that ogrilloi don’t let horses just wander off; horsemeat tastes like-”
“Michaelson, this is a fantasy.” Kollberg sighs with exaggerated patience.
“No one expects it to make sense. It’s not supposed to be realistic.”
He clicks the control again, and the wall view dissolves to a colorfully illuminated map of the eastern Boedecken. “Now. You’re only seven days’ ride from the Khryllian outpost at North Rahnding; by switching horses and sleeping on horseback, you could make it in less than five-”
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